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| Ykua Sala, Agustina Canete, San Pedro |
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Taquara'ipe la kuarahy oguapy
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| Taquara'ipe la kuarahy oguapy, Nestor Fabian Morel Miranda, Paraguarí |
International Photo Exchange
Hello All,
I would like to share with everyone a successful AHECHA Project in my site Pilar, Paraguay. My dad visited July 2009 for three weeks in Pilar and asked me early on to be involved in one of my projects. I purposely coordinated with CoCuMu to check out cameras while my dad was in Pilar. My dad, Bob Byrd a professional photographer and educator in Vancouver, WA was enthusiastic about the prospect of teaching Pilar youth about the art of Photography. We began planning an International cultural exchange project, an exchange of photographs between Pilar and Vancouver, WA spring 2009. My dad teaches at Hudson’s Bay High School, an urban high school with 2000 students where he proposed the project to his 
Advanced Photography students Spring 2009 with question what would they like to know about the youth culture of Pilar, Paraguay? The students were asked to respond to the question and were sent out with cameras in hand to show through pictures their own youth culture of Vancouver, WA.
Last July while in Pilar, my dad and I held six informal photography workshop sessions with seven youth from a local high school, Coliego Pilar. In the end, both the eleven students of Vancouver, WA and the seven Pilar students showed through pictures an idea of what youth culture is like in their own respective cultures. The culmination of this International Photography exchange project was fifty six prints destined to be shown in a two different photo exhibits, one exhibit in Vancouver, WA and the other in Pilar, Paraguay. My dad is able to sum up the project, “While the two groups are physically and culturally separated and there are some distinct differences in lifestyles, some fascinating similiarities are revealed by the young photographers.” The photo exhibit was held in Vancouver last December 2009 with 50 attendees’ opening night. The Vancouver exhibit has appeared in two publications which can be viewed in this blog. The show is now currently on display at Hudson’s Bay High School. The exhibit here in Pilar, Paraguay is tentatively scheduled (entirely weather dependent) for April 2010 in the Cabildo Pilar, the old city hall, followed by an exhibition in Colegio Pilar. As of now, my dad is asking to start another Photo Exchange Project. Way to go Dad!
-Brian, February 2010
Ahecha Yuty
Photos from Ahecha Yuty now hang in the Municipal Library, covering nearly every free inch of wall space, making pueblo-famous ten Yuteñas, all student-teachers in their twenties. The ten photographers will graduate in July from Yuty’s Instituto de Formación Docente (IFD) as teachers of Initial Education, and their community photos were taken during a period of intense work, study, and practice. In the final months of their degree work, these women attend classes in the morning and student-teach in preschools and kindergartens in the afternoon. Many care for family members--children, mothers, brothers and sisters, even soon-to-be-born babies--in down moments. It amazes me that the women found time to participate in basic digital photography workshops. But they did!
We often met on Saturday mornings and occasionally wrangled a bit of time away from their morning classes to talk about perspective and movement, to experiment with color options, to analyze published photographs, to practice downloading photos on one of the IFD’s three computers, even to make picture frames from old cardboard boxes. To be honest, the women of Yuty’s community photography project show more artistic ability than their supposed teacher, capturing the pueblo’s character in its church, flowers, families, motos, river, soccer fields, asado and chipa, even in its mud. (Yuty sits 90 kilometers from the nearest asphalt. When it downpours, a person can’t return from the neighboring despensa without mud-caked pants.)
More than anything, I came away from the project with the sense that many photographers had discovered something about themselves: whether it be a newfound appreciation for a mother’s hard work, a critical take on the local volleyball club’s exclusion of women, confidence in one’s ability to learn a new technology, or a more serious interest in art. I learned, thanks to our community excursions with cameras and my friends’ ribbing, to relax and walk more slowly, because I was failing to see a thousand interesting details every morning.
Amy Dickinson, G-26, EEE Yuty, Departamento Caazapá
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We often met on Saturday mornings and occasionally wrangled a bit of time away from their morning classes to talk about perspective and movement, to experiment with color options, to analyze published photographs, to practice downloading photos on one of the IFD’s three computers, even to make picture frames from old cardboard boxes. To be honest, the women of Yuty’s community photography project show more artistic ability than their supposed teacher, capturing the pueblo’s character in its church, flowers, families, motos, river, soccer fields, asado and chipa, even in its mud. (Yuty sits 90 kilometers from the nearest asphalt. When it downpours, a person can’t return from the neighboring despensa without mud-caked pants.)
More than anything, I came away from the project with the sense that many photographers had discovered something about themselves: whether it be a newfound appreciation for a mother’s hard work, a critical take on the local volleyball club’s exclusion of women, confidence in one’s ability to learn a new technology, or a more serious interest in art. I learned, thanks to our community excursions with cameras and my friends’ ribbing, to relax and walk more slowly, because I was failing to see a thousand interesting details every morning.
Amy Dickinson, G-26, EEE Yuty, Departamento Caazapá
