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KLATCHKO’S VISION : CHANGING THE WORLD ONE IMAGE AT A TIME

CHANGING THE WORLD ONE IMAGE AT A TIME

University of the Arts Magazine
By Art Spikol

…….(Klatchko) has been everywhere. She’s a photographer. Mostly of kids. She’s done that in North, Central and South America, Africa, Europe, china…Asia…most of the habitable space on Earth. …”I wanted to use photography to make a difference,” she recalls. “I used to get fired up thinking how photography had the power to change the world….”

She taught photojournalism to children for three summer,…assignments were done with point-and-shoot film cameras, the photos cut and pasted into a presentation. …(her education program) is a relatively simple standards-based curriculum that uses photography in two key ways:

Part one asks students five essential that will pique their interest about photographs they are shown and inspire them to explore the aesthetics of photography and learn to write creatively about images – linking with subjects such as geography, social studies, environment and ecology, visual and language arts. By learning the element of good photography and how to ‘read’ photos, students are able to search for clues that reveal the meaning behind the photographic details – as Klatchko says, a method ‘designed to sharpen their powers of observation, stimulate thinking and help them develop a descriptive vocabulary.’ Included will be an analysis of multicultural photographs as a way of bringing cross-cultural content into the classroom’ …..(her new partnership with MAGPI/University of Pennsylvania will use her….program for an interactive Internet 2 roundtable series with schools around the world.)

In part two, students learn how photography and writing feed into each other, and, using their own camera, take photos that will inspire them as they complete assignments on self, community, family and a range of other themes. At the end of the program, each student will leave with a ‘book’ containing all their photography/writing assignments.

Klatchko shows teachers how to apply the program to a variety of classrooms and budgets – kindergarten through high school, big and small. “Some of the teachers I’ve worked with teach graphic design; some teach ESL, others teach special-needs kids. Everyone can teach this course.”That flexibility is important. Even school districts strapped for cash and having no access to cameras can simply have kids …cut (photos) out of magazines. The important thing is to get the kids to communicate, to explore and express their feelings.Klatchko puts teachers through the process and sends them out on their own voyage of self-exploration. “I give them a task similar to what they’ll give their own students. I might ask them to explore what it means to be an adult – just as they might ask students what it means to be a kid. I might say, ‘Who are you? If you were an instrument, what would you be? Who are you in relation to your family? Is there a person inside you that no one sees?”

How can you use photography to help children ‘open up’ and how do you ‘read’ a photo or write a story based on one? “photography is largely a decision-making process,” Klatchko says. “in the best photos, everything is included for a reason….They (the students) are based with the same decisions any photographer encounters: “What am I trying to say? How will I say it? What should I keep in the frame, and what should I crop out?” Facial expressions, clothing, background – each of these elements are loaded with information.”

….”If you simply ask people to write,” Klatchko says, “they look at you blankly. But if you ask questions, you trigger ideas. You make them think about the issues and how they’ll bring them to life through photography, then the photography to feed back into the writing – and then a picture may truly be worth 1000 words.”