By Alice Stevens | Operations and Development Associate
Limitless Horizons Ixil is always looking for innovative and creative ways to facilitate learning, expression, and collaboration and we are often afforded fantastic opportunities thanks to supporters like you! Last week, we were fortunate to host a photography project with visiting high school students from Catlin Gabel and Oregon Episcopal School (OES) that engaged Limitless Horizons Ixil middle school scholars with questions of identity and voice. Photovoice or Fotovoz combines photography with community action by encouraging participants to explore themes, create a narrative, and express themselves through photos. Through the project, our scholars were able to frame their community and their culture through their own eyes. With some helpful photography tips, suggested themes and guidelines (including an image scavenger hunt), and the support of the high school students, our Youth Development Program (YDP) scholars were given free reign to photograph their community and capture what Chajul means to them.
Photovoice focuses on community consultation, creativity, and ownership. In a culture where illiteracy affects 39% of adults, and middle schoolers often struggle with expressing themselves in Spanish, images and photography offer youth a new medium of self-expression. Furthermore, it is a site of real cultural exchange, as both students from the US and Chajul quickly develop an understanding of their own lens: their experiences, biases, and backgrounds that color their interpretation of the world. Where the US youth saw poverty, our scholars saw their friends playing. Where they saw novelty, Limitless Horizons Ixil scholars saw the rhythm of daily life. Where the American high schoolers saw weathered but beautiful old women, our middle schoolers saw their grandmothers and neighbors. Through observing what their counterparts deemed worthy of photography, students from Catlin Gabel and OES gained unique insight into how Chajulenses define themselves.
After two fruitful and fun sessions of exploring the community and snapping shots, the groups gathered to discuss the photos and present a slideshow. Students spoke of the rich paradoxes of Ixil daily life (natural versus artificial, modernity versus tradition, old and young) and discussed what images and symbols represented their community (corn, friends, traditional dress,daily rituals of washing and weaving). The students from Oregon observed that their counterparts were drawn to deeply familiar images and scenes. We learned how our YDP scholars conceptualize their experiences and see their culture. Some images were deeply personal—Gaspar described the bond he shared with his grandfather, and Juana showed us a beautiful shot of her kind and generous neighbor.
Political issues were explored as well; we reflected on the problems of irresponsible and exploitative photography, and Francisco explained the perception that visitors’ photos were a way of stealing a part of Ixil culture through selling images of Chajul to tourists and in the US. Always themselves being objects of photos and gaze from visitors, handing the cameras to our students gives them the power to dictate how their community and its inhabitants are presented and perceived.
We are confident that the themes of the project will last in all the students’ minds, along with the shared experience of two different cultures on different sides of a border. Limitless Horizons Ixil is so thankful to our supporters for making exciting and engaging experiences like Photovoice possible for our scholars!
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By Alice Stevens | Operations and Development Associate
By Alice Stevens | Operations and Development Associate
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