A traditional “tour” involves the following: a plane flight, a hotel, a camera taking photographs, a tour guide, a bus or train ride to a new location, a camera taking photographs, a hotel, a tour guide, a bus or train ride to a new location, ad infinitum.

In the end, we have seen much. We have pictures to show for it, to prove to ourselves and others that we were there. But what happened? How did we feel? What did it and what does it mean?

Most “educational tours” are of that same sort. Largely, we go to a new place, move around and within it, and take pictures of what we see. These photographs are representational of at least two-dimensional experience in that place. But was happening in these moments? These pictures are but tiny, frozen parts of frozen scenes in the larger context of a village or a city in a kingdom or country in a land far from home.

PROJECT 1:1000 seeks to expand upon and explore the third dimension of a photograph. We seek literary accompaniment to visual representations of moments in time. Literary – as well as traditional – photographs. These snapshots don’t just happen. There is a world around them, and a world certainly changing within the one taking the picture.

We seek to define these moments. As we capture with a camera images that move us, we seek to speak explicitly on how it was we were moved. To seek to startle out students out of the often disconnected practice of clicking buttons on a hand-held machine. They will need to be aware, and define more precisely all that is left unsaid in a photograph – essences unseen in the frame, the world uncaptured around it, and the small world moved within the photographer. We seek to force them into – are surely should see as we look back – that golden zone of disequilibria – the space between the known and the unknown (both within and outside of self) where learning occurs.

If it is true that “a picture is worth a thousand words,” then we will do that rule justice. In fact, we seek a greater emphasis on written expression than we do photographic representation. One thousand words is roughly a paragraphed, one-page piece of text. Small investment. Big return. Whether that one page be a personal journal entry, a letter home, or a literary account of a moment, an image, a place, or a face – accompanied or not by a photograph – PROJECT 1:1000 will offer the student countless immaculate, invaluable opportunities to discover self and the world.

We seek to create and develop critical thinking, self-reflection, attention to detail, artistic/written expression, and communication. We encourage an immersion in the world of sights, sounds, tastes, smells, and emotions. Our aim is to engage the world.

 

David Overturf
Barcelona, Spain
2002