On Photo-graphy and Teacher (Self)Education

Abstract

In the current imagistic context, the photographic image has taken on a different role due to its large-scale production and dissemination. As a consequence, contemporary approaches to teacher education in Visual Arts have emphasized Image as one of the main objects of investigation. It results from the significant and complex range of meanings that it raises, as a cultural and symbolic product of humanity. Considering this reality, this paper discusses the importance of (trans)forming photo-graphy, by making images and memories present in us, according to Gilbert Durand’s idea of memory as a reservoir of human imaginary. Therefore, the discussion addresses photo-graphy as a non-verbal text and support for the (re)presentation of personal symbolic universes of learners and teachers-to-be, as well as autobiographical narratives which result from the poetic reverie theorized by Gaston Bachelard. Thus, I consider photo-graphy the booster of two fundamental instauration movements: the internalization of externalities, through revisited memories; and the externalization of interiority, through the exercise of photographic language based on dynamic changes between everyday relationships and the environment. The exercises of reading the world through signs and of analyzing and producing images as visible supports for subjectivities enable us to reveal things and reveal ourselves by transgressing presence and absence limits. It broadens the human capacity of symbolization by capturing the photographic language in its structural and pragmatic articulation which enables imaginary manifestation. Results show that relationships established between the past and the present create a relational circuit in which the imagining action of photo-graphy is enhanced, thus, providing feedback to self-education processes and enriching college students’ experiences.