Students launch new photography exhibition
Students setting up the exhibition. Photo: April Stevens.
High School photography teacher April Stevens has again harnessed her students’ creative energy and together they have produced an exhibition entitled Looking Beyond the Random.
The works, produced by a group of 14 students from years 12 and 13, can be viewed for a month at the White Room gallery in Takaka.
The large-sized prints look more closely at the world that we all too often perceive just randomly, said Mrs Stevens as she described the variety of approaches taken by the students.
“Some are close-ups, some are done from a different angle and some prints are more traditional. The exhibition is really a motivation for students to produce the best they could for enlargement. For some it was their first time doing photography and they have never done anything in large print. This is a great opportunity for the students to see their own work.”
Darkroom technique was an additional unit to the photography course. Though some students chose only digital photography, the darkroom added another dimension to photography, said Mrs Stevens, as it so aptly showed that “photography is about drawing with light”. The group has been developing a range of darkroom techniques as part of their course, such as burning in (putting in more light), dodging (protecting an area from light) and spotting (dealing with effects such as scratches and dust), and they learned to compose a picture.
“Some of the students have not done arts since they were juniors and for the course they studied photography technically and compositionally. They looked at some photographers and selected an approach—for example surrealism, abstract or narrative—and they looked at the whole range of ways of how to take a photo and they had to keep within that chosen approach,” Mrs Stevens explained.
For those who want to see the finished works, the White Room’s winter exhibition days are Thursday, Friday and Saturday during business hours. Admission is free. Those interested in purchasing the students’ work can approach the gallery owner.
Ina Holst
