Courtesy of Prince Davenport

In 2021, the Yale Center of British Art projected looped photography on High Street, to answer the question, “Where are you?”

James Vanderberg, educator for high school, college and community engagement at the Yale Center for British Art, created the annual exhibit “The View from Here: Accessing Art Through Photography” with this specific question in mind. 

The exhibit is a photography intensive for 11th and 12th graders and first-year college students in New Haven to work with museum staff, photography experts and curators to create and exhibit art that showcases New Haven through the lenses of its generation of future leaders.

“The work these students are producing is of the same caliber as an exhibition of any artwork coming to the museum,” said Vanderberg. “I think it’s no different than if the Schwarzman Center had put on an exhibition of an artist that everyone knew their name. I think these kids are right here, and I think that it has the same weight.”

The center was first opened in 1977 by benefactor Paul Mellon, class of 1929. Enthralled by British art and culture, Mellon balanced his time between the United States and England. While across the pond, he began collecting artwork that cataloged British history and culture. Shortly thereafter, he began a partnership with architect Louis Kahn, who was commissioned to design both the Center for British Art and the Yale University Art Gallery. The pieces housed within the Chapel Street edifice, which span from the 1400s to now, are considered the largest collection of British art outside of the United Kingdom.

The modernist-inspired building is currently undergoing renovations, but according to Vanderberg, it has always sought to “give both Yale and the New Haven community an opportunity for research, enjoyment and to engage with [Paul Mellon’s] love of British art.”

Vanderberg is a former high school teacher and has said that he has always felt most comfortable working with young people. He taught university-level art and art history in New York for approximately 10 years. After accepting a job at the center remotely in the midst of the pandemic, he was asked to create avenues for engagement with local youth. 

“My key thoughts were ‘How do I create programs?’” Vanderberg said. “‘How do I engage these students in a way that is going to excite them, make them more interested to come back, and engage in visual art in a very specific way?’”

Vanderberg worked with Martina Droth, deputy director and chief curator at the museum, and Paul Messier, founder and Pritzker Director at the Lens Media Lab at Yale’s Institute for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage, to design the curriculum for the program. They sought an exhibition element that was hampered by the absence of an open museum space. 

“We designed a way to project the student images out into the street through our storefront windows on High Street,” he said. “It used to be the museum shop, and we had these projection screens put in, and the students’ work was on a loop from basically dusk to dawn. And then, much like every other part of ‘The View from Here,’ that also evolved.” 

In its fourth year, the exhibit has grown into a collaboration with the Yale Lens Media Lab, the Institute for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage and the Schwarzman Center. Working with the Schwarzman Center presented an opportunity for the exhibit to be shown in the President’s Room, a significantly larger space than where it had been housed prior. In response, the program went from showing 12 to 36 photographs a year.

When asked what the phrase “The View from Here” means to him personally, Vanderberg says he was inspired by the Studio Museum in Harlem’s yearlong program titled “Expanding the Walls.” “Expanding the Walls” is a foundational program in New York City for students attending public high school in one of the five boroughs.

“We were thinking about this idea of expanding the walls, like, what does that mean?,” he asked. “I kept thinking about how we were interacting with each other in the Zoom space — lots of little screens. People started to organize their bookshelf in certain ways or put on funny backgrounds. And it was always like, ‘Where are you right now?’ because we’re really interested in what you are able to see.”

This prompted Vanderberg to wonder what young people were viewing, what stories they could tell from those views and why it was significant to their identities and backgrounds. 

An artist by trade, he decided that the best way to capture the essence of the exhibit was through iPhone cameras.

“iPhones are ubiquitous,” he said. “Students have smart devices, and I used to teach in high school, and it was the biggest fight every day. Everyone’s taking pictures, so how do we tap into this as an art form as a way to access creativity?”

Photographer Prince Davenport, a member of the exhibit’s 2023 class, says that taking pictures via iPhone as opposed to a traditional professional camera was a new task and compelled him to “learn more about techniques related to composition and color.”

“Walking into Blue,” one of the two photographs Davenport presented, was an experiment using one of the techniques he learned in the program.

“‘Walking into Blue’ was photographed in Edgewood Park, and this was around the time when I was introduced to the practice of colored gels,” he said. “A colored gel was this transparent colored paper, and I covered half of my lens with the film to create the man continuing on the path walking into blue.”

Davenport says that the instruction at the center instilled “a sense of preserving the culture” of New Haven and “using it as a parameter for future artists to see.”

Eliza Factor, another member of the exhibit’s class of 2023, shared a similar sentiment regarding the program.

Coming from a photography background she deemed was “strict,” Factor said that participating in “The View from Here” introduced a “broader and general view” of art and the world around her.

Her pieces for the showcases were titled “Grasping Serenity” and “In Bloom.” “Grasping Serenity” is a vivid, black-and-white elevation of minutiae, capturing a butterfly with a broken wing resting on a human hand.

“[Grasping Serenity] was taken at my old house in the backyard,” she said. “We had blueberry bushes, and had set a tarp over the bush so animals wouldn’t eat it, but when I went to visit the bush, there was a butterfly that had gotten caught under. That’s when I took the picture.”

Factor believes that being in the program and working with Vanderberg and other staff is an opportunity for talented youth to bring light to New Haven and show what living in the area is like through their respective eyes. 

“Everyone has a different perspective as seen through the photos, whether that’s looking into the nature that you can find or embracing city life,” she said. “I think students alike are able to show how they view New Haven and how they can fit into that space.”

Vanderberg hopes that “The View from Here” helps youth like Davenport and Factor to tap into their creative potential and self-confidence. He also hopes that attendees of the exhibit recognize the emotional resonance and professionalism each artist possesses and puts on display in their work.

“The View from Here: Accessing Art Through Photography” will open in Spring 2025 in the Schwarzman Center.

Correction, 9/13: Earlier version of the article incorrectly described job titles for Vanderberg and Droth.