Grade levels:
9 - 12
Duration:
Minimum one 45-minute classroom period
About this Exploration
Can a self-portrait call into question society’s assumptions and lead to positive change?
Explore how photography can illuminate aspects of your identity, including cultural background, family history, engagement in societal groups, personal privilege, and the points of intersectionality between those. To start this exploration, you'll consider the idea of self-portraiture and the depth of information (or misinformation) that photography can express by analyzing others’ self-portraits. You'll discuss the factors that shape background and identity, and think about your own identity. Building on these ideas, you'll create your own digital self-portrait to take the popular digital photography format of "selfies" to another level. Finally, you'll connect your own identity to the idea of the self and the self-portrait, and begin to consider the changes you would like to see in your world.
Vocabulary
Community
A network or group of people, sometimes living in a particular place, who share interests, values, characteristics, responsibilities, or physical spaces.
Cultural Appropriation
When an individual or group claims rights to the symbols, art, language, or customs of another individual or group, often without understanding, lived experience, acknowledgment, or respect for its value in the original culture.
Culture
A social system of meaning and custom, developed by a group of people to assure the group’s continuity. The system has unspoken rules that shape values, beliefs, habits, patterns of thinking, behaviors, symbols, and styles of communication. Consider using instead: Social identity group, social group
Discrimination
Actions stemming from conscious or unconscious prejudice, which favor and empower one group over others based on differences of race, gender, economic class, sexual orientation, physical ability, religion, language, age, national identity, and other categories.
Ethnicity
A social construct, used to group people based on shared cultural heritage and characteristics such as values, behaviors, language, political and economic interests, history, geography, and ancestry.
Gender Identity
A person’s individual and subjective sense of their own gender. Gender identities exist on a spectrum and are not just masculine or feminine.
Identity
An individual’s distinguishing characteristics. May include age, gender, religious or spiritual affiliation, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, ability, education, and socioeconomic status. Some identities confer majority status or privilege, while others confer minority status.
Intersectionality
An approach coined and theory developed by Kimberlé Crenshaw, scholar of critical race theory, which holds that characteristics such as gender, race, class, and others must be examined in relation to each other, rather than in isolation from each other. Developed to more fully discuss Black women’s experiences and the ways in which they are shaped by the intersection of race and gender.
Marginalize
Treatment of a person, group, or concept as insignificant or powerless; placing them outside of a group, society, or community; and enforcing prejudice through societal institutions.
Privilege
Unearned social power granted by societal institutions to members of a dominant group, based on the nature of their identities. It is often invisible to those who have it.
Race
A term used to identify individuals as part of a distinct group, based on physical characteristics and heritage. Although at one time the term was purportedly based in biology, race is now understood as a social construct that is not scientifically based.
Religion
A system of beliefs, usually spiritual in nature. Often advanced in the context of a formal institution.
Transgender
An umbrella term for people whose gender identity or expression differs from the societal expectations of the sex they were assigned at birth.
Lesson
Introduction
As you explore questions about who you are and where you fit in, you will begin to define yourself and notice how others define you.
Key questions in this lesson include:
- How do we understand our own backgrounds?
- How does background shape identity?
- How do photographers use self-portraits to illuminate, explain, or perhaps even disguise their backgrounds and identities?
Set the Stage
Untitled, Melissa Barales-Lopez, Mia Bella Chavez, Grecia Carey Ortega, Norma Vidal, 2018
Look at the student portrait shown here.
Questions for Discussion:
- What do you notice first about this image?
- What do you think the subject is communicating about her identity?
- What compositional and photographic elements do you notice, and why? Include:
- Framing
- The position of the subject
- What the subject is wearing
- Foreground and background
- Lighting
- What do you think the photographer is trying to show or explain?
- Do you think there are unintentional messages in this photograph?
- Does anything change when you know a bit more about the photographers and their intentions?
About the Photographers and Subject
“Our aim in the series was to celebrate our differences. We were aware that to the outside world, we had a lot in common: young, femme, Latina, photographers. But despite this fact, we were also aware of the many things that made us different. We captured these differences by giving each subject their own unique color gel and pose.” — Mia Bella Chavez
Mia Bella Chavez: As a kid, I discovered photos from my grandparent's youth. With these images, I was able to get a taste of a time I wasn't alive to experience, and in this way, understand my grandparents a little bit more. I loved the idea of capturing my family's intimate moments for ourselves and our descendants to enjoy, and began to take photography more seriously. For this reason, much of my photography focuses on portraiture and themes of identity. I have used photography as a way to advocate for social justice by using it as a "matter of fact": it is hard to deny visual evidence.
Norma Vidal: I grew up in Boyle Heights, graduated from Roosevelt High School, and currently attend the University of California, Irvine. When I first joined the Getty [Unshuttered] Photography Program I had almost no experience with photography. I just found it interesting and always thought it was cool the way photographs could capture so many meanings at once. As I got more involved with photography, I realized that I liked to take pictures of my community and things that represented my culture because I was very proud of them. My community is majority Latinx, including low-income households, and struggles with multiple issues such as redlining, lack of school funding, the school-to-prison pipeline, police brutality, and more. All of this has made me who I am today and has shaped how I view the world and how I wish to spread awareness through my photographs.
Explore Further
Self-Portrait with Family Photographs, 1981, Judy Dater, gelatin silver print. The J. Paul Getty Museum. Gift of Jack von Euw in honor of Lillian Lichtenfeld. © Judy Dater
Look at the photograph shown here. Or view the image on getty.edu.
Questions for Discussion:
- What do you notice first about this image?
- What do you think the photograph is communicating about the subject’s identity?
- What compositional and photographic elements do you notice, and why? Include:
- Framing
- The position of the subject
- What is the subject wearing?
- Lighting
- How do you read the subject’s expression?
- Does anything change when you learn the title of the photograph?
- What hypotheses do you draw about the photographer’s background and identity?
About Judy Dater
Through self-portraiture, Judy Dater (born 1941) has often explored her relationships, identity, experiences, and observations. This image celebrates the personal significance of a specific day of the year. She stands beneath her parents’ wedding portraits. Their wedding took place on June 21, 1931. She was born exactly ten years later. This photograph was made on that date, too, in 1981. About this image, Dater said, “I was looking for a sense of identity in relating myself directly to my parents—who they were, what they did, where they came from, and where I came from. And also how I became my own person.”
Exercise: Discussing and Mapping Identity
As a class, discuss the idea of identity.
Questions for Discussion:
- What do you feel are significant things to know about your own background and identity? What is the nature of each of these aspects?
- Are some things labels that others put on you?
- Are some aspects fixed while others evolve over time?
- Do any of these aspects depend on context?
- Is how you see yourself different from how you think the world sees you?
Next, continue your exploration of identity by completing the Identity Chart graphic organizer. [See Resources section.]
Practice: Turning Identity Maps into Self-Portraiture
Start by watching the Unshuttered 2.0 Selfie challenge video. [See Resources section.]
Refer to your completed Identity Chart and brainstorm how to “show” (rather than tell about) your identity in a self-portrait. Your identity can change over time, and there may be aspects that you're not ready to show or share. That's ok! Your photographic self-portrait can capture whichever aspects of your identity that you wish to share at this particular moment in time.
Using the ideas you brainstormed, create a self-portrait. Consider the elements of self-portraiture explored earlier in the discussion, such as framing, foreground, background, scale, proportion, lighting, a subject’s position and expression, and symbolic objects. Use the related photography skills videos listed under Resources as refreshers. Then, continue your self-portrait practice at home and in your neighborhood.
Reflect
Sharing your work can feel vulnerable, so creating a safe space for sharing is important for this exercise. In small groups or with a partner, share one to three of your self-portraits. You may choose to speak about your intention with the photograph(s), or not. Alternatively, this exercise can be done on your own as an individual reflection.
Consider the following questions as you look at each others' photographs and think about what it was like to make them. As you discuss them with your peers, think about ways you can share positive feedback with them.
Questions for Discussion:
- What is the first thing you notice about the photograph?
- What are the photographers explaining, or perhaps, disguising, about their identity?
- What did you discover about yourself, and about others, in the course of the project?
- What was challenging, and why?
- What are you most proud of, and why?
- What would you do differently next time?
Banner Image: Untitled, Melissa Barales-Lopez, Mia Bella Chavez, Grecia Carey Ortega, Norma Vidal, 2018
