Digital photography is a great technique to use for environmental art-making – while it’s not ‘no impact’ (is anything?), it is low impact. For a small amount of electricity students can have so much fun taking photos and then modifying them in so many ways; it’s a great form of recycling! I have been using the work of many of environmental photographer/artists in my classroom as starting points for eco-art lessons. Canadian Ed Burtynsky is known internationally for his large-scale photos of human impact on the earth; if you haven’t seen his documentary Manufactured Landscapes, it is excellent viewing. I haven’t seen his newest one, called Watermark, but reviews of it are also strong. (More about his work at http://www.edwardburtynsky.com/ ) The work of American photographer Peter Menzel is often found in my classroom as well – his series Hungry World and Material World are fascinating portraits of families’ consumption around the world; not surprisingly there are great disparities depending on where they live. I use his work to introduce eco-justice education and the power of art to raise awareness about inequity and its relationship to the environment. (http://www.menzelphoto.com/books/hp.php ) And finally the work of American Chris Jordan (http://www.chrisjordan.com/gallery/rtn/#silent-spring ) is also useful to introduce how environmental statistics can have a greater impact when given visual form.  We’re experimenting with photography ourselves at OISE this summer by running a photography contest on our Learning garden – I’ll share the results in a future blog post.
Using Digital Photos for Eco-Artmaking
Posted August 19th 2014 at 8:40 pm by HilaryInwood
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