Class: Intro to Photography
Grades: 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th
Teacher: Lauren Duffy
Students in Mx. Duffy’s Introduction to Photography course took a trip to Boston College’s McMullen Museum of Art to experience an exhibition of Arnie Jarmak’s works. The instillation, Arnie Jamak: Photographing Chelsea in Transition, showcases photos from Jarmak’s time as chief photographer for Chelsea’s daily newspaper. Through these photos, the demographic and social changes of Chelsea during the late 1970s and early 1980s can be seen.
After receiving a tour of the exhibition, students had the opportunity to participate in a question and answer session with Jarmak. There were many questions regarding how photography worked in the 1970s and how the shifting culture of the time impacted his photos. Jarmak emphasized how simply documenting the world around you can be a powerful tool as time progresses.
In addition to the photographs, the exhibition also included a Deardorff 8 x 10 field camera, which Jarmak used when he was one of the last film photographers before the digital age. Recorded interviews, essays, a biography, and a study of Chelsea’s demographic transformations were also at the student’s disposal.
Students will be taking what they learned from the gallery and applying it to their next projects, which will require them to use digital cameras to document their lives as Beaver students and as creative problem solvers.
More about this course: In this course, students will learn how to operate a DSLR camera and Adobe Tools to become familiar with the basic photographer’s workflow. The assignments will be a combination of technical and conceptual experiments in digital photography. As photographers, the students will learn to observe and notice light, color, space, and form to understand visual composition and framing in photography. All students in the class will learn to present, reflect, and think critically about their photographs as well as photographs by artist photographers to build new ideas for their work.
Prerequisites: Intro to Visual Arts or departmental approval. Open to 9th, 10th, 11th and 12th graders