Week 2 - Framed Perspectives, Photography as Knowing

Unit theme: Knowing

Art can be a way of understanding and communicating with the world and our circumstances

Artists: Vary by lesson – Timothy O’Sullivan, Henry Daguerre, contemporary photographer, reference to “Naming the View” from Reading American Photographs.

Key Concepts

-        Our knowledge is continuously changing

-        Our perceptions and personal experiences influence what we feel to be true

-        Now knowing is uncomfortable, but can be essential to our growth

-        Art-making is just one way to come to know something

Essential Questions

1.      What does it mean to know?

2.      How do we come to know something? Methods? Senses?

3.      Once we know something, can that knowledge change? How?

4.      How might art become a way of knowing or understanding?

Lesson 1: Framed Perspectives, photography as knowing

Objectives

-        Learn about the history of photography as a medium of examining, surveying, and understanding through the work of Daguerre and O’Sullivan

-        Become aware of the conclusions we draw based on photographic evidences (a so-called “truth” medium)

-        Examine these ideas in relation to visual culture and social media as well as fine art imagery

Lesson/Discussion

-        Briefly discuss a few of the essential questions as foundation of unit and lesson (perhaps one full day of discussion?)

-        O’Sullivan and the survey of the West

o   Why did they choose these particular photos to include in their survey? Think of the purpose of a government survey group.

o   Do you think there is anything they are leaving out?

o   Why might these photographs have been powerful in their time?

o   How do you think they influenced people?

o   Are they telling the truth?

o   Is it ever possible for photos to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth?

-        Photographs help us gain knowledge and understanding as we draw conclusions based on their subject matter, for good or bad.

o   How do we use photos to influence perception in our own lives?

o   Why do we take photographs?

Activity (embedded in lesson)

               Examine 3 photographs (O’Sullivan, contemporary, tabloid?).

-        What might the photographer’s intention have been?

-        What methods did they use to portray their idea?

-        How does breaking photos down help us in our lives?

Project

Photographs teach us how to know. Can they teach us how to un-know? (cred to Jacob Haupt)

-        Photograph something you see every day 20 different times

-        Write a paragraph about how your perceptions of that thing did or did not change because of it.

Assessment

               Written portion of project, turn in 20 photographs, participation in ending class discussion