Utah Museum of Contemporary Art- Utah Biennial: The Present as Influenced by the Past

Utah Museum of Contemporary Art- Utah Biennial: The Present as Influenced by the Past We See the Same Things Differently Adam Bateman s Google image search crowd sourced photo-collages Summary: Using local Utah artist Adam Bateman s work as a starting point, students will collaboratively create their own photo-collage artworks as a way to understand how we look at, document, and share our ideas/ photos of the landscape and monuments. Students will learn about the history of landscape photography and how it has influenced the way we take pictures today. Curriculum Ties: Visual Arts- Fine Arts- Foundation 1 & 2 Visual Arts- Fine Arts- Photography Visual Arts- Fine Arts- Art History and Criticism Visual Arts- Fine Arts- Computer Arts and Electronic Media Educational Technology (9-12) Social Studies- US History 1 Materials: Digital Camera Color Printer (Ink Jet or Laser) Transparency Film (Ink Jet or Laser) Clear tape for attaching photo transparencies together and to the wall Resources: Website: Adam Bateman http://www.adambateman.com/albums Adam Bateman is from Utah and splits his time between Salt Lake City, Los Angeles, and New York City. He received a BA in English and Spanish from Brigham Young University and an MFA in Sculpture from Pratt Institute. He is a recipient of the Utah Artist Fellowship Award. He currently has an installation as part of the Utah Biennial: Mondo Utah at Utah Museum of Contemporary Art. Adam has

had solo exhibitions of his work in the BYU Museum of Art, Akureyri Art Museum in Iceland, and has exhibited his work in New York and Los Angeles among many other places around the country. He is interested bridging regional cultural and art issues with issues central to contemporary art at an international scale. As part of this effort he operates an artist-run space called CUAC in Salt Lake City where he pairs international artists with Utah artists. Website: hpgrp gallery http://hpgrpgalleryny.com/2013/09/08/installation-picture-4/ Website: Corinne Vionnet http://www.corinnevionnet.com/site/1-photo-opportunities.html http://www.designboom.com/art/crowd-sourced-photographic-monuments-by-corinnevionnet/ Website: Dorothea Lange http://www.moma.org/collection/browse_results.php?criteria=o%3aad%3ae%3a3373&page_ number=2&template_id=6&sort_order=1 Website: Ansel Adams http://www.anseladams.com/ Website: Carleton E. Watkins http://www.yosemite.ca.us/library/watkins/thumbnails.html Background For Teachers: Students should understand the following vocabulary for this activity: Analogue Photography- is a commonly used term for photography that uses a progressively changing recording medium, which may be either chemical process based (e.g., photographic film or plate) or electronic (e.g., vidicon or CCD sensor). Through common use this term has come to mean anything that is "not digital" despite some amount of controversy that the use of film isn't a true "analog" process. In a film camera that uses the gelatin-silver process, light falling upon photographic emulsions containing silver halides is recorded as a latent image. The latent image is subjected to photographic processing, which makes it visible and insensitive to light. (Source: Wikipedia) Digital Photography- uses an array of electronic photo detectors to capture the image focused by the lens, as opposed to an exposure on photographic film. The captured image is then digitized and stored as a computer file ready for digital processing, viewing, digital publishing or printing. (Source: Wikipedia)

Landscape- comprises the visible features of an area of land, including the physical elements of landforms such as (ice-capped) mountains, hills, water bodies such as rivers, lakes, ponds and the sea, living elements of land cover including indigenous vegetation, human elements including different forms of land use, buildings and structures, and transitory elements such as lighting and weather conditions. Combining both their physical origins and the cultural overlay of human presence, often created over millennia, landscapes reflect the living synthesis of people and place vital to local and national identity. Landscapes, their character and quality, help define the self-image of a region, its sense of place that differentiates it from other regions. It is the dynamic backdrop to people s lives. (Source: Wikipedia) Landscape photography- shows spaces within the world, sometimes vast and unending, but other times microscopic. Photographs typically capture the presence of nature but can also focus on man-made features or disturbances of landscapes. (Source: Wikipedia) Collage- is a technique of an art production, primarily used in the visual arts, where the artwork is made from an assemblage of different forms, thus creating a new whole. (Source: Wikipedia) Collaboration- is working with each other to do a task and to achieve shared goals. (Source: Wikipedia) Composition- is the placement or arrangement of visual elements or ingredients in a work of art, as distinct from the subject of a work. It can also be thought of as the organization of the elements of art according to the principles of art. (Source: Wikipedia) Elements of Art- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/elements_of_art Principals of Art- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/principles_of_art National Parks- is a park in use for conservation purposes. Intended Learning Outcomes: To understand the differences between seeing and perception. To understand how to use a digital camera. To understand how to use a computer for photo editing. To understand composition and how it effects how viewers understand a work of art. To understand how others view of the landscape can inform your own. To learn to work together. Instructional Procedures: As a class, view the samples of the work of the historic landscape photographers and discuss the images. Next look at samples of Adam Bateman s and Corinne Vionnet s art works and discuss those images.

Questions to be asked during the discussion will be the following: What do you see? How are the images similar? How are they different? How do you feel about Adam and Corinne using other people photographs as their own work? Have the students taken similar photos of national parks or monuments or people? Did they take the photos at the recommended viewing position? Why? What do you notice about the image qualities between digital and analogue? How do the layered/ collaged areas change the way you view a photograph? After discussing the images, students will work together to create their own photo-collages. Split into groups of three to four students. Have them pick a place or object to photograph and one by one, without the other students seeing, take a photograph of that place or object using the digital camera. (This way the will be sure to take a photo that differs from one another s). Next import the photos onto the computer and then open them in a photo editing program, i.e. Adobe Photoshop. Use Photoshop to change the opacity of the image to 50%* and send the image to a printer that has the transparency film loaded into it. (Make sure to purchase the correct film for your printer, laser or ink jet) Once the images are printed attach the photos to a wall or window so that the landmark or object in the photos align (there will be issues of scale that alter the final image) and are layered on top of one another creating the photo-collage. Questions to be asked during the art making process: What did you choose to photograph? Why did you choose that? How did you decide to compose the shot? What are the differences between the group s individual photos? Are the single images more interesting than the photo-collage? What type of feeling does the photo-collage create? Does the way your collaborators took their photos seem more interesting than your own? Extensions: Print out two copies of each photo. One on the transparency and one on photo paper. Create the photo-collage with the transparencies and hang the individual photos next to the collage and discuss the differences. Create one large collage by having all your students take photos of a place, the playground or football field, etc., printing them on the transparencies, and aligning them to recreate the entire place. Don t change the opacity of the images to see how the images effect, change or negate the pictures behind them.

*Instructions for Adobe Photoshop editing process: 1. Open Adobe Photoshop. 2. Under the FILE tab click OPEN. This will open a dialogue box that will allow you to open the images that you have imported from your camera in Photoshop. 3. Once the images are opened in Photoshop, you will need to unlock them for you to edit the file. There will be a dialogue box on the right hand side of the window where you will see the words: LAYERS, Channels, and PATHS. In the box you will see the image file that is currently being worked on. Next to that file name you will see a small padlock icon. Double click on that icon; this will open a dialogue box asking you to name that layer. You can name it whatever you like. I chose to name it LAYER 1. In this same box you can change the OPACITY to 50 or 60%. Push the OK button. 4. The image should now be ready to save. Under the FILE tab click SAVE or SAVE AS and name your file, maybe use the name of the student who took the picture. Save it as a JPG. Click OK. To make the file easier to find, make a new folder on your desktop and save the file there. 5. Now open the file from your desktop and under the FILE tab, click PRINT. You will need to change your printer settings to TRANSPARENCY. This can usually be done from the PROPERTIES button on the printer dialogue box that you are currently looking at. Make sure that you do not scale the image up or down, or if you do make sure to scale all the images to the same percentage (96% or something to that effect.) Click the PRINT button. 6. Remember that Apple and PC computers have different visual set ups and tabs in each program, but the basic idea will be the same for each. You may need to experiment a little or search around for the right commands based on your operating system.

Images: Ansel Adams

Ansel Adams

Dorothea Lange

Carleton E. Watkins

Corinne Vionnet

Adam Bateman