“I love taking pictures, usually I use my phone but this is so different and much more fun because there are so many options and so many different things to think about while taking pictures,” says Jenan, one of the teens attending CRP’s new photography class.
This month CRP started a photography class for the teens in our community. We are collaborating with Darkroom Amman and Lomography, two other organizations, to teach the art of film photography, different techniques, and photography theory, as well as different angles and proportions.
“I wish CRP would do more programs like this. There’s so much technology that we don’t have access to and technology for me is super fun and amusing to learn different aspects of,” says Ghaith, another teen at the class.
Incorporating different activities for teens at CRP was a big goal of ours in 2018. These classes help young people to discover new talents by trying something new and exploring different options. This gives them the opportunity to escape boredom and make new friends. We see a lot of passion and participation whenever we start a new activity directed towards the teens at CRP.
Last week the participants of the class went on a field trip to “Darat al Funun,” which is a home for the arts and artist of the Arab world. Darat al Funun has many different exhibition rooms each contains a different style of art. The teens got to explore different styles of photography and look at live examples of what they learned in class. Located near downtown Amman, going to Darat al Funun was a fun trip where the kids got to explore and bond with each other.
After that, they went to Darkroom Amman, which is a project that promotes analog photography. There, they got to use analog cameras to take some pictures and then see how to develop these photos in a darkroom. “I had so much fun, It’s definitely something that I haven’t seen before, never thought photography is this complex,” says Arweej
This program was made possible thanks to Marta Vidal, a freelance journalist who contacted CRP to start a photography class for the youth at CRP and is also teaching the class. She had previously done the same program in turkey also with some youth from the refugee community.
Big thanks to Marta, Darkroom Amman, and Lomography for spearheading this program! Make sure to follow us on Facebook to see the results of the class.