Each year the second grade teachers and I challenge the children to make self-portraits in many media. This year with the umbrella project 'reflection', we hoped that focusing on photography and portraiture would be both a challenge and inspiration to the children.
After creating self portraits in various ways, we looked at the portraits best friends Vincent Van Gogh and Paul Gaugin had made for each other. These became a provocation along with Saul Steinberg's paper-bag mask photographs taken by Inge Morath of the artist and his friends in various settings. The children had already noticed that portraits can reveal or hide aspects of a person. Steinberg thought that disguise is part of life -everyone wears a mask, and invents personas. In these portraits, children described what they wanted to a partner who had to represent the person using symbols. The photographs show both what the children chose to represent of themselves and what the partner saw in them.
After creating self portraits in various ways, we looked at the portraits best friends Vincent Van Gogh and Paul Gaugin had made for each other. These became a provocation along with Saul Steinberg's paper-bag mask photographs taken by Inge Morath of the artist and his friends in various settings. The children had already noticed that portraits can reveal or hide aspects of a person. Steinberg thought that disguise is part of life -everyone wears a mask, and invents personas. In these portraits, children described what they wanted to a partner who had to represent the person using symbols. The photographs show both what the children chose to represent of themselves and what the partner saw in them.
Comments
Post a Comment
Please do comment!