Eva O’Leary – Happy Valley « burn magazine

I grew up in a central Pennsylvanian town, nicknamed Happy Valley. It is home to Penn State University, a big ten party school that dominates the culture both economically and geographically. The town is homogeneous, 71% of the inhabitants are between the ages of 18-24 and 83.2% of the population is white. It is made up of two main streets, and prides itself on housing the forth largest stadium in the world. In 2008, it was named the largest party school in America by the Princeton review, and in 2012 it had the highest number of reports of forcible sex offenses on any campus in the nation (partially related to a child sex abuse scandal that made international headlines). My childhood and teen years were spent on the edge of Penn State’s campus, our home was down the street from the stadium and surrounded by student rentals. As a teenager, I had easy access to the campus and local party culture. My first experiences of adulthood were heavily impacted by the normalization of binge drinking, gendered power dynamics, patriotism and hook-up culture. For the last five years, I have been making photographs that reflect on my experiences growing up in this environment. In making this work, I’m referencing a personal archive of journals and documents from my young adult years and using this material as a conceptual map.