IS 230 Photo

the end/reflection

2008-05-25T05:47:00.000-07:00

A few pages from our zine:

Well, the end came and went. We made amazing zines full of our photography about the environment, presented at the parent/teacher exhibition at IS 230, presented at the Urban Arts Festival at the Bleecker Street Theater, and spent some time picking out which photos to leave behind in the hallways of the school. I am so proud of my students, they have grown as artists, photographers, and people. I will miss you!

Reflections:
Here are the students answering my questions, discussion style, about the year.

"Photos create memories, lots of memories. This program has been good for me because it could help me in the future, like it could help me get into a good school, the stuff that I've learned could help me in a lot of places." - Caryin

"Photos are like art. They represent something that you feel. Each pic can represent a different emotion and feeling you have inside." - Alan

"We got to express our emotions in our pictures, like we chose the pictures we took for a reason, like the one Dayana took of the flower, or the one Alan took of the tree..." - Daniela

"I liked best [Central] park and the MET, because I liked seeing nature and taking pictures. Or, you could take pictures of family and people you care about." - Dayana

"The school is so cramped up. All day long being inside the school is hard. [What I liked best here was] being outside and doing almost anything I wanted with the camera, you get to move and get better pics outside." - Caryin

"Pictures are like words." - Alan

"Pictures try to send messages in the attitude or the way the person or thing is doing or feeling or expressing." - Daniela

new work by Brenda

2008-05-14T10:36:00.000-07:00

I like this picture because it shows the shadow of the tree but at the same time it shows all of my classmates in it too. I also like it because of the branches of the trees. We went to the MET museum to see the Lee Freidlander picture of a tree shaped like a hand. Then I tried to re-create the same picture but it came a little different. I think my picture looks like hands trying to reach us.

new work by Kevin

2008-05-14T10:31:00.000-07:00

I like this picture because it shows a flower that is all alone and that’s its surrounded by leaves. It also shows loneliness

new work by Alan

2008-05-14T10:28:00.000-07:00

I like this picture because in the picture it shows a flower but with some garbage around it and that shows how much litter is in the world.

Does this photograph change your perspective on nature?

I like the picture because it shows how the frown on what looks like a face on the tree shows how we are destroying nature.

new work by Nicole

2008-05-12T13:32:00.000-07:00

I took this picture because it seemed to show something about nature and earth, it seemed to show how much trash there is on earth. It also shows my dog Oreo.- Nicole

new work by Daniela

2008-04-28T13:53:00.000-07:00

I took this photo because I was playing in the playground and Dayana was under me I told her to stop. Also because it looks mysterious and sad, and half her face has light and half doesn’t.
I like this photo because I think that it shows that the garbage on the ground can hurt people and the environment. Also because it shows that garbage in the ground is hurting the person, which is the shadow.

The trees and earth save us. Don't cut it and don't damage it=( I like the emotion of the squirrel in this photo that why i chose it. Daniela

Metropolitan Museum of Art

2008-04-02T07:21:00.000-07:00

We took a nice long field trip to the MET to see the Lee Friedlander exhibit of Olmsted's parks. Then, we went to Central Park and tried to recreate our favorites. It seems like the environment is becoming our theme. We honor and cherish it in our photographs. We have hundreds of photos to edit this week, but they're coming soon! Above are our our favorites from Friedlander.

Street Photography!

2008-03-19T09:52:00.000-07:00

To collect photographs for our artist books and zines we have started to talk walks around the school, it's been loads of fun and the students' photographs are amazing! Do you think these are interesting photographs of community? What kinds of emotions do they display? Leave us comments, please.

"Shaddie Movimientos" By Natalie

"Chains" By Dayana

By Alan

By Edwin

Student Photo Essays

2008-02-06T06:31:00.000-08:00

All the students have created photo essays in PowerPoint. The themes were family, immigration, cultural identity, and place. Each photographer labored for a long time editing their photos, deciding which ones to use, and then learning PowerPoint. Here I have put just one slide of each student's work, but their photo essays each held 5-10 slides. They were amazing and I am so proud of their hard work!

On Feb 4th we went to Long Island City High School to present our work to two other photo classes. We had a fun time even though we had to leave early, but we look forward to presenting more work to even more students in Manhattan in May at the Urban Arts Festival!

By Charmi

By Dayana

By Edwin

By Josephine

By Daniela

By Caryin

By Daihana

By Alan

By Brenda

By Nicole

By Maria

By Kevin

By Joshua

Field Trip! Lower East Side Tenement Museum

2008-01-03T13:22:00.000-08:00

We went to the Lower East Side Tenement Museum! Click on the link for the website, where there are some really cool online activities.

We did a short walking tour of the area, but it was COLD! So we headed indoors for snacks and fun in the Confino Apartment where a costumed interpreter dressed as teenage Victoria Confino circa 1916 welcomed us as though we were newly arrived immigrants and taught us a few things about how to adapt to America. We were told our clothes looked funny and we would need to get some new ones or else we wouldn't fit in! We couldn't believe she had no t.v., no washing machine, and had to sleep on the kitchen floor!

Below are some photos the students took during the trip, click on them to enlarge. We shared cameras so it's hard to know who took which one. Also, we weren't allowed to take photos inside, sorry!

When asked to write about the most interesting thing they learned, the students wrote,

"The most amazing thing I learned at the museum is that there had to be 9-10 people per apartment and two families per bathroom." Alan

"In this trip I had so much fun. I think the most interesting thing to see was the acting because she is talking in other way. She is showing us odd things. I think in my mind this is the most fun and important thing." Tasnima

"

"What I learned on the trip was about the neighborhood and the things I heard about immigration life in the history channel video." Atenas
The most interesting thing I learned was about the stories on the LES, and the pink retail building." Dominique

ESPN reporter/editor

2007-12-09T19:23:00.000-08:00

On December 3, ESPN The Magazine reporter/editor Ian Gordon came to the Photography Club to give an interview workshop! Students worked on open, closed, and follow-up questions. The idea is that we're going to start interviewing our family members and then, next semester, people on the street, so we wanted an introduction to asking questions. In the follow-up class we tried out our newfound interview skills by hitting up the guitar class, where we interviewed and photographed the participants. Check back soon for those photo essays!

Open-Ended Questions: Questions designed to get more information about the interviewee, or questions that do not have a “yes” or “no” answer or a factual answer; instead, you’re asking for opinions or feelings. These questions usually begin with WHY and HOW.
Closed Questions: Questions that lead to YES or NO answers or factual answers, like What’s your birthday? Do you like the Yankees? These questions usually begin with DO, WHAT, WHERE, WHEN, or HOW MANY?
Follow-Up Questions: After someone explains something that interests you, ask a question that you didn’t write down. Be flexible! Examples: Why did you feel lonely? You said you didn’t want to come here, why?

2007-12-07T19:35:00.000-08:00

Recently we've been inspired by more of Joseph Rodriquez and the intense work he's done documenting gangs in East L.A. He put together a photo essay/documentary called East Side Stories. We talked about the difference between writing our own text and interviewing people to get good quotes to accompany our photographs.

We were particularly struck by this photograph because the mom doesn't seem to mind at all that her daughter is playing with a real gun. We talked about gangs here in New York and about how little we know. These photographs allowed us to see and learn about a world so different from our own. The caption reads: The morning after a rival gang tried to shoot Chivo for the fourth time. Chivo teaches his daughter how to hold a .32-caliber pistol. Her mother looks on. Boyle Heights, 1993.

Links to other Student Blogs

2007-11-19T06:50:00.000-08:00

We've been checking out some of the other Working Playground blogs and comparing their great work to our own.
IS 252 in Brooklyn
New Design High School, Manhattan
JHS 44, Upper West Side, Manhattan
MS 2, Brooklyn

Field Trip to the Y Gallery

2007-11-19T05:46:00.000-08:00

Last Wednesday we took a walking field trip to the only gallery in Jackson Heights, the Y Gallery. We brought along our handy viewfinders and pretended to take pictures of interesting compositions and subjects along the way. The exhibition (now over) was called Making Gook Luck and focused on the talismans of artists from all over the world, but who live and make work in New York. Cecilia, the curator, talked with the students at length about some of the pieces and even explained what it means to design and put together an exhibition. Go to the Y gallery's website! The downloable PDF essay about the exhibit has images of all the works.

Our favorite piece was the one we could experience, by Lina Puerta, called "Tree." Each student took his/her turn sitting inside and pulling closed the flaps, watching the slow birth of the light all around them, which came together at the top, seemingly eons away from the viewer. While offering a sancutary Puerta also reminds us that in many cultures trees are a source and symbol of good luck. They are also vital for our survival, converting carbon dioxide into oxygen. Puerta is a Colombian-American artist who lives and works in New York City. To look at more of her work, check out her website, linapuerta.net

The students also really liked the piece hanging in the middle of the gallery, by Ian Laughlin, entitled "Tiki—Fortune Favors the Bold," which playfully blends goodluck symbols from indigenous Maori culture (New Zealand), with American pennies and a western GoodYear tire. On the backside, with the pennies, it reads Lady Luck and accompanies the sillouette of a woman.

For more links of artists in the show:
Venezuelan born Alejandra Villasmil displayed the importance of friendship in her piece, "Never Ending Offering (Hopefully)," where a Chinese dragon (symbol of goodluck) is hung with portraits of her friends, who she believes to be her personal talismans.
Ikjoong Kang emigrated from South Korea to NYC in 1984 and his work is about recording the small daily experiences of his new life with a new culture and a new language. He has had lots of success doing public art here in the US but when he first arrived he worked at a grocery store and peddled watches on the street in Chinatown. His piece in the Making Good Luck Show, called "Buddha with Lucky Objects," included a curved collection of dozens of colorful images of Buddha, adorned on top with small lucky statuettes from around the world, including a Laughing Buddha, a model car, a college graduate, and a Sacred Heart of Jesus.

Questions posed to the class:
How does luck play a role in the experience of an immigrant?
Did you or your family have any lucky items they brought with them from their native country?
What's your talisman?

Student Work!

2007-11-02T08:02:00.000-07:00

Here are some images that we took at home! We're trying to tell stories and practice our composition skills....let us know what you think!
Photograph by Jennifer
Photograph by Alexandra
Photograph by Daniela
Photography by Kevin
Photograph by Dayana
Photograph by Donald
Photograph by Edwin
Photograph Tasnima
Photograph by Daihana
Photograph by Pious

See if you can tell what's going on here, this series of photographs is a great example of how to tell a story visually. Taken by Charmi.

StoryTelling

2007-11-01T07:01:00.000-07:00

What do I know about my own or my family’s immigration story?
What can I learn from my family about our immigration story?
What does is mean to be an immigrant?
How do I tell a story with words?
How can I tell a story with photographs?

We've started a new unit looking at what it means to tell a story, through text and/or photographs. We've been talking about immigration, given that Jackson Heights is one of the most diverse neighborhoods in the world, and trying to get at our own immigration stories—or if not ours—than we go home and ask our parents.

On the second day of this unit we had some students read their work aloud, Donald read: (click on the image to enlarge)

And Tasnima shared with us: (click on the image to enlarge)

Once our stories are written we start to sketch them out, imagining how we would tell the story visually. We use Working Playground's tool, Storyboarding as a Graphic Organizer. It's important here to think about composition, creating CLOSE-UPS as well as WIDE SHOTS, but it's also necessary to think about SEQUENCE, meaning the order of the images. Here's an example done by Fariha, who picked out IMAGERY from Tasnima's story and did a brilliant job imagining extreme close-ups, regular close-ups, medium shots, wide shots, and even extreme wide-shots. Click on image to enlarge.

We've also looked at photo essays with text, like The New Americans, by writer Ruben Martinez (US citizen of Mexican/Salvadoran origin) and photographer Joseph Rodriguez (US citizen of Puertorican origin).

A lot of us are interested in documents, photographs, or objects that somehow tell a story about our family's histories. From The New Americans, here are some images that do that in an interesting way, including the person in the image:

Exploring Portraits and Self-Portraits

2007-10-30T05:48:00.000-07:00

How can I represent something about myself with a photograph? What do I want it to say?Edwin
Alan, age 11: I want to learn almost everything about digital photography.
Pious, Age: 11. My goal is to know how to take pictures and how to design the pictures. This photo was created in the library where I was taking the books then my friend took the picture.
Charmi, Age: 11. My goal for the photography club this year is to learn how to take pictures and how to download them onto the computer. This photo was created while I was reading a book.
Maria
Mohit
Fariha, Age: 12. My goal for the photography club this year is to learn how to edit photos with really cool effects and make the photo look more unique and creative. This photo was taken by one of my friends. I chose the pose. It was in Central Park.
Skye, Age: 12. My friend Jennifer took my picture and the fact that it's blurry stands for my shadow. it's like my twin ghost. It is also for Halloween. It is my shadow twin.
Tasnima, Age: 11. I want to learn about photography and how to take photos. How this photo was created: I was juts doing that and then my friend Pious took the picture.
Dora, Age 13. I hope to have a lot of fun taking pictures, and learn a lot about other cultures, too. My friend Dominic took this picture. She is also in 8th grade.
Kevin
Lauren

Daihana, Age: 12. My goal for the photography club this year is to learn how to use a camera and put it in the computer. This photo was created while I was standing in one place.
Daniela
Donald, Age: 11. My hopes and dreams is to become a great photographer. I want to take pictures that are fantastic and look real.
Alexandra
Anais
Caryin

Master Artist: Dulce Pinzón

2007-10-15T07:08:00.000-07:00

Artist Dulce Pinzón, who dresses immigrants in superhero costumes and photographs them, is represented by the Y Gallery, in Jackson Heights.