THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, January 14, 1995 TAG: 9501140028
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY TERESA ANNAS, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 125 lines
A FEW MONTHS AGO, Pearl Speller White made an eye-opening discovery - her own neighborhood.
Though White has lived in the Norfolk community of Huntersville for eight years, it took a camera to focus her attention.
``Usually I'm racing around, always in a hurry. Go to work, go to meetings, go to church - all in my car,'' said White. ``Most of us really don't take time to stop and see what's around us.''
In September, the 48-year-old mother of three got involved in a major photography project sponsored by the Virginia Beach Center for the Arts. The resulting exhibit, ``Open Shutters: Photographic Impressions by African Americans in Hampton Roads,'' opens Sunday at 2 p.m. at the center with a free public reception.
The center gave her a camera, some film and some inspired training.
``With this program, I would take little walking tours through the neighborhood to take pictures. It really helped to slow me down.''
A whole world opened up for White. ``It was like discovery time. When you get out to actually walk, you see the neatest things.''
She found a group of men who played checkers together most days. She stopped in an old-fashioned barber shop to admire the antique chairs. She saw kids playing hopscotch, something she hadn't witnessed in years.
White met an older man ``who knows everything. Full of good advice. He knows everybody, and everybody knows him.''
All the while, White was snapping pictures with her new automatic 35mm Nikon Fun Touch 3 camera, the same camera given to each of the 35 novice photographers invited to participate in ``Open Shutters.''
``I'm impulsive. Things that I like, things I wanted to capture - that's what I took pictures of,'' White said.
On display at the center will be two photos by each of the novices, taken over a three-week period from mid-September through early October. In addition, work by the six local and four national professional photographers who helped train the novices will be exhibited.
The idea behind ``Open Shutters'' was to give residents of predominately black neighborhoods a forum to present their view of life in their communities, said Betsy Gough-diJulio, the center's education director and coordinator for ``Open Shutters.''
The project included Seatack and Bayside in Virginia Beach, Park Place and Huntersville in Norfolk, Portsmouth's Cavalier Manor and Aberdeen Gardens in Hampton. Participants ranged from high school students to busy working mothers, from ages 13 to 74.
``Open Shutters'' was a massive collaborative effort involving city agencies, civic organizations, churches, businesses, educators, scholars and community leaders, Gough-diJulio said.
The program was modeled after three others - ``A Day in the Life of Black L.A.,'' a portrait of life in that city by 10 black professional photographers; ``Songs of My People,'' a nationwide project involving 50 black professional photographers; and ``Shooting Back,'' a program that handed cameras to disadvantaged children, giving them a means of expression.
From ``Shooting Back,'' Gough-diJulio got the idea to invite amateur photographers to document their surroundings.
The local pros spent time with the neophytes during the three-week shoot, then worked with them in selecting prints for exhibition. The final choices were made by two of the national photographers - Michel duCille, a Pulitzer Prize-winning picture editor at The Washington Post, and Craig Herndon, a veteran staff photographer at that newspaper.
``They have such an untainted view of the world,'' said duCille in November, as the jurying process took place at the Post's Fairfax bureau. ``They really went out and got fresh stuff.''
``Amazingly, it's a broad cross-section of work,'' said Herndon, picking through the contact sheets and color prints.
Herndon was on the lookout for ``something that looks like real human experience to me. If it's real, and the pictures are real, then it will resonate. There's a sympathetic response to what's going on in the photograph.''
DuCille hoped the exhibit would ``show both blacks and whites that there's a lot of normalcy. People tend to think of the black community in terms of ghetto. But here's this nice picture of a black couple,'' duCille said, smiling and holding up a photo by Wallace T. Hendricks of Bayside.
Many of the community shooters said they made it their practice to seek out and capture upbeat images. Much of the show consists of images of people at church, at home with their families or with friends.
``You hear so much bad stuff about Park Place on the news. I was trying to portray a good image of it,'' said La Tonya Sanders, a 15-year-old resident of that community.
``We have trees and flowers just like any other neighborhood. Picket fences and everything. I don't see it as bad or anything. I see it as a home. Where my house is. I like it, too. It's not a boring neighborhood.
``A lot of people live out here. But we know most everybody. Mostly friends.''
Brown said she has never felt fearful in Park Place. ``Some people do, before they come here. But after they walk around and see that no one is going to mess with them, it's not that bad.''
Maria Brown, 13, feels the same about Seatack. ``People might think that nothing but negative things happen around here. There are a lot of positive things happening.''
Brown spends most afternoons at the Atlantis Community Program center in her neighborhood. ``We come over here and help tutor little kids with homework. We help out our senior citizens. We take education first. We stay out of trouble.
``Some people have said they heard things about our neighborhood that isn't true. You know how it gets around. Like a lot of drugs and stuff. It isn't true.''
Sara Friend, who runs the Atlantis program, also took part in ``Open Shutters.''
``I have always enjoyed taking pictures of children. I'm not great. Not even good. But I enjoy it. Since I've been working at Atlantis, I have accumulated laundry baskets full of pictures.
``I see things other people don't see. To me, any child is beautiful. I took a picture of these three little girls, and I called it `Sisterhood.'
``I also took a picture of a little girl who lives downstairs from me. She's in a wheelchair. She's got such a beautiful smile. Just God's special sunshine.''
Besides giving confidence and a new mode of expression to participants, Friend expects the photo project will open the eyes of outsiders, too.
``I hope it will bring a positive light to all the neighborhoods. We need to stop stereotyping the neighborhoods. There's positiveness out there. And we need to go and stir it up a little bit.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photo by the winners: Louis Wilson, Sonnie Blaize, Maria Brown,
Kela Belfield, Pearl Speller White, Louis Wilson, La Tonya Sanders
and Shana Goodman
by CNB