Remix
From 2000-2015 I worked weekly with incarcerated students from the RI Training School (RI's juvenile detention facility). Here myself and my AS220 Youth colleagues did not want to and were mandated by law not to reveal the identities of any young person we worked with. By not revealing their identities students could leave the Training School with a clean record unencumbered by their previous incarceration. This became a challenge when teaching photography. I would work with some of the same students week after week, month after month, year after year in the same small class room. Here students could not take cameras outside, to their rooms or down the hallway. All photography had be created in one cinderblock class room. It was here we started the Remix collage style of working. By photographing students faces as close as possible and then collaging them together with images from comic books and photos from other sources students were able to create new identities. Students who perceived themselves to have little skill, and students who perceived themselves to have a lot of skill could each make personal engaging collaged images.
