Our Beginnings

written by Kevin Donovan

The Gray Matters Collective began in the winter of 2018 in a small college campus coffee shop in Rock Island, Illinois.

It was just an idea, that maybe mental health should be talked about more and stigmatized so much less. Haley DeGreve contacted me in November asking if I would be interested in a photo campaign focused on fighting the stigma surrounding mental health. We set out some ideas and eventually set out to create a black and white portrait series featuring college students, our colleagues and friends; those who believed in mental health and wanted to share their support or their story. In many cases, both. The portraits featured faces on a black background with a message of support picked by the subjects, ranging from themes of hope and love to support and care.

We picked a Tuesday for the event; somehow cementing Tuesday’s into The Gray Matter’s theme, and it began. A handful of speakers had agreed to share their story and message, the student government president, Kevin Atwood, a local mental health non-profit leader, a message from the college president, one of the college therapists, an student-athlete, to name a few. More people came then we had ever imagined. The floors became chairs and the doorways windows. People care about this. This matters. It has to matter. If we don’t keep pushing mental health, nothing changes.