Seeing the world through community service!
06/12/2008
At my college, I registered for a womens studies 101 course during Summer 2007. My instructor, Archie showed his small class a film about a woman who traveled to the red light district in Saudi Arabia. The woman had a background in photography and education, so she decided to combine those skills together in good use. She instructed a group of red-light district children how to take photographs around their environment. The children living in this district had parents who work as a pimp or prostitute. Girls are expected to follow their mother’s footsteps at young ages of 12 or 10 years old. Eventually, the woman developed personal relationships with her students by helping them to get out of the drug-selling, poverty environment. The film was documentary-style for two hours. After I watched the film, my mind started to get back in the creative process for photography and other arts.
Arts are used in outreach programs as a different approach for people to understand what’s going on around them. Majoredly of the visual arts aren’t done by professionals in the community service field of photography. I believe these amateur photographers have better photographs than alot of professionals. All their photographs tell a story, showing all imperfections with a raw quality. When I saw a photograph of a smiling Indian girl with half of her face showing, in front of broken windows, it spoke to me. Her one eye showing in the photo showed happiness and sorrow. It takes practice for an artist to capture a picture or photograph contains drastically different emotions and stories.
One of my projects I’ve thought about doing for awhile is visiting animal shelters. The pet photographs may be in a collage format in my portfolio and photography website. First choices of animals were pitbulls to educate people about this breed without judging ALL pitbulls as vicious fighters. Some of the proceeds will go to animal shelters or humane society. I don’t have the details down yet- it’ll be a long process. I’ll keep everybody posted on this. For now, open your mind, heart and spirit and check out these article links: Afghani children loves those disposables!
World Foods Photography Contest
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06/12/2008 at 5:38 am
photos! Photos! Post photos!
06/12/2008 at 10:22 pm
Hey there Jessica! Did you change your blog format? I love the mixture of green and black.
Also, I love your idea of photographing pets. A student in one of my classes did a photo project that included a series of five images telling a story about a local animal shelter. She basically started with an image of what the shelter looks on the outside and worked her way in until she ended with a happy dog being adopted. It was pretty cool (and broke my heart since I’m an animal lover). If you get permission from a local shelter to let you do your project, they may even use it in their advertisements! Good luck. and I agree with Zfolwick…post some pics girl!