A Representation of Developing Identities and Expressions of Creative Thinking

Alex Sicurella

Recently, my Digital Photography students have posted photographs from their final projects on the walls near the student café. The final project in Digital Photography is a culmination of their learning and growth as artists throughout the course. These works are a representation of their developing identities as artists, and an expression of their creative thinking.

To recognize and entice you to check out their work I’ve selected a few outstanding examples from the course. In our first example, 12th Grade student Zhang Ke’s work titled Flawless explores the idea of capturing the beauty of the subjects’ self-perceived flaws. She creates a calming and inviting environment that allows the subject to display a level of comfort in the photographs, which leads to a nuanced expression of her theme throughout her photos.

Natural

Block

Words from the artist：

“For Natural: When I asked Rose, my model, to hide where she did not feel satisfied about her face, she said: ‘There’s nothing to hide.’ Then I capture this photo, honestly, nothing to hide. For Block: The light and halo give this image a very gentle atmosphere, so even though my model Patricia blocked her eye the photo still highlighted this idea of ‘Flawless’ I hoped to achieve.”

——12th Grade, Zhang Ke

Words from the artist：

“With this project, I want to discover the connection between human desire with flowers by taking photos of the most intimate things around my life, including people, poems and others. As for me, flowers are the representation of fragile yet attractive. When I crafted the photos, I wanted to use the center composition and black-and-white tone to emphasize the main characters in the photo.”

—— 12th Grade , Li Yixuan

I have been deeply impressed by the dedication and work the students have put into this project, and respect their bravery in sharing their artwork in a public space. The value of art and the expression of creativity through a variety of mediums are worth being cherished, and the practice of art plays an important role in the development of our students. I am thoroughly convinced that the opportunities we provide our students in our Fine Arts courses allow them to push themselves beyond their comfort zones helping them to discover aspects of themselves that they may not encounter in other courses or subjects. I am excited to be able to continue to support our students in the exploration of creativity and the production of more amazing photography in the future.