Document
Introduction
O N E E V E R Y O N E is a series of photographs by Ann Hamilton for the Dell Medical School. She took more than 500 portraits of people who have received care or who have cared for someone else. By putting a cloudy sheet of plastic in front of the person in the picture, many of the peoples’ features are blurred, making it feel like it could be anyone, even you, in the photograph.
Questions
Can you assign a mood or feeling to these images?
Why do you think the artist created blurry rather than clear portraits?
What do you think it feels like to be photographed behind a sheet of plastic?
What do you think you can see or hear behind the plastic?
Observations
The cloudy atmosphere in the photographs ignites the sense of touch, something we don’t often see in photographs.
Activity
Pick a figure that you find particularly interesting. Mirror their pose. Think about why he or she is holding their posture that way. Why are his hands in that position? Why is she making that facial expression? Imagine what that person could be thinking or what they have experienced.
After you’ve lived in this person’s shoes, write a haiku as if you were this person. A haiku in a three-lined poem; the first line has 5 syllables; the second has 7; and the third has 5 again. They are short and sweet! For example:
Caring is a gift
of patience to a patient.
Give care and take care.
BTW
You can see more photographs from this series at www.hamilton-landmarks.org.
Look again
Share your haiku and see if your listeners can guess which photograph inspired you.
Vocabulary
Haiku: A short, three-lined poem that originally developed in Japan