- Description
From 1976-1981, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) sponsored a program of photographic surveys in 55 communities in 30 states across the United States. These surveys created a new visual record of a changing nation.
This resource uses those images (or any photographic survey) as source documents to spark sustained inquiry. Begin with an Analysis activity to provide foundational visual literacy and analysis skills. Then choose to “stack” any of the Lesson Extensions, which uncover images’ complexities, their historical context, or the work of documenting a community. Each activity challenges students to access prior knowledge and apply it in a novel context.
- Educational Uses
Goals
- Strengthen students’ visual literacy and analysis skills;
- Encourage evidence-based reasoning;
- Challenge students to apply historians' habits of mind to present-day issues within their own communities;
- Invite students to “do” history by documenting present-day issues through photographs and oral histories.
More Learning Resources
Video
Shae McCoy, a photojournalist and author from West Baltimore, sits down with SAAM educator Elizabeth Dale-Deines for a wide-ranging conversation that touches on everything from what she keeps in mind when she photographs her own community to what stories might be told by juxtaposing historical and contemporary images of Baltimore. Created with K-12 students and teachers in mind, this video amplifies the practice of visual storytelling and the importance of engagement and authenticity when documenting community.
Lesson Plan
This activity uses a Jigsaw structure, requiring that students have access to a set of oral histories from the same time and place documented in the NEA photographic survey of your choosing. If an NEA photographic survey was not conducted in your area, consider using a survey from a neighboring area or one whose influence you feel in your own area.
Lesson Plan
Each person sees the world slightly differently because we each have a unique combination of roles, identities, and lived experiences. We might consider each of these individual parts of ourselves to be individual lenses through which we could see images, issues, or events.
Lesson Plan
With its focus on the artistic process, this activity serves to deepen visual analysis and an introduction to the strategies a photographer may deploy when taking a picture or editing it.