Thompson student photo exhibition invites Loveland to consider life’s curiosities

[Correction: A previous version of the photo captions that ran with this story misidentified the middle school Katie Wright attends. Wright is a student at Walt Clark Middle School.]

It’s true that creating art often takes talent, time and determination. But sometimes, it also simply happens on accident.

Katie Austin, an eighth grader at Loveland’s Lucile Erwin Middle School, says the latter happened when she got into the darkroom after a day of photography and realized one of her most interesting photos was a picture of a classmate’s face she had never intended to be viewed by anyone.

“I was messing around with the manual settings on the camera and the focus on it, and I accidentally took it basically,” Austin said of the photo.

But there was something undeniably interesting about the image. So Austin decided to develop the photo into a unique composition using a process that allowed her to remove the white space from the original image and then flip it, so an upside down mirror of the image appeared next to the original.

The final composition will now hang in one of Artworks Loveland’s galleries through May 2 as part of “Enigma,” this year’s exhibition of photographs from middle school students in the Thompson School District’s Gifted and Talented program who also completed a workshop with Loveland photographer Bob Campagna.

Campagna, who has worked with Thompson middle schools and Artworks to put on the workshop and accompanying art show since 2003, said this year’s show consists of photos related to mystery and curiosity, which is the reason for the “Enigma” theme. Each of the 72 students in the program has one photo in the show, which is presented with a short piece of text that the students were asked to write “about the curiosity” their photo depicts.

To produce the photos, Campagna accompanied the students on photography expeditions to several locations around the region, including Old Town Fort Collins and Masonville. Campagna then brought all of the students to the Artworks darkroom, where they were able to develop their images into black and white photos and create one unique composition that would ultimately be displayed in the gallery.

In keeping with the “Enigma” concept, Campagna helped the students experiment with applying photo developer solution to the photos with spray painters, eye droppers and even their fingers to create unique effects in which only portions of the photo are developed.

High Plains School eighth grader Egan Bauersfield was among the students who chose to go experimental with his composition by using both his handprint and a drip technique to apply photo developer solution to four close-up images of eyes he took around Loveland.

Those eyes are displayed side by side in what Bauersfield describes as a “cool, creepy composition.”

The workshop also provided many of the students, who have often only known digital cameras, with their first chance to shoot on film and develop an image in the dark room. That experience is one Campagna said he delights in giving them because it teaches the students about the “true art” of photography, which is expressed through the “rough edges” of black and white film photos that are simply absent in digital photography.

“When you work with film in the darkroom you really take ownership of it because you can’t just delete it,” Campagna said. “They come in thinking they are going to be taking a picture but they end up creating a photo.”

Paul Albani-Burgio: 970-699-5407, palbani-burgio@reporter-herald.com