High School Studio Lesson
the
Opening
Door
Teenagers’ bedrooms are reflec- tions of their personalities. Their bedrooms showcase their individuality and define
the world as they see it. Their bedrooms are private and public—shared
with some and off limits to others.
Each day students wake up and begin
the rituals of the day, and in the evening they return to their sanctuaries
and close the door.
Kris Fontes
The Shrine Down the Hall
What if they never returned to their
bedrooms? What would these rooms
tell us about them? These questions
were prompted by a slideshow on the
New York Times website titled “The Shrine
Down the Hall,” in
which photographer
Ashley Gilbertson documented the untouched
bedrooms of nineteen
young men and women
who died while serving in Iraq. Mr.
Gilbertson looked at bedrooms as a
way of memorializing the lives, rather
than the deaths, of young service
members.
In a darkened computer lab, my
high-school digital design students
viewed the slide show as I read the
accompanying article, “War Memorials with Neatly Made Beds” by Miki
Meek.
Meek wrote, “Karina Lau’s bed-
room has not changed. A stuffed teddy
bear and floppy-eared rabbit sit on top
of her floral bedspread. Angel figu-
rines and framed family photos line
her bookshelf and dresser. The only
thing missing is her. Private Lau was
killed seven years ago when insur-
gents shot down her helicopter in Fal-
luja, Iraq. She was twenty years old.”
After watching the slide show
and listening to the words of Meek,
students were silent. They were vis-
ibly shaken; some wiped away tears.
I asked them to share their thoughts
with the class. One by one we looked
at each of the nineteen rooms, try-
ing to understand who
lived there and their
stories.
We discussed ques-
tions such as, What
could we tell about the
person who lived in
each room? What were
their interests and achievements?
What do you notice first, or what
stands out to you about each room?
What is a shrine and do these bedrooms fit the definition? Each room
is carefully preserved by the parents
to help them remember; do you think
that this slide show is an invasion of
privacy, or should the photographs be
shared so that we never forget the sacrifices made by these young men and
women? (I chose not to include a dis-
What if they never
returned to their
bedrooms? What
would these rooms
tell us about them?
cussion about war as that was not the
direction I wanted this lesson to take.)
Making It Personal
I explained to students that their
assignment was to photograph their
bedrooms in a similar manner, in
order to explain, illustrate, describe
or document something about themselves; a memorial to who they are
and how they would be remembered.
The resulting images and artist statements were as diverse as I expected
and, in some cases, revealed pieces
of their lives that I might never have
known.
