EDUCATOR'S GUIDE: PHOTOGRAPHS OF MEXICO FROM THE AARON SISKIND AND MAX YAVNO ARCHIVES

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Interpreting Photographs | Interpreting Max Yavno's Photographs

Take a five-minute look.

1. Begin by looking at Aaron Siskind's Acolman 1, 1955.

2. Write down (or discuss) what you see in the photograph, listing the details.

3. Next, write down (or discuss) what you think is happening in the photograph and how you feel about what you see in the image.

4. Does the photograph have a "mood" or a "meaning?"

5. Spend five minutes with the photograph, searching for visual clues, thinking about how and why the photographer made this image.

Stand in the photographer's footsteps

To understand the picture on a deeper level, pretend you are the photographer. Look at the image as if you are about to snap the shutter of your camera and take this picture.

Ask yourself:

1. How close or far away are you from your subject?

2. What is the frame (border) of your photograph including and/or cutting off?

3. From what angle are you photographing? (Head-on, from up high, from a low perspective, from overhead?)

4. What is the quality of the light in the scene? (Is it bright or dark? Is the light dull or high-contrast? Is it coming from overhead, from a window, from behind or in front of the subject? Are there strong shadows?) How does the quality of light affect the mood of the image?

Since the photographer thinks about all of these things, and since all of these details contribute to what the work communicates to us, you and your students can learn a great deal about photographs by doing this exercise.

Use questions like these for effective interpretation

Now, look at Aaron Siskind's Veracruz 96, 1973, which is a partial view of the side of a building with lettering on it.

Note: By moving close to photograph his subject, Siskind separates the wall and its lettering from the surroundings (context) we would see if we were standing there, looking at this building. Instead of showing us the entire wall or all of the letters, he moves in close and focuses our attention on parts of letters, layers of paint, lights and darks, and surface textures of the building. When a subject is isolated and removed from its usual frame of visual reference, as is this one, we say in the art world that it is abstracted.

Ask yourself and your students:

1. What is your eye drawn to first when you look at this image?

2. Why do you think you noticed this first?

3. Where does your eye travel next in the image?

4. What causes your eye to move from one thing to another?

5. What interesting details do you notice about the image?

6. What words best describe the textures (the way the surface feels) in this photograph?

7. Does this image have a particular mood or feeling? Why?

8. Why do you think Aaron Siskind decided to take this photograph?

9. What other questions would help you to interpret and understand this picture?

Additional observation / interpretation exercise

Refer to the Learning to Look exercise which is a thorough, easy-to-follow approach for studying photographs. The questions help students describe the things they see in an image. Then, students are asked to study the arrangement of these things (the composition) within the image. Use this exercise with your students to carefully observe, discuss, and interpret Siskind's photograph Morelia 13, 1955.

Helpful hints

1. Ask your students to respond by basing their comments on details they see within the work and by using specific words, rather than "big" universal terms or comments. This will be more effective for interpretation than accepting responses such as, "This picture is pretty," or, "I don't like this photograph."

2. It is not necessary to discuss every question presented in the Learning to Look exercise with every photograph you study. If one of the questions seems confusing or unrelated to the photograph you are observing, just move on to the next question. For instance, if one asks about color and you are studying a black and white photograph, skip that question. What IS important, however, is to spend at least fifteen minutes really looking at and thinking about each image. The time you spend concentrating on one image will be directly proportional to how effectively your students will develop their skills of observation, interpretation, drawing conclusions, and making informed judgments about visual images of all types. You and your students will find that this exercise becomes easier with practice.

The photographer's unique, personal vision

Aaron Siskind and Max Yavno each photographed Mexico, yet their interpretations of that place are very different. This is not surprising, since each of these artists had a personal vision about photography that can be seen in his work.

Ask yourself and your students:

1. What particular things or what qualities appear in all three of Yavno's photographs?

2. What particular things or what qualities appear in all three of Siskind's photographs?

3. Are there any similarities between the photographs of Max Yavno and those of Aaron Siskind? If so, what are they?

4. In what ways are the personal visions of each photographer different?

Consistent qualities within a photographer's work help to identify his or her approach to a subject and their way of photographing it. These qualities contribute to the photographer's personal vision and style.

http://www.creative photography.org      This page last updated June 29, 1999.       oncenter@ccp.library.arizona.edu