The Photography Workshop
| In the photography workshop students are given disposable cameras to photograph their homes, their neighborhoods, their school life and each other. Students then crop, edit and make books that best tell their individual and collective stories. The workshop provides a good bookend to the beginning of the year where learners explore their roots and discover the resources that they share among themselves. |
 | In a sampling of classes at Jamaica High School between 1993 and 2001, approximately ten percent of the students’ parents and grandparents came from New York City and state. Twenty percent came from the other 49 states and Canada. Fifty percent came from the Caribbean, seven percent from non-Caribbean Latin America, four percent from Africa, six percent from Asia and three percent from Europe. Twenty-five percent of the American families outside New York come from South Carolina. Eleven percent of the total comes from Guyana, and seventeen percent from the island of Jamaica. The demographics of New York City classrooms are always changing as families move in and out of the neighborhood. But whether they come from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Sri Lanka or Texas, or elsewhere, photography allows students to share aspects of their lives they otherwise may not see.
The Photography Workshop is facilitated by photographer Janis Lewin, an editorial, documentary and portrait photographer based in New York City but with a Latin American beat. She has been photographing students at Jamaica High and throughout New York City high schools since 1998 and cites this work as among her favorite and most inspiring. Ongoing projects include photographs of Cuban cultures and Latin American Jewish communities.
Supplies include disposable cameras, albums and the cost of development and printing.
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