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23/5/2006

Talkin' Back 3

Museum Contemporary Photography, Chicago

Chicago- On May 24, 2006, the Center for Community Arts Partnerships (CCAP) and the Museum of Contemporary Photography (MoCP), Columbia College Chicago, will open Talkin’ Back 3: Chicago Youth Respond, an annual exhibition of photography and creative writing that distills major subjects impacting our community into riveting personal reflections on self-esteem and identity—all generated by young people in acutely challenging environments.

Talkin’ Back began three years ago as a conversation about text and image among photographers and writers working in programs sponsored by the MoCP and CCAP. Today it continues as a partnership between CCAP’s nationally recognized arts integration program Project AIM (Arts Integration Mentoring) and the MoCP’s program Picture Me. Project AIM partners teaching artists with public school teachers in Chicago and Evanston to create arts-integrated curriculum that promotes reading and writing through the arts. Picture Me offers teens in underserved schools and community centers the equivalent skill set and artistic level of students who have completed Photography One and Darkroom One courses at Columbia College. “Talkin’ Back serves as a model for what can be accomplished when college-based urban institutions like MoCP and CCAP share their vast resources—their faculty, visiting artists, exhibition spaces and the artworks and books in their archives—with the community," says MoCP Education Manager Corinne Rose, who has shared the story and success of the collaboration with hundreds of educators from around the country. The exhibition includes artwork by students from the Academy of Communications and Technology (A.C.T.) Charter School, Curie Metropolitan High School, Theodore Herzl Elementary School, the Jane Addams Hull House Center for the Arts and Culture, Juarez Community Academy, Northside College Prep High School, Albert R. Sabin Magnet School, and Snow City Arts Foundation.

Among the projects on display is Holding on/Letting Go, inspired by pictures and stories of loss, rescue, and survival in the wake of hurricane Katrina and by issues presented in the exhibition Stages of Memory: The War in Vietnam displayed at the MoCP in the fall of 2005. Students were first asked to take 1,000 snapshots of “the things we carry" and “the things that we cannot bear to lose." They then generated 1,000 descriptive words in response to the photograph, Jimmie’s Apartment, Memphis Tennessee, 2002, by Alec Soth, a celebrated artist in the MoCP permanent collection.

Also on display are billboards “advertising" how seventh and eighth grade students from Herzl Elementary School believe the world should see them. This project entitled Regulo—When the world looks at me, it should see … was developed by photographer Cecil MacDonald and spoken word poet avery r. young. They used photography, poetry and marketing to help African-American students overcome stereotypes and disempowering media messages, helping to build their self-esteem and nurture their respect for uniqueness. “The Talkin’ Back 3 exhibition is an inspiring opportunity for students to work with professional photographers and writers, and produce work for a very public and professional exhibition. Through this partnership, students of diverse cultural backgrounds, age groups and neighborhoods are insured that when they talk back, an audience of adults at a premiere arts college will listen and respond," says Cynthia Weiss, CCAP’s associate director of school partnerships and Project AIM.

MoCP anticipates that more than 300 people will attend the opening reception on May 24, 2006, from 5 to 7pm. Students, artists and educators will be present to answer questions about the work, and spoken word artists will perform throughout the evening.

ABOUT MOCP The Museum of Contemporary Photography (MoCP), a resident organization of Columbia College Chicago, is the only museum in the Midwest with an exclusive commitment to the medium of photography. By presenting projects and exhibitions that embrace a wide range of contemporary aesthetics and technologies, the Museum strives to communicate the value and significance of photographic images as expressions of human thought, imagination, and creativity.

ABOUT CCAP Since 1998, the Center for Community Arts Partnerships (CCAP) at Columbia College Chicago has been transforming the lives of thousands of Chicago’s young people through its unique approach to college-community partnership building. Founded on a mission to link the academic departments of Columbia College Chicago with diverse communities throughout the city, CCAP brings the concepts of community-based learning, arts-integrated curricula and reciprocal partnerships into the spotlight. It unites artists, educators, students, corporations, schools and community-based organizations to form meaningful, sustainable partnerships in the arts.

EXHIBITION SPONSORS Talkin’ Back 3: Chicago Youth Respond and the related education programs of the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Columbia College Chicago are generously supported by GE Commercial Finance; The Lloyd A. Fry Foundation; The Henrietta Lange Burk Fund; The Palmer Foundation; and the City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs/After School Matters. Projects of the Center for Community Arts Partnerships at Columbia College Chicago are supported in part by the J.P. Morgan Chase Foundation; the U.S. Department of Education's Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE), and the Arts in Education Model Development and Dissemination grant program; the Chicago Public Schools, 21st Century Community Learning Centers; the Field Foundation; the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency; Kraft Foods; Learn and Serve America; and the Polk Bros. Foundation.

Opening: Wednesday, May 24, 2005 from 5-7 pm.

Museum Contemporary Photography
Chicago USA
600 South Michigan Avenue

stampa

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