Teaching Packet

Process and Product: Photography

Part of Process and Product

Explore activities, ideas, and artworks to learn more about photography techniques- and get inspired to create! This unit features a video with  contemporary working photographers, image galleries of photographs from the National Gallery's collection, an explainer that dives into the basics of photography, and a lesson for beginner experimentation with various photography techniques. This resource is intended for grades 6-12.

Ilse Bing, Poverty in Paris, 1931, gelatin silver print, Gift of Ilse Bing Wolff, 2001.147.5

Grade Level

Subject

Hear From Photographers About Their Work

In this video, Phil Martin and James Jackson discuss their approach to photography and how they capture everyday images of the people in their communities.

After you watch the video, discuss these questions.

  • What does each artist enjoy about being a photographer?
  • What is challenging about being a photographer?
  • Which choices does each artist make as they compose their photographs?
  • What interests you about photography?
     

Photographs From the National Gallery of Art

Artists create and shape stories about communities through their artistic choices. Consider these questions as you look at each group of photographs.

  • Place yourself in each image. Where was the photographer located when taking the photo?
  • Imagine being in a different location. How would your perspective, and the photograph, change?
  • How does the artist use scale, lighting, angle, environment, and framing? How do these elements affect the way you see the subject?
  • What would you call the focus of the photo? Which details of scale, lighting, angle, and so on support your argument?
  • Is a particular point of view represented in these photos? If yes, which details indicate that to you?
  • What feeling or story do you think each photo communicates? Why?
  • In what order would you put these photos to tell a broader story? What new story might emerge if they were ordered differently?

Ilse Bing (1899–1998) taught herself how to use a standard 35mm camera. An American photographer, she worked in France and Germany as a photojournalist for Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar magazines. In these photographs, she captures both the hardships and joys of everyday life in Paris in the early 1930s.

Leon Levinstein (1910–1988) was not a professional photographer, but this native New Yorker loved experimenting with photography in his free time. His candid photos, taken in various neighborhoods, capture everyday life in New York by showing unsuspecting people crossing the street or taking a rest on a bench.

Deborah Luster (born 1951) uses photography to examine the effects of violence on society. She worked for five years on a project to capture the stories of people in prisons in Louisiana. Luster wanted to increase public awareness and understanding of the impact imprisonment has on individuals and families.

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Educational Resource:  Process and Product: Photography

Explore activities, ideas, and artworks to learn more about photography techniques- and get inspired to create! This unit features a video with contemporary working photographers, image galleries of photographs from the National Gallery's collection, an explainer that dives into the basics of photography, and a lesson for beginner experimentation with various photography techniques. This resource is intended for grades 6-12.

A man and two women standing near a bar nearly fill this vertical painting. Though made with oil on cardboard, the paint is applied in thin strokes, so parts of the painting look more like a drawing, and the tan of the cardboard is visible in many areas. Shown from the thighs up at the center of the composition, the man stands with his back to us, looking away from us to our left, almost in profile. The camel-brown of the cardboard acts as the color of his jacket and the skin of his face, which are otherwise delineated with cobalt-blue and violet-purple lines. He wears a dark bowler hat, and a white cigarette dangles in his lips. A few scribbled black lines could suggest a mustache. Hands thrust into his pockets, he looks down at the bar, which a runs along left edge of the composition. Squeezed between the man and the glasses on the bar, a woman wearing a teal-blue feather boa leans one elbow on the bar and looks back at the man from the corners of her eyes. Her skin is rose-pink and she has curly red hair. Her arched, thin eyebrows and snub nose are set in a round face with a double chin, and her crimson-red lips are pursed. She wears a ruby-red dress or coat and a turquoise-blue, wide-brimmed hat with bubblegum-pink ribbons or feathers. Two small, stemmed glasses sit on the bar in front of the man and woman. Behind the bar, along the left edge of the painting, a man wears a dark vest over a shirt with sky-blue sleeves. A light cloth lies over the shoulder closer to us and he has dark hair. The rest of his features are lost behind the woman’s hat. To our right, beyond the man’s shoulder, a woman stands with her body facing us as she tips back and looks off to our right. She wears a long, black tie over a pale blue, high-necked shirt. One hand is tucked into a pocket on the front of her jacket, which is streaked with mint green over the brown cardboard. Loosely painted vertical stripes below her waist suggests she wears a skirt, indicating this is a woman, though it might otherwise be difficult to tell. She wears a low, royal-blue cap with an emerald-green feather curling up from the back over a cloud of yellow hair. Only the gray bowler hat, ruddy skin around the ear, and a teal-green jacket of a fifth person are visible between that woman and the right edge of the composition. The wall at the back of the space is tan with shell-pink streaks, and a sign with a red triangle against a turquoise background is cropped by the right edge of the painting. The scene is sketchily painted so features are outlined with blue or brown and filled in with streaks of pale color. The artist inscribed the painting in the lower right corner, “pour Metenier d'apres son Alfred la Guigne HTLautrec,” with the HTL overlapping to create a monogram.

Educational Resource:  Process and Product: Painting

Explore activities, ideas, and artworks to learn more about painting techniques- and get inspired to create! This unit features a video with a contemporary working artist who makes paintings, image galleries of paintings from the National Gallery's collection, an explainer that dives into the basics of painting, and a lesson for beginner experimentation with various painting techniques. This resource is intended for grades 6-12.