PRAGUE, CZECH REPUBLIC—Armed with cameras and a passion for black and white photography, students from two vastly different districts in Prague, Czech Republic began a simple but unique experiment: to explore each other’s neighborhoods. Once every two weeks they joined in workshops where they learned to work with the camera, take pictures, and print their own pictures. They toured parts of Prague they never knew. And they learned about each other.
The first group of students came from the Secondary School Havlickovo Namesti located in Prague’s Zizkov district. Zizkov, long called “bohemian,” is home to large numbers of Ukranian immigrants and Roma. The novelist Franz Kafka is buried here, in the quarter’s Jewish cemetery. The second student group came from a secondary school in Modrany, one of Prague’s biggest housing estates. Villas and houses, many a century old, fill "Old Modrany.” "New Modrany" includes huge apartment blocks built during the Soviet regime.
Three professional photographers—David Kummerman, Simon Chang, and Karel Tuma—led the bi-weekly workshops with youth. “Our aim is not to lecture them on the plurality of cultures,” the photographers noted before the project began in February, 2008. Instead, they sought to rouse the students’ attention and interest through authentic experiences: “The contribution of the workshops will be the cultivation of their photographic vision, deeper understanding of the images, themselves, as well as getting on with the kids from the partner group.”
Between workshops, students worked on assignments: taking a self-portrait, capturing a typical situation in their homes and among groups of friends. At the workshops, they discussed the photos they had taken and the problems that had cropped up along the way. They swapped ideas and advice on how to make their photos stronger—and shared stories about themselves.
The students’ photography was part of a larger project called “Cultures Around the Block,” a flagship initiative of the European Year of Intercultural Dialogue 2008. Through “Cultures Around the Block,” youth in Berlin, Bratislava, Brussels, Bucharest, Coventry, and Warsaw—as well as Prague—each created their own local media project. A single belief united their various efforts: that common activities, paired with pride in results, can overcome social barriers and prejudices that often block communication across ethnic communities.
In Prague, the non-governmental entity Multicultural Center Prague organized and supported this media creation by youth. In October 2008, the students from Zizkov and Modrany exhibited their work at the “Dialogue of Cultures” Festival, in a public space near Prague’s city center. In December 2008, their work traveled to Brussels—along with the youth media from other project sites—for a culminating celebration of Europe’s ethnic diversity.
Click below to see the students’ photography.
“Behind the Scenes” : Photos of the photography workshops
“Studies in Black and White”: Self-portraits and photos with friends
Modrany | Zizkov
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