Photography Gallery
Our Photography Gallery features a curated selection of work by Venice Arts' students: From documentary genre work and personal storytelling, to fine art photography and work produced collaboratively with other youth across the country and around the world.
How does learning photography enable a young person to find herself?
Watch Julie talk about the inspiration she gets from her classmates, testing her limits, and how she hopes her art will grow.
highlights from our 25 years
Venice Stories
Venice Stories is a collection of youth-created photography, film, animation, and comics created as part of a year-long storytelling project across all workshops in our Art Mentoring & Education program. Capturing the people, places, history, and current pulse of the Venice community, these works explore the neighborhood from a variety of perspectives. Photo stories, excerpted in the gallery above, include portraits of long-time Venice artists; images that show the dynamism of skateboard culture; photo essays and interviews with multi-generational residents; and a series of local civil servants. Video stories focus on black surfers and the history of racial restrictions on the beach; the ‘hidden history’ of Venice’s communities of color; and newer residents/businesses in Venice. The comics class imagines the pre-history of Venice—as seen through the eyes of pterodactyls. Together these works record the rich tapestry that makes Venice vibrant and unique.
This gallery features work by our Advanced Studies' participants in Los Angeles, and teens in Hong Kong, who were worked for a year on a collaborative photo project, Twin Cities, that was exhibited in both Los Angeles and Hong Kong. These young artists focused their cameras on family members and the world around them, their lives as they transition into adulthood, and the commonalities they found with their peers across the ocean.
SHIPPING & RECEIVING: PHOTOGRAPHS AND LETTERS BETWEEN VENICE, CALIFORNIA, AND CHEYENNE RIVER RESERVATION IN DUPREE, SOUTH DAKOTA
“Through art I have been able to understand myself as well as others. I have been able to see that with practice and dedication I am able to push my predetermined boundaries and limitations and get closer and closer to the perfection of my craft. ”
This collaborative project brought together 22 young people—half in Venice, California, and half living on the Cheyenne River Reservation in Dupree, South Dakota—for a photographic and personal storytelling exchange. Using 35mm cameras and black-and-white film, students shot photographs documenting their lives and surroundings, then shipped the film across the country to one another, to be exposed again in the cameras of their peers. Their work was featured at the Venice Arts Gallery and bound into a hand-printed, handmade book.