re:Birth: a show of emerging artists on life, death and rebirth
An Educational Rebirth: A Photographic Essay (images below)
Los Angeles, California
Artist Statement
It's every parent's hope that their child will have a better future and more opportunities than they. Currently in Los Angeles, this hope can eventually die in a bureaucracy that is unprepared to help its children benefit from the American promise of free and equitable education.
Every year UCLA's Teacher Education Program (TEP) prepares a new cohort of young teachers for Los Angeles Unified School District's (LAUSD) inner city schools. The LAUSD is for the most part; overcrowded, segregated, and poor, with arguably fifty percent of its black and Latino students never graduating from high school.
These new teachers espouse the idea that free education is not equity, but should be -- and that children, regardless of their economic status, race, or ethnicity, deserve every possibility available. Their curriculum embodies "a social justice agenda," and strives to "remain self-renewing."
Every autumn the TEP graduates, armed with this agenda, represent a new hope for the children in Los Angeles. Their efforts not only affect the children within the city’s communities, but the country as a whole. Every child that is offered the full possibilities of America’s educational resources, can potentially become another productive and positive member of society as a whole.
Technical Statement
An Educational Rebirth is a set of photographs shot over a three week period. The color images were shot on a digital SLR, while the black and white images were shot with various speeds of 35mm stock: Tri-X 400 and T-Max P3200. The black and white images were then pushed three or four times in development to enhance their gritty nature.
The color images represent the reality of the current educational and societal realities, the images that students may not be able to escape. However, with teachers who are active agents of change these images will eventual become something of the past.
The black and white images represents the teachers and what they are attempting to bring to the classroom and the students they affect. Although these are the images that should be clear, they are gritty representations of the realty these teachers must content with daily. Their successes are also diminished due to a school district and city, both seemly blind to the efforts.
"Let them see the world as possibilities"
A. The Bungalows
Jordan High School
Los Angeles, CA
B. Mark Gomez, History Teacher
John Muir Middle School
Los Angeles, CA
C. Student Cameras, Media Studies Class
Manual Arts High School
Los Angeles, CA
"The American Dream"
A. The American Nation
Railroad Tracks behind Community Center
Los Angeles, CA
B. Nesanet Abegaze, Life Sciences Teacher
John Muir Middle School
Los Angeles, CA
C. English is my second language
Manual Arts High School
Los Angeles, CA
"It's your backyard, too"
A. Its your backward, too
Railroad Tracks behind Community Center
Los Angeles, CA
B. Antero Garcia, English Teacher
Manual Arts High School
Los Angeles, CA
C. My Neibor Hood, Student work
John Muir Middle School
Los Angeles, CA
"Treat them like criminals and they'll behave like criminals"
A. Education Behind Bars
Jordan High School
Los Angeles, CA
B. Benjamin De Leon, History Teacher
Manual Arts High School
Los Angeles, CA 2005
C. Respect Our Community
Manual Arts High School
Los Angeles, CA
