Literacy Through Photography

As some of you may know, I spent a significant portion of my time at my current job working on a project called Literacy Through Photography. Olympus donated over 100 point-n-shoot 35 mm cameras to the organization, and we rotate those around multiple classrooms in our eight partner schools. The students each get to shoot one full roll of black & white film, focusing on a theme of family, community, self, or dreams. We then develop all of the film for them, and they tell the stories behind their photographs through poems and essays. Next, the students each choose their favorite photo, and we enlarge those to 8x10s. Finally, each school hosts an 'exhibit opening' so families and community members can come out and celebrate the kids' displayed work.

I'm not going to lie to you. This project has been a logistical nightmare, and there have been several days that I have kicked myself for requesting to be assigned to LTP my first day at this job. BUT in the end, it was SO worth it. I was so amazed with some of the photographs that these students took. And this year, for the first time ever, we had a grand exhibit opening at the Smithsonian that featured the work of 100 students from across all eight of our partner schools. It was awesome. The students whose work was not displayed at the Smithsonian is now hanging in the MLK Jr. Public Library near the Chinatown metro stop. If you live in DC, I strongly recommend checking out both exhibits. The Smithsonian exhibit is at the S. Dillon Ripley Center, and it will be up through August 21. I think the one at MLK is up through the end of June.

Here are a few samples. (I don't know which is worse... Not crediting the student or putting an elementary school kid's name on a web page without their knowledge. I'll go with option A. for now until I'm told to do otherwise.) Enjoy!