Picturing Youth
In their project titled Picturing Youth, Nicole Kim and Vanessa Runions explore photography as a tool for early expression where neither oral nor written communication will suffice.
Since the 1950s, experts in early child education and developmental psychology have emphasized the importance of pictorial and image-based communication tools as both an integral accompaniment and potential replacement for traditional lesson plans. Yet despite this potential, many North American schools continue to encourage children to create images that are less about interactive communication and more about individual craft and technique. The production of images, whether illustrative or photographic, is relegated to the category of ‘art’; stripped of its capacity to operate as a legitimate and sophisticated form of exchange.
The focus of Picturing Youth has been an investigation of the visual communication capacities of children. The project is founded on the belief that current systems of formal education do not fully support visual communications skills in children, which multiple scholars have suggested to be a child’s primary and most accessible mode of exchange (see Doherty-Sneddon & Kent, 1996). While the full impact of this approach to education remain to be seen, it is conceivable that some of the communicative deficiencies in children are connected to their lack of comfort with oral and written forms. More specifically, there are implications for children being forced to adapt to a curriculum structure that emphasizes oral and written systems of exchange over visual ones. As a result of this possibility, we argue that there is a need for increased support and recognition for the development of visual language skills (which relate to media literacy) versus simply teaching ‘arts and crafts’. We live an increasingly visual world yet we do not provide children with a visual tool kit or ‘dictionary’ to navigate it.
Picturing Youth is a collaborative project involving eight children between the ages of four and thirteen from varying backgrounds, and two project coordinators. Each child was given a disposable camera and asked to provide a self-portrait in the form of a set of images. Once finished, the participants were asked to choose one image that they felt best represented them as a person. This exercise was meant to encourage the children to use the images as a tool for communication. Once the single image was chosen, the children were asked to explain their choice. The aim of the project is twofold: firstly, to illustrate the importance of visual dialogues for children, and, secondly, to provide alternative models for nuanced visual exchange at an early age. By encouraging strong relationships between different modes of communication, and illustrating the importance of visual dialogues, we can potentially provide children with another exchange system with which to inform and strengthen their communication and intellect development.
