through their eyes

I promise to upload my entries from the last few days of the trip (including elections) in the next few days...sorry it has taken so long!

Below is an email I wrote to a few friends... If anyone would like to be involved, let me know! (pauledixon@gmail.com).
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As most of you know, I've been in Sierra Leone the last few months teaching photography and literacy at a youth center. Although I spent the vast majority of my time showing students how to hold a camera or write English, occasionally one of my students would share an experience or thought that our world needs to hear.

Out of a desire to share those moments, I am hoping to create a website and book of their work. Additionally, I'll be holding an exhibition here at Sewanee (my university). I would love to devote the next few months to this project, but I don't have the talent - or the time - to do it all. As many of you are far more creative than I could ever hope to be, I would greatly appreciate any assistance you could offer. Below I've outlined what we're hoping to accomplish, but please do not feel that this list is exhaustive - if you have any ideas or suggestions, send it my way ( pauledixon@gmail.com ) and we'll incorporate it into the project.

Since very few people outside of Sierra Leone have seen the images and writings we'll be working with, here is a photograph and a few words by Sahr, one of my more talented students:

From Project

Thanks!
-Paul

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The Material

-Student photographs and writing. This was my project; I had the kids write and take pictures about themselves, family and community. I have all their writing and pictures...some are incredible, most are so-so but still impressive given their "war-affected youth" backgrounds. The writing really gives meaning to the pictures. This could easily be made into book and online format. I've attached a sample that I quickly put together in photoshop

-Short stories on peace and conflict collected by Amanda Blount in 2006. We'll scan these in, as Amanda wants to try to see if we can get the kids handwriting.

-National Identity project - short poems by the students on their perceptions of Sierra Leone, with photographs of the author and video clips of the students reading their poems. Sara did this with the kids; I'm not sure of the best way to present this. The book could have the poems and their portraits; the online version could do some cool stuff with flash and the text /audio/video...I'm not qualified to do it though.

-My photographs. These focus on democracy & development.

-Anything else you want to add.

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How you can help

(A few of these require geographic proximity to Sewanee, but most can be done from anywhere....)

-Typing up the students' writing from my project...I did most of this already for the exhibition we had in SL, but there's more that needs to happen. (Sewanee area only)

-Editing/proofing the writing...the students' english isn't the best, so the writing needs a bit of editing; at the same time, we want to preserve as much of the students voice as possible. This is a difficult line to walk... (Sewanee area only)

-Selecting students images to use...requires a bit of knowledge of Adobe Lightroom ( or I can show you how...it's not difficult). I've done most of this already with the students...just with 8000+ images from the trip, there's a few sections I haven't gotten around to yet. (Sewanee area only)

-Making website with Photography images and writings...this could be easily done in Lightroom, or could be done in a more customized manner in Dreamweaver or similar.

-Making some sort of flash/website/video with the national identity project...you can take this one pretty much wherever you want; I have the material but haven't started it yet. (this could be integrated into the photography website)

-Scanning and preparing Amanda's stories for publication. (Sewanee area only)

-My pictures are a bit more orient towards macro-scale politics and development - not the personal work of the kids - and I don't have any text for the images...if any history/political sci/development/english/journalism/etc oriented people out there would like to help me research and write accompanying text, that'd be fantastic. The Africa Working Group on Peace and Conflict ( www.africaworkinggroup.org ) has expressed interest in displaying our democracy/development material.

-making book of everything...hopefully within the next month, but at the very latest in time for christmas. We will either use Blurb.com or apple's Aperture books or if you have other ideas, suggestions are more than welcome... Any proceeds from the book (it won't be much, but it's a start) will likely go to an organization ( Me Na Borbor Pain - http://apps.facebook.com/sponsor-me/campaign/66 ) a friend of mine by the name of Tamara has founded to help students in SL with their school fees. This organization is only a few weeks old, so if you have ideas for it, you can certainly become more involved.

-brainstorming creative ways to display these (esp to a wider audience than just the usual "cafe" culture type people that go to art gallery openings) ...right now I'm hoping to do a book, a website, and an exhibition here at Sewanee. I'd like these (especially the website) to be interactive in some way rather than just a mere slideshow. If you have thoughts or other venues you'd like to display the material, let me know!