Borrowed Photos

This school year, I made a personal goal to keep my lessons focused on local visual art. Hoping to create deeper engagement, I wanted to create real-life connections between the art my students saw in class and the world around them. I spent the summer researching art that was local and accessible. I had two criteria: The artwork must be reachable by public transportation and free of cost to experience. Luckily, I live and work in Los Angeles, which has an endless supply of art and artists. During my research, I found that the work of Mark Bradford not only met these criteria, but had big connections to my students’ lives.

Artist Connection
Bradford, who was born, raised, and resides in Los Angeles, creates large-scale pieces that can be found in several museum collections around the city (and around the world). His artwork tells stories of life as an Angeleno. He often walks around the same streets my students frequent to find inspiration for his work. Students immediately recognized objects in Bradford’s art that they see every day. This visual connection helps them understand that an artist pays attention to everyday details to create meaning. These parts of the whole then comprise personal identity within individual artworks.

Guided Discussion
On the first day of the lesson, students looked specifically at Bradford’s collages. I showed a clip of Bradford talking about his work from a season four episode of Art21 (see Resource). Students learned about Bradford’s process of walking the streets to take down unlawfully posted signs advertising predatory businesses like payday loans, sketchy immigration papers, or cash for gold. In small groups and then as a class, we discussed whether he is also committing an unlawful act by removing the signs. The point of the discussion was not to find a concrete answer, but for students to use evidence to defend their opinion.

Artifact Collection
Next, I split the class into groups of three or four and gave each group a camera to share. Their prompt was to explore the school together and look for objects that they pass every day without acknowledging. I asked them to capture the essence of our school in photos, just as Bradford captures bits of Los Angeles.
When students returned to the art room, the photos were uploaded to a collaborative Google Drive folder. While reviewing them as a class on the projector, it was evident that each student had captured a different perspective of their school. There was also evidence that students looked for artistically valued objects with textures, patterns, and lines.

Choosing Photos
On the second day of the lesson, I had five copies of every photo printed in 4 x 6" (10 x 15 cm) grayscale format. I spread the photos across a few tables and explained to students that there was no longer any ownership of the photos. Just as Bradford borrows from the city for his art supplies, students were to borrow from one another. At first, there was pushback from some students who wanted to keep their own photos, but once they saw the interesting photos that other students captured, they acceded to the idea of sharing.

After collecting photos that meant the most to them, students began ripping, cutting, and editing. Just as they observed Bradford doing to the signs he confiscated, students used only the parts that they felt would make interesting art. They began to arrange and rearrange the photos in meaningful ways. Most students were eager to explain why they chose what they did, while others kept their reasons private.

Meaning-Making
On the last day of the assignment, students were given acrylic paint to add extra depth, meaning, and texture to their work. Several students opted for bright colors, which opposed the darker tones that make up Bradford’s work. The results are rich mixed-media collages that reflect the perspectives of my students and what they find meaningful about our school. While the work dried, students filled out artist statements.

After school, a group of students came to hang the final products. It took longer than usual because they wanted to stop and look at each one before hanging it. They beamed as within the collages, they found photos of themselves, their school, and their community.