“Awakening the eye” web platform

Development and appropriation of a web platform for creating teaching resources and documenting the experiences of the “Éveiller le regard” image teaching project run by the Institut pour la photographie.

As part of this project, for which I am one of the teaching staff, I proposed building a web platform that would be very easy to document, and would provide a trace of the experiments over several years, thus becoming a support for image pedagogy.

Initially, we hosted this platform in a subfolder of the www.benoitlabourdette.com website, so that we could get started quickly, and then moved it to a subfolder of the www.institut-photo.com website, which is its natural home.

For the moment, the web design is very simple: it’s above all a tool for curating structured content and making resources. Since 2021, it has been taken over by successive people, with ease.

I use the free tool SPIP, which offers complete separation between content and layout, enabling the creation of perennial data, and which has also enabled the platform to be moved very easily, without breaking internal links for example.

The web platform

https://institut-photo.com/eveillerleregard/

The Institute for Photography, a project at the service of photography

Initiated in September 2017 by the Hauts-de-France Region with the collaboration of the Rencontres d’Arles, the Institut pour la photographie aims to be a place for resources, dissemination, exchange and experimentation.

Its program is based on the complementarity and interactivity of five main axes:

• a program of exhibitions and events,
• conservation and promotion of photographers’ archives,
• support for research and creation,
• artistic and cultural transmission,
• publishing.

Transmission is at the heart of the Institut’s mission, which is to support everyone in their relationship with the photographic image. The aim is to teach people, collectively and individually, to decipher and experience images.

The aim of the Artistic and Cultural Transmission department is to raise awareness of the photographic image and its critical interpretation. It favors a collaborative, off-site approach to developing artistic education and visual culture in the region, in conjunction with the educational, social, health and legal sectors.

Innovative pedagogical tools and workshops combining analysis and practical experimentation adapted to different audiences are used to stimulate creativity, encourage exchange and confront contemporary issues.

Awakening the eye

The “Awakening the eye” program was born out of an assessment of the place of photography in public education policies.

This document describes :

• the place of the photographic image in the curriculum
• initial and ongoing training for teachers in the reading and practice of the photographic image
• the range of actions, programs and tools offered by cultural organizations throughout France.

In the light of these observations, it outlines prospects for the development of the medium’s use in teaching, in the service of open, cross-disciplinary pedagogies.

The program is designed and supported by the following image and teaching professionals:

Christophe Cognet is a filmmaker. Attentive to traces and the work of memory, his films question cinema, forms of power and surveillance, the mechanisms of creation and the power of images. Since 1993, he has been conducting a filmic meditation on art at the limits of human experience.

Benoît Labourdette is a filmmaker, educator, expert in new media, cultural innovation and entrepreneur. Among other things, he founded the video production center at Université Paris3 (1991-1997), the Fête nationale du court-métrage (2011-), the video platform Par ma fenêtre (2020-) and the company Benoît Labourdette production (2016-).

Julien Pitinome is a photojournalist based in France, Julien Pitinome works on social issues. He is co-founder of the OEIL collective and part of the team that relaunched FUMIGENE MAG magazine in 2015. He works in several areas of photography: press, reportage, corporate, performance, dance... and is associated with the Condition Publique in Roubaix in setting up its LABO151 media education project.

Referent teachers at each level are involved in the project, lending their expertise and experience to the project, developing content and supporting participants:

• Stéphane Latapie, teacher at Denis Diderot elementary school (Lille)
• Marie Usaï, art teacher at Collège Boris Vian (Croix), commissioned by the DAAC - Lille to work with the Institute for Photography
• Hélène Woisson, History, Geography and Art History teacher at Lycée Louis Pasteur (Lille).

The development of the program also includes the occasional participation of outside professionals.