Funny how these things happen: If Darren Setter's parents hadn't just happened to buy a home with a darkroom in the basement, and if his brother hadn't just happened to be in a photography class, and if Darren didn't just happen to be recovering from a nasty illness, well, he wouldn't be headed to Washington this week.

Darren Setter is one of five winners in the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards. (Michael Snyder photo) | ZOOM |

        Not just headed there, but headed there to be honored, handed $5,000 and see his photos go up on the wall of the very chi-chi Corcoran Gallery of Art.

        Mr. Setter, see, is one of five winners in the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, an annual competition that honors the nation's best high school art. His portfolio was chosen from 2,500 entrants.

        Not bad for somebody who didn't even take a photo class till the second half of his junior year.

        Mr. Setter, 19 and a June graduate of Sycamore High School, lives in Symmes Township with his parents, 20-year-old brother and a pudgy dog named Lexie, works at Climb Time, a rock-climbing facility in Blue Ash, and is doing summer school on Miami University's Middletown campus — Spanish and the dreaded pre-calculus.

        “I applied to Miami but didn't get in, so I'll go to Middletown awhile, then transfer into a double major in fine arts and business. It's the only college I want to go to. Between my mom and my aunt, they have 21 years there as part-time students. I practically grew up in the library.”

        The business major was chosen so he can make a living; fine arts so he can enjoy life.

        “In a perfect world, I'd do nothing but fine arts, but there's not a lot of room to move forward, and I don't think there's much of a living in it. I have no interest in photo journalism or advertising or anything like that. It's strictly fine arts.”

        That's what people are saying about his work — art and very fine indeed. Rosa Berland, visual arts program manager for New York's Alliance for Young Artists and Writers, called it “edgy, dark in tone and mood. What you often see in student photography is documentation of the world around them — family, friends, neighborhoods. This is different. There's a sense of change, of disintegration — a tension and a dialogue that's very sophisticated.”

        What earned all this praise was a portfolio of moody black and white photos of the interiors of abandoned buildings. Mostly, they're studies of light, shadows and textures.

        Like the one he shot in the basement of a building off Interstate 71: A high-backed chair, similar to those beauty parlor jobs with the hair drier attached, sits in the middle of the room. Smallish white vinyl albums are strewn on the gunky floor, so light streaming in the window behind the chair bounces eerily off them. To the side, a discarded stuffed bunny lies in still more gunk. He shot it all at an angle, so it looks like the chair is watching the door.

        “That shot, it's like this weird interaction between inanimate objects.”

        This from a 19-year-old? He's been thinking about things, 'eh?

        “I had an illness that lasted two years, a parasite that colonizes in the lower intestine. The best we can figure is that I got it swimming in Lake of the Ozarks.

        “Most people kick it in three months. I took two years.”

        Even today, three years later, he suffers muscle soreness, tendinitis, stiff joints and tires easily.

        “That's why I rock climb. I'm trying to get full-strength back in my muscles. But I think this will always be with me.”

        One of the things he did while recuperating was fool around in the darkroom. “I'd go down there on a Friday night and come up for air Saturday morning. I always knew it was time to go when the same CD came around the third time.

        “That's how I learned to make prints. I'd experiment all night, doing things in all sorts of different ways. I like to learn by experimenting.”

        The experimenting paid off. When he decided to take a photo class, he asked if he could skip intro and go straight to advanced. Teacher Robert Gregory gave him a ton of work to see if he could cut it.

        He did, in two days, and went straight to advanced photography.

        “I use a checklist to evaluate my students' photography that includes design, craftsmanship and imagination,” Mr. Gregory says. “When I saw the completed portfolio, I told him, "Darren, you did it all.' ”

        Did it all while working first in a Mason restaurant, then at Climb Town and maintaining a 3.5 average in Sycamore's honors program and playing guitar and managing to see girlfriend Rachel a couple of times a week.

        “What's great about Rachel is we started going together when I was sick and couldn't do much. She came to visit and kept visiting. Not many people would do that.

        “And lately, with everything that's been happening, I've had so little time. I've had to reprint the portfolio four or five times and that really takes time.

        “But I was happy to do it, because I really believe art was made to be seen.”

        Especially his.

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