Hey y’all!
My name is Sara Minsky and I’m a CCNY art ed student 
writing my thesis this fall. I currently work at the International Center of Photography (ICP) as an administrator for the Teen Academy program which offers analog darkroom photography classes to high school students. I am also an alumni of the program and received analog darkroom instruction from my public high school in New York City. Here’s a photo that was taken of me on my first day of class at ICP as freshman in high school!
In our increasingly digital world, there is still a demand to teach analog photography despite that more and more public high schools and colleges are deciding to close their darkrooms.
While the formal structure of my thesis is still being worked out, my question asks, what are the benefits of learning analog, darkroom photography in a New York City public high school, from the perspective of students?
My hope is to be able to work with students who have taken a darkroom based photography class in their high school and utilize photovoice as my research method. Photovoice is a method that is grounded in participatory action research to generate findings with students. I am still learning about the different ways photovoice can be used, but from what I understand, participants use photography to respond to the research question and explain their thoughts behind how their photos connect and tell a story as it relates to the research questions. Here’s a book I recently found and am excited to use as a resource!
While I have never used photovoice as a research method before, I just recently conducted a pilot study, where I asked a friend if they would visually respond to the research question taking photos with a polaroid camera. The discussion that came from one of their images shown above made me excited to begin these discussions with students. In our conversation, something my friend mentioned was that they like the way analog photography freezes time and allows you reflect, and how it is “like a plant that needs to be tended to. You need to tend to your negatives, if they’re dusty. You need to change the chemicals when they’re overused. There is a materiality to analog that isn’t there with digital.” The analog process also forces you to “be present and focus on what is in front of you.”
