PhotoSynthesis is a collaboration of the Winchester High School and Burlington High School brought to you by the Griffin Museum of Photography.

By creating photographic portraits of themselves and their surroundings, students from Burlington High School and Winchester High School have been exploring their sense of self and place in a unique collaborative program at the Griffin Museum.

In its thirteenth year, the 5-month program connects approximately 20 students – from each school – with each other and with professional photographers. The goal is to increase students’ awareness of the art of photography, as well as how being from different programs and different schools affects their approach to the same project.

The students were given the task of creating a body of work that communicates a sense of self and place.  They were encouraged to explore the importance of props, the environment, facial expression, metaphor, and body language in portrait photography.

Students met in November with David Weinberg, who after a 28-year career as an academic pathologist at a Boston teaching hospital, decided to pursue his longstanding interest in photography on a full-time basis. For many years his research explored the use of digital imaging to detect and classify human disease, so it was entirely natural for him to adopt digital photography for his personal work. In 2006 he obtained a Certificate in Professional Photography from the Center for Digital Imaging and the Arts at Boston University.

His personal work consists mainly of portraits, landscapes, cityscapes, and still life. His photographs are an attempt to deal with the mystery of the visual world, which he sometimes find humorous, sometimes soothing, and often confusing. Although the various series of photographs in his portfolio may at first appear unrelated, they are linked by desire to discover a spiritual connection to the subject. His series, “Palimpsest,” is perhaps most explicit in this regard.

Keiko Hiromi met with students in February and discussed her photography journey especially her project on survivors of the atomic bomb in Nagasaki and Hiroshima, Japan. Keiko Hiromi is a Japanese photographer based in Boston, USA & Tokyo, Japan.   Her work has appeared on NYT, People Magazine, Vanity Fair, El Pais, Der Spiegel, Diamond Weekly (japan), Boston Globe, PRI and ABC news and many more publications around the globe.  Keiko is a regular contributor for Huffington Post Japan.  She is available for assignments world-wide. She has international honors, has exhibited widely and is represented internationally in museum collections internationally.

Students also met with photographer Sam Sweezy to discuss sequencing of images. Sweezy is a professional fineart and commercial photographer and educator who resides in Newton, MA. He has exhibited at major photography venues including the George Eastman House in Rochester, NY.

Alison Nordstrom, the former curator of the George Eastman House in Rochester, N.Y., and photographer Sweezy gathered with students for a one-on-one discussion of their work and a final edit was created for the exhibition at the museum.

“In collaboration and through creative discourse these students have grown,” said Paula Tognarelli, executive director of the Griffin Museum. “We are very pleased to be able to share this year’s students’ work. We thank the mentors and teachers for providing a very meaningful experience for the students. We also want to thank the Griffin Foundation and the Murphy Foundation, whose continued commitment to this project made learning possible. To paraphrase Elliot Eisner, the arts enabled these students to have an experience that they could have from no other source.’’