Researching though documentary photography for learning Urbanism, heritage and contemporary time-space

Abstract

This paper focuses on the popular documentary photography in art education. Photography has been used as an artistic, pedagogical and methodological tool so as to learning of the contemporary urbanism, cultural heritage and space-time working with children from kindergarten and primary school. A one-year research project whose main objective was the expropriation of a photographic record of Galicia and, especially, of the popular images from Carral. The school in which this art-based educational research was carried out, is located in the council of the before mentioned place. The research project began by exploring the social use of documentary photography since its origins, and also by analysing the current use of photography in the contemporary arts. In this way, the research project based on photography started: Imagined City. The hypothesis of the research has been: What can the students learn through sensitive strategies and artistic actions related to the documentary photography of their own village? The project was developed in three consecutive phases: The course of time regarding the physical level; the passage of time considering the space level and the visualization of the research project through a final installation work-in-progress in the cultural center in Carral.