Elaine Smollin: ART AND VISUAL CULTURE BERGEN.EDU

Elaine Smollin
Art and Visual Culture
Bergen Community College
Paramus NJ 2009-2016

World Art
Explored by BCC Students through Photojournalism

A "Night Photo Shoot"
Directly outside our lecture studio
Completing our assignment:
Compare styles of 20th and 21st c. photography
using cars as reflective of our era, society, culture.

Our students hail from NJ, NY, Argentina, Belarus, Cuba, Iraq, Jamaica,
Korea, Mexico, Palestine, Peru, Russia and Texas

Exploring car surface as 3D mirrors

Introduced by early 20th c. photography/painting

Exploring surface reflections
of the night environment on campus.

Forming "A Photographers' Collective" Teamwork!

Appraising the success of the project while working.

Surface and depth

Students learning about imagery, composition and depth-of-field.

Students explore organizing a shoot and a site.

Art and Visual Culture Survey Class
HISTORY OF PHOTOGRAPHY PROJECT
Compare 20th and 21st-century themes in photography

Rose, our student from Russia,
compared the experience of immigration:

19th c. African-American family,
20th c. The journeys of her European family.

Rose presented 20th and 21st century photography

Contrasting the built environment and the human experience.

Reena explores 20th and 21st-century photography

Reena reconstructs

Ilse Bing's 1938s self-portrait composition.

German Expressionist Photography

Ilse Bing (20th c.) Reena Bouros (21st c.)

Project: Art and the Public Realm

Reena Compares Birdhead Photography from Shanghai

with her own view of Astoria NY

History of World Photography Project
Originality and Colonial Cultures

Project 1:

Compare photography

Project 2:

Find the earliest local photographers in two cultures.

Tomiah
Explored German/Austrian Expressionism in Photography
Her original photo portrait of her aunt made in the Expressionist style.
Tomiah was visiting student at BCC from Texas.

Tomiah
Examined the eariest photographers in
Turkey and Peru who were local citizens-
(who were not imperial explorers).

Tomiah

Photo portrait of her aunt

In the style of German/Austrian Expressionism

Museum Studies

BCC in Art and Visual Culture Class

BBC Students

Explore the Ancient World

at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Choosing Material Cultures

and Figures of Belief in Medieval Europe

Exploring depiction of
World Migration, Politics, and Fashion
through Fashion Photography

Exploring Myth and Realities
John, our student and military medic in the U.S. war in Iraq
born in Peru at the Metropolitan Museum with his sons
explores Antiquity and symbolic imagery.

Foundation Drawing

Bergen Community College

Our in-class assignment:

Draw around and between

an arrangement of objects (JJ)

Drawing II
Our Assignment in the glass atrium:
Drawing and Cinema
Draw the internal building structure in perspective
then draw imagery that appears on the glass.

This is a complex assignment
involving multiple types of appearances on
various planes, space and surfaces.

How each student experiences spatial perspective
while drawing: to include interior, exterior views
and a reflectioned view of fellow student.

Drawing Foundations:
How to draw on site
Choose individual perspectives in the Atrium

Assignment:
Draw 1. interior 2. exterior view 3. reflections