Aims of the Photography Collections workshop

This workshop uses photography as a way to think about the activity of collecting. Our template workshop takes place in an art museum, but it could also take place in other locations where multiple images/ items / objects can be found.  A museum can be an ideal location because it embodies the notion of collecting: a museum has been created by amassing a collection designed to be shared with others. Rather than passively viewing this collection as the curator/ exhibition designer has chosen to display it, we encourage participants to engage with the collection by creating their own collection-within-a-collection: to help focus students’ attention, the workshop is designed to approach collecting around thematic topics, which become increasingly complex as the activity progresses.
This workshop can be conducted with students working individually but may function especially well with students working together in pairs or small groups of 3. This complicates the task, but also helps students gain skills and experience in communication and collaboration as well as creativity and creative thinking as they consider what themes can be explored through amassing and curating a collection.

Learning Outcomes:

• This activity allows the participants to reflect on the act of collecting, and viewing the collection of images they create as their own artistic body of work which holds its own conceptual meaning, rather than simply functioning as documentation of existing subjects. Through this workshop, participants gain skills in critical thinking and creativity, and the group discussions during the workshop help students gain skills in communication. When organized as a team or group activity, the students also gain important skills in collaboration.
  Participants are encouraged to use this collecting activity in the future, if they visit a museum or other collection, as a way to personally engage with the subjects, and to critically think about how we collect, organize, and present things and knowledge.
• The participants have a chance to thoroughly engage with a place and its particular contents more closely, and in this case the variety of items on display in the museum; in a garden it would perhaps be the plants, areas, colours, layout or scents, in a gallery maybe the paintings, sculptures or materials used. They would be expected to spend more time selecting and making critical decisions on how much they want to say about a subject and how to use that idea into an interesting image. They would be encouraged to think about the concept of hidden interest, secrets and detail in the subjects and not just the subjects as whole things that everyone sees in a more immediate viewing and how to best share findings, and discoveries with others. Working out how to photograph and frame a detail best, how to use the available light, what makes for a more intriguing angle and how close to get to the subject without losing the subject’s ‘truth’ and relevance. They are encouraged to work out of their comfort zones on what they may naturally be drawn to and interested in so they may hopefully explore new and exciting subjects they had never noticed or thought of looking at before.

 All in all they are encouraged to slow down, spend more time viewing and make observations and connections with the subjects they are looking at, that they may not have thought of looking at before.

Materials needed:

• Camera
• Pen
• Paper