Photo Club Newsletter 2019-2020

Photo by Ni’Yana
Photo of Gabrieliz by Joel
Photo of Ni’Yana by Josiah

Hello everyone, Photo Club has made some exciting changes this year. We have expanded! Flower City Arts Center now proudly serve up to 45 students in 6th, 7th, 8th, and 9th grades from Wilson Foundation Academy and James Monroe High School.

The six goals of Photo Club are to:

  • empower youth to express their voice and vision
  • establish one to three year mentoring relationships
  • encourage youth to connect with their community
  • enhance knowledge of core school subjects
  • enable youth to build life skills
  • energize youth to work together in groups

Here’s some background and a sneak preview of  student work.

Photo Club started in the spring of 1999 and is now in its twenty-second consecutive year. Conducted by Flower City Arts Center, Photo Club is a 24 session after-school photography and writing program. After years of development, Studio 678’s model has been expanded to include Studio 789, James Monroe High School Photo Club.

Photo by Isabela

Students use a professional film camera to take pictures in the community, make their own black & white prints in the darkroom, write poems or stories to accompany their photographs, create a book of their work in the digital lab, and mat and frame their prints for exhibition.

Photo by Jadaly

The photography instructors at Flower City Arts Center work in partnership with teachers Michael Brundage and Alicia Oddo of  Wilson Foundation Academy, and Shanterra Chalice and Nilsa Irizarry of James Monroe High School.  These dedicated and caring  teachers provide an essential link from the school to our after-school program. They help recruit students, participate in every meeting, and monitor the academic performance, attendance, and individual needs of our students.

Photo by Desire

Photo Club is free to students; Flower City Arts Center secures funding for the program each year. This year’s supporters include Canfield and Tack, Cheryl & Don Olney, Daisy Marquis Jones Foundation, DiBella’s, Fay Slover Fund at The Boston Foundation,

Photo by Isabela

Feinbloom Supporting Foundation, Joy of Giving Something, Lumiere, William & Sheila Konar Foundation, Mary S. Mulligan Charitable Trust, Nancy Sands, Teresa Sipone, Vicki & Richard Schwartz Family Fund, Janet Buchanan Smith, Jeanne & Tom Verhulst, Fred & Floy Willmott Foundation, and many individuals.

Kodak Alaris donated film, Blessed Sacrament Church provided use of their parking lot, and Domino’s donated pizza. Aenon Missionary Baptist Church provided us with vans to bring students to Flower City Arts Center from school, and to various field trip sites. The Greater Rochester Community Transportation Foundation provided a grant to pay for some of the transportation costs.

Photo of Kingston by Sahara

Look what we have been up to!

At our first meeting in September, students came to Flower City Arts Center to learn about photography by making photograms in the darkroom and learning how a 35mm film camera works.  We then assigned five students to each of the nine lead photography instructors to form groups for the year.  14 students from last year rejoined our club.

We then began rotating our time between field trips, including two Saturday trips, making black and white prints in the darkrooms at Flower City Arts Center, and learning how to scan and edit images using Photoshop.

Our field trip sites included…

Colleges – Monroe Community College, Rochester Institute of Technology and the University of Rochester.

Thermal photo of Ms. Liz’s group at RIT

Urban settings – Monroe Avenue, Neighborhood of the Arts, Martin Luther King Memorial Park, Public Market, Village Gate, High and Low Falls and Rochester Public Library.

Ms. Kylie’s group at MCC

Natural settings – Hemlock Hills Alpaca Farm, Lamberton Conservatory, Begin Again Horse Rescue, Cobbs Hill, Cracker Box Palace Animal Shelter, Sunken Gardens and Washington Grove.

Ms. Kylie group at Cracker Box Palace Animal Rescue

A variety of work places – stores on Monroe Avenue, Pet Pride of New York, Verona St Animal Society, Allie’s Pet Corner, Rochester Police Department Technicians Unit, and Rochester Fire Department Engine 1.

Ms. Juliana group visiting the Technicians Unit at RPD

Museums and historical sites – Mt. Hope Cemetery, Ganondagan State Historical Site, George Eastman Museum, Memorial Art Gallery, Rochester Museum and Science Center,   and Strong Museum of Play.

Photo by Latifa

Community events – Fringe Street Beat and other Fringe Festival events, and Hilton Apple Festival.

Photo by James

Arts and cultural locations – UUU Gallery, Performing Arts Center at MCC, Photojournalism Projects Exhibition opening at RIT’s William Harris Gallery.

Mr. Quajay’s group in the Lighting Studio

In November and December students used the photography lighting studio to take portraits of each other. From November to January, poets Doug Curry, Grace Flores, Arthur “Marvelous Marvin” McCraw, and Laura Thompson performed their own poems for inspiration and helped the students create poems to accompany their pictures.

Students also learned how to scan their images  and use Photoshop in our digital lab to help create a section of book pages, with their writing and photos, and to create a multi media presentation. All the students brainstormed ideas for the book titles Wilson’s cohort chose “Through Our Eyes” and Monroe’s cohort chose “Shared Life Through the Lens”. The book cover photographs will be revealed at the ceremonies this Spring.

Currently, students are matting and framing  photographs for their final exhibition. Some students will make 11X14 size prints for an exhibit at Image City Photography Gallery.  In March, photos will be selected for permanent placement in a variety of community settings funded by the Fay Slover Fund at the Boston Foundation.

Studio 678 Wilson Foundation Academy Photo Club Final Ceremony

City Hall, 30 Church Street, Rochester, NY 14614,                                           Friday, March 27th, 2020

  • 6:30 pm: Awards Ceremony & Book Release in the City Council Chambers, third floor
    • Multi media Presentation of student art
    • Award Presentation with guest speaker
    • Book Release, copy awarded to each student
  • 7:30 pm: Exhibition Opening Reception in The Link Gallery, first floor
    • A selection of Studio 678 members’ photographs, writing, and special projects will be on display.

Studio 789 James Monroe High School Photo Club Final Ceremony

James Monroe High School, 164 Alexander Street, Rochester, NY 14607 Saturday, March 28th, 2020

  • 11:00 am: Awards Ceremony & Book Release in the Gymnasium
    • Multi media Presentation of student art
    • Award Presentation with guest speaker
    • Book Release, copy awarded to each student
  • 12:00 pm: Exhibition Opening Reception in the Atrium
    • A selection of Studio 789 members’ photographs, writing, and special projects will be on display.

Please support these young photographers with your presence at these uplifting events celebrating the hard work, perseverance, and creativity of our students! We hope to see you there!

UPDATE: Due to the Coronavirus Pandemic we have postponed both the Studio 678 & 789 Exhibition Openings, Awards Ceremonies, and Book Releases. We plan to hold both at Flower City Arts Center at the end of May if we are able. For the most up-to-date information please check out our Facebook page

Kallitype Behind the Scenes Part 2

Happy Monday everyone! Jen Perena here with a continued behind-the-scenes look at the kallitype process, this week focusing on the development, toning and fixing steps.

First off, full disclosure, everything I know about this process I have either learned from taking classes at the Flower City Arts Center, directly from the instructor of the Kallitype class, Jon Merritt, or from reading up on the kallitype process in books and online. So even though I have made almost 100 new prints since my residency began, nothing here reflects any big revelations….

The basic process is this:

  • Develop: 8 min*, constant tray agitation
  • Wash: 1 min, running water**
  • Tone: 1 min, constant tray agitation
  • Wash: 1 min, running water
  • Fix: 1 min, constant tray agitation
  • Wash: fill and dump tray 10 times
  • Final Wash: 20 min

*In class, for the sake of time, we only developed for 1 min. This was to  allow all the students to get a turn (class is only 3 hours!), stretch the chemistry, and, for learning purposes, 1 min was sufficient, since the image appears almost instantly in the bath. Leaving the print longer is recommended when making work you care about or that you really want to stand the test of time. I have been developing for somewhere in the 4 min to 8 min range, depending on how the image appears in the bath – for example, if I see right away that the coating is uneven or there is a problem, I develop for less time.

There are several options for developing solutions and I have experimented with 4 of them, finally settling on ammonium citrate. I buy it in powdered form, pre-measured into a one-liter plastic bottle which you simply fill with hot distilled water and shake. The ammonium citrate has a slightly cooler tone than others I have tried, and I like the way it further changes in the toner. I get about 7 prints from 1 liter of solution, and along the way, the developer slowly becomes more and more yellow.

This is how the print looks in the ammonium citrate developer – notice the reddish/yellowish tone

**After developing, you wash the print in tap water for just over a minute before toning. In class we learned to fill and dump the water tray numerous times while running the hose over the print in the tray. In preparation for my residency, I learned another trick from Jon: to add about a teaspoon of citric acid into the water bath and leave the print there for 10 seconds before washing with the hose – this alkalizes the print and prevents some of the bleaching that can happen in the fixer. No matter what though, the print still lightens up a little bit during this first washing step.

Here you can see the reddish/yellowish tone has lightened up a little in the first water bath

For toning, I am using a 1% selenium solution (10 ml selenium to 1000 ml distilled water). When the toner is fresh, you see a color shift within about 10 seconds, to an even cooler (gray to black) tone; when the toner is getting exhausted, it takes upwards of 2 minutes to see the shift. Right now I am averaging 14 prints per liter of fresh selenium, and then I have to mix more.

Here you can see how the color has shifted in the selenium toner – much cooler!

You don’t actually HAVE to tone, but it is recommended to increase the longevity of the print.

You wash again (after toning) for another minute, then fix in a bath of sodium thiosulfate. The fixer is a full minute as well. I am usually making 6-7 prints per session right now, and each liter of fix is good for approximately 25 prints, so that’s around 4 printing sessions for the 1 liter. If everything went right in the steps up to the fix, there should be minimal to no color change/bleaching at this point.

Success! No further color shift or bleaching in the fix!

And then after fixing, you wash again in a tray with running water, filling and dumping the tray 10 times (2-3 min), before finally putting the print into the tub to wash for 20 min. In class we washed for roughly 10 min at the end, but again, when you really want the work to be archival, you should wash longer.  Altogether, each print takes somewhere between 20 and 40 minutes, just for the wet side of the processing.

The image shown in the photos in this post is one of the new negatives I just made and printed for the first time this past weekend. I’m excited about working with more new negatives and getting into the darkroom to do more printing over the next two weeks, so stay tuned for updates on how the new work is coming along!

Writing with Light

Liz here, last week Flower City Arts Center had the honor of collaborating again with Writers & Books to offer Writing with Light. This class taught students to write their own stories and poems with  writer Karen van Meenen and then learn how to create their own black and white photographs with photographers Juliana Muniz, Christal Knight, and myself. The students also created  a book in order to showcase their hard work!

 

I had a blast walking around our beautiful Rochester neighborhoods, and making prints with the students. Everyone picked up the process so quickly, and no one melted in the heat. Here are some photographs of the students out shooting in Neighborhood of the Arts, and in the Community Darkrooms at Flower City Arts Center.

Special thanks to the students for their hard work, and enthusiasm! I hope everyone can comes back next year for another great week of Writing with Light.

Carina Christman

Claire Lustig

Cornelia Crumley

Eamon Capps

Evan Michaels

Kelsey Gallager

Marco Hill

Maya Taylor-Bush

Tamsin Spiller

Violet Laux

Yeshua Alba

Zion Thomas

Copies of the book are on sale for $14. Please click here if you are interested in purchasing a book.

Community Art Connect: Teen Empowerment

 

With the help of The Fay Slover Fund at The Boston Foundation 2018 is the second year that Studio 678 has been able to produce a special photography project.

Of the Community, By the Community, For the Community increases access to art in Rochester’s neighborhoods by placing student photographs for permanent exhibition in various community locations. One such location Teen Empowerment!

Here’s a behind the scenes look at the artwork going up.

 

 

 

Special thanks to the following students’ who worked hard to create the beautiful photographs now on display at Teen Empowerment.

Michael Failing

Miguel Sanchez

Michael Peterkin Jr.

Mohamed Hussein

Zoria Hughes

 

 

Darkroom Club – Join Us!

I’m looking forward to our next Darkroom Club meeting this Sunday! Last month we shared prints from several members and we’d love to have YOU join us this month. We’re meeting December 10th at 11am in the Sunken Room.

Bring your prints with you to share. This is an informal critique session where we share our current projects and generally just chat about darkroom photography. It’s a lot of fun! I’m excited to see this group grow in 2018. If you have any questions or feedback please do not hesitate to contact me at photo@rochesterarts.org or 585-271-5920. I hope to see you here at the Center on Sunday!

Celebrating 40 Years of Photography!

Hi Everyone! I wanted to take a moment to share some exciting news: the Photography program here at Flower City Arts Center is celebrating our 40th anniversary this fall!

We have such a rich history here at the Center! Over the past few months I have been working with our volunteers to digitize our archive and just the process of going through all of these photographs from the past 40 years is incredible. How great is the photo above of Photography Director Sharon Turner in the darkroom when she was a student in 1977? So fun! Did you know that Sharon was our founder Anne Beach’s first student? We’re planning an exhibition and celebration this fall – more info soon! In the meantime we’ve launched a fundraiser to help us support our future. Our goal is to raise $40,000 by this fall. As of today, within only a couple of weeks, we’ve raised $850. You can learn more about the fundraiser on our website >>

Want to learn more about our early years? Read Sharon’s letter that was mailed out last week >> We mailed out over 2,500 letters to our community – imagine if everyone donated $20! We would hit our goal by Friday. If you are interested in donating please click on the PayPal button on the side bar. Thank you for your support!