Cyanotype quilts and other images are found all over the Bellaire High School cafeteria Thursday. Photo by Derek Redd

BELLAIRE — Students in Rebecca Kiger’s photography class at Bellaire High School learned much more this year than just their way around a film camera. They learned several classic processes that culminated in their final project displayed Thursday at the school’s cafeteria, a project that got the students to learn how to slow down during their hectic daily lives.

Quilts and other images lined the cafeteria Thursday, examples of cyanotype, a photography method created in 1842. Kiger said the class had begun working with film rather than digital, then branched out into other alternative photography processes. Cyanotype, also known as sun printing, uses light-sensitive chemicals to create Prussian blue and white images by exposing paper or fabric to UV light.

“We started playing around with cyanotypes and printing them on fabric,” Kiger said. “And from there, we thought, what can we make from these?”

Kiger and the students enlisted the help of former Bellaire City Schools nurse Brenda Dunlap, who taught the students how to quilt.

Kiger said that, outside of teaching the students new photography methods, she also wanted to teach them how to slow down.

“There’s research that ‘grandma hobbies’ help,” Kiger said. “They’re happy things for kids.”

Those hobbies are things like film photography and quilting that allow kids to take a breath and work diligently, yet deliberately, to finish the task. The high school students were able to broaden the project to Bellaire’s elementary and middle schools. The district’s theme this year was “Making Hope Happen,” and the high school students talked with the elementary students about hope through nature, while they talked with the middle school students about hope through connection.

Bellaire High sophomore Mahkenzie Poggi said the new experiences were very rewarding.

“It was really inspiring to work together and do our quilts,” Poggi said. “We had a lot of help from Miss Brenda, which was amazing. And we got the opportunity to go to the elementary school and middle school and help with their quilts. It was really just the whole community together on these quilts, and it was really amazing.”

Kiger has garnered multiple major international awards for her photography, most recently for her work chronicling the East Palestine, Ohio, train derailment and the aftermath. That work earned her a finalist spot for the Community Awareness Award in the Pictures of the Year International Competition. It also earned her a World Press Photo award.

Yet teaching her students about unplugging and taking their time was was an experience she said she’ll always cherish.

“It’s a multistep process they have to see from beginning to end,” she said. “That kind of a process is a skill they can apply in their lives. That’s what I’m constantly trying to do as a teacher, not necessarily create photographers, but encourage problem solving skills and being able to take something from an idea to completion.”