PREPARING TO VISIT THE EXHIBITION

“Exodus” requires some preparatory experience to help students contextualize exhibit content and to help them engage more deeply with the purpose of the exhibition.

Activities: Content Brainstorm

Ask students to form small groups and lead a discussion about the following content areas:

• Why do people leave their homes?
• Who is a refugee?
• What is a refugee camp?
• Why do people go to refugee camps?
• Do refugee camps exist in the United States?

Discussion

Give students an opportunity to share their responses, then ask students if they have moved from one location to another, i.e., in the same state, between states or between countries.

• What does it feel like to leave a place and move to another?
• Help students generate a further list of reasons why people move from one place to another (include recent accounts of New Orleans evacuees).
• What is the experience of a person making such a move?

Write the words “Refugee,” “Exile,” “Migrant,” “Immigrant,” “Evacuee,” and “Exodus” on the board. Discuss with students what the words mean. Further exploration can distinguish between what the words denote and connote. For example, the Webster’s Seventh Collegiate Dictionary defines refugee as “one that flees for safety; esp: one who flees to a foreign…country to escape danger or persecution.” This is the denotative meaning of the word. The connotative meaning explores the emotions the word triggers. For example, students might connect refugee with illegal immigrants or with the undocumented. Such misleading connotations should be discussed. Students can then compare their pre- and post-exhibit visit responses to these terms.

Also ask your students if they know anyone who is a refugee, an exile, an immigrant, an evacuee? What are their experiences? Reinforce the idea that refugees constitute an ever-growing presence in our communities. In fact, SLC is now considered to be one of five, new, national centers for the resettlement of refugees and immigrants in the United States.

Discussion

Discuss the fact that Sebastião Salgado uses his abilities as a photographer “to show one person’s existence to another.” To realize this goal, he created a visual record of world-wide migration in the 1990s decade so that people will understand this unprecedented phenomenon.

• What do you think can be achieved by such a “documentary” activity?
• How might its content affect your life or the lives of people you know?

Tell students they will visit an exhibition of 300 photographs that were taken recently in Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and the Americas. The photographs show people who are leaving or have left their homes. Review the terms discussed and remind students that the aim of Salgado’s photography is “to show [this reality] and to provoke debate.”