Granite City, Illinois
GRANITE CITY, ILLINOIS
Training: September 5 - November 14, 2008; River's Edge School/Alternative Education Program;
Ron Laboray, Instructor
Exhibition SITE #1: PPRC Photography Project Gallery
February 3 - March 30, 2009
Exhibition SITE #2: City Hall Rotunda, Granite City
February 10 - March 26, 2009
This PPRC Photography Project was conducted in conjunction with Coordinated Youth & Human Services (CYHS) of Madison County, Illinois, a not-for-profit agency serving Granite City, just across the river from St. Louis. CYHS was founded in 1944 as a direct response to the need for youth services in Granite City, which was then a thriving steel town. To aid students who have a demonstrated lack of success in traditional schools, CYHS opened the Alternative Educational Program (AEP) in 1973. Over a period of 10 weeks, nine teenage participants from AEP focused their photographic efforts on Granite City's historic but neglected downtown. Our weekly trips to photograph the streets, buildings, and people of Granite City were part of the ongoing efforts by local leaders to jump-start a downtown revitalization. The images we created formed a new collection of photographs showing how Granite City looks today. As an artist, arts educator, and as someone who grew up in and now lives in Granite City, I found this an excellent opportunity to demonstrate the power of photography and to challenge AEP participants to be agents of social change. Photography has been a tool of social change since its invention. Photographs by Lewis Hines changed child labor laws by showing images of very young, shoeless children at work in dangerous factories. Jacob Riis used photography to reform tenement housing by exposing the horrid, cramped conditions of slum life. This spirit of creating positive change, which benefits the community, was at the heart of our efforts in Granite City. Being that the old downtown is filled with condemned, burned out, and decaying buildings, AEP participants viewed images by photographers who found beauty in the type of seemingly "ugly" subject matter found in everyday urban life. AEP participants also fulfilled our goal of social change by making residents and businesses "see" clearly the need for revitalization in downtown Granite City.
--Ron Laboray, Artist and Photography Project Instructor
PARTICIPANTS: (ages 12 to 18)
Alexandra Apostol
Devin Claypool
Kaleb Dunbar
Dustin Graham
Ashley Hayes
Brittany Holt
Tanya Long
Corey Verson
Dessa Williams
COMMUNITY PARTNERS:
Coordinated Youth and Human Services
River.s Edge School Alternative Education Program
Granite City Downtown Redevelopment Committee
Granite City City Hall
Granite City Office of the Mayor