Photo 1 Spring 2020

Wenjing Liu

One day, my mom sent me a picture of a blanket I have been using since I was five years old. I found it odd that I can vividly feel its tactile sensation by just looking at the image —— the fabric is so smooth and the fringe is so soft. I remembered that I had to touch that fringe every night before I went to sleep. Unconsciously, I tried to touch it. But it was the screen of the phone that my fingers came into contact. Technology products seem to be the things that I touch the most everyday. 

Since the outbreak of the pandemic, we can’t touch a lot of things. I started to notice what I can touch, what I cannot. I hope to observe the act of touching and record the tactile sensation that we ignore, forget or take for granted.

https://kekebolthouse.wixsite.com/mysite

My friend committed suicide when I was 16. Since then, I have tried to grow up as fast as I could: to leave that pain behind. Now I am 19, wishing I could slow down time. Distance from the hardest times in my life has left me time and space to truly appreciate them. Through this final project I have collected old memories from some of the hardest times in my life to appreciate their beauty, so I can move into adulthood without regretting my adolescence. With these memories of times of pain, there are photographs taken more recently that represent my transition from adolescence to adulthood. The photos are arranged to tell a cyclical story of my teenage years. Because of this, my photos are not differentiated or ordered by time period in my life. I realized that I cannot detach myself from the pain I experienced when I was 16. I tried to grow up very quickly and leave behind what I saw to be childish but through this collection of photographs, I have realized that those moments deserve a spot in my memory. This project has allowed me to finally romanticize my adolescence, giving me a chance to properly grow up.

One late Monday night, I stood outside the Roosevelt Island subway station waiting for the shuttle bus to arrive and take me home. I get a message from my boss. It read: ‘Don’t come in tomorrow.’ COVID-19 was just starting its rampage on New York City, but I was too exhausted and drained to realize the implications, so I sighed in relief. Little did I know that that would be the last day I left Roosevelt Island for the next two months.

In the midst of the pandemic, I constantly look outside my window to see how the rest of Roosevelt Island is doing. Life has surely become more lonely, but has not stopped for these residents. I see the same skinny man running, the same mother walking with her two kids, the same old lady folding laundry from the building across. Everyone is coping differently, and my photos attempt to capture that. In contrast to that, I wanted to explore how the island itself has responded. Locations once filled with life are now abandoned, desolate, and wrapped in restrictive tape. 

The last photo of the sequence is the only one I took from my window. A man sitting in the grass alone under the shade of the trees. He is covered in darkness, but the bright sunlight surrounds him and is leaking through the tree branches. I’d like to think of that as a metaphor for what our story will be. 

(Had to scan negatives using my DSLR and a backlight, so the quality is not great)

I took this photo in Chinatown. My initial goal going downtown was to capture how COVID-19 was affecting Asian businesses, as I heard there was racial discrimination going on (this was early-March). What I saw was the same old Chinatown, uninterrupted whatsoever. So I adopted a street photography style and started walking around rapidly and snapping shots of people as quick as possible so they couldn’t react. When I came across this man bending over and leaning on this railing, I stopped. His posture struck me. It hurt me almost. I snapped the photo, looked at him unsure of what to do, and left. When I look at this photo, I can’t help but wonder if I made a mistake. Could I have helped? He never made a sound, in fact he barely moved. It’s a mysterious moment that I wanted to share. 

Gregory Crewdson was born in Brooklyn, NY in 1962. Growing up, Crewdson was interested in multiple forms of art. He played in a punk rock band as a teenager. He was inspired by works in literature, painting, and film that involved themes of typical American life. His first exposure to photography was at the age of ten; a Diane Arbus retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art. While photography was still seen as a hobby to him earlier on, he carried it into his education and received a bachelor’s and master’s degree in photography from SUNY-Purchase College and Yale University, respectively. From there, his career quickly took off with his Natural Wonder series (1992-1997) being featured in a 1991 exhibition at the MoMA. Crewdson’s work is often in the form of tableaus, and showcases moments in ordinary, American, middle-class neighborhoods. Artists such as Edward Hopper or Alfred Hitchcock can be seen as influences on his work, as the elaborate lighting setups and precise blocking resemble that of a painting or shot in a film. 

One of Crewdson’s most famous bodies of work is “Beneath the Roses.” The collection includes 20 digital chromogenic large-scale prints, and is a good representation of his artistic style, as well as his process. The pictures were taken across multiple years ranging from 2001 to 2005. The scope of the project was quite large, as is the case with most of his projects. He worked with a full production team with some photos taken in a studio soundstage and others on location in anonymous towns or forests. In post-production, Crewdson pushes the photo even further with state-of-the-art digital composting and special effects. What results are still images that can be quite cinematic in a sense. Take Untitled (2004) for example. A man in a suit stands outside of his car with his hand out as heavy downpour fills the shot. The rain glows as it is illuminated by street lamps. Knowing Crewdson’s production-styled process, we can infer some technical aspects about the photo. It was most likely taken on location, as many of Crewdson’s exterior shots are, but the lights and rain are surely manufactured. In production stills, Crewdson’s crew can be seen using large lights mounted on cranes. Furthermore, his production budget is known to be comparable to that of a small movie production. Aside from the technical, Crewdson is able to culminate all of those elements to capture unique, storytelling moments. The man stands there stunned with his briefcase outside of his opened car, yet his facial expression is suppressed, the town is anonymous, the time period is unknown. To me, Crewdson creates these fictional frames to start a story, but never go further than that. They remain mysterious, which ironically creates a sense of reality to them. This fictional realism is one of many paradoxes that Crewdson implements in his work. Another being the dramatic in the mundane. Untitled (2001) features a naked woman standing in the middle of her bedroom.She stares at the floor, her body cast with harsh shadows. Another person’s feet rest on the bed behind her. The mirror reveals her solemn facial expression. Again, there is an ambiguity to the moment. What is she thinking about? What’s the state of the relationship between her and the person on the bed? These questions are begged from Crewdson’s intentions. The subtle tilt of her head, her spotlight-like shadow that strangely illuminates her, her straight, stiff posture. It adds much more to the otherwise non-noteworthy moment. When I view this image, I feel scared for this woman. She seems trapped; a hostage of some sort. When looking for a reason why, my eye naturally trails to the feet on the bed. Every intention of Crewdson’s creates a visual filled with fantasy and fiction, yet it shows a moment that feels hauntingly real.

“Sanctuary” was Crewdson’s first project produced outside the United States. He described the project as a means of challenging the established traditions in his photography style, and that is prevalent in the technical aspects alone. The project consists of forty-one black and white digitally taken photographs with minimal reworking. Additionally, the scope of the project was much smaller. The images are without human presence, rather they feature abandoned outdoor film sets. At first glance, it seems like the complete opposite of his past work and especially “Beneath the Roses.” Untitled (08), 2009 shows an abandoned Rome film set. The structures in the background are deteriorating, revealing the scaffolding. The foreground frames the image within two walls and the back of an arching sign. The walls look roughened up, the vegetation on the floor overgrown, and the overwhelming mist creates an eerie mood. In contrast to Crewdson’s past work, there is very little control Crewdson has over this photo aside from the camera settings. It feels more so documentary than anything else. Yet, it does not stray away entirely from “Beneath the Roses.” Still, Crewdson works with “reality and fiction, nature and artifice, and beauty and decay” (Crewdson). Rather than instill fiction in real moments, in “Sanctuary” he is capturing real images of film sets, a location based in fiction. It speaks to his mastery and skill that he is able to apply such themes and paradoxes to a wide variety of subjects and styles. In Untitled (17), 2009, Crewdson captures an alleyway framed beautifully with a dramatic beam of light running through the center. It feels very much abandoned and without human life. The umbrella and ropes droop down, the walls are peeling. From a visual standpoint, it does not resemble Crewdson’s work at all. Still, Crewdson is able to find some sort of beauty in the decaying state of this location. Personally, it does not excite me as much as a typical Crewdson photo might that was taken in an anonymous town or suburb. Alone, it feels too simple, and as a body of work, it feels monotonous. 

Gregory Crewdson has proven his wide range of styles, but his strengths lie in his storytelling. His ability to create an inkling of narrative, enough to draw an audience, while still creating a moment that feels vividly real is one that allows for his style to work and more importantly elevate his photos. 

Bibliography:

https://gagosian.com/exhibitions/2010/gregory-crewdson-sanctuary/

https://gagosian.com/exhibitions/2005/gregory-crewdson-beneath-the-roses/

https://www.thebroad.org/art/gregory-crewdson

https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/artist/gregory-crewdson

https://www.icp.org/browse/archive/constituents/gregory-crewdson?all/all/all/all/0

ARTIST STATEMENT

Extensive isolation and idle time made it painfully clear to me that even after five years in therapy, I am still resentful of my parents for my upbringing. On March 20th of 2020, in the middle of my last semester of college and just nine days after my twenty-second birthday, my parents drove me into the city to help me move out of my West Village dorm and back home to Queens. The early move was mandatory for all students as an emergency measure to flatten the curve of the COVID-19 virus. This I feel was the premature end of my life as a college student, and my facade as a Manhattanite. Truthfully, I couldn’t pull it off much longer. My head spun as I walked home in excruciating heels from hotel bars I couldn't afford. I felt much like one of my favorite fabulous women from Sex and the City but with none of the glamour. As a child, I would wait till everyone fell asleep to sneak into the living room and watch the show on a low volume, curled up in front of the boxy television. I have loved those women since I was ten, but trying to be like them was wearing me out.

The suffocating conditions of quarantine are exacerbating my neuroses. The panic attacks I have in the shower are a cruel, private reminder that I am the product of an estranged father and a narcissistic mother. This is probably why I am a writer. When I am a good writer, this is probably why. I am starving. I am a starving artist. Not dirt poor, no. Starved for attention, security, validation, love. Throughout all of college, I've been walking across a tightrope trying to convey through my art that mental illness is not romantic, and yet that sadness is my most profound grounding emotion. An assigned final project for my Photography I course was a welcome deterrent from over-indulgence in my own sadness and brokenness. I think I've made it across that tightrope.

I started by picking out old cherished toys of mine, desecrating them, and photographing it. In doing so, I wanted to portray bitterness towards my own childhood and the loneliness I feel until today because of it. I took inspiration from Lauren Semivan, Francesca Woodman, and Anna Gaskell, particularly her Wonder series. Across all of these photographers, I was intrigued by the ambiguity of time in their work and the absence of presence even in photos depicting someone physically there. To achieve the same in my work, I staged photographs in generic settings with no era-specific technology, landmarks, or events that indicate the passage of time. The photos are mostly taken within my parents’ house, or within the not so well-known neighborhood that it’s located in. Objects within the background that could potentially inform time are non-informative. The potted plants do not appear to grow throughout the photos, and the chess game ceases to progress once I step on the board.

When photographing people, I made sure to mostly exclude faces. My own face only appears once and it is obscured. This is my only confrontation with viewers, that someone is truly there and though she can be seen, she is not recognized nor acknowledged. For the most part, the subject in these photos is enveloped by the emptiness of the space. In events where another person is needed, they are not there. The doll appears to swing by itself. A subject plays chess by herself. The single interaction between the doll and a human is not playful and friendly, it’s abusive. The observed interaction between a mom and her son crossing the street also doesn’t feel friendly, it’s hasty and voyeuristic. I shot a variety of ground-level, high-angle, and low-angle photographs to create a sense of disorientation akin to what Alice from Alice in Wonderland might see between her phases of shrinking and growing. In a more realistic sense, it is unclear whether the point-of-view is that of a child or an adult.

Shooting these photos in black and white film and then developing in a darkroom felt appropriate for the intimacy of the subject. I wanted to be able to interact with these photographs through touch. Touching the rinsed photos with my hands, I felt a sense of gentleness towards them and perhaps a newfound gentleness towards myself. I am worth my salt as an artist. I am worth it. I found it charming how rebelliously the fiber prints curled. My mother’s voice rang in my ear, and I almost uttered to them “You never do what I tell you.” The process of setting up a makeshift darkroom in my parents’ basement to make this project possible was also in of itself a meaningful experience. Prior to the set-up, my mother told me about how my father acquired darkroom supplies in Poland, but had to abandon them prior to immigrating to the US without ever printing a single photo. Through setting up my own darkroom, I feel I have somehow connected to my father unbeknownst to him, and vicariously fulfilled his artistic endeavor. 

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Yansen Wang

The story begins with an ordinary point. When there is enough energy to ignite it, it becomes a gateway to a world, and people inside started their adventure. They are not content to be confined by darkness. They tried to break through the barrier of flame. But when they get close enough to the edge of the flame, they are swallowed up by the darkness. I can only watch quietly at the gateway of the flame. I can not touch, but I can look into the distance, like I look out of the window of the day. When the final flame burns out, it all comes back to that simple point.

Views, 24 Floors Up

Zhenyi Li

As an international student, I stuck in New York due to this pandemic. I can’t go out. I have to stay at home. I live my life with a routine. The only thing changing is the view outside my window. By chance, I have a 400mm telephoto with me, which gives me a sense that I am observing people from the perspective of God. Thus, observing the people from 24 floors up becomes one of my guilty pleasures (they don’t know they are observed and photographed when I doing this) during my quarantine.

Safe Trip Back Home

I constantly moved and tried to find a place to settle down in the past 2 months. The last two month is all about packing, unpacking, and traveling with my packages while avoiding crowds of people. Finally, I was trapped in an apartment in Stuyvesant town which I would call it shelter rather than home. Everything is pretty strange here — a new community, a new bed, and a new roommate. But what’s more strange is that I found solace in this strange place. I start to feel a sense of peace in doing simple things that I’ve never bothered to do back in normal days, like feeding squirrels from my window or looking into sky for hours. As much as the change of my schedule is the change of my state of mind—from extreme panic at the very beginning of the virus outbreak, to gradually accept the fact that I couldn’t go home, to now even start to enjoy the life under quarantine. 

Similar to the little things I did in the apartment, when I went out shooting in Stuyvesant town, I aimed my camera at the dailiness of everyday life. Maybe it’s because the very ordinary moments becomes unordinary in this special period of time. Or maybe it’s because pain makes me more sensitive to the warm and lovely moments in my life. Anyway, I feel like the moments that I usually ignored matters a lot to me at this period of time. Though I didn’t intend to, the majority of the photos I took are about family and home. Watching people staying with their family reminds me of me once staying with my own family.It gives me a sense of belongingness when I see something familiar from the strangers. It’s something that I’m familiar with, something stable in this world full of risks and unpredictabilities. 

The challenge is that I have to keep distance with people while shooting. I don’t want to disturb people and I couldn’t ask for their permission because of the virus, so basically I pressed the shutter and run away before they noticed me. This was definitely a challenge for me who only have experiences in shooting staged objects. Black cap, black sunglasses, and black masks, I felt like a paparazzi when I held the Sony DSL, sneaked around, took photos in seconds, and run away. Luckily, I have a 70mm lens which allows me to shoot from relatively far away. That’s why most of the photos have a shallow depth of field. Later, I edited them into black and white to make them more documentary-style. I like it black and white because b&w looks pure and solemn. And without the distraction of colors, it can better underline the theme/content of the photos. This is in conformity with my idea to show the little important moments that are likely to be ignored back in normal days. Being isolated and keeping away from normal life actually gives me lots of time and space to see clearly what really matters in my life that I had ignored before. 

As I got used to this strange place and even treated it as my new home, I was notified that the flight to Shanghai that I bought was the only flight not cancelled. So I packed once again. Now I was in a hotel out of nowhere in Shanghai alone because, based on local policy, all the international travelers are required to isolate for at least 14 days in the landing city before one can go home. The very last photo in my project shows the view out of window right now. It feels both familiar and strange to me because Shanghai is not far away from my hometown Beijing but has very different architecture style than Beijing. And the black and white gives it a nostalgic feeling.Though I still don’t make it home, I don’t feel anxious at this point. I want the photo to show the sense of peacefulness. This is probably because home is not a specific place for me any more but wherever my heart settles. 

As self-quarantine goes on, it is a great regret that I am stuck in my apartment and cannot put my hands on shooting anymore especially when your phone camera was broken as well. Window is my only platform for keeping in touch with the outside. I enjoyed sitting beside it and looking out on a rainy day. Therefore, when professor suggested me to stay creative by making a video project, I immediately came up with this idea of making a photographical video for this song called “Warm on a cold night” by Honne. Even though I am photographically restricted by many factors, I am glad that I was able to make this video through other photographers’ eyes as if they helped me finish this project together. I tried to find images that have the elements like rainy nights, late night driving, cold and empty views of cities, and people you love, based on either the lyrics or the vibe that the song gave me and matching them with the tempo of the song to emphasize the feeling. Combined with professor’s advice, I learned to connect the song with some photographical techniques, such as the chilling vibe and majestic feeling of the song with pictures of slow film speed. I want to relate this project with both physical and mental loneliness as well as any other suffer that people may be experiencing as they quarantine at home. I truly hope everyone can be with the one that can keep them warm on a cold night. 

Artist Statement: 

I’ve always found stillness disturbing. It’s always left me with this creeping feeling, like time had stopped. And that everything that was ever going to happen, had already happened. And that there was nothing left.

I find it almost perverse how the world around me has made itself look how I am currently feeling. Cold, grey, disjointed. What a sick cosmic joke. Though, I cannot dispute the impeccable comedic timing.

When I first saw my photographs, I was mesmerized. Images I had shot just days prior had somehow aged decades in the space between when the film was exposed and when it was developed. As if the camera was aware of the pervasive, inescapable melancholy of the world we currently live in and chose to capture it accordingly. Like distant memories of the present.

Maybe time really is nonlinear then – memory certainly is. And if the present could feel so far away, then why couldn’t the reverse also be true?

This series is an exploration of the memories that are always with us - that image that is spontaneously, unconsciously conjured up in your mind’s eye upon seeing something else. The kinship between two entirely separate experiences that when placed next to each other reveal a new truth that alone neither could conceive of.

-David Orlando

Below are a selection of spreads from a larger photobook.

WARMTH

These images were taken when I was unexpectedly in my hometown of West Palm Beach, Florida for two months just before graduating college. These couple of months might have also been my last in this town, as my family is moving at the end of the summer. I felt a collision of thoughts and emotions that I did not realize until looking back on these photos. Nostalgia and uncertainty. Empty and stifled. Appreciative and ungrateful. Connectedness and transitions.

When choosing images to put together, I saw the tension between emotions reflected in the different photos I was drawn to. Despite the conflict that arose, I ultimately felt at ease. Recognizing the chaos of the past, present, and future meant I was understanding more about these transitions in my life. I felt a moment of comfort and warmth.

“Empty” by Zach Zhang

I first started photographing this project when I went out to shop for some foods the first time after New York shut down. Having lived in Hell’s Kitchen for the past two years, I noticed something that I have never seen before, the whole Times Square area is so empty. There were barely cars on the street and people could even cross the street with their heads down. Lots of billboards were blank (though they soon were replaced by some other billboards a few weeks later) and Times Square is not as shiny as before. So I started to record this empty city in this pandemic and to show this particular NYC that others have never seen.

However, during my shooting, I found that New Yorkers have not simply disappeared. Some places are empty now, but some places are still relatively crowded. I think maybe it reveals what things are really essential to us, what things we must do even under this life-threatening situation. I have been to more parks than I ever did in the past two years in NYC. I have seen more sunsets near my home than I ever did in my lifetime. Enjoying the sunshine, the nature, the sea breeze, the fresh air, these are certainly repetitive things but I still do them whenever I get a chance. Maybe it reminds us what we should not forget about life after this pandemic has passed. The city might be empty now, but life is certainly not.

“House Portrait”- Sarah Jane’s Final This project is a portrait of my childhood home. Returning from New York City, reintroduction to my house in the New England suburbs felt odd. My body’s presence in the space felt alien having learned so much elsewhere over the past few years. As if what I learned here was far away from who I am now. I couldn’t help but feel that the house’s architecture now seems significant of an undeniable colonial history and violence. As I ponder the existence of this structure on the land it’s built on, I ponder my own body’s existence in my home.  I am conflicted by these feelings and my love and gratitude for my home. This turmoil of feeling caught between history and memory creates a dark and somber lens through which I created these images.  

When we would get a clear day and the sun began to lower in the sky, the light in the house would shift, showcasing it’s worn planes and niches. The fleeting nature of the filtered light reminded me of how sacred a moment in space can be, and became a way for me to interact and reconnect to this home. 

My parents are going to renovate this house in a few months. Each image holds a space I’ve seen too many times to count, and will miss dearly. 

My Own Apophenia is a series of photographic diptychs that I took of my personal experience during the pandemic outbreak of COVID-19 and architectural studies taken over the years during the time I lived or explored in different countries.

I temporarily moved together with my boyfriend to his parents’ house in Bound Brook, New Jersey, after the city of New York became the epicenter of the COVID-19 in the United States. It has been almost ten years since I lived together with my own parents. From late March to May, by spending most of the time indoors with another family, I experienced homesickness, emotional outbursts, and the feeling of being loved all at the same time. With activities being greatly restricted and emotions being dramatically amplified, I felt not only grateful more than usual to the family but also a wistful longing to be back in the world.

I started to document my daily life during this unique time—what I saw, how I felt, what I imagined—, I made countless connections between unrelated scenes, objects and space, which all came together in this photo book. All the photographs were taken with a digital camera, converted to black and white in order to keep the pure shape, texture and chiaroscuro echoed in my memories. My intent, by making dynamic visual triggers of connections through which memories are activated, is to extend the meaning of all the scenes, bridge the emotions attached to them, and to trigger new perceptions in a divergent context.

This project is a representation of my own version of apophenia—a space of the connection between unrelated scenes, of the limbo between what I will remember of the present and what I have experienced from the past.