Big+Lie

THE BIG LIE project
January 24, 2011

This is a small project assigned to the students as a warm up in creativity for the term. To begin to see the possibilites of the image and the ability for it to deceive and to be turned in different directions, each student was given one photo they've never seen before (all were drawn from slides acquired by Professor Saul at a garage sale). The students were to write and present a narrative about the image. Professor Gerald Saul presented the following as a demonstration: I had this friend once, back in second grade, back when you didn’t have to have anything in common to be best friends, you know. And anyway, this kid, Jakey, had a lot of trouble at home. Not the usual arguments and stuff but real violent trouble. His father would go out on some sort of binges and at the end of it all, well, it was crazy. Anyway, one day, right at the beginning of summer vacation, Jakey came crying to me, which was really weird because I never thought anything could get to him cause he was tough and could always take a hit, and he had this show box of family pictures in his hands. He said his dad was going to burn them all because of something his mom had done or said and that he didn’t want that to happen, so would I hide them? I said I would and I tucked them under my bed. The next day we went on a summer vacation for two weeks and when I got home, Jakey and his family had moved away. I never saw him again. I never forgot about those photos and I kept them safe ever since. (Gerald Saul)