Kari Giordano – Fulbright Distinguished Award in Teaching 2020

Finding inspiration (with photography)
GUM-PACK PHOTO TOUR
Photography - Documenting Place
Objectives:
To create a collection of photographs that describe the essence of a place and to
encourage community participation/discussion about the location.
Students will:
• Photograph objects, buildings, people, landscapes, and scenes within a chosen
location.
• Curate the photographs into a “gum pack” display, printing the photographs on
paper the size of a stick of gum.
• Seek community input about each photograph as written word and include the
writing in the display.
Activities/Sequence:
To begin the assignment, the class will discuss how each of us might view our
hometowns differently and how photography allows the artist to capture a scene
through their own unique perspectives.
Students will be given an out-of-class assignment to photograph a location of
their choosing. They should be encouraged to photograph any details they are interested
in or curious about. They can be people, objects, buildings, landscapes, etc.
The photographs will be collected for public viewing.
Students should seek information about each photograph from friends, teachers,
community members, family, and strangers. This may be done by exhibiting the
photographs in print form or by setting up a shareable community website to
contribute thoughts about the photographs.
Community-sourced submissions can be done using website such as the one
described here: https://www.karigiordano.com/post/crowd-sourced-community-history-archive
Why gum-pack?
Printing photographs small allows for more printing options at a reasonable
cost. A pack of gum is often shared; be it with friends or strangers and connotes
friendly discourse.
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Group: Secondary (can be adapted for primary)
Essential Questions:
In the age of social media
and instant social review of
images, how can students
encourage deep connection
to a photograph and to the
people who view it.
Materials:
digital camera
inkjet or laserjet printer
pen or marker
To encourage diversity in
your submissions, students
should share bilingual
instructions about how to
submit one’s thoughts about
any relevant photograph.
Students should seek out
submissions from all parts
of the community, not
just those which are most
familiar.
All written contributions
will be compiled and
exhibited along with the
photographs. The collaborative
prints/writing will be
packaged and shared as the
students wish.
The last time I lived in a city I was in art school, had
no need for reading glasses and wasn’t yet a mother.
Life looked very different. I have been living in rural
Western Massachusetts since then and have gotten
accustomed to life in the Berkshires. I appreciate a
lot of things about where I live: the natural beauty,
the familial surroundings and the lack of traffic from
Monday through Thursday. I have a neighbor who
uses his snow blower to help us out of our driveway
in storms and in turn we bake him cookies. The
towns that surround me are quaint and there are a
lot of good people there. In the school that I teach in,
many of my students have been together in the same
building since they were 2 months old and they will
stay together, in the same building until they graduate.
Their experience in school, like in the towns they
are growing up in is starkly different than their peers
living in other areas. Living in a rural town inherently
means one is exposed to less. Quite literally, the daily
visual stimuli is considerably reduced, for better or
worse (depending on who you ask).
Even after a short amount of time temporarily living
in Edinburgh, I feel the intense difference
between living in an urban area and living in the
Berkshires. Like my previous experience living in
a city, I walked everywhere in Edinburgh. I had
replaced my 35 minute drive to work (45+ during
tourist season) with a brisk 15 minute trek to drop
the children off and another mile or so to my office
or meeting space. During these walks I listened to
TED talks or audio books or took my headphones
off to hear conversations around me. I looked up
at the architecture, considered the thousands of
restaurants, and avoided being hit by buses. My
eyes were never not moving around, searching
for something new to see and my imagination is
working right alongside them making up stories
or creating a history of the scene laying before me.
An abandoned glove might become a story about
a restless dog owner who in taking his glove off to
dispose of his dog’s leavings let it fall to the ground
as the dog pulled him along to chase after a beautiful
looking poodle. There was inspiration all
around me all of the time. If I had an open schedule
I could drop into a museum (which were mostly all
free of charge) or check out a centuries-old building,
or greet a stranger at a crosswalk. The daily
commute alone was a shining example of the world
of difference in living in a rural vs. urban area.
Though my ride to work at home is often beautiful,
it is relatively the same each day. Sometimes the fog
would drift in and the small mountains would look
rather majestic, but it is a scene I have witnessed
many times in the past 14 years. There’s a monotony
to rural life that although often welcomed (and
romanticized by movies about people leaving the big
city and finding love in the simple life) can be a limiting
factor to what one is exposed to. Like my drive to
work, students ride on buses or cars on the same few
roads each day. They view beautiful landscapes or visions
of quaint town life through the blur of a moving
window. I believe it to be quite a challenge to notice
and appreciate subtly inspiring details of a voyage
while moving 40 miles per hour. So I dare to suggest
that students in rural areas, or at the very least, students
who live in non-walkable areas are exposed to
less stimuli and thus less creative motivation.
Teaching art (or any subject) in rural communities
bears the additional responsibility of guiding students
through the process of finding inspiration in the most
cleverly hidden spots. Visual stimulation is far more
limited in the country and students might have to work a
little harder to break the monotony of rural living.
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