Assignment 4 Reading Response: Pretending You Are Going To P ✓ Solved

Assignment 4 Reading Response Pretending you are going to photograph your college apartment to e

Assignment 4 Reading Response Pretending you are going to photograph your college apartment to express your story.

In lieu of a traditional reading response, you'd like you to submit a creative writing piece that incorporates ideas from the reading and touches on the 'place' you ultimately decide to photograph.

Your submission will be graded as a typical response, and should incorporate considered elements of the following 3 things: The universal qualities associated with the place you choose to photograph – a college apartment, and what are some of the preconceived notions of what happens there?

Your personal experience of this place - including more general emotion connections, as well as specific instances that have forged your relationship to it.

Specific words and phrases that describe your unique impression of this place, and an explanation of how you plan to express that impression visually.

The term 'creative writing piece' is subjective, and the actual writing can be as straight-forward, journal-like, poetic, or 'stream-of-consciousness', as you'd like (have fun with it!), but you should be sure to address the 3 bullet points above, in detail.

Paper For Above Instructions

Introduction

The prompt invites a shift from traditional analysis to a qualitative, sensory narrative anchored in a place many students call home for a season: the college apartment. My response treats the apartment not merely as a physical space, but as a palimpsest of routine, memory, and identity. In this written piece, I will (a) articulate universal qualities of the place, (b) recount personal experiences that shaped my relationship to it, and (c) select words and phrases that crystallize my impression and describe how I would translate that impression into a photographic narrative. The theoretical lens guiding this exploration draws on place-based theories that emphasize how spaces become meaningful through experience, memory, and social life (Tuan, 1977; Relph, 1976; Casey, 1997). I also invoke photographs as a way to render meaning, drawing on how photographic practice mediates between perception and memory (Sontag, 1977; Barthes, 1980; Mitchell, 1994).

Universal Qualities of the Place

A college apartment is simultaneously a laboratory, a sanctuary, and a temporary stage. It is a site of improvisation, where furniture rearrangements, posted schedules, and shared meals map a domestic economy on a student budget. The space embodies transience—walls that shift meaning with every semester, rooms that double as study nooks and social hubs, and corners that shelter late-night conversations and early-morning disappointments. In place-theory terms, the apartment functions as a locus where the ordinary becomes meaningful through lived experience (Tuan, 1977; Relph, 1976). Its familiarity is earned through daily routine, yet it remains imperfect, personal, and bounded by the temporary nature of student life (Casey, 1997).

The apartment also carries social meanings—noise levels, neighborhood norms, and the cultural textures of dormitory or off-campus life. It is a stage where personal belongings perform as narrative artifacts: a keyboard left open on a chipped desk; a corkboard with deadlines slipped behind concert tickets and photos; a coffee mug that marks a ritual of morning concentration. These objects serve as mnemonic devices, stitching together memories of late-night study sessions, friendships formed in shared kitchens, and the small acts of care that keep a space livable. The temporary design of the space invites experimentation, improvisation, and a sense of possibility—an open invitation to reimagine the self within the constraints of student life (Lefebvre, 1991; Ingold, 2000).

Your Personal Experience

My personal experience of the college apartment is a sequence of small rituals that stabilize my sense of self amid academic pressure. The scent of coffee that fills the room each morning signals a threshold between sleep and focus; the flickering glow of a laptop screen at 2 a.m. marks a zone where effort and exhaustion meet. The apartment has been a place of both shelter and challenge—where the comfort of familiar routines sits beside the anxiety of deadlines and exams. It is where I learned to negotiate independence, responsibility, and belonging in a context that is simultaneously intimate and transient (Relph, 1976).

Specific moments anchor my memory: the sound of someone turning off the light as a roommate leaves for class, the quiet after a late-night group study session, the small debates that arise over shared spaces, and the relief of finally making a room feel like mine through a few well-chosen objects. These experiences shape a personal geography—where certain corners feel safe, where sunlight lands at particular times, and how clutter or cleanliness signals mood and intention. This personal geography is inseparable from the broader discourse about place: spaces become meaningful when we inhabit them, voice them, and project our future selves onto them (Casey, 1997; Tuan, 1977).

Words, Phrases, and Visual Expression

The following words and phrases capture my unique impression of the apartment and map a strategy for visual expression: "threshold," "soft morning light," "persistent hum of campus," "scent of coffee and rain," "walls as memory," "patchwork privacy," "temporary sanctuary," "soundtrack of roommates," "a desk that holds the map of my future." Each phrase foregrounds sensory perception, temporality, and relational texture. In translating these impressions into photography, I would emphasize light, texture, and framing that reveal both intimacy and impermanence. Visual choices would aim to preserve the quiet dignity of daily life—portraits of small rituals, macro shots of objects with associative meaning, and wide-angle scenes that convey the apartment as a setting in which identity is negotiated (Sontag, 1977; Barthes, 1980).

Concretely, I would structure a photo essay that interleaves close-ups of objects (a coffee mug, a sticky note with a reminder, a jacket draped over a chair) with wider scenes that reveal the layout and flow of space. The tonal palette would favor warm, soft light in morning shots and cooler, shadowed tones in the evening to reflect the cadence of days and nights in a student life. The sequence would move from the intimate, almost domestic details to a broader context—windows that frame the campus beyond, the kitchen that serves as a social hub, and the door that marks entrances and departures. In textual accompaniment, I would pair captions or short reflective paragraphs that echo the motifs of attachment, memory, and the practice of making meaning within a temporary home (Relph, 1976; Low & Altman, 1992).

Plan for Expressing the Impression Visually

The photographic plan is anchored in the belief that place is not only seen but felt. I would begin with a morning sequence to capture the warmth of early light reflecting on familiar surfaces, followed by a mid-day interior that emphasizes organized clutter—an artifact of busy student life. Evening photographs would focus on shadows, silhouettes, and the quiet atmosphere that emerges when campus noise subsides. The images would be curated to reveal an evolving narrative: the transition from dorm-cocoon to personal space, from naivete to nuanced responsibility, from a generic room to a space imbued with personal meaning. This approach aligns with interpretive photography theory, which treats images as conveyors of memory and perception rather than mere documentation (Barthes, 1980; Sontag, 1977).

Conclusion

The college apartment, as a site of daily practice and memory, offers a rich locus for a creative reading response. By foregrounding universal qualities of place, detailing personal experiences, and crafting language that translates impressions into a visual plan, the piece becomes a narrative about belonging, time, and selfhood within the bounds of a temporary home. The theoretical frameworks of space, place, and photographic representation provide tools to articulate how such spaces acquire meaning through lived experience and creative expression (Tuan, 1977; Casey, 1997; Sontag, 1977; Barthes, 1980).

References

• Tuan, Yi-Fu. 1977. Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
• Casey, Edward S. 1997. The Fate of Place: A Philosophical History. Berkeley: University of California Press.
• Relph, Edward. 1976. Place and Placelessness. London: Pion.
• Cresswell, Tim. 2004. Place: A Short Introduction. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
• Lefebvre, Henri. 1991. The Production of Space. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
• Altman, Irving and Setha Low (eds.). 1992. Place Attachment. New York: Springer.
• Sontag, Susan. 1977. On Photography. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
• Barthes, Roland. 1980. Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography. New York: Hill and Wang.
• Gibson, James J. 1979. The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
• Ingold, Tim. 2000. The Perception of the Environment: Essays on Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill. London: Routledge.