The Baltimore United Viewfinders is a youth-led arts program teaching young people in East Baltimore to use photography, video and other digital media to address local social justice issues. Through the lens of a video or a still camera, these artists, storytellers, future activists and leaders confront the misconceptions and the hard truths of their neighborhoods, their lives and our city.
Through creative expression, the Viewfinders hope to bring about change. All the while, however, the program is changing them.
Anne Kotleba, a 2012 Community Fellow, started the Baltimore United Viewfinders with a friend, as a way to give young people in East Baltimore a means to find their voices and communicate their unique points-of-view. A Maryland Institute College of Art alumna, Kotleba spent four years rebuilding Gulf Coast communities and working as a teaching artist after Hurricane Katrina. That experience taught her how art could benefit entire communities.
At first, Kotleba spent much of her time teaching her students the mechanics of photography: lenses, shutter speeds, exposure, lighting. “We were like, ‘Let’s learn the medium,’” she says. “But now they’re older, and they’re so interesting! We’re having these amazing conversations, and I can see their growth as human beings and in their ability to think critically. Now, they’re saying to me, ‘Let’s take this medium and say something with it.’”
The Viewfinders meet afterschool at MICA Place, a community arts facility in East Baltimore. There, they learn from Kotleba, from volunteers and from one another. They practice their craft, play music, work on community projects and share secrets and laughter. “A lot of us have been here since the 6th-grade, so we’re like a family,” says Damien Keola-Eldridge, 16 (second from left). “We’ve grown up here.”
For many members of the Viewfinders, home is East Baltimore, so many of their photos are of porch fronts, cornerstores, rowhouses, neighbors. “I like to show people what it actually looks like in East Baltimore,” says Keola-Eldridge, “the good and the bad.”
“It feels like you’re not there when you’re behind the camera,” he continues. “It’s like you’re just an eye looking around.”
There are 15 high school members of the Viewfinders and 12 junior Viewfinders, in 5th-8th grades, from schools across the city. For many of the younger students, being a part of the group is as much about having a comfortable place to go afterschool as it is about photography. “MICA Place itself becomes this safe place for these young people to be themselves,” Kotleba says.
Kendell Jordan, 15, (left) started with the Viewfinders when he was a 6th-grader at Tench Tilghman Elementary/Middle School. “I knew nothing about photography,” Jordan says. Today, the Baltimore City College sophomore is taller than Kotleba, and one of her most experienced shooters. Through the Viewfinders, he has developed an interest in technology and graphics. “After college, I either want to be a graphic designer, work for Marvel Comics or be a video game developer,” he says.
Derrick Smith, 16, a sophomore at Baltimore Polytechnic Institute, also started with the Viewfinders as a 6th-grader. “It changed the way I view my community and it changed the plans I had for my future,” Smith says. “It taught me different skills, like leadership and how to make connections. I always thought I wanted to be an aerospace engineer, but now I see that I have a real eye for art, design. I can see all the beauty that’s in our neighborhoods, instead of just the perceptions you see on the news and in the media of the crime rate and drugs. I think a lot now about doing community-based art, teaching kids skills, journalism.”
Nya Gatewood (foreground), 15, a sophomore at Baltimore Polytechnic Institute, is one of the group’s newest members. “I get a chance to express myself here,” she says. “And at school, I don’t really get a lot of opportunities to do that.” Gatewood had never operated a real camera—outside of a smartphone —before. “I like that you don’t really have to think about the picture when you’re taking it. You just see something that interests you, take a picture, and assign meaning to it later.”
As the Viewfinders’ skills grew, the longtime members asked to take on new technologies, such as graphic design and videography. One project they launched this winter involved interviewing longtime and relatively new residents of Patterson Park, asking questions such as, “What do you love about your neighborhood? What would you change? Do you feel safe?”
“It was interesting,” Nya Gatewood says. “Some of the white residents said they didn’t feel safe. And a lot of the black residents said they felt like [new, white residents] invaded their neighborhoods, and pushed the crime and drugs toward the already bad parts and made them worse.”
The Patterson Park interviews will make up a segment of a larger documentary about black culture, perceptions and stereotypes. The documentary will be a companion piece to a still photography exhibit the Viewfinders are working on called “Home.” “It was their idea,” Kotleba said, “to do something around the idea that home is not a commodity.”
