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Looking at Artists and Photographers

Gabriel Orozco, "Pinched Ball"

Bottari with the Artist, 1994, used Korean clothes and bedcovers, Yang Dong village, Korea. Photo by Ju Myung Duk.

In order to further the understand journeys as a concept for exploration and subject in photography we looked at several artists as a class. Gabriel Orozco, Kimsooja, to start off with helped in the facilitation of the first couple of exercises. Kimsooja especially drove Exercise #2 towards the end of the first week. Using the Artists’ “Bottari” work, students returned to the discussion of journeys, objects of value and how we care for and carry/transport these items. As a class we looked for an everyday material to use and decided on the plastic bag as an object to utilize in our next installation. With 17 filled plastic bags each student needed to create a public installation and reinterpret Kimsooja’s “Bottari” works.

Installation: Things We Lost Along The Way

Installation by Yesenia Perales

Installation by Roberto Paniagua

Installation by Gerardo Aguilar

As part of the first exercise “Things We Lost Along The Way” students were provided frames for their images and to create one public intervention - installation utilizing all images. Considering the objects from each person and locating a spaces students were then asked to document their installation and lead a short discussion with the class.

Week One - Cameras, Journeys and New Questions

When starting this program I wanted to bring some new practices for students as it related to the camera and picture taking. Instead of the program containing the expected elements of composition and rules behind photography (which we did cover) I wanted students to participate in exercises and activities that would expose them to new ideas behind the medium and other ways of using the camera as a tool for recording information, and image making.

In many of our initial discussions, many students’ experiences with cameras and picture taking was invested in snap shots, camera phone imagery, and other readily available imagery and practices. When asked to consider what the camera does (specifically what a digital camera does) as a translator of information into a digital code we began considering deeper connections behind the camera itself and it’s connections to our theme of Journeys and Migrations.

First tackling the idea of a “journey” and its many variations along with their own journeys taken - we began talking about family vacations, people moving from place to place and life as a journey itself. So with that we began our fist exercise.

Anthony Marcos Rea,

Teaching Artist

Exercise: Things We Lost Along The Way

For the first exercise, I wanted students to consider the journey as one taken by themselves. After discussing the word, its meaning and their own understandings of it we talked about how over time we loose things along the way, that we make decisions behind what to keep, what we discard and what is lost. Students were asked to select 5 items of personal value to themselves. Describe the object and briefly explain what makes it valuable. As a group we were to take a journey, imagining we had a long distance to cover. Along our way, we had to loose and/or leave behind one item until we were left with only one in our possession. As each object was left behind, students had to document the object in the space it was left.

Our Funder and Partner for Summer 2010 Journeys/Migrations and the Document

For more information and other programs, please go to: www.afterschoolmatters.org

Our Partner for this program: www.idpl.org