Pictures Dialogue

The didactic unit investigates the effect pictures have on each other. After an introduction, pupils create a first series of diptychs where on the left remains the same as the photograph, while on the right the picture changes. The learning should look for a special relationship between the two neighbors, guided by formal aspects. The second exercise was to construct a whole chessboard out of square photographs “talking” with each other and influencing the meaning of all participating pictures. Then students get in touch with John Stezaker’s world, whose collages are quite clumsy in the way they do not hide their superficiality at all, but on the other hand, his interventions are highly subtle and very precise, where the two pictures touch each other. The students have the task to create a collage with formal and material associations and to paint the scene afterwards, by integrating the material change in the picture in order to make it feel natural, but obviously strange and paradoxical.