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Arts & Communication Photography and museums for senior students

incorporating said baggage into their creations, developing
an artistic discourse through images, and reflecting on said
narratives. When commenting in class on the images taken
during the visit to the Anna Boghiguian exhibition at the
IVAM, the majority highlighted the motivation that caused
them to be able to “enter” the works of this octogenarian
artist. Themes like climate change are commonplace in
exhibition museum, as the fish with plastics remind us
the Sustainability Development Goals. Since these works
directly communicate ecological and political messages,
it seems over-claiming to argue that photographing them
involved the development of critical thinking (Figure 4).
We observe how the images that are part of this research
connect us with the human, which has implications in the Figure 4. “Karma. Marine Debris” (2021) by Nayra López and Vinz Feel
conceptual and pedagogical approach to these images. Free, in the exhibition “Emergency on Planet Earth”, Centre del Carme,
Photographs bring us closer to the forms of life, their Valencia. A big fish with plastics explains the ecological problems,
behaviors and roles, and their relationship with others and evidencing the senior student’s interests. Author: Maria Alonso.
with the world, allowing us to investigate this research
process from personal and lived experiences. The personal
experience forms part of the collective experience of the
society, showing us the symbolic visualization of what we
know, and from it emerge stories and discoveries that tell us
about social relations, how we observe the city, the way we
live in it. In educational research, it is convenient to establish
and connect with educational practices, since these same
practices, based on ethnographic and artistic visual research,
are articulated in turn in the double axis of research, teaching,
and the improvement of their own, integrating practices
in their environment. Observing the public in the visits,
documenting the fact of museum visitors does not, in itself,
imply learning critical visual or cognitive skills (Figure 5).
In addition to the details of art works, exhibition rooms,
pieces on display, and other elements typical of museums, Figure 5. People observing the photography exhibition by Zanele Muholy
another facet that is reflected in the students’ photographs in the IVAM Valencian Institute of Modern Art. Author: Gemma Pla.
of urban landscape is the environment of museums visited.
Engaging in arts-based research offers adult students exhibited in the museum, but the compositional game
the enormous possibilities of a research methodology as that light generates with the exhibited pieces, objects, and
a pedagogical construction process through which they artifacts in context.
learn about themselves and the society of which they are By creating a visual discourse from their own images,
a part. In addition, it allows them to inquire about the students can offer topics that are dealt with in the
creativity generated by their own history and collectively classroom, incorporating issues that really interest them,
reflect on burning issues that include the city, museums, or that emerge from the images. In this way, knowledge
collective heritage, and knowledge of art from artistic is born directly from the photographs they have created,
practice. Using drift as an activating element turns them and also from their embodied memory of taking these
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into flâneurs, observant walkers aware of the esthetic photographs, images linked to the environment visited,
capacity generated by the urban environment. The results which tell us about the museum as an institution, which
are, finally, esthetic, since reflection allows them to obtain responds to specific sociocultural and personal conditions.
surprising and attractive images, beyond the document We detected that there is an artistic intention in these
that certifies their visit to the museum, as portrayed in the images, an esthetic element that is articulated in this case as
photograph presented by Miquel Valls after his visit to the an ally of the research process, as we have remarked in the
History Museum of Valencia (Figure 6). It is not a work description of the methodology, facilitating and allowing a

Volume 2 Issue 1 (2024) 6 https://doi.org/10.36922/ac.1740