Categories
Community Programs

The Laundromat Project

A few years ago, we blogged about a community program known as The Laundromat Project. The Laundromat Project is a community-based art program that takes place in local laundromats across New York City. What makes this program unique is the fact that they use a space where people of different races and backgrounds converge. The laundromat is a common ground that all types of people come to, and the downtime created in waiting for laundry creates a perfect opportunity to engage in art. Right now, the project works out of different laundromats in the city, but their long-term goal is to create an art center that adjoins a laundromat and create a more permanent dialogue with a particular space.

I found the most groundbreaking aspect of the project to be its offering of residencies for artists. In their Create Change program, artists have the chance to break out of the independent mindset of working as an individual. Most artist residencies give artists an incubation space for their own work. The Create Change program allows artists to engage in a meaningful dialogue with the community. This departs from the norm, and allows for the artists in residence to explore what is possible when art is integrated into a community setting that would otherwise not be a part.

You can keep up with what The Laundromat Project is doing by visiting their website and calendar.

Categories
Community Programs

Global Youth Connect

Global Youth Connect is a non-profit human rights activist organization aimed to empower and inspire passion in youth. It has helped to address a wide variety of human rights and social justice issues around the world since 1999. Global Youth Connect provides today’s youth with opportunities to engage in experiential learning in post-conflict countries that have a history of human rights abuses. International youth participants in delegations join local peers in their selected destinations in a combination of workshops, advocacy meetings, volunteer service with NGOS and site visits, through which they obtain vital information on the key human rights issues pertaining to their choice of location. International youth delegations are invited to work collectively in taking action for human rights and social justice.

Over the past decades, GYC has initiated 26 human rights training programs, involving more than 625 young individuals from 15 countries. There are currently twelve locations international participants can select from, such as Rwanda, El Salvador and Bosnia. The GYC programs provide comprehensive tools to inform and empower young people to make educated decisions in the human rights field.   Here is a video of an International Delegate talking about her experience in Rawanada. They are currently accepting Bosnia and Rawanda delegation applications. Be sure to also take a look at their blog.

 

Categories
Community Programs

Expanding the Walls

Over the past four weeks, I have been working with high school students from the Studio Museum in Harlem Expanding the Walls (ETW) program. This amazing program is for students that come from all over the New York area. It is an opportunity that allows the students to learn digital photography over the course of 8 months. They also participate in a variety of activities that help to inform their final photographic project such as museum and gallery visits.

The program approached us at Photography and Imaging because they wanted to expand the experience with photography by learning analog photography before diving into digital. That’s where I come in. Expanding the Walls needed an analog aficionado.  I was up for the challenge. Starting in the beginning of February the students of ETW made the journey to the Photography & Imaging Department of NYU’s Tisch. During these weeks the students learned how to operate an analog camera, make compelling images, and enlarge their negatives in the darkroom.

I was so excited to introduce to these students my passion and it was a joy to see their engagement with the amazing art of photography. The workshop has come to an end, but I’m looking forward to working with these students until the end of the semester as they transition into digital. I hope to see the concepts they’ve learned to extend into their images as they work toward a final project.

To learn more about Expanding the Walls, check out their website.

  photocrati gallery

Categories
Community Programs

Aja Project- Youth + Photography Transformation

Aja is an acronym for the phrase “Autosuficiencia Juntada con Apoyo” which means supporting self-sufficiency. Aja Project is an organization that provides photography based educational programming to youth that have been affected by war and displacement. In this program, the students are taught to think critically about self identity while developing leadership skills.

This non-profit organization is based in San Diego, California and utilizes participatory photography methods in after-school and in-school programs. Since its start in 2000, Aja has helped more than 1,000 displaced youth share their stories with over 1 million viewers. They have had public exhibits at the National Geographic Society’s Explorers Hall, United Nations Headquarter, and the San Diego Museum of Arts.

Aja Project also has two international sister organizations- Record of Truth in Burma and Disparando Cameras (para la Paz) in Colombia. Aja is continuing to look for ways to further expand their unique and life changing program.

You can read more about this organization here!

Photo from Aja

Categories
Community Programs Resources

Teen Empowerment & Employment through the Arts

Artist for Humanity (AFH) is a unique and innovative arts organization that provides empowerment and employment for teens through the arts (painting, photography, sculpture, screen printing and digital media).  Located in Boston, MA since 1991, AFH’s mission “is to bridge economic, racial and social divisions by providing under-resourced youth with the keys to self-sufficiency through paid-employment in the arts.”

AFH partners professional artists/mentors with youth to design, produce and market art products from various media.  Growing up in Boston, I have always been a fan of AFH’s work and certainly hope to work with them one day.

Be sure to check out their blog too!

                                                            photo from AFH

Categories
Resources

How to take a photography portrait in 10 minutes

How to take a photography portrait in 10 minutes | Art and design | guardian.co.uk.

When time is short or the location is a disaster, every photographer needs some tried and tested ideas to fall back on. Here are a few tricks of the trade

from the Guardian Photo Blog

 

Categories
Future Imagemakers

Spring 2013 Future Imagemakers-Latest Student Work

Future Imagemakers is an innovative after-school program run by the Photography & Imaging Department at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts.  It gives high school students the opportunity to learn about digital photography, create, and develop ideas that are taught by NYU students.

This year, we are lucky to have 13 very talented young students join us from high schools all over New York City as well as Long Island.  Comprised of sophomore and juniors, students came in with different photography backgrounds and skill levels but all have a strong passion and dedication for the art.

Some of our assignments have included photographing the students’ community, family members and strangers, as well as shooting a series inspired by a song or piece of literature.  The students also visited the Allen Ginsberg exhibit at the NYU Grey Gallery, practiced shooting out in Washington Square Park, and will have the opportunity to shoot out on St. Marks and take a field trip to MoMa later in the spring.

Our goal for this program is to help students not only understand how to shoot with DSLRs and work in Adobe Bridge and Photoshop, but to also help them cultivate new ideas, open them up to new works of art, and show them the importance and power that photography has in our world.  We also have a class blog so feel free to check it out!

Below is a slideshow of images from students’ work so far this semester.  Each photo was chosen by the students themselves.

photocrati gallery

 

Categories
Media Projects

Birth Culture

Alice Proujansky taught in our Community Collaborations program in 2002. She has been extremely busy since then as a freelance journalist and Teaching Artist and Staff Developer at Urban Arts Partnership in NYC.  Her Birth Culture project was featured in this Sunday’s NY Times.

©Alice Proujansky

Life’s Unequal Beginnings – NYTimes.com

Alice Proujansky (BFA 2002)  in the NY Times Sunday Review as part of their Exposures series in The Opinion Pages.

She writes: For the past six years I have been photographing birth, looking at its universal as well as cultural aspects, and the struggle to provide women with safe, respectful care. An estimated quarter of a million women die each year from pregnancy-related causes like pre-eclampsia. Though the number of women who die in pregnancy or childbirth is half what it was 20 years ago, most of these deaths could have been prevented.

My interest in the subject started when I was 18 and on a semester-abroad program in the Dominican Republic, where I ended up with a Spanish immersion internship in the materInity ward of a public hospital. continue reading.

This is the not the fist time the NY Times has featured this work. In 2010, they produced  the multimedia piece “Hope for a Healthy Birth After C-Section” using Alice’s photos.

A freelance photojournalist based in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, Alice Proujansky’s work has been published by the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the BBC, New York Magazine, NPR and others. She has also been a teaching artist for many years and now is Staff Developer at Urban Arts Partnership. Alice returns regularly to our department to talk to students in our Community Collaborations project. 

See www.aliceproujansky.com for more information, to view more images from her Birth Culture project, and to follow her blog.

 

Categories
Media Projects

Reinvention Stories

REINVENTION STORIES > A new web project by Documentary Filmmakers, Julia Reichert and Steven Bognar  that pushes how the Web can be used for storytelling. *Worth checking out

REINVENTION STORIES is an experiment in bringing real life documentary stories into the potential of an interactive environment. This includes a short movie. Sit back and watch it if you want, or choose your own path through.

You can add your own story. You can answer questions we ask. Or eventually you can see dozens of stories, of people, places and events in our city. read more

 

Interesting interview with Julia and Steve about their project and the process of making it @ POV films blog, Two Filmmakers Reinvent Their Approach for “Reinvention Stories,” a Web Documentary

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Highly recommend reading more on the POV | PBS blog: Another interesting and related story about community storytelling is My Brooklyn: Replicating Their Model in Your Community

 

 

Categories
Community Programs Media Projects

Photographing your own community

Came across this article Voices of NY » » The ‘Destruction of a Community’ Thru Another Lens which features an interview with Ricky Flores, a Bronx photographer whose work is featured in the exhibition Seis del Sur at the Bronx Documentary Center. The article and great website for the exhibition highlight what it means to photograph your own community.