Transition

Change-evolution-transform

We awaken each day to new circumstances, circumstances that require new understanding, tolerance, and awareness. The nature of existence is accommodating to change, and how we manage that change is what determines our success. The ability to use the accumulated knowledge that we have gained through experience, education, and training provide the ground upon which we stand, when this ground shifts, do we see this as a crisis or an opportunity?

This yearlong project, involving the students from the Photographic Institute of the Beijing Film Academy and the Department of Art at the University of Minnesota, has provided an opportunity to examine the concept of transition and the effect it has on their lives. Students were asked to explore visually some aspect of change that they have come to understand as altering the way they perceive and understand the world around them. Some use personal narratives while others illustrate through a documentary style, the evolving landscape. As students it is often difficult to perceive change when living in real time, this project provided the medium and the opportunity to step back and to reflect on their own assumptions.

Each of the students as well as their professors has had the opportunity to visit another culture and to experience the differences in the underlying assumptions upon which the cultures have been built. Each student arrived at his or her work through their individual experience, often finding in each other's culture and background remarkable similarities that unite the work. The transition in contemporary photographic technology has led to new means of representation and students have responded with many images that would have been difficult or problematic with film technology. The digital transition has given students and professionals alike a new immediacy and a freedom to experiment.

The intention of this project and the larger program Walking and Discovering is predicated on the belief that we are better off learning form and with each other.

Thomas Rose

Art Director of the Transitions Chinese-American image communication program

Teacher of University of Minnesota visiting China in 2012