3EyesOn
3EyesOn: Innovative photo projects for schoolchildren and their communities
3EyesOn is a partnership between photographers Crispin Hughes and Gideon Mendel. Our work is dedicated to working with pupils from deprived communities to respond photographically to their lives.
We believe the current fatigue in conventional documentary photography offers a remarkable opportunity for the unselfconscious vision of schoolchildren to make profound artistic and social comment.
The latest digital cameras quickly allow children to produce work of a high technical standard. From here they can easily progress to using the camera as a tool to explore their world. As they gain confidence they can produce an intimate and revealing portrait of themselves, their families and communities.
Typically we engage with a class over just one intense week. We have found that given the right motivation, structure and direction a class of pupils of varying ability will produce an exhibition of a high enough creative standard to sit comfortably in a mainstream gallery or museum.
Central to our practice is that each child progresses from one to one support to independent and self-directed work at home. The children find this an enriching and confidence building experience and some of the academically weakest children have excelled in this project.
We work with the children and poets to enhance and expand their photographs using multimedia video to produce unique gallery pieces.
The resulting body of work takes on a life not only as a multi-disciplinary teaching resource but also as a way of drawing potentially diverse local communities together.