View the poems and photographs in this gallery.
As an academic museum, the Georgia Museum of Art provides experiential learning and research opportunities. One way that the museum fulfills this role is by welcoming faculty members from across disciplines at the University of Georgia to use the museum as a resource for their classes.
Andrew Zawacki, distinguished research professor for the creative writing program at UGA’s Franklin College of Arts and Sciences, brought students from his Advanced Creative Writing class (English 4803W) to the museum for a series of three workshops this past semester. As part of their coursework, students participated in unique, challenging workshops centered around ekphrastic exercises inspired by photographs in the museum’s permanent collection.
Ekphrastic exercises involve writing in response to a piece of visual art. These exercises invite dynamic descriptions and personal interpretations of the artwork. In this case, Zawacki asked his students to write poems inspired by and in response to one or more photographs that they chose.
Each three-hour visit followed a consistent format while presenting a different creative prompt. Sessions began in the museum’s Education Center, where students read their poems or prose aloud to receive feedback from their peers. The second half of each class was held in the museum’s Shannon and Peter Candler Collection Study Room, where curatorial assistant in contemporary art Ciel Rodriguez introduced 20 photographs for viewing and analysis. In the final hour, students took notes or began drafting poems in response to one or more of the photographs. The project had loose parameters, allowing students creative freedom and encouraging them to move beyond straightforward descriptive writing. The challenging part of the workshop was the experimentation process involved in writing outside of the box.
Rodriguez selected each set of photographs with variety in mind, including portraits, landscapes, architectural photos, Polaroids, large-format prints and both individual images and series.
“It was pretty much like a buffet or a smorgasbord of different formats,” said Zawacki. “They were abstract, they were figurative, they were black and white, they were in color. There were local photographers, European photographers — it was a wide range of stuff to look at, all of which the museum owns.”
The first class visit served as an orientation to the museum and an introduction to the medium of photography. Rodriguez presented a selection of images exemplifying how photography has evolved over time: wet collodion printing, black-and-white film, sheet film, hand-colored photographs, color film, Polaroids and digital media. Students also viewed a selection of images representing traditional genres, such as landscape photography and portrait photography.
Rodriguez selected the second session’s photographs to correspond with the course’s assigned readings. To further explore the themes of science, magic, dream logic and otherworldly landscapes that appear throughout Julio Cortázar’s book “From the Observatory,” for example, students considered Judy McWillie’s atmospheric and abstract images. This session also pulled several photographs related to the South — including images by local photographers Jason Thrasher, Margo Rosenbaum and Rosie Brock — leaning on themes and scenes that may feel familiar to students attending a university in the Southeast.
During the third and final class visit, students examined multiple photographic series — Milton Rogovin’s “Appalachia” series, Berenice Abbott’s “Changing New York” series, Dennis O’Kain’s “NationsBank Ironworkers” series and Arthur Tress’ “Coney Island” series — to get a sense of their ability to suggest a narrative.
“The premise of the course is really for advanced creative writers to disrupt their writing practice by incorporating images,” said Zawacki. “This conjunction is a really important part of the relationship. What is the relationship between the poem and the photograph? Do we need to have the photograph in front of us in order to make sense of the poem? Do we think it’s important that the poem should make sense on its own and not have to see the photograph? These things change depending on which photograph they chose, but these are the kinds of questions we explored in the workshop.”
Museum director David Odo has been actively expanding outreach to faculty across various UGA departments, aiming to raise awareness of the museum and encourage the use of its extensive collection as a valuable academic resource. Increasingly, instructors like Zawacki have been partnering with the museum to offer hands-on learning experiences for their students, some of whom have never visited the museum before.
“It’s about getting out of our parochial, discipline-specific buildings and understanding that the possibilities for art and the possibilities for literature are probably wider than we allow ourselves when weeks are busy. So, it’s really about opening up what possible avenues might be. Now that it’s on my radar, I’ll use it as a resource all the time,” said Zawacki.
Authored by:
Rachel Dantes-Palmer
