Janiyah Shelton is a 20-year-old photographer from Stone Mountain, GA. Playing instruments and always in arts majority of her life, Janiyah knew something in the art field would be the career she will enjoy for the rest of her life. She began her photography business her freshman year of high school and started her photography business her junior year of high school. Janiyah is now a sophomore at Bennett College majoring in Journalism and media studies to pursue her career in photojournalism. Janiyah enjoys taking pictures of portraits, fashion, travel photography. New York, Nigeria, South Africa, and the Bahamas, to name a few, are cities/countries she has spent the time to capture its amazing view. Her future career is to become a freelance photojournalist. She hopes you enjoy her pictures as much as she enjoyed taking them.

 “Mental Health in College Students” is the theme of her art show. She chose to do this topic for several reasons. Janiyah goes through stress and depression as a college student and not only does she go through it but many college students go through it as well. Yes, it is an issue that gets talked about but not enough. Usually, students are not comfortable to talk about what they go through and rather keep it to themselves and not seek help.

Janiyah felt this was a perfect theme for her art show so she planned it out and reached out to 20 students who attend Bennett College, North Carolina A&T, and the University of North Carolina at Greensboro to see if they were comfortable enough to talk to her about their mental health and share it to the public. Janiyah picked the five emotions; fear, anger, sadness, love, and joy, because she feels that those emotions are emotions, were a thing that students go through as a college student. She gives one emotion to a student, ask them a question about it and let that student talk to her. Janiyah made sure it was just her and the student in a dark room with only one bright light on their face and asked each student to wear black and white to give a contrast in the black backdrop. While the student was talking, Janiyah would take pictures of them to get certain facial expressions and also voice record them because their strongest statement that they said would be their caption of the picture. Some of these stories told by the students were very powerful and Janiyah made sure she thanked that person because they were comfortable enough to speak to her about this issue and go public about it.

Janiyah Shelton’s ultimate goal for this art show is to bring awareness on mental health in college students and that those who go through it you are not alone and there's always someone who would love to help you!