Rationale: Current global rhetoric stresses the importance of seeing young people as more than passive recipients of socialization and highlighting their autonomy and agency as well as their basic needs for education, safety, and protection from economic exploitation. Yet, most of the images that circulate of children continue to feature their needs more than their agency (i.e. the starving Somali orphan, the trafficked Nepali girl, the São Paulo street child). This is a time for new possibilities and partnerships that link youth civic engagement, social activism, and the visual arts.
Working with artists, educators, child rights advocates, and scholars, “Visible Rights: Photography for and by Youth” will explore the role that photography can play in facilitating children's agency and promoting their rights by placing cameras in the hands of youth, giving them the power of self-representation. Our goal for the conference is to identify best practices among practitioners and scholars; to promote synergies in a network of collaborations, publications, workshops, and internships; and to encourage intervention through creative, non aggressive practices. The number of panels is intentionally limited and the opportunities for interaction are generous. Our goal is to enhance academic analysis with collective reflection on best practices among practitioners and scholars.
The Cultural Agents conference “Visible Rights: Photography for and by Youth” is supported by the Lemann Fund of the Harvard University Brazil Studies Program at the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies (DRCLAS), the Harvard Graduate School of Education, the Centro Universitário Senac, UNESCO, and UNICEF.
Conference Directors:
- Jacqueline Bhabha , Executive Director, University Committee on Human Rights Studies; Jeremiah Smith Jr. Lecturer in Law, Harvard Law School & Adjunct Lecturer in Public Policy, Kennedy School of Government
- Wendy Luttrell , Nancy Pforzheimer Aronson Associate Professor in Human Development and Education, Harvard Graduate School of Education
- Nicolau Sevcenko , Visiting Professor of Brazilian Literature and Culture, Department of Romance Languages and Literatures & Professor of Cultural History, University of São Paulo (USP)
Free & open to the public
Thursday Evening:
| 7:00 | Reception and Gallery Talk Nicolau Sevcenko "Photography in Double Focus." Visiting Professor of Brazilian Literature and Culture, Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, Harvard University & Professor of Cultural History, University of São Paulo (USP) The exhibition will display photographs by youth about young people's rights/cultural agency/self definition, selected by participating panelists. This gallery talk will establish some parameters for the discussions to be developed during the conference and workshops, stressing multiple perspectives and different interdisciplinary “frames” for carrying out collaborative photography projects with youth. A set of core questions include: how can photography mobilize or paralyze adults working for the rights of youth? How do youth use photography as a sense-making and aesthetic tool? |
| 8:30 | Exhibition Visible Rights |
Friday, December 8th
| 8:30 – 9:00 | Coffee |
| 9:00 - 11:00 | Panel #1: Perspectives on Childhood This panel introduces the concept of "visible rights" and its relationship to changing definitions of childhood and children's and young people's agency. Each presenter highlights a different perspective on the development and empowerment of children and young people through photography. Chair, Âmbar de Barros, UNESCO Coordinator in São Paulo, Vice-President of Agência de Notícias dos Direitos da Infância (ANDI) • Brinton Lykes , Professor of Psychology; Associate Director, Center for Human Rights and International Justice, Boston College, Boston, U.S.A. • Wendy Luttrell , Associate Professor, Harvard Graduate School of Education, Cambridge, U.S.A. • João Kulcsár , Centro Universitário Senac; Founder, NGO Alfabetização Visual, São Paulo, Brazil |
| 11:00- 11:15 | Break |
| 11:15 -12:30 | Workshop #1: Collective Art, Exercises for Collaborations in Schools João Kulcsár (in the Brazilian context) and Wendy Ewald (in U.S. sites) will lead us in simulating collaborations among photographers, schools, and community. This is an opportunity for participants to introduce themselves by exploring the multiplier effect of art in education. |
| 12:30 - 2:30 | Lunch |
| 2:30 - 4:00 | Panel #2: Latin American Photography Projects with Youth; This panel focuses on four projects developed in various locations in Latin America. Panelists will touch on the different methodologies developed in each project and the repercussions of their work in each of their local communities. Chair, Ismar Soares, Coordinator of Núcleo de Comunicação e Educação da Universidade de São Paulo (USP) • Paula Trope , Visual Artist, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil • Nancy McGirr , Executive Director and Founder of Fundación de Niños Artistas de Guatemala / FOTOKIDS, Guatemala City, Guatemala • Martín Rosenthal , Director, Fundación Ph15, Buenos Aires, Argentina • Alexander Fattal , Founder, Jahir Aristizabal , Executive Director, and Roquelina Flores , Community Coordinator, Fundación Disparando Cámaras para la Paz / Shooting Cameras for Peace, Bogotá, Colombia |
| 4:15 - 6:00 | Workshop #2: Best Practices that Integrate Visual Arts, Teaching, Learning and the Empowerment of Youth . • Brazilian NGO Alfabetização Visual , “From Pin-Hole to Digital Photography” |
Saturday, December 9th
| 8:30 | Coffee |
| 9:00 - 10:00 | Panel #3: Photography Projects with Youth, International Perspectives This panel will expand on some of the topics introduced by panelists working in Latin America, expanding the scope of the conversation to a global level. Panelists will reflect on the challenges of collaborative photography and media projects in an international context and the successes of their projects, including methods of measuring impact. Chair, Aimée Corrigan , Center for Digital Imaging Arts at Boston University • Shinpei Takeda , AJA Project, San Diego, U.S.A / Thailand-Burma • Shawn Davis , Project Director, Visual Griots, Academy for Educational Development, Washington D.C., U.S.A. • Susan Song , Executive Director, Kids with Cameras, New York, U.S.A. |
| 10:15 - 12:15 | Panel #4: Visual Arts and Effective Ethics This panel will consider the ethical implications of photography projects that seek to place the tools of self-expression in the hands of youth. Panelists will focus on issues of audience, the requirements and possibilities of true collaboration, and the delicate dynamics of projects that seek to engage subjects within socially marginal groups. Chairs: Robert Sikorsky , Executive Director, Duke University Center for International Studies, Duke University, and Nicolau Sevcenko , Visiting Professor of Brazilian Literature and Culture, Department of Romance Languages and Literatures & Professor of Cultural History, University of São Paulo (USP). • Wendy Ewald , Senior Research Associate, Center for Documentary Studies; Artist in Residence, John Hope Franklin Center, Duke University, Durham, U.S.A. • Eric Gottesman , Artist, The Vision Collective, Boston, U.S.A. • Laura González , Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas, Universidad Autónoma de México, Mexico City, Mexico • Miguel Chikaoka , Fotoativa, Pará, Brazil |
| 12:30 - 2:30 | Lunch |
| 2:30 - 4:30 | Workshop # 3: Sharing Best Practices: Networks for Development We will form four discussion groups that address some of the questions raised at the conference, develop proposals for future collaboration, and report in a joint session at the end: • Technical training: José Luis Falconi , Associate Director, Cultural Agents & Art Forum Curator, David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies (DRCLAS), Harvard University, Cambridge, U.S.A. • Aesthetic effects: June Erlick , Editor-in-Chief, ReVista: Harvard Review of Latin America & Publications Director, David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies (DRCLAS), Cambridge, U.S.A. and Mauricio Lissovsky , Researcher, Núcleo IDEA, Escola de Comunicação, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil • Ethics: Catalina Ocampo , Department of Comparative Literature, Brown University, Providence, U.S.A. • Financial viability: Josie Davis , Teaching Artist and Director, New York University, New York, U.S.A. |
Note: The exhibition is open to the public throughout the duration of the conference. From January 29th to February 28th it will be on display at Senac Lapa Scipião .
For further information, please contact Catalina Ocampo at the Cultural Agents Initiative: cultagen@fas.harvard.edu or João Kulcsár at Senac: joao.kulcsar@sp.senac.br
