The great mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead saw the world as an intricately connected place and thought that education should be aggressively designed to reflect this, stating in his great educational work in 1929 (The Aims of Education and Other Essays): The solution which I am urging, is to eradicate the fatal disconnection of subjects which kills the vitality of our modern curriculum. There is only one subject-matter for education, and that is Life in all its manifestations.
As someone involved in both mathematics education and photography, I find common conceptual themes between the two seemingly disparate areas.
In photographing the landscape, light and composition can make all of the difference. Record a scene at the wrong time when the light isn’t good and you get a so-so record shot of individual elements, but catch the same scene at the right time when the light is good and sprinkle it with a bit of composition—making the elements work together in unison—and you can seize and make permanent a special moment in time.
The same is often true in teaching mathematics. Present a subject in a bland, disconnected manner and you tend to get confusion and frustration in most of your audience. But take the same subject matter and strategically reorganize and season it with context, history, metaphor and narrative—delivered at the right time—and you can achieve a unified educational experience that is impactful and memorable for your students or readers.
At least, that’s how I like to connect these processes.
The pages in this section showcase a sampling of my photography of the United States and Canada. Captions of locations and dates are included as I believe they can add seasoning to the images just as context and narrative can do to teaching. It has been said that, "the camera makes everyone a tourist in other people's reality"(Susan Sontag). It is my wish, that you have a pleasant experience touring some of the special events that I have witnessed and interacted with over the years.
