Tag Archives: Olivia Crawford

Another Day in the Life: Saturday High Instructors David Sotelo and Evah Hart

Sotelo

Last month we introduced you to Olivia Crawford, an alumna of Saturday High, Art Center’s program for high school students (grades 9 through 12), who shot images for Nike Sportswear’s Look of Sport: Los Angeles campaign. Olivia spoke very highly of the “Day in the Life” projects she completed in Saturday High’s Photography 2 class, saying they were important in shaping her experience with photography.

We wanted to learn more about “Day in the Life,” so we chatted with David Sotelo and Evah Hart, who co-teach Photography 2, to learn more about the project, the process of discovery, and teaching at Saturday High.

Dotted Line: Tell me a bit about the “Day in the Life” project.
Evah Hart: We start almost all of our classes with “Day in the Life.” It’s important because it establishes the recognition that our student’s lives are important and a valid place to be pulling from to create work. In the project, we have them shoot three disposable cameras in one day. And we ask them to include the time stamp on the prints. The fact that they’re shooting a lot of pictures really forces them to recognize things in their life that they wouldn’t otherwise see.

Dotted Line: These disposable cameras aren’t the digital kind, right?
Hart: Yes, and that’s important because we’re not editing. We actually have them cover up the viewfinder, too. We want them to react to their life rather than trying to make beautiful pictures. The project diminishes the expectations of beauty and the ideals we’re confronted with on an everyday basis.

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Day in the Life: A Saturday High Alum Shoots for Nike

Angela Choi, as photographed by Olivia Crawford for Nike Sportswear.

With most of us walking around with YouTube, Facebook and Twitter on our phones, it’s no wonder why it has become increasingly difficult to be aware of our own surroundings.

But don’t tell that to Saturday High alumna Olivia Crawford. The Pasadena native recently graduated from Polytechnic School and is now studying art and art history at the University of California, Berkeley. Crawford’s passion for capturing the people and events in her life through photography not only made her a standout in her Saturday High courses, but it also landed her a very cool gig during her last winter break.

An ad agency discovered her work on Flickr and asked her if she’d like to be involved with Nike Sportswear’s “Look of Sport” campaign. The job involved shooting photographs of athletic and stylish individuals from Los Angeles, photographed in a style remaining true to her own aesthetic.

Crawford agreed, and the campaign appeared online last month.

“Olivia is a disciplined, focused and intelligent kid,” says Saturday High instructor David Sotelo, who along with co-instructor Evah Hart, taught Crawford twice in Photography 2. Sotelo recalls Crawford being particularly inspired by Nan Goldin and Larry Clark, two artists whose work he and Hart regularly feature in their class. “The work Olivia did for Nike—that aesthetic evolved out of the inspiration she got from those photographers, artists who were using their everyday life as a diary.”

We recently caught up with Crawford to learn more about her experiences in Saturday High and her work with Nike.

Dotted Line: Which Saturday High classes did you take?
Olivia Crawford: I took an oil painting course my sophomore year of high school. We painted from models and that class really helped me with my later photography courses, Photography 1 with David Sotelo and Photography 2 with David and Evah Hart, which I took twice.

Dotted Line: What did you learn in those classes?
Crawford: Both emphasized making your own projects and learning to be sensitive to your environment. We came up with projects based on what we were seeing in our own photography and what we were reacting to in our environment.
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