Youth photo project goes on display in B-N

NORMAL – The first images from an ambitious photography project featuring self-exploring work by local youths are now on display at Illinois State’s Milner Library.

Eighteen images from the Picture This project are now on Milner’s first floor. More than 150 students from five local schools and organizations are involved in the initial images, and were asked to “become ‘researchers’ of their own lives by thinking about who they are in the context of the world around them,” according to a description of the project.

“We’re allowing youth and community members to re-envision who they are individually and to re-envision what technology can provide for us,” said Tony Preston-Schreck, curator of University Galleries.

More than 3,000 images were taken from September to December, by youths from a Children’s Discovery Museum workshop, The Baby Fold, Ridgeview High School, and Bloomington junior and senior high schools, said Preston-Schreck.

In addition to the 18 prints displayed at Milner, an iPad will also be set up featuring many of the other images, he said.

“You can actually view what images were taken before this image, and what images were taken after that image, and you get a great sense of what the students were thinking about as they were taking the images,” Preston-Schreck said.

The project was funded, in part, by an Illinois Prairie Community Foundation fund, a grant from retailer Target, and Milner Library, which printed the images. Students were supplied with high-resolution, point-and-shoot digital cameras, Preston-Schreck said.

More students from Metcalf school in Normal, Tri-Valley, Tri-Point junior high, and Olympia schools are starting their own projects this semester, he said. A larger exhibit featuring all the Picture This work – at least one photo from each student – will be on display at University Galleries from May 22 to July 1, Preston-Schreck said.

“We’ve never had an exhibition of this scope, with community involvement,” he said.

Ryan Denham can be reached at ryan@wjbc.com.