Creative Synthesis

In the late 1980s, Duke University’s Center for Documentary Studiescoordinated a short photography workshop for local public schools.  Positive response from teachers, students, and administrators to Wendy Ewald’s two-week program led to an ongoing project that uses photography as a basis for literacy and social studies education.

The Literacy Through Photography program uses photography to bridge education, community life, and personal experience.  The pictures taken by students are used to spark verbal and written communication, and to provide immediate ties between the children’s lives and the issues examined in other classes.  The project creates a more engaged, relevant classroom environment by asking students to incorporate their own experiences in critical ways.  The program’s creators feel that this process succeeds by “building on the information that students naturally possess.”

Since the program’s inception, Ewald has worked to expand the Literacy Through Photography concept to other schools.  She hosts introductory workshops each summer, and has explored the project in Secret Games: Collaborative Works with Childrenand, with Alexandra Lightfoot, I Wanna Take Me a Picture: Teaching Writing and Photography to Children.