The family photo album is probably the most valuable personal item in any household. Within its pages are the two dimensional catalyst that confirm and reinforce our memories. The family album's most important function is to provide individuals with visual evidence of their past, evidence ephemeral memories cannot provide. In catastrophic disasters such as hurricanes, people organize searches for photographs and generally what is found is laid out on tables for the community to search through. Individuals with no visual record of their life seem somehow like people without a past, without a history, as if their past life never existed and their present life has been reset with no evidence of the past, except for the memories.
This Workshop is project-based seminar. It is a unique opportunity for advanced editing experience and photo based art making. Chong's project in this workshop is twofold: The first project for the class will be for each student to create and present a personal digital or virtual family photo album. The second part will involve the IDA Class working with displaced families who are victims of hurricane Katrina to help them locate, edit and archive their family photo albums. The archiving would entail the digital copying and scanning of the originals, which would them be stored and presented on CD ROM or DVD Disks. The IDA class will work with community participants to archive their albums, create slide show movies with sound using QuickTime Movies, PowerPoint and Flash. There will also be a brief biography of each family at the start or end of the presentation. Those biographies will be in video and text form.
With the community participants consent or collaboration the most beautiful or engaging photographs will be transformed into works of art for the exhibition. Students have the option to create works about their own families or of those families from the displaced communities we will be working with. The exhibition will feature a viewing room for the family pictures archive that will be projected and will give the viewer options of which families they wish to view.
Teaching Assistants: Jessica Guh
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Albert Chong
Born in Kingston, Jamaica of African and Chinese ancestry, Albert Chong is an internationally acclaimed photographer. He left Jamaica in 1977 to permanently reside in the United States and attended the School of Visual Arts in New York from 1978 - 1981 graduating with honors.
Chong's exhibiting career started in 1981. In 1988 Chong, and family moved to San Diego, where he attended the University of California, San Diego earning a Master of Fine Arts degree in 1991. He is presently associate professor of art/photography at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
Albert's photographs are in included collections, both public and private, national and international. The three main bodies of his photographic work include the I-Trait series, The Still Life's, and the Thrones for the Ancestors. Other aspects of his work include mixed media sculptural installations, video, book works and objects.
In addition to the IDA workshop, Albert will teach an Advanced Photography seminar.
Relevant Links: http://spot.colorado.edu/~chonga/ |
