#audreyyip

Boogie, From Belgrade Belongs to Me (2009)

This image stuck out to me because even after studying it for a long time, I still have absolutely no clue what she’s planning to chop. The way the space is filled is also interesting to me: The straight lines of the tree/park bench contrast a lot with her hunched over figure.

Martha Cooper, Skeme, Bronx, NYC, 1982

The color contrast and Martha Cooper’s focus on graffiti art especially captured my attention. The idea of preserving the temporality of graffiti through the permanence of a photograph is a fascinating idea.

Jill Freedman, Family disputes are dangerous for cops, ca. 1978–81

The fact that it’s the woman being held back while the man is carrying the children once again demonstrates the ability of photos to defy prejudice and expectations.

Jeff Mermelstein, Sidewalk (New York City 1997)

This piece had an interesting style. The reflection in her glasses is black and white and more in focus then she is. It kind of reminds me of the phrase that the “eyes are windows to the soul.”

At the MFA, I learned a lot about the photojournalism process: how photos were selected from negatives, by whom, and for what reasons. It was fascinating to see famous photos in the gallery and uncover the stories behind them. I learned that most negative editors were actually women, and this definitely surprised me that females were given such an integral role in the photojournalism process at that time and played a large part in the printing of many well-known images. One such notable instance was Peggy Sargent, responsible for selecting the best negatives from Alfred Eisenstaedt’s photos covering World War II victory celebrations. The fact that she also suggested cropping it to be the way it is now also highlights the major role female negative editors held.

The postulation that this photo was possibly an instance of sexual harassment was even more shocking. And having that fact brought to my attention made me pay attention to details I hadn’t seen before. For instance, that the woman being kissed in this picture seems to be holding a fork pointed straight at the man’s jugular and that the man’s arms appear to be aggressively trapping her head. This part of the exhibit and others like Alexandra Bell’s critiques on implicit bias made me realize the power that images held and how they can be greatly misleading at times.

The exhibit that resonated with me the most was the exhibition photos of the Japanese internment camps during WWII because it struck me as ironic that a majority of the images published were ones depicting civilians that appeared happy and smiling despite being forcibly removed from their homes, locked away, and segregated from the rest of society. The subtle racial bias and even the use of the slur “Japs” in the Life Magazine article published along with these images was also very shocking. The quote “They have everything except liberty” especially saddened me. It was also interesting to observe how the Japanese civilians were able to adjust to their new situation and make the best of it.

In addition, Julia Wachtel’s work critiquing Life Magazine’s “sometimes euphemistic presentation of U.S. ethnic discrimination” was a novelty. Her juxtaposition of the mundane life of the Japanese women and a painting of General MacArthur and her decision to compose certain parts of it into dots were cool to read about.

To be completely honest, I definitely failed to grasp the overarching meaning/theme of this poem and didn’t really understand how the poems themselves related to their respective titles. After reading them, I felt the tone was slightly mournful, reminiscent, anticipatory, and even somewhat calm. The poem itself was full of highly descriptive imagery. However, I could only really form separate images of what was being described and wasn’t able to weave any of them together. The repetitiveness (even across poems) and use of rhetorical questions was able to convey a sense of urgency and confusion, though I’m not sure about what…

This was one of my favorite parts from The Fire Sermon, as I especially love the rhyming and rhythm:

“Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song,

Sweet Thames, run softly, for I speak not loud or long.

But at my back in a cold blast I hear

The rattle of the bones, and chuckle spread from ear to ear.”

James Baldwin’s Notes to a Native Son makes for a somber read as it describes Baldwin’s internal conflicts regarding racism, growing up, and his grief and disappearing hatred for his father. One of my favorite quotes from the text is:

“Hatred, which could destroy so much, never failed to destroy the man who hated and this was an immutable law”

Sebastião Salgado’s willingness to go extreme lengths to photograph the subjects he did astonishes me, and his images are as much saddening as they are horrifying in their depiction of humanity and all its suffering. His passion for immersing himself in his work and sacrificing much of his life for photography is both inspiring, though totally unrelatable. Like the thousands of men willing to brave the ladders of Brazil’s mine in the hopes of striking gold, Salgado was prepared to give up his own life for his career, both literally and metaphorically. Some instances of this included him climbing the same rugged ladders that the Brazilian miners did multiple times daily, abandoning his promising career as an economist for the World Bank, leaving his wife and sons to photograph the world despite being in dangerous situations, and crawling out of the protection of a camp to photoshoot walruses, even with the threat of a polar bear looming on the horizon.

Brassaï was a Hungarian–French photographer known for being the first to document Paris after dark. He primarily shot with a large, fixed lens, 6.5x9 cm Voigtländer Bergheil folding camera mounted on a heavy wooden tripod. Much of his famous work depicts the interplay between light and darkness and uses long exposure estimation techniques. For indoor images, he employed the use of auxiliary lighting composed of exploding flash powder, which produced a softer light than flashbulbs. In addition to photographing urban landscapes, other themes he especially focused on in his night-life images were prostitution, drugs, and homosexuality. This book compiles the best-known images from two of his previous publications, Paris After Dark (1932) and The Secret Pasris of the 30s (1976), which were well-received despite the scandal and censure its themes faced at that time.

Book cover

The mysterious man in a trench coat and the existence of a night-time library caught my eye.

The juxtaposition between the couple and the man sleeping on the bench was especially interesting.

Despite being a reflection, it looks very much like a Greek painting. This effect seemed really cool to me!

Repetition of the “Hotel” signs, the empty road, and eerie lighting creates a mysterious effect.

The shadow manipulation and interplay of light/dark makes for an interesting subject I’d like to explore more.

The fog’s effect on light is fascinating, and I’d love to experiment with this!

The Trip to the Moon by Georges Méliès:

It was interesting to observe how each frame was colored and how much that affected my perception and focus throughout the film. As I watched the film, my eyes seemed to automatically fill in some of the non-colored parts too. The film also cleverly included the use of props, taking advantage of the camera and film’s ability to stop and resume time at will (for example, when the telescopes “magically” became stools or when the umbrella “transformed” into a mushroom). Hearing the video with audio this time made me appreciate a whole other layer that music adds to cinematography. I especially enjoyed the piano music when the astronomers encountered the natives on the moon, as it sounded especially discordant and full of staccato notes. The transitions between scenes were surprisingly smooth too. I also watched small clips of another black and white rendition of the film with a primarily trumpet instrumental, and the feeling was completely different from the colored piano version.

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John Berger, Ways of Seeing:

After having just experienced the very effects movement and sound had on Méliès’ short film, John Berger’s points were especially convincing to me. Personifying the camera as some powerful entity that has replaced the eye and “changed not only what we see, but how we see it” was a refreshing new perspective. Beforehand, I’d never really given thought to how my surroundings affect the images or reproduction of images I see. Oftentimes, I’d be too focused on the picture itself to consciously process the environment around me. But I definitely agree that “[e]verything around the image… confirms and consolidates its meaning,” and I’ve personally experienced this diminishing effect of image uniqueness when browsing Wikipedia or Google. Berger does an amazing job keeping a relatively neutral perspective and exploring both sides of the tradeoff between accessibility and (image/painting) uniqueness.

A small point of disagreement, though: I dispute that the “camera, by making the work of art transmittable, has multiplied [a painting’s] possible meanings and destroyed its unique original meaning”. After all, without firsthand accounts, who is actually privy to what a painting’s “original meaning” is? Even in museums, the art descriptions are speculations made by “art experts”. Instead, I find that regardless of the existence of the camera, all art and images are open to interpretation. There is no one, singular, correct meaning.

Finally, I admit that my favorite parts were when Berger said:

“Because paintings are silent and still, and because their meaning is no longer attached to them but has become transmittable, paintings lend themselves to easy manipulation. They can be used to make arguments or points which may be different, very different, from their original meaning.”

In Magnum’s own website description of its history, it is interesting to note that in addition to the four great photographers who founded the co-operative (Robert Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson, George Rodger and David “Chim” Seymour), a fifth person was briefly namedropped: “Bill Vandivert (an American who had helped found Magnum but soon dropped out)”. After further attempts to research American photographer William Vandivert to discover his justifications for leaving the group, I was barely able to uncover any information. I find this particularly odd, and only managed to discover a brief mention of Vandivert in Nadya Bair’s text, “Their Daily Bread: American Sponsorship and Magnum Photos’ Global Network” (https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/pdfplus/10.1086/694074). Inside, it describes:

“Vandivert, who served as Magnum’s first president, quickly jumped into details of how each photographer, and the operation as a whole, would make money. Photographers would secure an assignment from such publications as Life, Holiday, or Fortune in order to cover their travel expenses to a specific location. After the photographer “does the agreed number of stories or pages for them . . . he shoots as much material as he can on the side, keeping closely in touch with both Paris & New York offices so that we know what he can get . . . the photographer must know what the magazines are interested in, what they are hoping to get, and the agency girls must know at all times what the photographers are up to.”

After reading this, it seemed like the complete opposite to Magnum Photo’s core beliefs:

“It was important for Magnum’s photographers to have this flexibility to choose many of their own stories and to work for long periods of time on them. None of them wanted to suffer the dictates of a single publication and its editorial staff. They believed that photographers had to have a point of view in their imagery that transcended any formulaic recording of contemporary events.”

This makes me speculate that this discrepancy in beliefs is the reason behind Vandivert’s departure from the co-operative. Bearing this in mind, I’m curious about the “rigorous process of self-selection [that photographers undergo now] in order to become full members”. How exactly are these photographers chosen?

Another detail of note was the mention of Maria Eisner and Rita Vandivert as co-founders to the agency as well as the inclusion of Inge Bondi, Barbara Miller, Rosellina Bischof, and Inge Morath in the 1957 photo of Magnum’s annual meeting. I find it astonishing to note the involvement of women so early on in the co-operative and am interested to learn more about their roles and treatment in the agency. Were they disrespected or subject to constant prejudice? And is this just Magnum’s attempts to appear more inclusive? Seeing the current list of photographers in Magnum Photos, I’m interested in what steps the co-operative has taken to diversify its members.

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Due to my interest in non-Western photographers, I chose to introduce Chien-Chi Chang. A Taiwanese American born in 1961 and influenced by his experiences as an immigrant, his photography explores the themes of alienation, connection, hope, darkness, restriction and freedom. Some significant events he has witnessed include the Rohingya genocide in Myanmar, the European refugee crisis, the war in Ukraine, and the Hong Kong democracy protests. Other subjects he has documented include the lives of North Korean defectors and Chinese immigrants in New York.

Chien-Chi Chang Satellite dishes on a Chinatown rooftop provide a direct connection to the opera/news back in China. New York City. USA. 2017. © Chien-Chi Chang | Magnum Photos

Chien-Chi Chang Chinese opera posters decorate a bubble tea shop in Chinatown. New York City. USA. 2017 © Chien-Chi Chang | Magnum Photos

Chien-Chi Chang Video still from Chien-Chi Chang's 'Burma-The Promise Betrayed'. © Chien-Chi Chang | Magnum Photos

Chien-Chi Chang Cross-shaped posts carrying telephone wires edge a bunker on the Tumen River. Soldiers here are ordered to shoot anyone trying to sneak in or out of North Korea. North Korea. 2007. © Chien-Chi Chang | Magnum Photos

Chien-Chi Chang Darkness settles over the Mekong River, providing cover for North Koreans who slip over in boats from Laos to Thailand. Thailand. 2008. © Chien-Chi Chang | Magnum Photos