In a series of workshops lasting several days, we carried out the BeamerHacks project with a group of children. We started with an introduction to photography: How does a good picture come into being, what do I have to pay attention to in terms of light and structure.
The kids then worked out what their hobbies are and how these activities are best presented as a pose in a photo. Gambling on the cell phone, cooking, inline skating, playing the piano… all those and many more were depicted as poses.
Each kid chose their favorite photo of themselves and learned to edit it with an image editing program. The revised image was projected onto a screen and traced in pencil.
In the last step, the portraits were colored with acrylic paints. In a vernissage, the completed works of art were presented proudly and the participants received certificates summarizing everything they learned in the past weeks.
A pose became a photo, became a projection, became a work of art.
*”Beamer” is the – sort of – German word for projector, so the English sounding title makes more sense in German than it does in English.