By : Leticia Gutierrez/Appeal-Democrat
August 29, 2008
Several local youth found there's a lot more to the scene around you than first meets the eye after taking part in the program "How I See it: My Place" through the Sutter County Library in Yuba City.
Their photos and writings about what they discovered in the community during the 10-week project went on display Thursday night at the library, with the exhibit on view for three weeks.
The youth, equipped with digital cameras, roamed within one-quarter mile of the library at Forbes and Clark avenues while participating in the project. The project is part of the California Stories initiative "How I See it" program of the California Council for the Humanities.
The youth "talked about how they enjoyed going into the neighborhood and seeing things they didn't know were there before," said James Ochsner, services coordinator at the Sutter County Library. "Some said they'd never really walked through the neighborhood and had never seen a lot of things they were taking pictures of."
Over several weeks, the students took photos in several themes: palimpsest, or layering, showing how things are reused; transformation, how people transform their environment; mystery, whatever they saw as mysterious; and serendipity, unexpected delights.
One of the hardest parts of the program was explaining your photos, participants said.
Liliana Martinez, 15, thought the program would just be taking pictures, she said. Instead, it was taking pictures and looking at the object.
Maria Romero, 19, majoring in photography at Yuba College, found herself trying to understand a random photo she had taken showing the word NorCal across a vehicle's back windshield — it turned out to have what looked like a headless person sitting in the back seat. "I thought, where is the head?" she told the audience attending the program's opening at the library.
Participating Sutter County youth included Jessica Martinez, Liliana Martinez, Kanvarbir Gill, Sanam Gill, Kiley Hentges, Sayedt Bobadilla, Maria Romero, Rajwinder Kaur, Manjit Gurcha, Harneet Gurcha, Alexson Bevacqua and Jagdeep Kaur.
The local group's work will appear on the California Stories Web site www.californiastories. org in spring 2009.
The Sutter County Library, at 750 Forbes Ave., is open from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday to Thursday and 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Friday and Saturday.
The library in Yuba City was one of 21 throughout California that participated in the project administered by the California State Librarian.
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