How are we impacted by the daily consumption of countless images created by marketing forces, the media, and popular entertainment? How can we differentiate our authentic selves from idealized realities? Do we become what we see? In other words: How do photographs form us?
As a class participate in the class discussion following the lecture with images by artist Wing Young Huie. The images in the lecture confronts many divisive social issues, such as cultural bias, immigration, religion, and social disconnection.
Contrasting points of views are engaged through Huie’s photographs that are open to interpretation and asks participants, “What do you see?”
Students will be paired up and asked to interview each other by asking the following questions:
* Describe your life in one word or several sentences.
* What advice would you give to a stranger?
* What is your favorite word?
* How do you think others see you? What don’t they see?
* How has race affected you?
* Describe an incident that changed you.
Encourage each other to be as real and honest as possible and avoid cliché answers. The student asking the questions will pick which answer the other student will write on the blackboard. Try to pick the answer that is the most interesting and revealing. The students paired will then photograph each other on the school grounds with the chalkboards. Try to be imaginative and pick areas that reflect what was written on the blackboard.
Photographs will be exhibited outside the graphics lab. Post you and your partners photographs on your web page along with a link to reflection paper (Word document). What was your impression of the other student before this interaction? What about after? Were the answers surprising? How difficult is it to photograph the essence of someone? How does the photograph of you compare with how you think of yourself?
Exhibition – All classes are to take images with a school digital camera. The images will be downloaded, edited (become BW) and printed to be displayed in the Arts Hallway Gallery. Images will also be posted to the South Ridge Art Dept web page and the South Ridge and Teaching Tolerance FaceBook pages.
Media Art students – Post two sets of Chalk Talk images: you and your partners images and two additional (Edit in PhotoShop – BW and save for web and devices as an 8″ x 10″ 100 dpi before uploading) Look through the folder on your flash drive to choose.
