What will you get if you ask middle schoolers to show you their city through a camera?
There may be images of flowers and friends, street scenes and sneakers, and trees and trains. It can also include colorful images featuring their favorite people, places and things. Such Photographs made up an exhibition that was the end result of a special citywide photography lesson called "Everyday DC".
"DC is a place where people can all come together and be free and be with everyone that they love, "said Lauryn Tharpe, one of the four student curators (馆长) who worked with their art teacher at Brookland Middle School to put the exhibition together. "There's more to DC than big buildings and important people."
Everyday DC" was inspired by a popular Instagram Feed called Everyday Africa, which was started by two professional photographers who noticed the personal photos of Africa, from their perspective (视角 ) showing a different story than their professional work. The goal of the online photo"exhibition" was to show viewers what it's like to live in Africa, as opposed to what people outside of Africa see in the news.
In Washington DC, students took photos to reflect their lives there. Twelve middle schools each submitted about 10 student photographs, from beautiful portraits to action shots and images of the students' favorite foods. Tharpe and another three students were selected to be curators by their art teacher, Maame Bawuah, who coordinated ( 协调) the project for DC Public Schools.
"I have a lot of amazing students, although the four of them are quite exceptional," said
Bawuah, who chose the students to be curators because of their interest in both photography and museum management.
A curator is someone who collects, organizes, cares for and displays anything in a collection.To get ready for the exhibition, the curators had to take care of many tasks, including taking their photos according to different themes.
