Identity – Photo - Design

Class photos / Visual impressions of community consciousness / from the beginning of the 21st century

Abstract

To express personal identity, there are many opportunities in the field of photography from portraits of professional image manufacturers to today’s selfies. Fully different types of content and formal elements is the class photos: where portraits appear in the environment of picturesque, graphic devices and texts. But in of way of creation, the class photo creation is also aware design, not suddenly guided by the idea. However, its true significance lies in the formal expression of community identity and its unique formulation. An important station of formation of our identity is the completion of student years and the beginning of adulthood. Are accompanied by a series of ritual events (graduati, graduation exams, entrance exam: a competitions that requires strict attention; serious, cheerful, joking events). 

In the 21st century, amidst the ever-expanding technical possibilities, millions of snapshots of every event can be taken, yet the habit of making class photo is alive and well, with tens of thousands voting for it in facebook tournaments. A class photo is even a visual document of last-minute social belonging, a product of individual creativity, or a business venture; formally either a unique and reproduced phenomenon, existing in its material nature or a virtual phenomenon, it is a multifunctional object in its purpose, because it is in the public domain. Provides representation of the institution to the general public in street shop windows for a given period; then represents the departed later on the walls of the school in the local small community until the existence of the school; and represents the class as a whole before themselves in private image use. 

A ritual object is the class photo, a memorial sign: an important part of the social and private image material, which is undergoing a significant transformation even today, following the possibilities of the digital age. Class photo, which often strive for astonishing sight, no longer just consider the visual expression of a local or professional identity important, but for example, pictorial.  

Class photo taken by: Máté Lipcsei