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

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Take a five-minute look

1. Begin by looking at Max Yavno's untitled photograph of a street scene in Mexico City.

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 effect 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 Max Yavno's photograph of Casa Martinez and consider how this image serves as a visual document (record) of that place.

Ask yourself and your students:

1. What does the photograph tell you about this particular place in Mexico?

2. What details in the photograph support your ideas?

3. Where was the photographer standing when he took this picture? How close or far away?

4. Do you think the young man in the picture knew that his photograph was being taken? Why or why not?

5. What time of day is it? How can you tell?

6. What two languages are represented in the picture?

7. What obvious shapes are repeated in the photograph?

8. What interesting details do you notice about the building?

9. Why do you think Max Yavno decided to make this photograph?

10.What other questions can you add to this interpretation?
 
 

Additional observation / interpretation exercise

The Learning to Look exercise 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 Yavno's untitled photograph of men with pigs.

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.

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