Picture Perfect : Project Uses Photography to Give Youngsters a Panorama of L.A. Neighborhoods

The black and white photographs displayed at Santa Monica Place reveal just what captures a child’s fancy: a wise-looking homeless woman. An ice cream truck. A gleeful sister on a playground slide. A dog swimming in a Venice canal.

“Multiple Exposures,” an exhibit of photographs taken by children from Venice, Watts and Pasadena, culminates a six-month project that introduced the youths--already enrolled in local photography courses--to one another’s communities.

“Kids tend to know their own neighborhood, and that’s it,” said Shai Hannukah, one of the photography instructors. “But if you see other places and learn about the existence of other places, it changes your point of view.”

The concept evolved from a 1993 project by the Venice Arts Mecca, a nonprofit organization offering free children’s art workshops. During the project, children photographed their own neighborhoods and published the pictures in a calendar.

“We saw how incredibly powerful it was for those kids to be photographing their own community,” said Lynn Warshafsky, director of Venice Arts Mecca. Not only did the children get to know their own neighborhood better, but they also interacted with others in the broader community, Warshafsky said.

To expand the idea, she organized an exchange between photography students in her organization’s classes and youths enrolled in similar classes at the Watts Towers Arts Center and the Armory Center for the Arts in Pasadena. The effort was funded by a $25,000 grant from the Thelma Pearl Foundation, a charitable organization set up by the longtime nanny to the Walt Disney family.

During meetings between the young students, it became clear that they had only a vague grasp of one another’s communities, said Joel Glassman, director of photography at the Armory. The field trips and meetings gave the children “an understanding for a greater community called Los Angeles,” he said.

“I remember we had a question and answer period about Watts, and all our kids knew about Watts was that there was a riot there,” he said. “And all Watts and Venice kids knew about Pasadena was something about the Rose Bowl.”

The photos taken by the children were as varied as their personalities.

To Novelette Brown, her picture of a broken television abandoned near a Watts sidewalk told of her annoyance with those who litter.

“It shows how people don’t clean up there,” said Brown, 11, of the picture she titled “Nothing on TV.”

At the exhibit’s recent opening, the young photographers appeared to be taking their newfound renown in stride. As admirers looked at Jose Quintero’s picture of an old man sitting outside a dominoes hall in Watts, he explained why he snapped the shot he titled “Old Hummer.”

“It was interesting that he was old and I heard him hum a little bit,” said Quintero, 11.

Elsie Flores, 13, of Culver City liked bringing her work to life in the darkroom.

“The darkroom is like magic, because a plain piece of paper becomes a picture for years,” said Flores, whose photograph “Hats and Birds,” depicting a woman in a hat feeding pigeons, sold for $75 at the exhibit’s opening. Flores was able to keep a portion of the money.

Some students were at a loss to explain to visitors why they took certain pictures. David Blumenkrantz, a project photography instructor who taught basic concepts of 35-millimeter photography and darkroom techniques, said the children were often surprised by what they had captured.

“They don’t have to understand the significance yet,” said Blumenkrantz, who introduced his students to a variety of photography forms and history. “They are little kids. But it’s still beneficial because it becomes part of their background and their experience. I just want them to enjoy it.”

“Multiple Exposures” is on exhibit through Nov. 9 at the Santa Monica Place Community Focus Gallery, 3rd Street and Broadway, Santa Monica.