Reading personal photographs: a case study at an Israeli art college on multiple identities

Abstract

This article presents a pedagogical–visual process developed in a traditional frontal-format course with a multi-identity group of students set in a large lecture hall. It examines an assignment that required students to analyze a meaningful personal photograph and connate it culturally, while internalizing visual general patterns utilizing a sharing digital forum. This activity promotes combining visual theories with relevant introspective self-expression, emphasizing multi-identities. One can relate this utilization of visual tools to Paulo Freire's approach to dialogic pedagogy, which emphasizes the relevance to learners and the shift between the personal and the cultural, helping to confront the heterogeneity of the class.

Keywords:

• Multi-identity
• visual reading
• visual literacy
• dialogic pedagogy
• visual pedagogy

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 The faces of the people in this photograph have been hidden at the request of the student. As the student comes from a religious Muslim family, her parents forbade her to provide permission to show the photograph in this article and mention her name. This unwillingness and needing to ask her parents for permission can themselves bear witness to her culture and its approach to the personal image.