While on a lecture tour in the fall of 2000, I
spent some time in Seattle, on a leg of my trip organized by the estimable
Walter Bodle, guiding light of Youth in Focus, an
award-winning program for teaching photography to at-risk inner-city young
people in that fine, damp city. Watching Walt and his dedicated crew at work
with a cluster of excited, creative teens reminded me that this kind of
grass-roots photo education took off in the
1960s.
There's now more than a third of a century's worth of collective, cumulative experiment in this approach to visual education, which has taken place not just all across this country but in fact all around the world. Yet you'll find little published trace of any of that effort, and almost no reference to it in the literature of photo education specifically and visual education -- a sad fact.
It strikes me that the time might at last have come around for some project to distill the experience of those three decades plus -- to consolidate the gains, assess the lessons, and seek to draw often isolated programs into a larger framework. With the 2005 Oscar for best Documentary Film going to Ross Kauffman and Zana Briski's splendid Born into Brothels, which came out of the Kids with Cameras project, surely the moment has arrived to weigh what's happened so far, and to plan what should happen next.
If you're interested in this set of issues -- and, of course, especially if, now or in the past (or in the future), you have had any involvement in a program teaching photography to young people, at any age level and in any context -- we'd like to hear from you. Just send your name, contact information, and a brief statement about your interest in the subject and experience (if any) in this area to us at neweyes@nearbycafe.com. You'll
receive an email questionnaire in return, and we'll bring you up to date on the
venture that's
unfolding.
