Photography Students Take on Venice!

After last year’s experience with the Venice flood waters, this year’s Academic Travel trip was relatively dry. The group this year had students from Photography 1, Photography 2, and AP Photography. Students also visited an exhibition of photographs by renown Italian photographer Ferdinando Scianna and viewed artworks in the Venice International Biennale of Art. Unfortunately in the weeks after, Venice was devastated by high tides, storms, and flooding that crippled the city.

Photography students on all the Academic Travel trips were encouraged to enter up to four photographs to be considered for publication in a book about this fall’s trips. There are images from Italy, Austria, Switzerland, the Azores, and Spain. An electronic copy of the book has been included. Viewing at full screen provides the best experience.

A collection of photographs by students at The American School of Switzerland made during 2019 Fall Academic Travel.

Venice, Italy - Fall Academic Travel 2019

Self-Portraits - Forget the Selfie!

TASIS Student Self-Portraits

Many TASIS photography students were given "self-portraits" as one of their first assignments of the year. No cell phones allowed, and the assignment was simple. Take a photograph of yourself using your DSLR that communicates something about you that everyone might not already know. Students are very used to taking selfies with their phones, but the deliberate and slower shooting with a tripod was a challenge. Before the assignment, time was spent researching different techniques and famous self-portraits taken throughout the years. Enjoy the slideshow gallery of photographs taken by both Advanced Photography students and this year’s Art and Design 2D students.

Enjoy photographs from The American School in Switzerland (TASIS) located in Lugano!

It is All About Light

Winter Photography Show

Over 60 students displayed their first semester work in the Winter Photography Exhibition held in the Palmer Center the last weekend of January. Classes participating in the exhibition included four sections of Photography 1, the first year IB students, and the AP Studio 2-D Design students. Throughout the first semester, Photography 1 students have explored camera operation and techniques with an emphasis on learning how to control the aperture, shutter speed, and ISO for correct exposures. Time was also spent on studying the principles of design, learning how to post-process, and the mixing of traditional and digital media.

IB Visual Arts students exhibited artworks resulting from an investigation of Identity and Self-Portraiture. Students are required to explore different media and to experiment with new techniques, often combining media to create meaningful expression. As part of the IB curriculum, students write a rationale to further express their intent, their inspiration or influences, and to frame the development of the artwork. The students also exhibited pages from their Art Journal which document their creative process. The variety of work on display highlighted photography as well as painting and the creation of three-dimensional objects.

AP students work almost exclusively on developing their Range of Approaches/Breadth portfolio in the first months of their year. At the Winter Photography Exhibition, their work reflected their ability to use the principles of design and their camera to create well-composed photographs. For the next four months, the AP students will concentrate on their Sustained Investigations on one idea or concept in photography, pushing themselves both creatively and technically.

It was an impressive show, and students, faculty, and visitors came away with a new appreciation for the hard work and talents of TASIS photography students. The video below represents only 10% of the images and artwork displayed but represents the 2019 exhibition.

Here is a gallery of the photographs with the photographer’s name included.
(Click on each slide and use the arrow on the right to follow the story sequentially.)

Exquisite Corpse in Display in the Sahenk Center

For the past few years TASIS photography students have enjoyed the challenge and surprises that occur when working on an Exquisite Corpse project. The parlour game Exquisite Corpse developed from a Surrealist working of a game called “Consequences” in which participants would write a sentence in turn on a sheet of paper and fold the paper to conceal part of the writing before passing it on to the next contributor. The corpse of the title came from artists drawing body parts on a part of a sheet of paper and folding it to conceal the image from the next person. The results can be surprising and serendipitous.

In our Exquisite Corpse, the first student/player was given a phrase from which they were asked to produce an image. In turn that image was delivered to the next student and so on until each photographer had a chance to respond. Like a visual game of “Telephone,” participants add an image to the chain while only knowing the image that came before their own.

Each of our image chains are not a collection of photographs but, rather, an unfolding story that evolves from multiple points of view one image at a time. While the particulars of each photo can be interesting, the stories are found in the surprises, mystery, and disconnects that mark the trajectory of each narrative. The strange, illogical juxtapositions are what attracted the Surrealists to the form. The excitement of creation and collaboration is what drives us to seek what meaning, if any, will develop at the end of our chain.

Enjoy our new Exquisite Corpse stories created by the AP Photography students and their teachers.

Click on the title of each story and use the arrow on the right to follow the story sequentially.)




Student Artist Honored by the College Board

By Stanislava Kirsanova ‘19

By Stanislava Kirsanova ‘19

Congratulations to Studio Art: Drawing Portfolio student Stanislava Kirsanova ’19, who had a piece of artwork selected by the College Board for inclusion in the 2018–2019 AP Studio Art Exhibit. The exhibit is produced annually and aims to showcase outstanding artwork created by students who submitted portfolios for the AP Studio Art exam. Kirsanova's work was one of just 30 pieces chosen from the more than 60,000 portfolios submitted in the spring of 2018.

All artwork for the 2018–2019 exhibit was selected by a group of high school and college art educators with extensive experience in the AP Studio Art program. According to Wendy Free, the AP Program's Director of Arts Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment, "Each work was selected because it represents the extremely high level of rigor, commitment, and accomplishment AP Studio Art students can achieve."  

Kirsanova earned a 5 on her exam, and Fine Arts Department Chair Martyn Dukes was very pleased to see her work recognized on a grander scale. “Having one of her pieces selected from the many, many thousands of artworks submitted each year for examination is a rare distinction and a tribute to this young artist’s growing abilities,” he said. “This success is the more remarkable with Stanislava simultaneously following both the AP course and the first year of the IB Visual Arts program.”