Communicating Community through Photography

This is week two of Triple Exposure’s focus on the theme of community and students have spent their photography classes peering beyond the confines of TYO and the surrounding neighborhood. Triple Exposure classes have been encouraging students from Khallet to look at their community from a new perspective. Focusing on their neighborhood challenges TYO’s photographers to examine the role their own identities play in defining what it means to be from Nablus and field trips provoke them to recognize the connections their city has with Palestine, the Middle East, and the world as a whole.

Visually expressing these concepts both in and outside the classroom has offered children from Khallet an opportunity to express how they feel about growing up in Nablus.  Each picture says something important about the Triple Exposure photographer who is behind the camera and every one of their photos is a visual statement about their experience of childhood in Palestine.  Visual arts like photography cross linguistic, cultural, and economic barriers to enhance each student’s appreciation of diversity and awareness of the world around them.  Perhaps most importantly, photography provides an opportunity for every student to learn from the class and gain from the ability to express themselves, no matter their background.

Feelings and emotions that are too complicated to be expressed in words can be better conveyed within the realm of photography where a picture can communicate even the most complex of ideas.  These visual concepts can serve as a bridge between TYO’s students and the world beyond Khallet.  The camera is a unique tool in that it is capable of capturing the details and emotions that bring people and communities together. In this way, the Triple Exposure photography program enables children to realize their potential as active, expressive, and constructive members of their community.

- Zak

Zak is a Fall 2013 intern at TYO in Nablus.