Throughout high school and at times in college, teachers would do a writing exercise which had us view a picture or piece of art and craft a creative writing piece in relation to the image we were presented with. I loved doing this kind of writing, but at times felt a little bit limited/uninspired by it depending on the picture my teacher chose to guide it. I vividly remember a time where we did this as a class in my freshman year. Upon my teacher presenting us with a stock photo of a sunset, the guy sitting next to me said under his breath that "it's literally just the f***ing sun." Now of course, my teacher probably could have provided a better photo to get our creative ideas going, but maybe the biggest problem is she didn't properly explain the process/scope of the assignment? This scenario and kind of assignment is what led me to make my infographic, which aims to encourage students to think critically of what it is that they're seeing, and uses four guiding questions:
What is it that you see? - This question seems literal enough, but I want it to encourage students to relish in the details. I liked the image I used alongside it because while the image itself is probably nonsensical or simply artistic, a part of my mind wants to conceptualize or make sense of why the woman is looking through what looks like a perfume bottle. I could say they're glasses, you could say otherwise, it's about perspective.
What is it not? - I wish the image I used for this was black and white to fit perfectly with the rest of the images, but it was too perfect to pass up. This question asks students to reinterpret the image, to find something beneath the surface. Similarly to seeing shapes in the clouds, use the shapes and form something entirely new; Explain it to me.
What's just out of frame? - This one is my favorite. Of course, you have the photo, but you are not limited by it as much as you might think? You could think literally just outside of the frame, or you could think in terms of time. For example, what happened immediately after this photo? What about before? The photo may have painted a picture, but it doesn't give the whole story, you do!
How did it come to be? - A little bit of overlap from the last question, but I found it worth mentioning on its own. Why is the subject of the photo where they are? How can you make meaning of what's going on? What are the circumstances which gave us the photo? Your guess is as good as mine.
Making the visualization was a lot of fun. I enjoy designing and visualizing things, especially when I have creative freedoms in regard to the execution. My hope was that each image would connect and relate to the concept that the respective question asked. I think each one does a good enough job of relating to the question, but I think the fourth one does a particularly good job (the image does most of the heavy lifting though!). The four photos were sourced from a few different places, such as the MoMA archives, as well as various Instagram pages. I particularly like the MoMA archives, as there's so much art and material which can provide writing inspiration! If/when I do an activity like this in the future, I will certainly let students pick their own starting piece, and will encourage them to utilize the amazing online archives which the internet provides.
I am a firm believer that in order to get students interested in writing, we need to let them do it in a matter which doesn't occur in a vacuum. In other words, we need to intertwine writing with other mediums, whether that be art, music, audio, etc. This is how writing actually occurs in real life, and how it is inspired. Thus, teacher's which ignore to do so fail to convey to students what writing is truly capable of. I have been outspoken of this already in various assignments/discussion posts, but with the reality of cell phones, and the endless consumption of flashy material in which it provides, we should not and can not expect students to take to writing/reading with a blank page or a wall of dense text. My hope is assignments like this as well as my visualization do their job to really reach through to students and enable them to be creators rather than just consumers.
