Picturing our lives
Our own photographic exhibition
To the Teacher
This activity challenges the learners to represent their own lives in photographic form – whether with their own photos, or through their selection of photographs taken by others. The activity should encourages learners to consider what key moments and images of their lives they would use to describe the quality of their everyday lives to an outside viewer.
There are two ways to approach this project. The first way requires you to use a camera and a printer. If you do not have access to a camera and printer, use the alternative option.
You are the curators, and perhaps the photographers, of an exhibition of photographs called Picturing Our Lives.
- Discuss in class the kinds of subject matter that you all feel you would want to include in your exhibition. What kind of story, message or feeling do you want to convey about life in South Africa now?
- What types of images do you feel would convey this message, story or feeling most vividly?
Putting together the exhibition
Earlier, you looked at some photographs that gave you a glimpse into life under the apartheid system. In this project you will compile a series of photographs that show glimpses of everyday life in your own contemporary South Africa – the South Africa of your own lives.
Finding the images
First option: Taking your own photographs
Each person should take three photographs that might be appropriate for such an exhibition. You can share a camera or phone, but each of you should take at least three photographs.
Print these photos.
Write your own titles and, if you feel it is necessary to explain the picture further, a caption for each of your photos. Include your name beneath the title.
Once the pictures have been printed, you will mount an exhibition of the photographs.
Second option: Finding photographs in newspapers
Bring to the class as many newspapers as you can collect.
Each learner should carefully page through the newspapers and select three photographs that in different ways show something of our lives in South Africa now.
Cut these out carefully.
Now mount each photograph. You can do this by glueing the image onto a piece of stiff paper or card that is bigger than the photo itself.
Write your own titles and, if you feel it is necessary to explain the picture further, a caption for each of the photographs you have selected. Include the photographer’s name beneath the title.
Mount an exhibition of the photographs.
Curating the exhibition
Discuss as a group the placing and positioning of the photographs, and which images should be next to each other. Images affect each other, or “talk” to each other in different ways. They might tell different stories, depending how you group them. These are some of the decisions that are involved in curating an exhibition.
Picturing our lives
