Our first year Middle School adventures in Art & Immagine led us to the medium of photography to express our ideas and thoughts on the school theme “di che pasta sei fatto?” (what are you made of?). No easy task, but with the help of our eyes, hearts, heads and HANDS, the children soon began to question the idea of what photography is, how it is changing, and how to draw upon personal experience to tell a story through the camera lens.
“It is an illusion that photos are made with the camera… they are made with the eye, heart and head.” - Henri Cartier-Bresson
We used a series of methods to help the children engage with their eyes, hearts, heads and hands:
- Each child was asked to choose and bring an object to class that had significance for them
- Each child shared the story of their chosen object
- They extracted keywords and ideas from their descriptions
- They put the keywords into groups (and themselves)
- They created phrases or rhymes based on their keywords and objects
- They made compositions with their objects and words and photographed them
- Lastly, we put our HANDS in the picture, us, la pasta, what we are made of!
Here you can see some of our work together.