CLEVELAND, Ohio— In celebration of its 150th anniversary, the Cleveland Public Library is partnering with the Cleveland Print Room to tell stories about everyday life in the city.

Cleveland has many stories to tell.

And the library hopes the photographers for the 20/20 Project can bring as many of those stories to life as possible. 

Jef Janis has been taking pictures and telling stories in the city for over 25 years.

“We have a beautiful melting pot of a lot of different cultures and people, and a lot of different viewpoints and religious backgrounds and political backgrounds, and by us being out in the street, we get to tell some of those stories and share how beautiful and how very alike we all are,” said Janis.

And he’s hoping to help fill a void here in the city he says has been missing from the library’s photography archive.

“Unfortunately, with newspapers and things not being as big, their collection dropped off in the 80’s. They weren’t getting as much stuff,” said Janis. “So, we’re kind of filling in that role by having so many of us with different viewpoints out on the street.”

Aaron Mason, with the Cleveland Public Library, helped kick start the Cleveland 20/20 project, which aims to update the library’s archive by documenting modern life in the city. 

“We’re thinking forward, right?” said Mason. “So, we’re here in 2019, and we’re thinking about what users would want to see in the year 2040.” 

While Janis brings a more local perspective, photographer Ruddy Roye traveled all the way from Brooklyn, New York to capture images that tell the story of Cleveland. 

“I go out every day, I go into different communities and I sit and observe,” said Roye. “I look for what I consider to be a piece of a story.” 

Roye has been a photographer for decades, and brings an outside perspective as he turns the story of Cleveland into a work of art—like using reflections from a building. 

“There’s a sense of isolation that I think happens to black folk in Cleveland, and so that’s what I look for in the mirror, and so I’d sit here and I would wait to see how that piece of glass reflects African Americans,” said Roye.

And with over twenty photographers roaming the streets of Cleveland, Mason hopes the 20/20 project can document the city in a positive light. 

“It’s something new for us to have contemporary photographs in the collection, and this is kind of the beginning of a collection that will grow over time and years to come,” said Mason.