STORY
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PICTURE THIS
Picture This is a series of hands-on interdisciplinary photography classes for teen youth engaged in the juvenile justice system who, for privacy reasons, don’t have access to digital cameras or cells phones. Over the course of 24 classes, artist Michael Llewellyn guides students through the 500-year relationship between scientific discovery and photography, on a journey of self-reflection and individual creativity.
Picture This highlights the historic uses of the camera to explain the human physiology of perception, the properties of light, perspective, composition and motion, as well as the role of the camera in bringing scientific advances into the public realm.
Working with shadows in the field.
At its core, Picture This introduces students to the idea that creativity is a means of self-expression and that self-expression is a dynamic between aspirations and limitations. Students learn to use photography as a creative medium to further self-reflection, transformation and growth. Using examples from artistic and scientific historical records, slide show presentations move through time: from the effect of the first camera – the camera obscura – on drawing and painting, through to the zoetrope, the precursor to both motion picture and .gif technologies.
Butterfly
Classroom set up and installation ready for student participation.
Learning about sequential photographs.
Boys developing personalized cyanotypes.
Tracing a favorite celebrity with a portable camera obscura.
