This fall, we’re highlighting our Community Voices programming, a wide range of fee-for-service workshops, trainings, and media-arts centered professional development sessions. The Black Joy Photography workshop was developed in spring 2022 and illustrates how media education can impact both students and educators.  

At Wide Angle, we like to use themes that play on the strengths of our teachers and create an opportunity for students to experiment with a range of media types. In Teaching to Transgress, bell hooks writes about the classroom being a liberated space (1994). Sometimes technical instruction can feel very dogmatic and limiting. We aim to create a workshop that allows students to explore a variety of photography means and methods, while giving students freedom to explore who they are. 

This curriculum encourages students to lead the message making. The individuals we learn about root their Black identities in celebration, brilliance, and joy. By presenting an alternative to common stigmas and stereotypes that center Black suffering and oppression, we hope to combat limitations imposed on our students’ creative processes and, even more importantly, how they define their identity for themselves. We hold time to look at artists, activists, and educators who are often underrepresented within arts establishments - like Lucille Clifton and Mei-Ling Malone - as inspiration.

When students are asked to take pictures of what sparks joy and they are just free to have a camera and explore, they immediately start taking pictures of each other. There’s a sudden release of tension and requirement for anyone to do one thing. When students start posing for one another, there’s a playful, authentic exchange between photographer and model that is everything that I want students to gain in a learning experience. They look at each other differently, they look at themselves differently, and they begin to use the camera as a tool that reflects that dynamic.

Lesson Plans

Photographers of Black Joy

First, we introduce the theme. What does Black Joy mean to you? What might that look like? Students generate concepts and words around the theme into a list. Next, we look at a range of works that reflect Black joy from three levels of interaction as a photographer. 

Adrienne Waheed - photojournalistic, in the moment, active, live. Waheed shows Black Joy as resisting, protesting, and changing the world. Confronting white supremacy as evidence of resistance as an act of Black Joy. 

Ken McFarlane - largely studio work, posed.  We talk about the photographer as a maker of a painting and with lots of control. 

Wit López - takes images and literally reassembles them. We discuss queer identity as an intersectional part of talking about Black Joy. 

(For more works that center Black Joy, check out the Museum of Black Joy in Philadelphia.)

Photography Basics

Students learn principles of photography including framing, rule of 3rds, leading lines, point of view, and exposure. They start with automatic settings so that they can focus on the storytelling aspect of photography. We review photo examples from students and discuss what photo principles are incorporated.

Partner Photoshoot

Students translate their list(s) of joys into photographic images, with the support of a partner photographer and self-selected props. We review communication basics to foster a supportive/effective partner photoshoot, reinforcing the shared creation process. Students experiment with perspective, composition, and exposure to create a dynamic visual expression of their concept.

Writing about Photos

At the end, students review their photos and select their favorites to give titles using the prompt, “To me, Black Joy means…” As an example, we look at a photo by McFarlane of a man pushing a carriage with a baby in front of a brick wall and consider all of the things the artist might be trying to say in the photo. What words come to your mind when you look at this image? What ideas could this photo be about?

Check out student photographs with titles and descriptions below from our Community Voices workshop at KIPP: Baltimore.

MEET THE AUTHOR

Beth Holladay is a Baltimore-based artist and teacher with over a decade of experience with community arts programs, art education, and freelance photography. After receiving her MA in Art Education from the University of Louisville, she led a public high school art program by initiating community partnerships, diversifying the curriculum, and creating avenues for student work to be exhibited in local galleries. She uses her experience and expertise in graphic design and photography to engage students and community members in art projects focused on inclusion and social justice. She maintains an independent art practice of hand-cut collage.