Expanding the Walls

    I personally love it when young people are given the opportunity to express themselves through art and create beautiful things. These works can be especially touching when the artists have interesting or atypical world views or when the subject matter is not well documented as main stream work. A project that I find incredibly motivating and moving took place in New York City not long ago.


    Two months ago, The Studio Museum in Harlem gave twelve teenage girls with no formal photography experience professional cameras. They were told to document their lives, their worlds growing up in New York City. The results from this project are both shocking and beautiful in their own way. 

    According to the New York Times, this program called Expanding the Walls "allows teenagers, 'many of them from Harlem or other historically underserved neighborhoods,' to work with the museum’s curators and educators. They use as their study model the renowned Harlem photographer James Van Der Zee, whose classic portraits chronicled Harlem during most of the 20th century... The teenagers, all of whom are black or Hispanic, are trained in the use of the digital camera’s aperture settings and shutter speeds. They are encouraged to photograph subjects that are the most meaningful to them. Many of the girls use the camera to explore setbacks in life and tough back-stories."


A link to some of the photos can be found here