Jennifer Kinney: City Under One Roof

City Under One Roof by Jennifer Kinney Jennifer Kinney is a photographer and writer currently based in Whittier, Alaska. Whittier, originally a military port of great strategic importance, has gradually become a place filled with pervasive solitude. Jennifer Kinney tells a story of this little town and its community in her ongoing series called City Under One Roof. She invites the viewer to peek inside the life of this small community and see how it's transforming. „City Under One Roof is an incomplete portrait of a town and its many transitions, from a vitally patriotic World War II necessity to an obscure outpost, from a proud, young, isolated town to a middle aged one increasingly connected to the outside world. It is an invitation to engage with community identity: how it forms, how it changes, and how it is represented. The title refers to Whittier’s reality as a town of shared roofs and homes, where neighbours live so close together they can hear each other through the walls. It was a nickname for the once-grand Buckner Building, the largest building in Whittier and the Alaskan territory upon its construction, but abandoned just six years later. It is also a metaphor for the way we live in small communities: as a family, persisting in spite of difference and division.” Words: Jennifer Kinney, Thisispaper Photography: Jennifer Kinney