K'ipay Portraits, Colombia (PP)
Photographs by developmentally and physically disabled students of the K'ipay school in Bogota, Colombia.
K'ipay is a private school for 30 developmentally and physically disabled students in Bogota, Colombia. Yanet Sierra Rodriguez founded the school 13 years ago and chose the Quechuan term "K'ipay" for her work as it means "to develop the seeds not collected during the harvest." The school has an interdisciplinary team of five teachers who follow each student with the goal of increasing his or her abilities through educational methods that address movement, perception, communication, cognitive development and creativity.
Using photography as a pedagogical tool corresponds with the school's philosophy of stressing the creative potential of the individual student. "K'ipay Portraits" began as a collaboration between the students and staff of K'ipay and Anna Lise Jensen, an MFA student at Hunter College, New York. The purpose of the project was both to explore doing a group project of photographic portraits as well as starting a program of continuous self-documentation by the K'ipay students. In order to raise funds for photo equipment at K'ipay and implement this long-term project, the school is selling cards containing images by the students.
"K'ipay Portraits" will be shown as part of the PhotoVoice exhibition "Unbroken" that will travel from New York to Denmark and Sweden in 2004.
To find out more information on this project please contact:
kipay33@hotmail.com (Spanish)
aljnyc@verizon.net(English)
www.kipay.org
"I like this portrait because of the way Sergio looks at himself in the mirror."