ON THE COLLABORATIVE / We conduct our studio classes in a former elementary school located in one of the more challenged inner city sections of Pittsburgh known as Manchester. Our after-school program is currently sponsored by the Society of St. Vincent De Paul and engages children ages 7 thru 10 in an arts collaboration that produces collage self-portraits. The approach we use is fairly straightforward. A number of photographs are taken of each student. One image per child is selected and printed. We then teach them to draw a freehand contour line drawing based on their photo. Once the drawing is completed, we demonstrate and assist the students in creating a collage self-portrait. The children utilize printed images/material from magazines that often reflect popular culture. The process of selecting this material as well as the selections themselves invariably engage issues of identity, class and gender. Our process is one of collaboration. Students work on their own as we circulate amongst them encouraging their ideas, suggesting ways of interpreting themselves, as well as adding "parts" to the puzzle of their self-interpretation. Often we will get a student "started"; a nose here, a forehead there. This leads to a dialogue, both verbal and visual, between the child and the teachers. A synergy of sorts takes over, moving back and forth between us. A small number of students are able to connect with this process with little assistance and work quite independently. Most need varying degrees of direction both conceptually and technically. In the end our collective interplay creates the work that emerges, which is often visually metaphoric and blurs the line between who is teaching whom.                                         Co-Directors Meda Rago & Francis Crisafio 2009 ON PHOTOGRAPHY / I have taken two approaches to the photography of these children. One is largely black & white and photojournalistic. This approach includes shooting formal portraits of the children as well as documenting them in the classroom and their neighborhood environment. I am focused on their spontaneity and the need to react quickly to their expressiveness. I am also interested in trying to see what they see when they walk out of their homes, on the way to school or to play and back home again. I feel their visual connection to their community and neighborhood has much to do with how they see their future. The second approach taken is more conceptual and premeditated. I substitute the child's face with the finished collage face, thereby creating a mask. I then pose and photograph them for a second time, the first having been the initial portrait. The reflection here is on the individual child and the final collaborative visual interpretation which can be quite dramatic. As a group of images they also reflect the colorful nuances of the collective child. My overall aim with both approaches is to shape what the viewer is perhaps not seeing or does not wish to see. I want to investigate what lies outside the viewers' daily experience and what my subjects choose to reveal as well as to hide. In the end, the image taking is an attempt to get at what is "inside" which is more interesting to me than what is obviously on the outside. FC 2009