Impact 25- The Fletcher's in New York City
This is Maureen and Earl Fletcher.
For the Impact 25, Jane and I created a new persona where we decided to be this couple in their sixties from Ohio who came to New York City for the weekend. Before going to the places, we went some days before to GoodWill to look for outfits that would be representable of Earl and Maureen. Jane is Earl, and I am Maureen, it was very fun to go and see the variety of clothes we could use to re-create ourselves into someone else.
We went to several different locations around New York that we believed Earl and Maureen might like. The idea was to ask people who were around the location if they can take an image of us as a memory. I brought my professional camera, so it was fun to see how others would take care of the camera. A young man, and other younger ladies told us new tricks to use the camera. It was so fun to ask others to take images, knowing that they probably thought we were in a way crazy by wearing the clothes and the glasses that we could barely see with them. Or maybe because it is NYC, people are use to eccentricity. Overall we had a blast going around the city and thinking about how to ask a person to capture an image.
Some of the places we went was:
* Times Square
* Central Park (found a horse!)
* Lincoln Center
* The Metropolitan Museum of Art
* The Guggenheim
* Colombus Circle
* American Museum of Natural History
Maureen and Earl in the Met.
After we took the images, we decided that the best way to see people reaction is by creating an instagram account. With the instagram, we added the images saying that is about our weekend in NYC, and then see the reaction in social media. It was such an interesting approach because we got 64 followers in the lapse of 2 weeks of having the account and adding the images. Also, in each image we added information about what we liked of that place. On average we had 14 likes per image we added. The social media approach went beyond what I expected, because we had more than 25 people being impacted by the project, and also the strength of social media that sometimes you can create a new person, and others will believe it is real.
This would be an interesting study to do, how truthful can an image be? The image is just a snapshot and you could be erasing a lot of facts because you only see an enclosure.
To see the instagram, go to this link: https://www.instagram.com/maureenfletcher41/
The main page of the Instagram Account.
The images and the text in social media of Maureen and Earl Fletcher.
Tammy and Jane,
ReplyDeleteI don't think I can speak anymore highly about this project than I already have! It is extremely engaging and extremely fun to watch unfold. I keep waiting for new photos to be posted every week. This is a good project for secondary school because they're at that age where they're trying to figure out who they are in the world and this lets them know that they can try out different personas and have fun doing it. All at the same time engaging with the community. To push this project further you can get the whole class involved and treat it like a wheres Waldo where everyone is in costume and trying to find each other. It would be such a fun way to strengthen community ties while increasing your digital and photography skills. You can frame this as a photography unit where students are learning to use the features of their camera and learning how to frame an image and make a composition that they can them digitally edit. I love your impact25 project so much. Thank you for sharing this with us!