AVT 667-Photography

Photography, as a medium, has evolved so much in such a relatively short period of time.  When I was an elementary school student, photography required an expensive camera, fancy lenses, film, access to a dark room…schools didn’t have the budget for that kind of equipment, so it wasn’t even an option until high school.  Even then, to take a photography course required a prohibitively expensive resource fee.  None of this is the case today.  Thanks to rapidly advancing cell phone technology, virtually everyone has a professional quality camera (and video recorder) in their pocket at all times.  You can edit your photos directly on your device without additional, costly software such as Photoshop.  You can adjust the focal length, light/color balance, shutter speed, image size/quality, choose the format and take burst photos natively within your camera app.  You can even overlay gridlines to assist with composition, it’s bonkers what you can do with a phone these days.  Photography is available to everyone, including very young students, which is great, but comes with a few draw backs. 

For one, cameras are so ubiquitous today that we’ve all become comfortable with a sense of pervasive voyeurism.  With a separate, point and shoot device, you at least knew when someone was aiming it at you.  We’re all so glued to our cell phones these days that it doesn’t even register if someone is holding one in your immediate proximity.  This poses a potential danger to children (even from other children) who may not be quick to grasp when moments of vulnerability are being recorded.  When you factor in that these devices are connected to the internet, with the ability to distribute photographs to every corner of the globe instantaneously, the potential for exploitation is even greater.  I think if photography is to be implemented into an elementary school art curriculum, serious attention must be paid to teaching responsible usage. 

Another concern is the disposability of photographs in today’s culture.  With antiquated cameras, the investment of time, money and resources needed to shoot and develop film was a real consideration.  For this reason, photos were taken with deliberation.  You didn’t commit to something unless it felt worthwhile, often with some degree of staging taking place.  Film is no longer a finite resource, and “development” is immediate, so pictures are taken with a “fire and forget” mentality.  They have very little value.  Would today’s students understand the significance of someone like Ansel Adams, Annie Leibovitz, or Richard Avedon?  Would they appreciate the skill and artistry that went into their work?  I hope so, but their whole conception of photography is so very different from what it is for earlier generations that it’s hard to say. 

Concerns out of the way, what I do like about introducing photography to children is the use of a camera as a tool.  It’s a remarkably convenient note taking device.  See something that inspires you?  A shape?  A pattern?  A color scheme or composition?  Take a quick photo and you’ll have it to reference later.  You can take a picture of a doodle you made on a greasy McDonalds napkin, and then throw that thing in the trash where it belongs.  I frequently take photos of art supplies I’ve enjoyed working with in class and use them to form a shopping list.  The exercise we undertook in this class is a great example of leveraging the accessibility of photography for inspiration.  Because a cell phone is small and light, I could easily take mine out with me to explore the woods around my apartment complex.  By documenting my surroundings, I applied a level of scrutiny I never had before.  I discovered a whole world right beneath my nose that I’d never seen until through the lens of a camera.  For me, the results aren’t so much about the photographs themselves (I certainly don’t consider these “art”) they are merely the product of the far more valuable process.  This is probably the mindset I would foster should I introduce photography into my lessons, to use a camera as one step in a larger journey of discovery/creation than the end in and of itself. 

Resources Worth Considering:

“How to Take Good Photos With a Phone”- Includes recommended photography apps to install on your phone.

“Phone Photography 101: How to Take Good Photos With Your Mobile Device”- This one has a lot of good advice on the compositional aspects of photography, in addition to the standard mechanical tips. “Look for symmetry” and “embrace negative space.” That kind of thing.

“The Complete Guide to Smartphone Photography”- Clarifies some of the terms used in digital photography, comments on the strengths/weaknesses of various smartphone brands, provides suggestions on accessories, and outlines some overlooked features common to most devices.

AVT 667-Found Objects

File “Found Objects” next to collage under “Art movements I appreciate, but have little personal interest in.”  Unlike collage, which is at least useful for students who aren’t comfortable with drawing and painting, found object art strikes me as impractical in an elementary school classroom setting.   

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my site observations this semester, it’s to limit as many distractions for kids to fiddle with as possible.  In one of my third-grade classes a student brought in a stuffed pig that “oinked” when you squeeze it.  An actual, live pig would have provided equal diversion.  The kids at that table passed it around, tossed it, squeezed it incessantly and giggled hysterically all the while.  That day was the only time I’d seen my mentor teacher become genuinely angry, and bark out “this is why there are no toys allowed in the classroom!”  I can only imagine what kind of pandemonium would ensue if students were asked to bring in dozens of their own objects.   

This could be circumvented by the teacher maintaining a supply of “boring” objects that aren’t of great interest to a child, like the scraps of cardboard, loose plastic and empty bottles we used in class…

…but the storage space required to retain an adequate inventory is hard to justify.   

Lastly, at the risk of coming across like a condescending jerk, I have doubts about an elementary school student’s ability to grasp the sophisticated conceptual considerations inherent to most found object art.  They can certainly paint and glue things together, but can they combine them in way that conveys a message?  They very well may, but I’d need to spend more time in a classroom to have a better sense of what they are capable of.  Until then, I think any found object art I introduced would be more of in an art historical context than an in-class project. 

“9 Wacky and Wonderful Found-Object Sculptures From Across Art History”

https://www.artspace.com/magazine/art_101/book_report/phaidon-history-of-found-object-sculpture-list-53384 

“A Look at the Found Object Art Movement”

https://artincontext.org/found-object-art/ 

“Art Project for Kids: Found Object Sculpture”

https://www.storey.com/article/art-project-kids-found-object-sculpture/ 

For my own foray into found object art for this MAT course, well, I think my ambivalence towards the medium is palpable. I brought in a collection of random objects from around my house and office, but that’s just what they were: random objects. There was no thematic connection between any of them, and I had trouble finding one once I was in class. I borrowed a few things from classmates to try and broaden my options, but in the end, I think these feel like a series of empty exercises in photography more than actual found object art. The irony of my doubting a third-graders ability to work in this medium while I myself am equally incapable of it has not gone unnoticed.

AVT 667-Printmaking

While working on my BFA I took “Digital Printmaking” here at Mason as an elective.  For the most part, all we did in that class was create images in Photoshop, print them out, and transfer them to paper using a screen printer.  And thus concludes the entirety of my experience with “printmaking” to date.   

Experimenting with printmaking in AVT 667 was eye opening, in that it made clear just how little I know about the process.  I had a vague awareness of some of the terms brought up during the pre-assessment, such as intaglio, relief, and monoprint, but even those definitions I didn’t feel confident in.  For my own future reference, this is a handy resource for tools, techniques and terms commonly used in printmaking: https://www.ipcny.org/glossary 

When faced with the array of supplies for this unit, what became immediately obvious to me is how unintuitive they are.  With a paintbrush, a pencil, or a lump of clay I believe even a complete novice can grasp how they work just by looking at them.  In printmaking, objects such as a brayer or a chisel are similarly self-explanatory.  But shaving cream, a box of toothpicks and some food coloring?  A gel pad and a pile of leaves and feathers?  I’d be more likely to stumble my way through disarming a bomb than figuring out how these things work together.  For this reason, my first, unguided attempts to produce prints with them were, to put it mildly, unproductive.  The only thing I’d successfully made, was a mess. 

More future reference: 

Gelli Pad Printing

Shaving Cream Prints

I tried carving into a Plexiglas panel with a chisel, as again, that at least seemed pretty straightforward.  The carving part of the process went smoothly, but using that to create an actual print was another failure.  I thought I knew how it worked and quickly discovered how incorrect of an assumption that was.  Rolling paint onto the panel and pressing it to paper produced a vague, ghostly smudge of nothing.  (The Plexiglas plate is on the right, print attempt at left.)

In summation, printmaking is not a unit I would feel comfortable teaching without significant independent investigation first.  Any demonstration I attempted to give or question I tried to answer would be done with a complete lack of confidence.  As I discovered firsthand, printmaking isn’t something a student can just pick up and figure out, it requires guided instruction.  Until I can get a firmer grasp on how these things work, any guidance I gave would be straight off of a cliff and into the abyss.

Below, a gallery of broken dreams.