photograph

As with every arc, each band approaches the topic with their own flair, modes of inquiry, and topics of study. Since Gever's official declaration of the Photograph arc last Wednesday, the Brightworks kids have started their exploration of the Photograph through photo safaris, camera obscuras, and studying the contents of a single photo.The Red Band was invited to investigate what was depicted in a photo that Shawna put up in their bandspace. She writes,"I taped a “mystery photo” to our easel and provided oil pastels for the children to add onto the picture.... By Friday, all of the white had been filled in with color and shapes. Sadie and Isaac both postulated theories as to what it was. Sadie said it was a giant pillow fight, which she remembered from seeing it before."Isaac said it was a crowd of people in a room with a flag pole. He could see the people’s heads. When I asked him what all the white rectangles were, he thought maybe they were white shirts. When I told him what Sadie said, he at first laughed, but then, looking closely, he said, “Yeah, it could be a giant pillow fight!” And he laughed again."It was indeed a mass pillow fight, which convened on Valentines Day. I found it in an old San Francisco Magazine spread. I look forward to continuing this game with the children with different photos every week."Last week, the Orange Band began constructing a giant camera obscura in the bottom part of their bandspace. Mackenzie writes,"When the question inevitably arose of how big the hole should be, Quinn ran to his Chromebook and started researching. Bruno, Huxley and Ben joined him the following day watching videos and reading articles about camera obscuras. Quinn discovered that a big hole let in more light while a small hole allowed for greater focus. Because of this we began with a hole the size of a pin.As you’d imagine it was too small to project an image on the opposite wall, but Lola held a paper up to the hole and discovered that it was indeed projecting an image. This gave the group the gust of excitement and energy they needed to finish the project. While Quinn, Selina, Huxley and I were outside taping cardboard, we could hear the squeals of excitement coming from inside as the image projected on to the wall. This is our first iteration, we still have plenty tinkering to do with the material, size and shape of the hole."The Green Band launched into photo safaris and have been snapping like crazy. Amanda was impressed by a conversation they had as a band yesterday:"Today we began our inquiry by listing all of the reasons to take a photo, and the conversation quickly evolved into jobs that use photographs, ways in which photos affect us, varying levels of importance of a photo. By the end of our conversation, each one of us had pieced together a beautiful reflection to answer, "Are photographs powerful? Why? How?""But even this question, in itself, is up to interpretation. A picture of my family, for example, is important to me, but not many others. Versus a picture of, say, the moon landing - something that permeates through the masses, pulling similar emotions or reactions from an entire population. What separates these photos? Just significant events? Strife? Surprise? Survival?"We are excited to share more of the kids' photographs as the arc goes on!