High School Studio Lesson
“I realized that it
is more difficult
being the photographer than the
reader, because you
have to take on the
subject’s life to know
how they feel. In a
sense you become a
part of them instead
of becoming a passive
viewer.”
—Chan ta l
Emily Hendricks, grade eight, K.P. Indra Simhan (Indu).
THE 100
Keri McLeod
The 100 People Project is a
nonprofit organization based
in New York City. The organization poses the question:
If there were only 100 people in the
world, what would the world look
like? Based upon statistics, there
would be fifty males, fifty females,
sixty-one Asians, eighty adults, eight
would speak English, one would
have a college education and only
one would own a computer, seventeen would be undernourished, and
seventeen people would have no safe
water to drink, amongst other statistics.
A book, documentary, and traveling exhibit will exhibit the best
100 images that describe the world
portrait. Students submit their
photos online, while also accessing
work from other schools throughout
the world. There are teacher lesson
plans and suggestions for integrating
this project into your school, as well
as the statistics on the website of
the 100 People Project.
Ethical Considerations
When is it okay to photograph “the
other?” Some of my students photographed people they knew, others
didn’t. The parameters state that
students must photograph someone
they admire from the country in
which they reside. They also needed
to get model release forms signed.
Photography
There are ten students in the
class. I have five computers in my
classroom and two 35mm digital
cameras. Some students chose to
photograph at
school, but as the
project progressed
they became
bolder and some
wanted to photograph strangers. They used their
own cameras outside of school time.
We had five critiques over five
months, during which time they
learned digital photo manipulation
techniques, digital output, and how
to upload an image to the Internet.
They thought it was pretty cool that
their work was in cyberspace. I tell
them that one of the most important
things about making art is sharing
it with other people. What good does
an image do if it is in a box under
the bed or just in your computer?
Introduction
On the first day of class, I showed a
computer presentation on the history of portraiture and the power
of environmental portraiture. Artists included
August Sander, If there were only 100
Dorthea Lange, people in the world, what
Lewis Hine, Diane
Arbus, Richard would the world look like?
Avedon, Joel
Sternfeld, Gregory Crewdson, Sabas-tio Salgado and David Hilliard. We
discussed ethics, the caste system,
and other societal structures in the
world, which led us to a discussion
about ethics in photography.
