How about getting your class to take their school photo as an opportunity to create their very own self portrait art work? Below are two self portraits of the artist Gillian Wearing. She is posing in the photo as her father amd her grandmother, recreating photographs taken long before she was born. Only her eyes are recognisable as her own.
Idea 1: Ask your class to find an old photograph from newspapers and old records at the local family history room at Central Library. Recreate that photograph using hair, makeup and costume or they could paint the portrait onto card, cutting out holes for eyes and wearing it as a mask. The idea is to pose as that person for your school photo, act like that person, be history and create an unusual artwork. Literacy tasks like writing a story about that person could support the photo.
Idea 2: The image above of the man holding the sign is from a series of work produced by Gillian Wearing called 'Signs that Say What You Want Them To Say and Not Signs that Say What Someone Else Wants You To Say'. Ask your class to come up with a poem or sentence which answers this question: If you could tell the world one thing, what would it be? They could hold up their handwritten signs in their school photo (individual/group).
Each of these activities will get them to think again about a yearly occurance, something ordinary and familiar takes on a new meaning for them. The parents can then choose which one they get printed and framed, normal or artwork.
