Grades 9-12: Never Picture Perfect
Lesson One
Artist Spotlight: David Meanix
Provide your students with full-page images of the Artist's work.
Click here for printable images.
Click on the following link to view the artistic process of David Meanix.
David Meanix's work combines photography and sculpture in a technique that he calls "photosculpture." He photographs the subject he wishes to sculpt, enlarges the photo to life size, deconstructs the photograph, and then creates a photo as a "mask prop." These mask props become characters in a photographic tableau. Unlike traditional characters, they are charged with additional contradictions of context and authenticity. Recast using various techniques of commercial photography such as portraiture, fashion, and advertising,..the resulting images powerfully transform image, identity, and place.*
Student Connection: Evolution of an Image
Begin this lesson by viewing a short film entitled Evolution, which gives students a glimpse inside the world of marketing and image manipulation.
Discussion Questions:
You may need to show the film a second time before discussing.
1. Ask students to share their initial reactions to this film (positive, negative, surprised, etc.)?
2. Compare the process that David Meanix uses in his art with the marketing design process as shown in Evolution. How are they similar? How are they different?
3. David Meanix's photosculptures are referred to as "mask props," which "powerfully transform image, identity, and place." How are product or fashion ads mask props? Is this a positive or negative transformation?
4. At the end of the film Evolution, the following statement was made, "No wonder our perception of beauty is distorted." Do you think that the images we see each day in advertisements really do alter our perception of beauty and reality? Why or why not?
5. How do you determine what is real or true in advertisements? In life? Where does truth come from?
Conclude this lesson by taking an online image manipulation quiz as a class. Take this true or false quiz to see if your students can identify which photos are real and which ones have been manipulated with computer software. Once you have completed the quiz, you will have access to a short video clip entitled Fabricating Beauty. This video will show you some of the tricks and techniques used to alter reality at a typical photo-shoot.
*Artist statement derived from: Bert Green Fine Art
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