Teen photographers get their shot
Philanthropist lets shutterbugs run riot in Aga Khan Museum
Teenage paparazzi equipped with Canon digital cameras have had the run of the Aga Khan Museum of Islamic art and civilization for the past four days, snapping pictures of ornate ceramics, rugs and anything else in the collections and backrooms that catches their eye.
The 20 shutterbugs, between 13 and 16 years old, were students in a photography workshop for underprivileged youth hosted last week by Fredric Roberts, a former Wall Street executive who ended his career in mergers and financing to travel the world and take photos.
“As the ’70s became the ’80s, and the ’80s became the ’90s, my taste for greed and corruption and the sort of thing that Michael Douglas made in the movie ( Wall Street) were much less palatable to me,” he said in an interview at the museum on day three of the weeklong, free course.
Roberts founded the investment banking firm, F.M. Roberts and Co., in Los Angeles in 1980.
In 1993, he was chairman of the board of governors of the National Association of Securities Dealers, which owned and operated the NASDAQ Stock Market, according to his website.
He learned to use a camera on a six-week trip to Thailand, China and Tibet in 1986. But it wasn’t until he retired 14 years later that he rediscovered photography. At 58, he took a photography workshop in Santa Fe, N.M., and returned to Southeast Asia. Pictures of his travels, from India to Cambodia and China, became the basis for his book Humanitas.
As much as he enjoys taking pictures, he says he finds even more fulfilment teaching children to express themselves through photography. He gave his first photo workshop in Udaipur, India, in January 2011 and has organized others in Tajikistan, Bhutan and Nicaragua.
From learning how to hold a camera, his students move on to shutter speed, aperture, ISO and principles of composition.
After the course, Roberts and his staff of professional photographers will leave four cameras behind and two licences of the photo-editing software.
The kids’ work will go on display with photos by past students at the Aga Khan Museum from April 30 to May 31as part of the Contact photography festival.
After the workshop is over, the students can continue getting feedback on their pictures in a private Facebook group, Roberts said. But the class is meant to leave them with more than just an understanding of framing and exposure, he noted.
“This is an empowerment exercise. We give them photography as a language to go out and say something.”