Photography Students Focus On Their Shutter Skills

9/27/2023

Shiny new camera in hand, Amina Nabiyeva ’26, who hails from Kazakhstan, was strolling on the quad working on her first assignment for her Darkroom photography course: a day in the life of a foreign student in America.

The sophomore summed up her love of photography as “an interesting way to share your perspective with the world, to capture your thoughts in a picture.”

Upper school visual arts teacher Rachel Langosch tasked her students with documenting their world with a roll of film and going through the steps of rolling and processing it: “Show us what a day in ‘your world’ looks like. What are the artifacts, people and spaces that define how you see the world around you? What does your perspective look like?”

Lucille Quackenbush ’26 was inspired to take the course after receiving a camera from her parents. “The project is very broad so we can focus on whatever we want,” Quackenbush said. “I’m choosing to look at surroundings and what's around me, and I'm going to go into New York City and take photos there.”

Meanwhile, Langosch’s Darkroom 2 students recently completed their first project combining slide film and physical objects to make collaged photograms. Photograms are photographic prints made by laying objects onto photographic paper and exposing them to light.

Charley Agranoff ’24 used slides borrowed from the art studio. “I enjoyed being able to explore the different tools in the darkroom without the component of it being my own picture,” Agranoff said. “It gave a lot of perspective on different methods I can use in the darkroom.”

Langosch’s hope is that her students will be keen observers of light, think critically about their compositional choices, and see photography as a vehicle for communication and for change. She said, “There is a true magic, a slowing down and a meditative quality to making images in the darkroom and Masters students are so fortunate to have these resources that quite literally bring us into the past.”