Interaction between painting and photography in art creativity of 9th grade pupils

The theme of my master's thesis is the interaction of photography and painting in the field of visual arts. These two otherwise separated media provide creative and unusual results. In the first part of the thesis, the theoretical part, I analysed various foreign and Slovene artists and divided their work, based on the role of photography in the composition, into following categories; photography as a starting point, photography as a final independent product, photography in a painting, painting in a photography – this method is the most popular one among artists – photography in photography (photomontage), collage in photography and finally, transformation of a photography into a painting with a computer program. I also recreated the interaction of painting and photography in my own work, which I analysed in terms of visual arts theory. Photography media and its mixing with painting materials is not part of the traditional field of visual arts, therefore I was interested in how pupils comprehand the subject. In the second part of the thesis I linked the motif with the town of Nova Gorica, which marked the 70th anniversary of the establishment last year. Ninth-grade pupils, included in the research, are therefore from Nova Gorica. The research was devided into two parts; the first part of the data was gathered by questionnaires, given to the pupils before and after the lesson. The goal was to assess their knowledge and understanding of the topic before and after the lesson. I realized their knowledge was very high and their attitude towards the topic positive, but due to the unfortunately formed questions this changed after the lesson. In general, pupils placed photography in the field of art genres and were familiar with the definition of mixed media technique. Most of them also like and feel comfortable living in Nova Gorica. They found the assignment with the topic Moje mesto nekoč in danes (My town in the past and today) interesting, as it was something different from what they are used to, although most nine-graders have used photography before in some way. In the second part of the research I analysed some of the works with predefined criteria to see, which architectural changes the pupils suggest.