Appendix
Example Assignments
Following are four examples of assignments that bring into the educational process differing aspects of photography. The first is from Gary Wahl of Albion College, MI, mixing the idea of discovery and the technical aesthetic dialectic.
Gary Wahl
Handmade Negatives
This assignment creates compositions without the use of a camera. You will be composing directly onto a handmade tape-negative. You will need to search for small objects of various translucency, shape, and texture. Try to develop a palette of shapes, lines, and points. Leaves, wire, string, dryer sheets, fabric, onionskin, garlic skin, flower petals, coarse salt, and bug parts are good materials.
You will arrange these on a piece of processed unexposed black and white film. You will need to illustrate three of the compositional principles listed below. These are to be abstract exercises in pure composition. This means that you should not create any “Things.” You are not making pictures, but rather are exploring the visual vocabulary of shapes, lines, and tones. You may also include marks scratched directly into the film.
Compositional Principles: Radial Symmetry, Asymmetrical Balance, Rhythm, Pattern, Closed and Implied Shape, Positive and Negative Forms, Contrast.
When you are happy with your composition, carefully cover it with a piece of clear packing tape and cut away excess tape.
When you print these “negatives” you should test for a good rich black in the clear areas and details through the light side of the grayscale.
You should make five 5×7 prints containing areas of black, white, and some grays. You will need to make a reversed image representing three compositional principles and a positive of at least one image using a reversed print as a paper negative.
Note: make your negatives in the light, on the tables. Do not bring unsealed negatives into the darkroom: they can create dust and grime that will get on your real negatives later.
Putting our heads together, we can form ideas for an assignment from many perspectives. One of the greatest potentials in collaborating with students is for the development of good assignments. Such an effort has two advantages. First, collaboration provides a wealth of ideas. Some ideas will be good and some will be unusable, but there are opportunities for new ideas. Second and more important, engaged students will see aspects of what they will be doing. For many students this will increase their understanding and they will make images that have a greater learning effect. For the faculty there are also advantages: involved students will feel greater ownership of their learning, and the ability to use cohort-appropriate tasks provides another opportunity to give instruction about the reasons for certain learning objectives and to present fresh ideas. The collaborative building of assignments can consist of small or large efforts.
The following assignment is the outcome of just such a collaborative effort. This assignment has been written up by J Seeley of Wesleyan University and one of his students, Sasha Rudensky.
J Seeley
The 2-Headed Camera: An Experiment in Collaboration
Commercial photography is commonly a team effort involving an art director, assistant(s), hair and make-up people, assorted advertisement executives, gofers, and of course the models. The making of a motion picture is another example of a creative collaboration on even a bigger scale. Although a movie bears the name of a single director, it is always a product of many talents. Directors hire experienced team members for their particular technical expertise. Under the guidance of the director, who will often use the same crew from one project to the next, the team shares creative responsibilities, resulting in a collective aesthetic.
By Sasha Rudensky, Wesley an University, CT, student of J Seeley
When it comes to photography as self-expression, photographers rarely work together as a team. In the world of art, where collaborations abound, the making of a fine art photograph has remained primarily a solitary endeavor.
There are financial and practical reasons for collaboration in commercial photography and in film production, but it occurs to us that there may be something to be learned by the application of two minds to the creative problems that arise in a photography course. Our idea is to have you explore the possibilities of a shared creative effort and ultimately test its effect on self-expression, learning, and development of ideas.
The assignment
Either the students can select a partner from this class or have a partner selected for them. The assignment can be voluntary or required.
This assignment is normally given with one week 's notice, so that there will be time for you and your partner to meet and discuss ideas. Sharing previous work and freeform brainstorming are highly recommended. A logical way to begin planning is to make an analysis of collective strengths and weaknesses. As a team, you could make use of shared or contrasting interests, or you may choose to shoot subjects that neither of you has worked with before. The partnership decides together what is most likely to produce the best results.
You may work in any location. Any subject or approach is acceptable. As you work together, try not to dominate, or be dominated by, your partner. Make this a true collaboration of ideas and execution. Do more than use each other as models or assistants. A tripod can be a very useful tool so that both students can study potential shots by looking through the camera.
The owner of the camera should develop the film. Printing in a collaborative manner is optional. You may choose to produce twin prints, or may opt to work separately without consultation. It could be interesting to see if the same frames are selected as final prints and how printing interpretations will vary.
Contact sheets and negative sheets listing both names and prints that are co-signed are required. The partnership also indicates which partner is submitting the work. A contact sheet is expected from each student (for our contact sheet notebook). Partners may use prints from the same frame for class assignments and final portfolios. This or any future collaborative roles will satisfy shooting requirements for both students.
Next, Jeff Van Kleeck of the University of Redlands, CA defines a complex assignment that uses evolution as a primary learning and maturation process. While the assignment moves through several steps and processes, it holds onto the central assignment while having the learner come to both technical and aesthetic understandings.
Jeff Van Kleeck
24 Images about One Thing [or the obsessive artist in search of the sublime]
Description
This assignment asks you to actively engage in your environment. In the first part of the assignment, I will assign you something to photograph. You will make 24 distinct images that represent your “word.” For the second part of the assignment you will attempt to define your concept of the “Sublime” in the 21st century.
Objectives
Actively engage in your surroundings, explore the concept of multiple views, understand the idea of conceptual art making and concept generation, and use editing and sequencing to develop a strong design and concept and to develop a personal definition of the Sublime.
Technical Skills
Camera skills, retouching, cropping, sequencing, color control, resolution, and sharpening. Book planning and construction.
Instructions: Part 1
- As a class, we will brainstorm for ideas and come up with visual solutions to some of those ideas.
By E.J. Sullivan, University of Wisconsin, WI, student of Jeff Van Kleeck
- Using your camera as a tool, thoroughly explore your environment, looking for unusual angles, gestures, and emotions that describe your topic.
- Edit your images to develop your ideas.
- We will look at a variety of output options, including a large print and arranging your photographs in a book.
*Note: In order for this assignment to be successful, you will need to photograph more than the 24 images. It is important to edit and reshoot images to achieve the best photographs you can.
Instructions: Part 2
- Using what you have learned about image-making in the first part of the assignment, create another series of 24 photographs. This time your task is to visually communicate your definition of the Sublime.
- Compile your images into a book.
Van Kleeck explains that in the first part of this assignment, students are given something, represented by a word, to photograph. I try not to have more than two students with the same word. Here is a sampling of some of the words I use: black, white, blue, shadow, water, etc. I put the words into a hat and have each student draw out one word. We then brainstorm as a group.]
I push the students to look for connections that could lead to interesting photographs. I ask the following questions: “How do you photograph your idea?” or “How can you visually communicate a concept? ”
The second phase of the assignment requires the students to document their definition of the Sublime, again using 24 images. During the critique, we address how each student approached both parts of the assignment.
Last, Irma Martinez-Sizer at Texas Tech University, TX involves both other students and society at large, in the guise of the U.S. Postal Service, in the creation of, distribution of, and interaction with photographic art. Beyond the technical aspects of making the “Mail Art,” the project has a highly developed communications component. The collaborative nature of the project also defines the changeable nature of creativity.
Front and back of Mail Art; by Stacy Nannen, Texas Tech University, TX, student of Irma Martinez-Sizer
Irma Martinez-Sizer
Mail or Correspondence Art, a Two-Port Project
Introduction
Mail Art is art that uses the postal system as a venue and a medium. Ray Johnson is considered the father of Mail Art. Mail Art is influenced by the Fluxus and Dada art movements. It incorporates elements found in postal objects, such as stamps, seals, and rubber stamps, but also fuses collage, typography, poetry, painting, drawing, and other techniques. Mail Art defies the idea of the gallery or museum as the place for showing artwork and promotes the participation of all artists (or all people), since there are no juries and no rules. Mail Art has been an innovative venue whereby artists can express their views on social causes. Artists that create Mail Art send their work to other artists, who can add or alter the piece. This exchange varies and expands the message as it moves from one sender to another. Mail Art can be fun and humorous.
Part One
Following is an example of the word bank. Words can be proposed in class by students or given by the instructor.
delayed, toe, rich, sleep, furious, shine, dirt, final, dried, contagious, icy, idol, dull, head, interrupted, bass, nocturnal, rocket, occupied, reign, slim, gossip, loud, noon, macabre, nut, impatient, incurable, spine, hell, slippery, spider, everywhere, skittish, worn, crown, hail, gut
Select TWO words from this word bank.
Develop a relation between those 2 words.
Using the two words, communicate an idea, a concept.
Create your own non-official rubber stamps and artists stamps, collage, and/or visual poetry to convey the relationship between the TWO words that you chose.
You can use Photoshop to create from scratch, hand draw, paint, or scanned found typeortext.
You may not typeset with the computer; only use handwriting or scanned found orne ga tives,
You can combine scanned objects, line art, images created with a digital camera and/or scanned photos or negatives, and different textured papers.
Use U.S. postage stamps ONLY as SAMPLES to create your own stamps and images.
The final size of the document that you will mail is 6 ″sX 9″.
Your image can bleed or have a border around it.
Consider both sides of the paper as the whole mail art piece, but remember to allow space for mailing information on one side and the official USPS $0.39 postage stamp.
Print 2 copies of the image that we 'll call image #1.
When the instructor indicates, you mail one copy of image #1 to the assigned classmate. Keep the other copy to turn in to the instructor.
Part Two
Once you receive your classmate 's image #1 by mail, scan it and alter it. Add a third word from the list to change, alter, or reinforce the original idea.
You have to be able to place the new image on the same size format of 6 ″sX 9″. Consider both sides of the paper as the whole mail art piece, but remember to allow space for mailing information on one side and for the official postage stamp.
We 'll call this image #2. Print two copies of image #2 (you will keep one and mail the other). Mail the one you altered (image #2) back to your classmate and turn in your classmate 's image #1 to the instructor.
Bring in the image you got in the mail for critique (image #2) when you receive it.
In this assignment the learning goals include techniques that utilize type, computers, cameras, scanners and printers, knowledge basis in art history, and aesthetics. This is brought forward in the critiquing of both images and in comparing how image #1 becomes image #2, and how the words and images interact within the work. Because of the technology that can be used in the assignment, technical issues also become part of the critique.