Habitat for Humanity International
Carter Work Project | St. Paul, Minnesota
The 40th Jimmy & Rosalynn Carter Work Project landed in St. Paul in the fall of 2024, timed to President Carter's 100th birthday. More than 4,000 volunteers gathered over six days on the East Side to frame up 30 homes at The Heights, Twin Cities Habitat's largest development to date — a 112-acre former golf course being converted into a 147-unit affordable housing neighborhood. Carter, in hospice care at 99, wasn't on site. He died three months later.
Habitat for Humanity International brought me on for five days of documentary coverage. At that scale, the camera wants to go wide and stay there. I kept moving closer to the homeowner in a hard hat watching her own house go up, the volunteer who'd flown in from out of state, the conversations happening at the edges of the build site. Five days is enough time to stop reacting to the event and start finding the people inside it.