By Kelly Morgan,Staff Writer
Poland school shutterbugs display their work at Bates College for the In Our Hands, Through Our Eyes exhibit.

POLAND – Armed with point-and-shoot cameras and supplies of film, five students from Poland Regional High School have spent the last three months exploring their worlds from behind the lens.

The resulting work will be on display at the Bates College Chase Hall Gallery for two weeks starting Sunday: Black-and-white self portraits, Lewiston cityscapes and shots of the students’ everyday environments.

“When we first started this, I thought we’d be taking pictures and helping him out,” said Nick Williams, 16, nodding in the direction of Bates College junior Jacob Bluestone, who has been mentoring the boys. “I didn’t realize it was actually about us and would be our photos up.”

The whole project was a bit of a trick, getting five high school boys – all more interested in sports and hanging out than school – to learn the art of expression and communication through photography.

“We totally duped ’em,” joked Poland teacher Ken Chutchian, who works with the students in a group informally known as the Boys-Bates club.

The group was started two years ago as a way to raise the aspirations of young male students by connecting them with members of the Bates community. It began as a series of informal meetings – bowling, playing basketball, watching “Pimp My Ride” in a dorm room – and has led to this friendship with Bluestone and the photography project.

The boys recently met with Bluestone, 20, in a conference room at the Poland high school during lunch. He was handing out posters and postcards for the pending exhibit and showing the group some of their finished photographs.

He’d spent last summer in Bolivia doing a grant-funded photography project with disadvantaged youth, and brought back images and stories to share. He asked the Boys-Bates students if they would like to participate in a similar effort.

“One of my goals,” he said, “is to start a kind of exchange of different photographs from different worlds.”

It took a few attempts to get the project in Poland off the ground. Bluestone first sent the boys home with cameras and photo assignments, but the assignment sheets usually were thrown out before the end of the school day. Then he decided to invite everyone to Lewiston to tour the city streets and vacant mill buildings.

“Sometimes the one-on-one time with the camera is too intense,” he said. The Lewiston tour was the trick, and afterward the Boys-Bates group overcame this hurdle. Stark self portraits and shots of everything from stationary objects to everyday activities show a willingness to explore and experiment.

“Once we started, like, doing stuff as a group and taking pictures, it was fun,” said Peter Brown, 16, who had yet to tell his family about the exhibit.

Terrance Welch, 16, said he used to at least wait until he got home to throw out the photo assignments. It doesn’t seem likely he’d reject such direction again.

“I’d have to say for me, the ice fishing picture is my favorite,” he said, pointing to a photograph in which he holds up a big, shining silver fish.

It was the largest fish he caught all winter.

It’s hard to say what impact the photography project or Boys-Bates connections will have on these students’ lives, but the group is clearly a positive experience for all involved.

“The way I define success right now is that these boys look forward to their meetings with their Bates mentors, they have made connections and friendships, and they have taken these relationships from the social realm to the academic,” Chutchian wrote in an e-mail.

The project was sponsored by the Bates Department of Art and Visual Culture with support from a Phillips Fellowship and an Arthur Crafts Service-Learning Award.

Students Patrick Collins, 14, and T.J. England, 15, also will have their work featured in the exhibit.

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