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KidsPost, the childrens' section of The Washington Post, reported on the opening of “Everyday DC,” a photography exhibition sponsored by the Pulitzer Center and the D.C. Commission on the Arts & Humanities. Students from a dozen D.C. Public Schools (DCPS) submitted their own photography, which will be on display at the Pepco Edison Place Gallery in Washington, D.C. through January 31, 2018.
On Friday, the Washington Post’s Kitson Jazynka caught up with four student curators—Lauryn Tharpe, Alexis Thomas, Makayla Herrington and Bridney Takoh—as they put the final touches on the exhibit. The students were in charge of arranging the 126-photo collection for the gallery’s opening.
Jazynka reports that Lauryn found the process to be “kind of fun… but hard at the same time.”
Organizing the exhibit was the final task in a months-long project to introduce students to photography and investigative journalism. “Everyday DC,” an educational program designed by the Pulitzer Center in collaboration with DCPS, challenges students to consider how Washington D.C. is portrayed in the media, and how their lived experiences relate to those portrayals. Over the past semester, students have been taking photos and conducting interviews, all while broadening their definition of what it means to live in D.C.
The program, now in its second year, is the educational partner of the Everyday Africa project, founded by grantees Peter DiCampo and Austin Merrill while on assignment for the Pulitzer Center. Their Instagram feed, which documents the day-to-day lives of Africans in an attempt to combat common stereotypes about the continent, has attracted over 370,000 followers and spawned dozens of offshoots. DiCampo and Merrill have presented their work to schools across D.C., speaking to over 600 in all eight wards of the city.
There is a reception for the opening of the exhibition on January 10, 2018. The event will kick off at 5:00pm and will feature remarks from Peter DiCampo and Austin Merrill, student curators from Brookland Middle School, and DCPS Director of Arts Nathan Diamond. Remarks will be followed by performances developed by theater students at Eastern Senior High School in response to the exhibition.
Read the full story at WashingtonPost.com.