Anyone hoping to see junior Nichole Sobecki at some point in the next four months had better do it quickly. Less than a week from today, the girl known to her friends as Nicki will leave for Lebanon, traversing the world to take a job at an English-language newspaper in Beirut. There, Sobecki will pursue her natural passion for understanding and capturing the complexities of world affairs through photojournalism.
This dual Tufts-SMFA student speaks with an open, reflective manner, displaying extensive knowledge of the complicated events and situations she has explored in the world around her.
Sobecki's interest in such documentation began at a young age. Even as a child, she refused to be filmed by her mother's new video camera, preferring instead to do the filming herself. She began studying photography in high school at the age of 14. That same summer, Sobecki journeyed to Ghana, where she spent six weeks taking photographs and exploring life in the country, thus cementing her interest in documentary photography.
Sobecki has also explored a variety of other artistic mediums: "I've been painting and drawing since I could hold a pen," she said. To hone her talents, Sobecki decided to pursue a dual degree at Tufts and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts.
Sobecki is an international relations major with a regional concentration in Africa. As a freshman, she joined Exposure, a group run by the Institute for Global Leadership (IGL) that explores human rights issues through photojournalism. Through Exposure and the IGL, Sobecki landed an internship with renowned documentary photographer James Nachtwey, which she pursued that summer before joining Exposure for their first workshop trip to Kosovo.
While there, Sobecki explored the story of Kosovo's ethnic minorities. She focused on studying the Roma and Serbian people there, producing works of both photos and writing that eventually became a part of a book entitled "Rebuild: Kosovo Six Years Later."
When she returned to campus that fall for her sophomore year, Sobecki enrolled in EPIIC and planned a trip to Rwanda. That winter, she traveled there with four friends to explore the role of women in Rwandan reconstruction. As a researcher and the documentarian of the trip, Sobecki is currently working on a book of photos that tells the story of what she called an "incredible experience."
Later that year, she went on a second Exposure trip, to Philadelphia, where she and other Tufts students worked to explore this issue of gun violence in the area. The Daily featured their work in a special section titled "Philadelphia Exposed."
Sobecki's first film, a project she is currently working on with junior Jessica Anderson, grew out of this workshop. With the film, she and Anderson originally intended to tell the story of Hakim Reid, a 34-year-old man that Sobecki met while working on the project in Philadelphia. In and out of jail over the years, "he made all of the mistakes that make you the big man on the street," Sobecki said, also describing Reid as powerful and articulate.
Tragically, less than a month before Sobecki planned to begin shooting her film, she learned that Reid had been murdered.
"He was someone I respected and empathized with and had talked to on a daily basis for three months," she said. "I was devastated."
She chose to go ahead with the film, tentatively titled "Dying Quietly," turning it into the story of Reid's life told by those who knew him best. Sobecki expects to finish the film by the time she graduates, hoping that it will be used in Philadelphia as part of an after-school program for youths whose violent behavior or drug use has led them to the juvenile legal system.
"I've never done a film before," she said, "but you're learning as you're going, and I can only really learn by doing."
The summer after sophomore year, while working on her film, Sobecki became involved in Harvard's Program of Refugee trauma, helping to create a "blended learning course that is the first masters program in global mental health."
Her work there was different from her other projects in that it included no photography and documentary - yet it is still relevant to the issues which drive Sobecki.
"My work at Harvard has to do with education and human rights issues," she said. "And that's what I'll always return to."
For Sobecki, photography and film are mediums through which to explore the social injustice and humanitarian issues that truly move her.
"I'm not interested in photography for photography's sake," she said. "In what I do and the mark I leave on the world, [just photography] has never seemed fully satisfying to me."
As the head of Exposure last semester, Sobecki encouraged dozens of aspiring photographers, documentarians and activists to explore what they found satisfying about photojournalism.
Sobecki added that reflecting on how she wants to explore the world is a driving factor in her decision to travel to Lebanon.
"Photography, writing and journalism are very powerful ways to address the injustices that you see in the world, but I don't think that they're the only way," she said. "The question of whether they're the way for me is almost what I'm going to Beirut looking for."
Thus, Sobecki will board a plane next Monday and fly to Beirut, where she will work as a photographer and writer for the Daily Star, an English-language newspaper run by the International Herald Tribune. Her decision to spend the semester in Lebanon grew out of an intense academic interest in the country.
"[Lebanon is] probably the most fascinating place in the Middle East right now," she said. "I want to understand it better, and I want to do that by going there and living there." She hopes that she can use her experience in Lebanon to direct herself in her senior year at Tufts. As of now, Sobecki is unsure whether she will complete her SMFA degree.
Sobecki said she doesn't know what she wants to be when she grows up other than "happy," but she knows she will always have some project or pursuit about which she is passionate.
"The things that draw us to stories are really somewhat intangible," Sobecki said. It is this willingness to pursue whatever moves her that keeps Sobecki so passionately engaged.
