This Summer, a colleague of mine, Margie Pugh, went on an ancestral heritage tour with her family to Slovenia. On this tour she met Gregor Markelj, head of the Oblikovna School. Both she and he have the same great grandmother! Seeing Gregor’s school, Oblikovna, really had an impact on her. The architecture of the school was stunning! Much of the artwork on the walls reminded her of the walls at Sonoma Academy, which also shares a love of art. Margie knew after this visit that she had to somehow try and bring the two schools together. She approached me, Hillary Younglove, Head of the Sonoma Academy Art Department, because she knew that I often do exchanges with schools around the world.  Together with Uros Acman, the photography teacher at Obikovna, we designed a photo project for the students. 

 

The Diary project is a collaboration between two photo classes, one located in Santa Rosa, California, United States (Sonoma Academy),  the other in Ljubljana, Slovenia (Oblikovna). Sonoma Academy and Oblikovna students documented and shared a bit about themselves and their day to day lives. They introduced themselves before the project with videos. Over a period of a month or so, students created a series of photographs dealing with lifestyle, family and homeland, considering lighting, composition and story-telling.

 

During the assignment they posted some of their images to Instagram. For the culmination of the project, both classes met via Skype and posed one another questions about teenage life in both countries along with their impressions of the photo exchange. We hope to do another exchange in the future!

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Hillary Younglove