A Cultural Journalist’s View of City Life
Deborah Hare
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Give FeedbackWays of Seeing your City
I would like to spend some time in this course helping students to really see their city, perhaps from a new perspective. There is a lot to be said about the relationship between looking and writing, about getting students to “look” and to begin to analyze and describe what they see. Armed with sketch pads and pencils I intend to spend a few hours sitting on the New Haven Green with my students looking around, and then drawing what we see from any angle we choose. A few tips about drawing can come in handy here. Keep it light and keep the pressure off. After we finish drawing, the homework assignment that night will be to describe in words what they saw. This, I think, is a nice introduction to the descriptive essay.
This segment of the class would make a wonderful introduction to photojournalism as well. Cameras are available at most schools. Each student will take approximately ten pictures of any aspect of city life that interests them. It is important to limit the number of shots so that they are forced to really think about them. Exposing students to great photojournalists would be a wonderful way to divide up all the reading and writing that this class entails, and also show the students that powerful communication of ideas can be done with the camera. Many excellent photographs are contained in a book entitled “Reading American Photographs Images as History—Matthew Brady to Walker Evans.” Some of the pictures I am going to use from this book are “The Hand of Man” by Alfred Steiglitz, “Engineer” and “The Spirit of Industry” by Lewis Hine, “A bench in the Bronx on Sunday” by Walker Evans and scenes from ghetto life by Jacob Riis. These pictures show a variety of images of city life both positive and negative. A slide show of their work would make a visually profound activity. Black and white slides can be made very easily by photographing the pictures you want to use from photography books. Later, when all the students have done their photographs I will have a slide show of their work.
A walking tour of New Haven with a guide from The New Haven Preservation Trust is highly recommended. Some ideas for assignments include drawing your favorite building in New Haven and interviewing a local artist, perhaps at The Creative Arts Workshop.