Hello all--
It's me, Kate the TA, once again getting the posting started for the Week Five readings. Thank you for your participation last week here on the blog and in class on Saturday. It's hard to believe that we are past the halfway point of the class already!
As I challenged you last week, I'd like to see 10 individual people post on here. Again, the people who are assigned this week's readings should definitely post their thoughts and reactions. I know the rest of you have opinions, so get them up here for all to see!
Joy is away on vacation for most of the week, so if you have any questions, please email them to me and I will answer them to the best of my ability or pass them along.
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Some time ago, Wendy Ewald and I worked in different capacities on the Five Faiths Project, organized by Ray Williams, then director of education at the Ackland Art Museum. A link to an article about the project in Teaching Tolerance magazine follows. The last paragraph is particularly pertinent to working with/in different communities.
http://www.tolerance.org/teach/magazine/features.jsp?p=0&is=16&ar=148&pa=3
Ray Williams' guidelines to the kids participating in Wendy's class were broad: "create images that provide some insight into your religion." The photographs were exhibited at the Ackland and were published in a catalog that I will bring to class Saturday.
Learning to Read Photographs addresses the use of photos to stimulate discussion among children, " . . . serving as a springboard for their storytelling and writing." The kids involved in Ewald's Five Faiths class and subsequent exhibition are "insiders" who in many cases, take these familiar icons or rituals of their religion and examine them as an "outsider" might.
On another note, Milton Rogovin's website is full of provocative images that are more easily viewed on screen:
http://www.miltonrogovin.com/
I am interested in Ewald's comment about framing, point of view, timing, etc in photography having parallels in writing.(p29) Perhaps some of us are more comfortable by nature in one medium of expression than in another?
Whoops. I provided p3 of the Teaching Tolerance article. The url for the entire article is:
http://www.tolerance.org/teach/magazine/features.jsp?p=0&is=16&ar=148
Elizabeth Barrett: Consequences of Filmmaking
I was struck by Barrett's comments about dual identity - the being part of a place and yet separate from it. For me, this is a rationalization that allowed her to not feel guilty for not seeing the abject poverty in the area she grew up in. This seems to me the same kind of rationalization that allowed so many white southerners to turn a blind eye to the racial injustices that were so much a part of life in the Jim Crow South. Did we truly not see what was going on - or did we just not want to see ?
Meaning and Interpretation:
I was intrigued by Hoepker's description of himself as "just a harvester - a collector - of moments". As someone who grew up in the rural south, I think of harvest in terms of field crops so when I went to the dictionary, I was a little surprised to find that one of the meanings of "harvest" is "the result or consequence of any act, process, or event". The use of the word harvest sent me down a couple of paths: does the harvest (that memorable moment) belong only to the producer of the crop - or is there also a notion of "gleaning" that leaves aspects of those moments for anyone to pick up? And a harvest typically implies a crop that's ripened and mature - does this mean that there's a "right"
time to capture a moment on film or tape ?
Meaning and interpretation.Inside a controversial 9/11 image"
It feels to me that to images were placed together , there is a sense of manipulation by looking at this picture.oc
Standards of Living
Interesting to see the conditions of NC farmworkers at the same time that we review Evans' images. Perhaps the portraiture, the b/w images, Evans' particular style make his photos more palatable than the living conditions we are shown for NC migrant workers today.
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