In Linda Buturian’s PsTL 1312 Creating Identities Through Art and Performance course, the photomontage assignment gives students the opportunity to create an image and accompanying text in order to reveal an aspect of their identity. They combine and arrange magazine images into a visually compelling picture, which they then color copy. The accompanying text, referred to as “I Am” writing, sheds light on the meaning of their photomontage.

Students are encouraged to concentrate on expressing one aspect of their lived experience, such as their ethnic traditions, gender issues, spiritual beliefs, or economic challenges. With scissors in hand, they sift through magazines to choose pictures that compel them, stir their imaginations, and help them reveal their ideas.

Along with engaging their creative skills, the photomontage assignment serves as a kind of critical media analysis. It furthers their discourse on how images shape public perception. As Allen Ginsberg put it, “Whoever controls the media, the images, controls the culture.” By using the images to create art, students step away from the commercial pull of pictures. The photomontage and “I Am” writing assignment allows students to explore their identity and utilize both verbal and visual texts in order to help them become active participants in intellectual discourse. As students move into uncertain futures, confronted with complex cultural, economic, and environmental challenges, they need images to help them envision hopeful and inclusive scenarios. 

When students premiere their photomontages and writings, they discuss the process of artistically conveying their concepts, read their writing, and give and receive feedback. All of them had the same assignment, most all used the same magazines, and yet no two images are alike: they are unrepeatable, like visual imprints of students’ identities. The photomontage and writing usher their rich lived experiences and ways of knowing into the classroom.

In addition to the photomontage assignment, Linda Buturian incorporates imagery and media into her other classes, including digital stories which are featured in her water seminar, PsTL 1906W.