PhotoStory, India (PP)
Project manager: Deidre Portnoy, USA
Project title: PhotoStory
Photography by children, students and women in India, Georgian Republic, Haiti and the US.
Uttaranchal,India
Photo by Rajkumari
The PhotoStory Project is an international documentary program enabling participants to use photography and writing to record their personal experiences. Engaged in their own storytelling they create a personal document with simple cameras and journal writing. The photographically illustrated stories are assembled into individual handmade books. This provides an opportunity for creative expression, enriching personal discovery, self-esteem and literacy skills.
The PhotoStory Project has run with the participation of women and children from rural villages and inner-city slums in India, students of a community-learning centre in Haiti, abandoned children in the Georgian Republic, middle school students on Cape Cod in the USA and Tibetan refugee school children with special needs.
The program promotes a perspective that helps individuals visualize and express different aspects of their daily lives through art. By highlighting personal, family and community stories the program deepens an appreciation for cultural heritage and personal experience.
In these internationally challenging times it is essential that we develop the means to personalize our common human experience. Work from the PhotoStory Project is shared with participants from different countries. Through this exchange, the program aims to connect distant and culturally disparate communities and bridge seemingly broad and often fractious ethnic, gender and class differences. Connecting the global community through personal stories results in a tapestry of life - image by image, place by place - that lessens stereotypes and promotes empathy and understanding.
To find out more information on this project please contact: contact_d@hotmail.com