Aperture On Sight Student Exhibition: Final Week on View
For the past three years, Aperture’s team of teaching artists has fanned out across Queens, Brooklyn, the Lower East Side, and Harlem to teach visual literacy in a range of school-based and after-school programs. This expansion of our education programming brings a year-long curriculum to middle and high school students in underserved communities. Aperture’s approach uses the reading and making of photographs as an avenue to acquiring visual literacy: the ability to understand an image’s meaning by thinking about its form, content, and context.
Aperture’s program this year reached over one hundred students at seven locations, which include Brooklyn Community Arts and Media High School (BCAM), Highland Park Community School, I.S. 61 Leonardo da Vinci, M.S. 136 Charles O. Dewey, Storefront Academy Harlem, East Side Community High School, and Grand St. Settlement’s after-school programs, facilitated by the Beacon Community Center and School’s Out New York City (SONYC). These students learn how to visually communicate their ideas and create photographs with intention and meaning; with these skills, students have the ability to make findings and interpretations when it comes to viewing art. Upon completing the program, students have the opportunity to be a part of an exhibition hosted by Aperture, showcasing the photographs and photobooks created throughout the year.
Alice Proujansky is Educational Partnerships Coordinator and Emily Stewart is Education Work Scholar, Aperture Foundation.
Aperture On Sight: Teaching Visual Literacy through Photography is on view at the Aperture Gallery through August 11, 2016.
