"The Best Part of Us," an installation of large-scale digital photographs by
Syracuse City School District (SCSD) students from the Franklin Magnet School
of the Arts and Fowler and Nottingham high schools, was recently mounted on
the exterior of the Case Supply Building, 601 W. Fayette St., Syracuse. The
installation, which was created and curated by photographer Stephen Mahan
and sponsored by the Near Westside Initiative, can be viewed best by traveling
north on West Street between Onondaga and West Fayette streets.
"The Best Part of Us" consists of 10 photographs, each measuring 48 x 64 inches,
that are printed on vinyl and mounted with a protective covering. Organizers
plan for additional photographs to be installed in September.
Mahan, who is also an instructor of art photography in the Department of
Transmedia in Syracuse University's College of Visual and Performing Arts
(VPA), believes that photography "levels the playing field" for students of every
age and that handing them a camera and asking them to photograph themselves
as well as their school community, families, and hopes and dreams fosters
literacy and self-esteem and promotes tolerance and understanding in an
increasingly diverse urban community.
"My interest is not so much teaching photography to kids-it is in sitting down
and listening to what they have to say, building trust, letting them realize they
have an amazing story to share, convincing them that others are interested in
their story and using the camera as a tool to start the storytelling process," says
Mahan. "What the camera does is allow all kids equality in our project in the
school environment. People have learning differences, and using the camera
greatly diminishes or eliminates any of these differences. I know that our schools
are filled with brilliant and creative kids who think they are not; it is my job to
give them the tools to realize that they are."
The Franklin Magnet School images were created by English as Second
Language (ESL) students from Burma, Cambodia, Cuba, Eastern Europe,
Vietnam and Africa. Mahan worked with ESL teacher Janet Staub to teach the
basics of digital photography to these students through a grant from the SCSD
Educational Foundation and Light Work at SU. The project used the medium of
photography to encourage relationships between ESL students new to the
United States and their school community. Through the images they created, the
students were able to communicate visually with their peers, teachers and
members of the community.
At Fowler and Nottingham, Mahan taught photography with the assistance of SU
students enrolled in the innovative course Literacy, Community and
Photography (LCP), which is part of the LCP arts education program in VPA.
LCP encourages children to explore their worlds as they photograph scenes from
their lives and then use these images as catalysts for verbal and written
expression. The written component of the class was taught at Fowler by John
Colasacco, professional writing instructor and writing consultant for the writing
program in SU's College of Arts and Sciences (A&S), and at Nottingham by
Michael Burkard, associate professor of creative writing at A&S.
LCP is an ongoing collaborative project between SCSD and SU under the
auspices of the Partnership for Better Education, which uses learning
communities as the framework for focused interaction between SU and the SCSD,
and works to expose students to creative approaches to arts, literacy, science and
technology, engineering and math. The LCP curriculum is housed in the Mobile
Literacy Arts Bus (MLAB), which functions as a classroom, digital photography
lab, art and poetry library and alternative gallery space.
For more information about the exhibition, contact Mahan at scmahan@syr.edu.
