The Personal Documentary Class at Flower City Arts Center is an outlet for photography students to practice critically looking at and discussing photo edits, essays and bodies of work. It also serves as a building block for the students to start making their own body of work and thinking of how to present their body of work in forms of edits.
Each week, the students shared their edits and their experiences during the pandemic. Together in class, we discussed what works and doesn’t work in the edits and the experiences in building our bodies of work. In just eight classes, each of the students were able to discover using photography as a tool to not only document their life but as an attempt to make sense of and/or cope with the world around us.
My vision for this class was for the students to have their own pop-up show for the last class as part of the learning experience, inviting members of the Flower City Arts Center community. Since that cannot happen, some students have chosen to display their work on this blog.
Since the pandemic, I have been working from home with my new co-workers- who happen to be my pets. My husband has continued to work outside the home like “normal”. We live in an old, rambling farmhouse with lots of rooms, windows, doors and shadows. Since we haven’t been able to leisurely leave the house I have taken a ton of online classes- from gardening to tap dancing to this documentary photography class. Because of this class, I have started looking at my days as a collection of moments. I typically take photos of nature and landscapes so am drawn to beautiful things. I don’t look at my everyday life as interesting enough to photograph, besides maybe a cute pet photo, my gardens or art projects. What I have found though, is that even photographs of a seemingly “mundane” nature can be really interesting and draw a person in. I chose to use the same lens for the whole project to add a “landscape” feel to an intimate setting. My creatures are the “stars” of this and being home all day has given me the chance to see what they do all day…which is nothing;) My pets are a huge part of my life and are with us for a relatively short period of time so this will be a wonderful record of them and how we lived during the pandemic.
Jen Casasanta
IG: @jencasasanta
really like the ‘landscape’ feel to your images – unusual but very effective here; there is so much to look at in each photo. Well done!
Thanks Steve! It’s totally outside my comfort zone. I enjoyed doing it though!
Love it. Very nice to document these times.