Through Tillie's Eyes is based on a photo album created by a young girl who was a student at Hoosier Grove School and lived in Hanover Township, Illinois in the early part of the twentieth century. Like many other young women of her day, she took photos with a Brownie camera. Her photos are special because she used her camera to document so many of the typical, everyday activities of her family and friends. Her photos create a good picture of how people spent their days in rural Hanover Township.
Create a Classroom Photo Album
Supplies and tools needed:
- Disposable cameras
- Photo album
- Marking pens
After students visit Through Tillie's Eyes :
*Lead a discussion about life in rural Hanover Township as revealed by Tillie's photographs. Compare life then to now. Ask the class to compare themselves to the young people Tillie photographed. Do they feel they have anything in common with the people in the photos? In what way has life changed?
*Ask students to think about what images they would capture with a camera if they were creating a complete picture of everyday life in their community.
*Give each student one of the cameras for a day and assign them a number of photographs to be taken based on the number of cameras you can afford and the number of students participating. For instance, if you have five cameras with 36 exposures, and 35 students, assign each student to take 5 photographs. (The teacher can use any extra shots to take group portraits of the class.)
*After the photography assignments are completed develop the film. Let each student choose at least one photograph to mount in the classroom album. After mounting, students will write a caption to accompany his/her picture. The caption should include the names of the people in the shot, place and date taken and the student's comments. Instruct the students to write as though someone one hundred years from now is reading the caption. What might the reader want to know about the picture? Keep the album for the year. If possible, add photos throughout the year that help complete a "picture" of everyday events in the community.
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