The Studio Museum in Harlem

Shift in Focus: Expanding the Walls 2007 Student Exhibition

When young photographers turn a conscious eye on the world, mundane moments gain the clarity and beauty of fresh perspective. The ordinariness of sunlight filtered through layers of fire escapes, the bend of a mother’s back, the disarming warmth of a child’s direct gaze, become provocative renderings of heartfelt subject matter. Community, diversity, family, self-exploration, the immigrant experience and a changing world are just some of the themes explored in this year’s Expanding the Walls exhibition Shift in Focus.

Through both pure documentation of the everyday and staged expressions of earnest aspirations, the photographs by the Expanding the Walls participants are revealed together with selections from the James VanDerZee archive. The resulting exhibition places a contemporary lens on VanDerZee’s visual commentaries on community, race and meaning, and offer fresh opportunities to rethink his visual legacy.

Privileged to be custodian of a significant portion of VanDerZee’s photographic archive, the Studio Museum offers youth unprecedented access to this complex and intriguing treasure trove through the Expanding the Walls program. Now in its seventh year, the program and exhibition continue to foster impassioned temporal dialogues between the past and present, igniting profound consideration of VanDerZee’s timeless themes. The furthering of these dialogues, begun so many years ago on these very streets, is testament to the Studio Museum’s commitment to its role as a community educator.

Expanding the Walls is supported by The Peter Jay Sharp Foundation, Time Warner Inc., New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency, and the Eathon Hall Memorial Fund.