Flowering Diversity - A Memorable High School Project

From the early-90s on I worked at Swedish Senior Secondary schools, teaching mainly Graphics Communication, Photography and "Moving Images". Besides the regular classroom instruction, it was not uncommon that special student-projects were arranged, usually integrated with classroom work to a degree, but with a large part "outside" as extracurricular activity. A 1997 project on my own initiative involved (analogue) photography, modelling, slide scanning, image processing and graphic design. It came about as a spin-off from a larger, externally financed project that had not used up all the funds. After completion of the main project resulting in a student art exhibition and fashion show at a major Swedish Museum, we formed a smaller group of students whith an interest in the spin-off project. This started it all off: Some staff members at our school were in contact with an organization called INEPS, International Network of Productive Learning Projects and Schools. INEPS had many activities, but at the time student-art work was selected for display at the UN Headquarters in New York. This exhibition was to be a part of the 50th anniversity of the Declaration Of Human Rights, to be opened by Kofi Annan himself. Our project-concept then built on the creation of images in line with the theme of human rights and the equal value of all human beings. If we succeeded we could be part of the New York exhibition!

Doing some homework with soundtrack design

As an afficionado of multi-projector slide/sound shows using programmed cross-fade transitions, my primary aim was set! However, it became pretty clear that a show of this type only had some promise in our vicinity, where we could be in control of the laborious projection technology. But images are flexible, we decided to create two large posters alongside. These would be shipped to the NY exhibition.
For some time I had privately taken pictures at the so-called Azalea Valley, part of central Gothenburg's largest park. The valley provides shelter from three sides which the Azalea bushes seem to like. In the month of May the valley is in full bloom and offers an amazing sight. The idea to use this enticing setting for a type of portraiture occurred to me before, now was a chance to act upon it. The guiding motif during the photography/modelling phase was a suggested analogy between the Azalea's variety of form and color and the variety of humans according to their different origins on this planet. On top, blooming and youthful beauty is something to be cherished and celebrated with all its amazing strands and facets.
Flowering Diversity became the English project title, derived from the Swedish Mångfalden blomstrar.
The original larger project had attracted mostly female students, due to the extensive fashion design component. It felt natural that only girls joined the smaller modelling group, but there was sporadic criticism for the gender-imbalance (to be rectified in the next project!).
The actual process was an amazing experience, opening new perspectives for my own development and leaving a strong impression on the participants.

"Diversity"-posters at a drive for a suburban school in Central Gothenburg

The idea to arrange images on posters proved fruitful even in our local environment. Our school has a long tradition with public relation events in order to get some positive media attention, vital for a school placed in an immigrant-rich suburb. The choice of school is free in Sweden, even within the Public system. So new students have to be attracted to a school. Our poster material came in handy at info stands and wall displays. Many variations were made, much material found its way into promotional brochures and websites. In Sweden it is not quite politically correct to use female "attractions" in promotional material, at least not in the Public Service field. But I dare say that our concept had more advantages than disadvantages. Traditionally, the image of an immigrant suburb leans heavily on tense and dangerous looking male youngsters. One does not readily think of relaxed and sensitive females, seemingly comfortably settled in an harmonious world. We are talking about two different cliches here, but a slight shift from the more agressive to the more alluring one had a noticable effect.

Interestingly, even the local Parksboard in charge of the Azalea Valley had noticed our "Diversity" posters somewhere in town and contacted the school. They really liked our material that had elevated their "child" alongside our students. According to them, much love and labor goes into the Azalea area, with frequent losses of shrubs after severe winters.
The original image show used 35mm Kodachrome slides. Many of the slides had to be scanned in order to work with posters and brochures. At the time ('97) only the commercial Kodak Photo-CD  process yielded the necessary high quality scans. Much of our funding was eaten up by this very expensive way to go. The digital version of the slide/sound show presented here is almost identical with the analogue original and uses only images from the original scans. Since zooming and panning effects were not really possible in analogue slide shows, the digital version here abstains from them as well.
For another show on the Azalea Valley (without portraits) click on this link.