Black, Brown and White in the Chocolate City: Part I

“Black, Brown and White in the Chocolate City:
Being an Adolescent in the Nation’s Capital.”
Part I
Local and national discussions about education have long underscored the need for
improved literacy. More recently, visual literacy has been highlighted as one of the forms
of literacy that students must master to ensure their academic success. In a society
flooded with images from the mass media, it’s critical that youth build their
understanding of how images ‘work.’ Likewise, because images are so appealing and
pervasive, it makes sense to use visual literacy to build traditional literacies—reading,
writing, speaking, and listening. The A.B.L.E. Program has taken up the cause of visual
literacy with an ambitious year-long examination of youth: “Black, Brown and White in
the ‘Chocolate City’: Being an Adolescent in the Nation’s Capitol”.
Black, Brown, and White (BBW) is modeled along the lines of the Literacy through
Photography curriculum developed first by award-winning photographer Wendy Ewald.
Ewald designed her curriculum originally for elementary school children in Durham,
North Carolina. Kristian Whipple and I have elected to draw on the LTP method to work
with the middle school and high school students that participate in A.B.L.E. Our program
is designed to enhance students’ visual literacy by creating the opportunity for them to
translate words into images. To guide the students we gave assigned them several themes
to explore: family, community, dreams, symbols, and self.
This method is powerful because it turns up the volume on students’ voices. Throughout
the first half of the year, students heard the mantra from us: everything you say, do or
think matters. We want you to express yourself fully and completely.
It is our hope that this first BBW show allows the audience to better appreciate the
incredible work of a group of young and developing photographers/writers/artists.
Students have come to a broader understanding of how visual literacy can be a valuable
learning experience. Most importantly, they have created amazing photographs that
reveal as much about the subject as they do about the photographer.