A city with good form performs for its residents. To find out how, our team went inside homes and lives, walked streets, and shopped markets. We found a care community generations old. We found the qualities behind the performance.
All tagged Cultural Norms
A city with good form performs for its residents. To find out how, our team went inside homes and lives, walked streets, and shopped markets. We found a care community generations old. We found the qualities behind the performance.
The exuberant/ironic chipmunk on a sky-high sign draws any driver’s attention from hundreds of feet away. Orderly rows of gas pumps promise a spot to fill ’er up. Mesmerizing repetition pulls weary Texas interstate travelers into a world of overwhelming convenience and a longer-than-usual pit stop.
We interviewed one person to be a nanny for our children. When she arrived at our doorstep for the first time, most of her nuclear family joined. The message and the value prop was, “You don’t just get me, you get us. And we get you.” Full access into another culture and the chance to play some part in their heritage, their “life-history” is an intimate privilege.
Clear intent, technical readiness, and some form of social currency are needed in order to get the shot.
When in the field but off the clock, you have the opportunity to capture local knowledge that fills in the inevitable blanks of your research.
A single picture, considerately shot, can reveal meaningful insight about a situation. Designers and project teams may use an image to influence an idea or make a case for design intent by publishing the story to larger communities of interest.
In The Camera Fiend, Bill Jay traces a quick history of the technical, social, and cultural histories of amateur photography, revealing the contentious relationships that have always be present between photographer and human subjects. I felt this discomfort during certain moments of my Aunt’s funeral services as a participant-observer-photographer.
A brief mid-morning sprint during a 2013 teaching gig in Mexico City provided views from above and near-below street level. Brushing elbows with vendors and urban services revealed a sliver of a typical workday.
While in Shanghai studying the social and cultural factors of nutritional supplements, our team checked into a traditional Chinese care facility to receive centuries-old, non-invasive, systemic therapies for our aches and pains.