Venice Dream Team members shoot mostly in black-and-white. “I like to shoot architecture,” says 14-year-old Justin. “It’s good in black-and-white. So are candid shots of people.”

Team members enjoy the experience of watching their work slowly emerge as pictures in a developing pan. Photographers volunteer to show them the tricks of the trade. The kids are well aware that the Team depends upon the sale of the photos. And so they need to produce sharp, well-printed, and professional-looking prints. Everything they use, from film to printing paper, is Kodak.

Just about everything in the basement studio/darkroom is donated or scrounged. “We make do,” Bingwa says. “We don’t get any government grants. We got a lot of our computers by cleaning up an office when a company was moving and told us we could keep what was being left behind.”

The kids are learning more than how to use an enlarger and print a sharp print. The darkroom often produces a basic change in behavior. The change especially shows up in kids who had little respect for most objects (and most adults). One kid from rough streets remembers being surprised that she would be trusted around expensive equipment like the enlargers. “Bingwa never said anything, like, ‘Be careful,’” she says. “And no one trashed anything. We learned to respect things.”

Selling the Pictures