NYC is a librarian

09May08

Thank you kindly, New York.  This week your media and cultural outlets unwittingly showed their enthusiasm for my Fall 2008 information literacy program, which I’m the early stages of plotting with the aid of some major lettuce.  Without revealing too much of my huggermugger master plan, I’ll tell you only that the program involves visual literacy, graphic information, and technology.

Imagine my glee when I opened the May 12th issue of The New Yorker to discover a fantastic story on the use of digital retouching in the fashion industry.  Unfortunately, the web article omits the before and after shots of a reclining nude model.  That’s too bad, since it would be most useful to project the photos during visual literacy instruction, as part of a discussion that connects cutting-edge technical processes in the art of image making with the long-standing social criticism of Jean Killbourne. 

And

Today’s NYT  has a review of an exciting new exhibit at the MET.  Superheroes: Fashion and Fantasy examines the parellels between the trasnformative costume design seen in graphic fiction, haute couture, and sportswear.  We’re not talking about the girl in my English class that wore an ill fitting Superman t-shirt every day of Junior year.  Superheroes is thought provoking and clever, both within the contexts of historical idealizations of the human body and in current interpretations of metamorphosis.  Curated by Andrew Bolton, the show is open to the public until September 1.  

Please publish more leads in the field of visual literacy (web, print, moving image, photo, etc) throughout the summer. 

Signed,

Librarian About Town (though not your town)

Image source: http://www.metmuseum.org/special/superheroes/index.asp

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Tags: fashion, graphic fiction, information literacy, nyt, Superman, visual literacy