Adventures in Documentary Picture Taking
I have been exploring some great begining classes this semester for my major, which is Art, and one of them happens to be Basic Photography. It's not something I have been particularly drawn to but I sure have been having fun with it so far. We started with Photograms and then moved on to "Light", then explored the effects of our medium by giving our prints nonliteral names (if that makes any sense). I have had more fun with this than I have had with any other beginning class aside from Ceramics. Others have not enjoyed this class like I have. Some have been very frustrated to the point of tearing up and have made some expensive mistakes, like exposing 100 sheets of paper before it's been printed and ruining their film during the developing process. I ruined my first role when I tried to rewind it without pushing in the button on the bottom of my camera and ripped the sides up about half the length of my 36 exposures. I'm not too torn up about it. I am a beginner after all. As with any other art class, the day the assignment is due, we pin our work up on the wall and let all its onlookers rip it to shreds with critique. Our current assignment is a documentary of ourselves.
Every three hours we are to take a picture of our "self" in whatever place we are in doing whatever it is we do as naturally as we can do it. After two days we are to develop our film and make prints before we repeat the procedure taking pitures of our "alter ego" instead. These two, the natural self and the alter ego self, are, I am told, often interchangeable and usually thought of as more accurately portayed when they are flipped. I have yet to discover myself from this perspective and I think it will be embarrassing but fun.
This experience is not unlike the experience most students have during college writing. It starts out kind of fun, maybe frustrating to some, and an interesting learning experience. As students get further involved, they can get a little frustrated if writing doesn't come easy. Or a lot frustrated as the case may be. And then, if they come to the Writing Center, they find themselves feeling "pictured" or "taken". Maybe they feel embarrassed to be exposed and critiqued by their peers, but still find some enjoyment when inevitably positive comments are said in their favor and they realize that all their hard work is paying off as they learn how to write for an "A".
Writing is very much a creative proccess. It requires a plan, a structure, a purpose, and an outcome. And practice. Just like taking pictures, writing must have a solution that is agitated just right so not to over expose or underexpose the writer's ideas. There are several tries with each exposure time, shown to the tutor, before a final print is ready to turn in. And I suppose that process is what keeps us working or makes us decide to give up. The grade sometimes is the only motivation to keep students creating and the classes are taken only because they are required, but the achievement is always worth while. And the document tells a story of the student through its medium.
Every three hours we are to take a picture of our "self" in whatever place we are in doing whatever it is we do as naturally as we can do it. After two days we are to develop our film and make prints before we repeat the procedure taking pitures of our "alter ego" instead. These two, the natural self and the alter ego self, are, I am told, often interchangeable and usually thought of as more accurately portayed when they are flipped. I have yet to discover myself from this perspective and I think it will be embarrassing but fun.
This experience is not unlike the experience most students have during college writing. It starts out kind of fun, maybe frustrating to some, and an interesting learning experience. As students get further involved, they can get a little frustrated if writing doesn't come easy. Or a lot frustrated as the case may be. And then, if they come to the Writing Center, they find themselves feeling "pictured" or "taken". Maybe they feel embarrassed to be exposed and critiqued by their peers, but still find some enjoyment when inevitably positive comments are said in their favor and they realize that all their hard work is paying off as they learn how to write for an "A".
Writing is very much a creative proccess. It requires a plan, a structure, a purpose, and an outcome. And practice. Just like taking pictures, writing must have a solution that is agitated just right so not to over expose or underexpose the writer's ideas. There are several tries with each exposure time, shown to the tutor, before a final print is ready to turn in. And I suppose that process is what keeps us working or makes us decide to give up. The grade sometimes is the only motivation to keep students creating and the classes are taken only because they are required, but the achievement is always worth while. And the document tells a story of the student through its medium.
posted by Anonymous at 2:16 PM
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