Currently, The Viewfinder Project consists of two parts:

Part I of this project takes students through a very particular process of identifying, through photos, what they both like and dislike about the world around them, the space where they spend their day-to-day life.

In Part I, students are introduced to the idea that if we as people could change how we look at the world around us, using our minds and our eyes, then we might create for ourselves an entirely different experience and therefore a different life for ourselves in years to come.

Part II of this project is designed to take students to a deeper level on this journey to self-discovery. Its purpose is to help students continue adjusting their eyesight, so to speak. A trained eye can see photos anywhere and everywhere, photos just waiting to be captured. When we train our eyes to see the photos around us, what begins to happen is that we start to see the world around us in a new way. We start to notice things we have never seen previously. And then we start looking for new ways of seeing the world around us. The ways in which we perceive the world around us changes and we begin looking for alternate choices.

We’d like to see The Viewfinder Project expand beyond this simple format. Our growth plan includes video work for both children & adults as well as gallery shows, coffee table books, film festivals, computer labs and possibly YOUR project, whatever that may be.

By 2009, we hope to have models of TVP up and running in at least two other countries. Eventually, we’d like to see TVP happening all over the world.

Because of the grassroots nature of The Viewfinder Project, we hope that you download our curriculum and modify it as you need to in order to fit your context. We ask that you then share these modifications as well as your lessons learned and your students’ photos with us using the TVP web site.