When we observe children we can not do anything else but to suggest and assume – we can never know for sure what they think or for instance what they find interesting in their surroundings. Careful documentation of our observations can get us closer to knowing a bit more about the children, and “pedagogical documentation” (the way its has been practiced in the early childhood institutions in Reggio Emilia in Italy) can even take us to the level of self-reflection - necessary if we want to improve out pedagogical practice…
But what happens when children themselves make documentations? When we give them a camera they might probably act according to their understanding of the task (What are we supposed to do?) or they might imitate what they observed adult’s usually do with a camera. But they would probably also extent the task by their imagination, intuition and play.
The images shown here are made by a three years old girl. The selection of these five is made from a large number of images with different motives. I have chosen portraits because the most of the pictures showed people. Does this tells us what the girl believed people usually take pictures of – or can her choice of motives tell us about her relationship to the people she photographed? (The most of the portraits showed her mother :)
I find it interesting that there is a lot of action in the portraits: they are everything but boring - there is always something happening: the point of view is seldom neutral (of course limited by the size of her body); sometimes her fingers cover the part of the lance and the horizontal lines are not quite horizontal (because her hands are not steady); the compositions have diagonal lines … as if she knew how much action can be achieved by such lines..!PS. All of the pictures people, including the photographer, have approved the use of the photos in this blog.
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