Stories and photography

Jakob Serjun: Tomos motorcycles, a Slovene motorcycle company, are known and used by young and old alike. It is a symbol of different times. All families that I know have one in their garage. Among the older generation, stories are told of love, adventure and mischieif and almost all of them have a Tomos motorcycle as an integral part, being passed on to younger generations.

This fall the students at Ljubljana Multimedia and Graphic Technology Secondary School are learning about different ways of telling stories through the lens of a camera and written language. We are using a multidisciplinary approach where we combine lessons of the English language with Photography to teach students about the importance of story structure to tell a cohesive story that will captivate the audience.

Using Christopher Booker's book The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories the students were introduced to three different types of plots: Rags to riches, Overcoming the monster and Rebellion against »the one«. The students then threw story cubes in groups of 4 or 5 and worked together to write a story while highlighting the chosen theme – What does it mean to be Slovene?

Following the session, the students had a lesson about the way photographers use visual language to tell stories, highlighting different photographic works and authors. Students worked on different concepts at home and created photographs that would fall in line with the chosen theme, with the objective of keeping authenticity in the captured images.

We will conclude the project with readings of stories and presentations of photographs the students took during the duration of the project with constructive critique.

Miha Golob,

SMGŠ

Ljubljana, 23. 11. 2022