Exhibition at Foto8 Gallery
01 – 10 November 2012
Public Opening 01 November from 18:30
Foto8 is pleased to announce the exhibition of “I Feel Like Taking Pictures Everyday”, photographs made by children representing six schools in the London borough of Tower Hamlets.
This exhibition presents the photography of school children from The Stepney Partnership, six schools within Tower Hamlets where the majority of children are of Bengali origin. Artist/photographer Mark McEvoy, in collaboration with Foto8, has facilitated a series of creative digital photography workshops with over 300 students across five primary schools and one secondary school. Many participating children had never used an SLR camera before.
Workshops were immersive, beginning with a short overview of camera settings and highlighting a variety of photographic genres and creative processes. Children were then given a camera to photograph themselves and their surroundings. After looking through their results and choosing their favourite images students finished the session with hands on collage creation from a printed selection of their work. As well as building their confidence and realising their creative potential they had the opportunity to actively engage with many styles, methods and approaches to creative digital photography.
The photographic output of these workshops was varied, humorous, often profound and the visual complexity of their natural perception was never short of inspiring
Mark McEvoy is an artist with a documentary approach. He uses photography, video and sound to investigate and archive life experience. His work has been exhibited widely and published worldwide. He is a degree photography lecturer at Middlesex University and regularly freelances as an art facilitator for educational organisations and charities. He was recently selected for inclusion in The 2012 Taylor Wessing Portrait award to be exhibit at The National Portrait Gallery from early November.
The Stepney Partnership brings together children, families and staff across six schools in Stepney, East London: Ben Jonson Primary, Cayley Primary, Halley Primary, Redlands Primary, Smithy Street Primary and Stepney Green Maths Computing and Science College.