It was a show of work by the documentary photographer Walker Evans at the Metropolitan Museum of Art last year that got Jennifer Cattaui thinking.

What if she gave 100 disposable cameras to local kids and asked them to document their neighborhood, wondered Cattaui, owner of the Tribeca kids boutique, Babesta. What, she thought, does the landscape look like to them?

A few months later, “Greetings from My Hood: The Postcard Project” was born.

One hundred children, ages 3 to 13, took up the challenge. They were given one month to shoot 27 frames and there was just one rule: stay south of Canal Street.

At a one-hour orientation session, two of the three judges (all of them professional photographers), gave the kids tips on how to use the cameras, and everyone got a “goody bag” with a map of the shooting “boundaries” and a bottle of water to keep them hydrated.

Then they were off and looking for inspiration.

“Children kind of run through day-to-day life,” Cattaui said. “Classes, school. It was fun to ask them to slow down and see what they found compelling about their neighborhood.” 

The month went by and 80 children returned their cameras. Cattaui took them to Trilogy, the photo lab on Chambers Street, where over 2,000 photos were printed.

When Cattaui looked at them, she discovered one wonderful image after another.

“Maybe I shouldn’t admit this, but I had assumed it would be an easy task to choose the winners,’” she said. “But I was amazed by the photos!”

So were the judges—Christopher Auger-Dominguez, Donna Ferrato and Gregoire Ganter—who, she said, spent a lot of time “negotiating” until they could agree on the 10 finalist photos, four of them shown here.

The young shutterbugs, Cattaui said, approached the assignment with remarkably fresh eyes.

“They didn’t wait for a sunny day and for everything to be perfect,” she observed. “They took the environment as they saw it and photographed what struck them.”

The children documented their favorite dogs and people, neighborhood stores, police officers and firemen. Some turned their cameras only on people while other preferred scenes devoid of life. Scooters were a popular subject and several photos of dead rats showed up among the submissions.

“There were a lot of pictures of legs, jeans, butts and strollers. Cottaui said. “We suddenly realized that children have a dramatically different perspective of the city from a height point of view!”

Images by the semi-finalists were displayed at Babesta, 66 West Broadway. Then Cattaui, who was an avid postcard collector as a child, made postcards of the winners. They are on sale at the store and half the proceeds go to the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council.

Cattaui said that visitors to her store are “blown away” when they learn that kids took the pictures.

“The talent was probably always in them,” she says. “We just gave them a platform.”