Default | NEWS

3/13/2008

Picturing Pozos
Rice students help children tell their town's story through art

BY JESSICA STARK
Rice News Staff

For many college students, Mexico is a spring break destination, but it was a classroom beyond the hedges for eight Rice University students this fall. As part of an artistic and educational outreach project, the students taught photography basics to the children of Mineral de Pozos, a small ghost town in the heart of Mexico. The children, ages 7 to 16, were given cameras and other materials to discover, explore and capture their town through artwork.

The Rice students walked with the children through the town and listened to their stories. They encouraged the children to create photographs and monotypes that expressed personal feelings about the town and townspeople. 

Teaching children to play Winningham reflects on the talent of the Pozos youth        How much of the children’s success was due to what we taught them, and how much was due to their own intuitive skills? The prevailing view is that there are no prodigies in the visual arts, but these photographs cause me to question that belief. I look at photographs taken by Hilary Vanessa Becerra, for example -- one is a view through an old doorway wrapped in a tangled web of vines, another shows a cracked and battered masonry wall, alive in light and shadow -- and I can only marvel at the vision of this 7-year-old child. I cannot begin to explain how she could make such beautiful pictures, I suspect that if the Rice students or I taught her anything important at all, it was to hold the camera steady when releasing the shutter. Then I think of Juan José Sánchez Ugalde, age 11.  I remember the day I walked with him and a few other kids through the Cinco Señores mine.  I noticed that Juan José showed a kind of detached concentration as he photographed. I watched as he found something that intrigued him -- a wall with a jagged shadow across it and a window that looked out to a tree -- and he began to study the scene through the viewfinder of his camera.  But he didn’t take the picture. Instead, he took the camera from his eye and surveyed everything in front of him.  Then he put the camera to his eye again.  Still, he didn’t take the picture.  He kept at it in this manner of extreme concentration and waited. Then, an unexpected thing happened.  My dog came trotting through the picture Juan José was framing.  It happened very quickly.  Just as the dalmatian passed in front of the camera, I heard the shutter click. The photograph that Juan José took that day speaks for itself, as all good pictures do.  Any artist — or child — can look at the picture and find pleasure, beauty and mystery in it.  But I wonder, each time I look at it, how an 11-year-old would even conceive of taking such a surprising picture.  Perhaps Juan José learned from the many hours he spent exploring his town and photographing with the Rice students. Or perhaps children don’t need to learn such things, any more than they need to learn how to play. --Geoff Winningham is a professor of visual arts.

"Our walks were more about the rediscovery and exploration of the ordinary than simply creating art," said Ian White, Jones College senior. "I found the children's earnest desire to document the town and their lives to be both refreshing and exciting in its lack of artistic pretense."

As eager as they were, the children initially struggled with taking unique photographs. Many of the children would group together and all take the same shot from slightly different vantage points. White said that the Rice students spent a great deal of one-on-one time with the children to resolve that issue.

Another challenge was getting the children to uncover what about the town was fascinating to them.

"When we first started working on the project, we told the kids to photograph things that were interesting to them," said Myrth Killingsworth, Jones College senior. "We were trying to capture the parts of the town that were most important to them -- to see the town through their eyes."

Apparently, the Rice students were interesting: the first few rolls of film were almost exclusively portraits of them. With encouragement from their student mentors and teachers, the children turned their sights back on the town and got closer to their subjects, even the old widow who lived alone with myriad dogs.

"I convinced the children that they needed to talk to her," White said. "Most of them had assumed she was crazy, but once they talked to her, they learned that wasn't the case. It made me feel like we had really contributed to the well-being of the community and brought them together."

How the exhibition came to be

The Rice students' efforts yielded all of the photographs and monotypes in the exhibition "Mi Pueblo: The Pozos Children's Project" by Rice professor Geoff Winningham. Winningham had been commissioned by the Jung Center of Houston to have an exhibition for FotoFest 2008, an international showcase of photography and photo-related art.

While he was thinking about what he would like to exhibit, Winningham remembered a project done by his wife, painter Janice Freeman. A few years ago, Freeman had brought some children from a nearby orphanage to her studio to teach them printmaking.

"The prints they made were quite beautiful," Winningham said. "So I began to wonder if I could do something similar for the kids in Pozos -- teach them basic photography, help them photograph their town, process and print their work and still assemble a show in time for FotoFest."

Winningham only had six months to get funding, buy cameras and materials, find and teach the Pozos children who wanted to participate, help them produce the pictures, then frame the show and hang it.

Others might have panicked or scrapped the idea all together, but Winningham decided to expand the project.

"I had a real all-star group of students last spring, and I missed them," Winningham said. "I thought about it for a second and decided it would be a real adventure for them. Within 24 hours, I had six students signed on to help me with this project."

He then called the Jung Center, and with its full support, the Pozos Children's Project was off the ground and Winningham, Freeman and the Rice students were bound for Mexico.

Rugged beauty, friendly people

Armed with 20 cameras, 500 rolls of film, darkroom supplies, paper and monotype inks, the group of 10 made its first voyage to Pozos in October. Nearly 40 children had signed up to take part in the project.

COURTESY PHOTO

The photograph was made by Hilary Vanessa Becerra, age  7. Her title for the picture is "The Town of Pozos.

"I really had no idea what to expect," White said. "I had never been to Mexico, but I expected the town to be small and quaint. Once I arrived, I was also struck by its rugged beauty."

Killingsworth too was enraptured with the town and its old cobblestone streets. Her first morning there, she walked into town and saw women wrapped in blankets with baskets on their heads.

"They all greeted me," Killingsworth said. "Geoff had told us that the people were friendly and welcoming. He was right."

Having made his first trip there in 1979, Winningham has a deep understanding of the people of Pozos. He visited the town as much as possible, inspired by its beautiful ruins. Then, about 10 years ago, he and Freeman bought a piece of land and built a house -- complete with a darkroom for him and a studio for her.

"Pozos became our true home," Winningham said. "We have loved living with a foot in both worlds, and we love to share the experience whenever we can."

Sharing the Pozos experience

Through "Mi Pueblo: The Pozos Children's Project," Winningham was able to open the door to that experience for his students and now, through the exhibition, a much larger audience. The exhibition, which runs until March 29 at the Jung Center, 5200 Montrose Blvd., is already slotted to appear at the Texas State University's Wittliff Collection and museums in Mexico and be turned into a 64-page catalog.

"The photographs and monotypes are stunning. I have a hunch that the show is going to be a real hit wherever it goes," Winningham said.

Winningham's students are also poised to be successes wherever they go, bringing with them the lessons learned and insights gained in Pozos.

"I believe that art has the power to make bonds, to bring communities and people together," Killingsworth said. "By going to Pozos and teaching the kids there, I was simply able to pass on a great gift that was given to me -- the ability to express myself in a way that connects me to the world and the people around me."

White too treasured the teaching and learning experience.

"I was given the opportunity and the auspices to learn so much," White said. "About a different culture, about my fellow students and most importantly, about how I perceive the world around me and my place in it. For that I will always be grateful."

Funding from Abrams, Scott & Bickley LLP; King & Spalding LLP; Carolyn Grant Fay; and Sheila and Isaac Heimbinder made this project possible. For more information about the exhibition or to see a photo, visit http://www.cgjunghouston.org/art/pages/pages08/march08pozos.htm.