#marimahr

[tallishabits]

Promoting Habits of Mind in photography

This afternoon I ran a catch-up session for a few photography students who had struggled with the half term home learning assignment. Their task was to create a series of photographs inspired by the narrative sequences of Duane Michals or Mari Mahr. Several students had found this challenging and I realised during the conversation I was able to have with them after school that they had struggled with generating a good enough idea (I suspect they had also struggled with doing some work over half term!) 

Normally I have over 20 students in my group and it's impossible to have detailed conversations with each one of them during a two hour lesson. With only 6 students to deal with this afternoon I was able to prompt, provoke, guide and challenge in a way that was supportive and iterative and, ultimately, led to some really thoughtful work. Following yesterday's ARG meeting I was also conscious of the Habits of Mind, particularly:

Imaginative - playing with possibilities, using intuition

Disciplined - crafting and improving, developing techniques

Inquisitive - exploring and investigating

Persistent - tolerating uncertainty, sticking with difficulty

For example, Yasmin had taken a series of images during the holiday but she was unhappy about their quality or relevance to the task. I was able to praise her for her ability to exercise some quality control in her crafting and improving. I noticed that she had drawn an image on her arm and asked her about it. I also mentioned that I had seen some great images by her on Facebook. I suggested she find an image that she had already taken and draw on it, thus emphasising two of her existing strengths/interests, and drawing attention to using intuition. She created a series of really interesting images in which a conventional portrait slowly became distorted by increasingly complex illustrations. She ended up staying an hour and a half, ensuring that her final images were scanned, edited and printed, demonstrating great persistence, particularly the ability to tolerate uncertainty.

Here is a link to Yasmin's Multiple Images page on her website with the sequence of pictures she took this afternoon (scroll to the bottom).

Alleshia had not completed the home learning assignment but came back to work on it during the catch up. She is a very conscientious student but was really struggling with ideas. We talked about how the photography course is a combination of developing techniques and generating good ideas. Good ideas, I explained, usually arise from exploring and investigating the work of other photographers but also playing with possibilities. She took an iPad outside and took a series of shots of her friends playing basketball. She returned to class, printed them and asked for my opinion. "You have to watch the ball", she said. I praised her for her initiative and offered some suggestions about how to improve the composition of the images. She accepted this and decided to use a DSLR for another shoot. We talked about photographing shadows rather than real people and filling more of the picture space. Her first attempt involved collaborating with two other students. Unfortunately, the images were slightly out of focus. Not deterred, she went out again and returned with some really interesting images. I was able to praise her both for her crafting and improving but also her ability to stick with difficulty.

I really felt this afternoon that the Habits of Mind gave me a framework for structuring a really positive learning experience for the students, these being two examples. I made sure in my comments that I drew attention to their capacity for real effort, determination and resilience in the face of difficulty. Hopefully, their experiences this afternoon have given them a little more self-belief and the confidence to tolerate uncertainty. I also hope that this will not only benefit them in photography but in their other subjects.

The animation at the top of this post is the series of images that Amy made using Yasmin as her model. The message (by Duane Michals) sums up our attitude this afternoon: "Wouldn't it be interesting if..." And then do it.

[tallisphoto]

Group analysis of Mari Mahr's '13 Clues to a Fictitious Crime', 1983

We began today's lesson annotating Mari Mahr's image sequence. We were interested in two perspectives:

How were the images created? What processes and techniques has the artist employed?

What can we deduce about the meaning of the sequence? How can we construct a coherent interpretation of the images?

Tom and Rosie noticed that photographs had been used as a base layer onto which a variety of objects had been placed and the whole assemblage re-photographed. For example, an aerial view of a town scape provides the background to a dove's wing. This creates the impression of a bird flying above the town when it is re-photographed. They also noted that the images are all dramatically cropped so that we never see the whole outline of an object. This close-up view creates an intimate relationship between viewer and image but also disguises objects and abstracts the composition.

Masha and Annie noticed the repetition of numbers, what looks like a lottery or cloakroom ticket and they were also curious about the number 13 in the title. We discussed the symbolism of 13 - unlucky, lunar cycles, number of witches in fairy tales, menstrual cycle etc. The ticket, combined with other objects like the white dress gloves, might suggest that the people represented in these images are (or were) relatively wealthy and cultured.

Sophie and Kezia were interested in the theme of viewpoints and observation. They noticed a pair of glasses, a mirror image, reflections and repetition. They also noted the use of text in the form of a book and a hand written note in a foreign language. Whilst there are 13 separate clues, it appears that information is repeated across the set of images.

Devon and Adrianna were interested in the variety of objects on display and the relationship between them: clocks, birds, fish, books, picture frames, eyes, stars, buildings etc. They seem to be relatively domestic objects suggesting the life of a family or community, perhaps even an individual. Yet the story of this person or these persons appears to have been fractured or disassembled and pieced back together by the artist, perhaps from memory.

[tallisphoto]

Mari Mahr '13 Clues to a Fictitious Crime' 1983

‘No real crime has been committed. The recurring face is that of my mother – youthful in a way I only knew her from early photographs.’ Mari Mahr 1984

Evoking dream-like fragments of real or imagined memories, Mari Mahr’s series of works that reflect on personal histories and journeys are drawn from her Hungarian mother’s photographic archives and found objects. They play with scale and objects confuses space and time. Her early works incorporate text, forming a strange and oblique narrative that reflects on a wide range of stimuli including films, events and situations. Drawing on the photomontage technique of the dadaists, futurists and surrealists, Mahr’s complex imagery incorporates typography, objects and images to create compositions that are then photographed, flattening the depth of plane and confusing the reading of the fictive image.

In ‘13 clues to a fictitious crime circa 1940–1941’ we are drawn into a perceived mystery: a telescopic view of a building, an aerial view of a bird flying over a town, the letter A, the number 2553, a clock reading ten past twelve, a half-hidden face, a message, fish, stars, a piano and the book ‘A house of gentlefolk’; all clues that lead back into themselves. There is no accurate narrative and Mahr herself tells us that ‘No real crime has been committed’. We have instead been part of a fiction that, like the dadaist and surrealist games and images, fractures reality and our perception of it, reflecting the surrealist obsession with sight and blindness.

Source

Consider the range of visual strategies used by the artist in the creation of this series of images.

Create your own response, considering the structure of your narrative and the techniques you intend to employ to layer images and objects

Upload your final images to your blog and write a detailed evaluation of the entire process leading to their creation, beginning with the Mari Mahr stimulus.