Saving a Picture Forever: Curating "Truthful" Images of Life at School

• In Event: 47.068 - Picturing Inquiry, Framing Childhood: Examining Drawing, Photos, and Photography in Critical Early Childhood Research

Abstract

Purpose
Oftentimes in schools, adults are charged with documenting children’s engagement through photographs. Photographs are displayed in the hallways, websites, and in classrooms as evidence that teachers and students are producing “good” work. However, how do children document/photograph their day? What would they view as important and memorable, worth “saving forever”, as one early learner noted? This presentation focuses on children’s representations of themselves and the moments they document and curate through a photographic lens.

Theoretical Perspectives
In looking at photos, I take up critical childhoods with an intersectional lens on identity (Saavedra & Pérez, 2012). Like adults, children are also striving to make sense of their lives and social relationships as active participants. Their individual and collective contributions are critical to understanding childhood as a situated time, shifting across multiple spaces. Rather than viewing children as “adults-in-the-making”, children are already living and experiencing the world as competent social beings (Thorne, 1993). However, their agency is limited by issues of race, class, gender, and (dis)ability (Crenshaw, 1991). These intersecting identities are further complicated in school where specific identities are privileged and made visible through various artifacts not limited to but including photographs.

Modes of Inquiry
The data for this paper draws from a year-long, ethnographic study on curriculum and literacy in a 2nd grade inclusive classroom, including children diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder. This presentation focuses on a three-month period, where children freely documented moments to “save forever.” Children participated in photo-elicitation interviews weekly, discussed collections of photos within smaller groups, and individually curated “favorite” photos (~9-20 photos) as part of a digital album (Templeton, 2018). In this presentation, I look across the photo albums (see Figure 1 for sample) to uncover themes and patterns that “in their own terms, seem ordered and meaningful” (Szarkowski, 1966, p. 126). Photo collages were re-created across children’s albums to analyze alongside field notes, observations, interview data, and media material related to themes (see Figure 2).

Findings
Throughout the findings, I explain the conflicting intentions behind photographs—the goals of schools and institutions against the social intentions of the children themselves. Children valued unique and creative contributions by children who were otherwise invisible according to school standards. For example, Parker (African-American boy) spent most of his day apart from the rest of the class, seen as behaviorally and emotionally challenged. However, his writing, drawings, and actions were featured prevalently in children’s photographic documentation. Only one photo showed children performing academic work, while other photos documented creative (re)constructions of popular culture, narratives juxtaposed with humor, experimentation with cameras (e.g. selfies, close-ups), and detailed photographs of play episodes.

Significance
Although photographs reveal truth to a certain degree by immortalizing details, facts, and slices of life, this presentation makes complex the vantage point from which photos are circulated and made public (Szarkowski, 1966). Given that photographs offer multiple versions of truth, we should consider whose truth is being told through classroom photos and how this potentially (re)positions children’s identities.

Author

• Haeny S. Yoon, Teachers College, Columbia University