Youth Noise

I photographed the YouthNoise DROP campaign on Saturday.

YouthNoise and Parsons The New School for Design, co-sponsored and partnered to launch DROP: a campaign focused on bringing creative young people together to create actions with local, national, and international impacts on the water crisis.

This day-long summit served as the initial step in a personal and team campaign for 75 emerging social entrepreneurs and activists in the greater New York metropolitan area. Part awareness building, part community building and 100% focused on social change, this summit offered opportunities for committed young people to dive into the complex world of water issues facing our global community.

It was a well organized event. Students were passionate about service and learned tangible ways to realize their projects. It was great to photograph especially because I learned quite a bit (that I can apply to Pedagogy of Photography and teach my students) by listening to the speakers (UNICEF, ALLOY...)that I was photographing. We saw clips of a documentary called FLOW which is a must see!

To view photos of the event click here, Youth Noise Summit Photos

You Tube Video

Election Night In Harlem

November 4th, 2008, Harlem, NY USA. I spent the evening photographing the Harlem Historic Community Celebration at the State Office Plaza, 125th St & Adam Clayton Powell. Over 2,000 people gathered in the plaza to watch the election results. After Barack Obama was elected President of the United States, people paraded up and down 125th street.

Historic Night in Harlem

Barack Obama is elected president of the United States.

Shout Out to Michel Leroy

A special thanks to lighting master Michel Leroy who I met at the Eddie Adams Workshop. He has been guiding me in studio lighting these past few weeks in NYC. Thanks Michel. Check out his work! He is an awesome photographer and teacher!



Copyright Michel Leroy

Tour De Bronx

On Assignment with the Riverdale Press. I photographed the final celebration of the Tour De Bronx at the New York Botanical Gardens. Though I wish I was out riding and shooting the event at the same time!

The Tour De Bronx is NYC's largest free riding event sponsored by Transportation Alternatives. Next Year's Tour de Bronx is October 18, 2009.

Pedagogy of Photography Recieves Praise

Victoria Restler, Senior Program Associate with World Savvy praises Pedagogy of Photography.

"I first met Katie DelaVaughn (née Delahunty) through the artwork of her students. Crisp, high contrast black and white portraits of elementary school children layered with vibrant marker drawings depicting their personal definitions of peace—Thomas the Tank Engine, Granny, making clothes, rapping and dancing. With their combination of skillful photography and jewel-like flashes of color, these images seemed more at home on the walls of a Chelsea gallery than a school bulletin board. Having seen loads of student artwork over my years in the field, I knew that the combination of authenticity, beauty and heart present in these photographs belied an extraordinary educator and artist.


In January 2008, Katie was selected to participate in World Savvy’s Global Youth Media and Arts Program (MAP). The MAP brings twenty educators together for six months to build skills and content knowledge for integrating global issues like Immigration and Identity into art and media curriculum. Among a group of veteran NYC teachers, Katie quickly shone with the innovative blend of art, literacy and multi-cultural education embodied in her Pedagogy of Photography (POP) curriculum and approach.


I am an artist, educator and administrator and direct World Savvy’s Media and Arts Program in New York and San Francisco. Last spring, I had the opportunity to observe Katie and help facilitate workshops with her classes on several occasions. When I arrived at Bronx Green Middle School, I often found Katie in her office surrounded by a gaggle of girls writing poetry or editing photographs. Even with very limited resources, Katie nurtured a safe space for students to explore their own identities and express themselves. She has a special capacity to connect with students of many different backgrounds and help them connect with each other. Her classrooms were filled with a wide mixture of students--Latino, Caribbean, African, Albanian; she developed strong relationships with each young person and provided ample platforms for cultural pride and expression. This aspect of her work—supporting engaged students of every stripe in their creative endeavors—never seemed to feel like “work” for Katie, and she spent endless lunch-periods, evenings and free days guiding the exploration and art-making of her devoted student following.


In a chaotic school environment—classrooms often full of 35 students—Katie consistently inspired her classes to create beautiful, meaningful art projects. However, unlike other arts educators that focus only on the quality of the product, Katie values the process and student engagement throughout. All of the concepts, descriptions, and images that her students create come from them. This ownership is evidenced in the voice of the work and the enormous pride of accomplishment her students display upon completion.


For the MAP’s culminating art exhibition, Katie and her students presented "Doors of Reflection" a powerful and richly layered piece. The middle-school class collected photographs from their lives and homes and created visceral collages that rippled against the cracked wood of three actual doors, suspended from the ceiling. This project was a success on many levels—it was visually striking, conceptually conveyed a textured tale of the immigrant experience, its development represented the months-long collaboration of more than 25 6th and 7th graders on a single, large scale collaborative work (a truly incredible feat!), and it continues to live on in the community with ongoing exhibitions at local Bronx schools, libraries and community centers.


At the exhibition opening, in an NYU gallery packed with parents, teachers and youth, Jasmine, one of Katie’s 6th grade students and a recent Mexican immigrant stepped forward to talk about the piece, “Before this year, I was nervous to express myself to anyone. I was so shy. Working with Ms. DelaVaughn has given me the confidence to believe in myself and express who I am.” Katie fostered this kind of personal growth in many of her students. Through her Pedagogy of Photography curriculum, her students came away from the year with art making skills and a deep appreciation of the ways that art can help us heal, grow, understand ourselves and the world around us."

Eddie Adams Workshop

I was one of 100 photographers selected to participate in the Eddie Adams Barnstorm XXI Workshop. It was an inspiring weekend. Photos coming soon!


"The Eddie Adams Workshop is an intense four-day gathering of the top professionals in photojournalism, along with 100 carefully selected students. The Workshop's purpose is to create a forum in which an exchange of ideas, techniques, and philosophies can be shared between both established members and newcomers of the profession of picture journalism. The Workshop is tuition-free, and the 100 students are chosen based on the merit of their portfolios."

Art HARLEM H.O.A.S.T

Thanks to all who came to the exhibit and presentation!

Harlem Open Arts Studio Tour

MTA Subway: midtown, September 15th 2008
photographed by Reuben Sinha

As an artHARLEM artist, I am showing both my personal documentary photography and my students' Pedagogy of Photography artwork at the Harlem Open Arts Studio Tour (H.O.A.S.T) October 4th and 5th from 12:00pm-6:00pm at Teachers College, Columbia University in Zankel 109. Enter at 525 W. 120th Street.

In collaboration with Resident Services, I will be giving a presentation on Pedagogy of Photography (POP) at 3:00 p.m. on Sunday October 5th.

Maternity Shoot in San Francisco

Congratulations to Mike and Colleen who gave birth to RoseMary and Thomas!

Doors of Reflection gets more press

After a year of hard work, Mrs. DelaVaughn's Pedagogy of Photography students created a collaborative installation piece that was exhibited at NYU in collaboration with World Savvy's Global Youth and Media Arts Festival.

Check out this great review of Pedagogy of Photography students work written by Dana Edell

Opening the Doors of Reflection

"One of the most powerful and richly layered art exhibits at the show is a project called "Doors of Reflections." Vivia, a vivacious 12-year-old girl from Jamaica, describes the project to me proudly. She perches on the edge of a wooden stool in the gallery, her yellow sundress glittering with sparkly sequins, and explains,

The whole concept was "doors of reflection," so it's when you hold on to a knob and you're turning it and you're thinking about what's behind you and what's going be in front of you, right? So it's like going back in time in somebody's mind and seeing where they gonna be in the future or where they are now.

The middle-school class had collected photographs from their lives and homes and created visceral collages that rippled against the broken, cracked wood of an actual door, suspended from the ceiling.

"I'm just a problem that can never be solved. I don't belong here."
"Life is too harsh for me to be able to survive yet I continue on."
"I will express myself."
"Albania is full of both beautiful and tragic memories. When I was five, the memory of seeing my aunt being shot by two drunk men hunts me & is heavy on my heart"
"Locked is what my door should be with all my secrets."

The middle-school class had collected photographs from their lives and homes and created visceral collages that rippled against the broken, cracked wood of an actual door, suspended from the ceiling.
These writings, scribbled with crayons, markers, paint and stickers, illuminate lives in which adolescent fears and insecurities are trumped by real terror and the desperate need to survive. I can't look away from the work. These kids have plunged their pens into their hearts and written with the unfiltered ink of raw emotion. Thoughts and secrets and desires are shuffled among photographs of smiling children, sepia-toned portraits of grandparents, geographies of memory, farmland, homeland and cityscape. When my gaze focuses on specifics, my eyes water, but I am at first unsure of these images as expressions of immigrant experience. Then, when I pull back and take in the entirety of the project, the conceptual theme washes over the boards.
The Immigrant Experience Leaks Through the Cracks

Boricuaz
La Boricua
such a shame
Datz all i hear
am i 2 blame
i am hizpanic
wat am i 2 do
IDK I don't have
a clue I cant
change my cul-
ture Itz not mii
fault I juz came
out diz way &
I cant go
back in
Im boricua N
proud Im
juicy NOT
Thin Im
brunette
not blond

The doors are the context, the frame and the canvas for the stories and feelings of the young artists. This poem by "Aze," is scratched into a windowpane in red and blue marker, the text hugging a photograph of a girl, body in profile looking outward into a void. Her shape is cut out and outlined in thick black: shadows that seem to be chasing her. A colored rendering of the Puerto Rican flag hangs suspended above her head. Taken alone, the image haunts, but within the collage of photos of smiling friends, doodles and magazine cutouts, its resonance sings. It is the immigrant experience � confusion, joy, pride, fear and sassiness leak through the cracks in the doorframe. As a work of art, as an expression of a young person's immigrant experience, the doors project is successful. It supplies images and media juxtaposed to each other in order to tell both individual and collective stories. As a collaboration project, it works on multiple levels. The viewer writes her own creation story of the piece, imagining a scenario where a group of 12- and 13-year-olds share scissors, glue, markers and laughter as they build the piece together. The images evoking pain and sorrow harmonize with those of survival and joy to tell a layered story of resilience.

Vivia sums up the process for me:
Through this project, everyone united with each other. Because everybody has a story to tell and everybody told their own story and now you get to see everybody's story. The fact that it's an art project really gives the person who's looking at it more in-depth features about who we are. And they get to see pictures of your life."

Goodbye Astroland

Astroland, Coney Islands famous amusement park in Brooklyn NY closed for good last night. I spent the afternoon with my Pedagogy of Photography students experiencing, documenting and celebrating it's last moments.