To offset a serious protein deficiency, powdered milk was introduced into the diet of New Guinea schoolchildren. But the children didn't like the milk, so a live cow was taken on tour, milked in front of them & the milk distributed in glasses. But again they grimaced & laughed & rejected it.

Miss Juanita Ferguson, a teacher in the Southern Highlands, filmed these reactions. Her students loved the films. They asked to see them over & over. Each student especially wanted to see himself - to see the funny face he had made & watch the reactions of others to his humor.

At which point, much of the resistance to milk disappeared.

Children everywhere are fascinated by pictures of them-selves, far more so than by pictures of friends. They know what friends look like, but they've never seen themselves. They're also more interested in their own art work than in the art work of others. The work of another is simply part of the environment, but their own work is visible proof of what was hitherto, for them, merely an inner thought, a psychic experience. Now part of them is visible to themselves & for a moment, at least, it gives them new identity . Then gradually it becomes subject to environmental control. Any environment has the power to distort or deflect human awareness. Photographs increase self-awareness only as long as they are private & not part of the environment.