Kansas high schoolers use digital photography to express their voices – Kansas Reflector

Kansas Reflector welcomes opinion items from writers who share our aim of widening the dialog about how public insurance policies have an effect on the day-to-day lives of individuals all through our state. Josh Davis is a graduate of Washburn College. He teaches digital images at Topeka Excessive College and is the chair of the artwork division.

Highschool college students this yr are extraordinary. The previous two years have been tough on them bodily and mentally, they usually have misplaced and endured greater than they need to have.

Throughout this time as their digital images trainer, I noticed my college students not bend beneath present occasions, however to take what was occurring and use it to create not solely stunning and breathtaking images, but additionally photographs that have been thought-provoking and really expressive of themselves and the world.

Whether or not it’s Photograph 1 college students studying the fundamentals of the way to function a digicam, or Photograph 2 college students studying the way to push their inventive limits in a semester full of decisions, one part stays the identical. I emphasize that the digicam is a method so that you can specific your self. It’s a method so that you can present the world the way you view it, a method to give a voice to the unvoiced.

On the finish of the day, I ask them, what are you making an attempt to say along with your {photograph}?

These deeper questions have led college students who’ve lived via making an attempt occasions to make use of digital images with a creative maturity that has taken my breath away. College students have coated a wide range of touching matters. Some handled altering one’s perspective for a greater view, self-portraits, feminine empowerment, and the Black Lives Matter motion. 

Most significantly, what I see of their images is hope. Hope for a greater future, a future that they themselves can create. 

Each faculty yr I aspire to encourage my college students to do their greatest, however what I hope they know is that yearly they encourage me to be my greatest and assist them discover their inventive voice. Yearly I’m amazed at how the digital images college students are capable of proceed to prime themselves.

By means of its opinion part, the Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who find themselves affected by public insurance policies or excluded from public debate. Discover data, together with the way to submit your individual commentary, right here.