Fortune Cookie Assignment

My fortune cookie saying was “It is better to stay and fight than to run away”. I chose this picture because the point of view is behind the tree almost as if that person were hiding from the rest of the landscape, which is dominated by an imposing mountain. The viewer is (hopefully) ready to conquer her/his fears, step out from behind the tree and face the obstacles ahead.  

Sense of Self

For my sense of self project I wanted to do silhouettes to emphasize feelings of agoraphobia. I wear my favorite vintage clothing because it too seems to rarely see the light of day. The rest of the pictures can be viewed here.   

Iraqi Women's Photo Stories

This movie about the creation of photo stories takes place at first in Damascus, Syria where a group of 30 or so women learn to use a digital camera and begin experimenting with them by taking lots of pictures of everything they encountered. They also created these life journey picture board things and the women had very tragic as well as very touching backgrounds. Some were struggling with growing up in a worn-torn region; a fear of the inevitable seems to grip them constantly. Others had painful stories about marriage, children, being kidnapped for ransom and other forms of violence. The women told their stories with a surprising amount of grace and control.

Seeing the women try and ‘figure out’ photography – not how it works per se but how it sends a message or a feeling - was very interesting especially when they stopped to talk about a picture of a little girl whom they felt had been exploited. Some felt the photographer exploited her by taking her picture but others saw a deeper pain, exploitation from elsewhere in her young life. The actual little girl in the video had impressive insight for her age regarding her own photography project. In her choosing to “laugh instead of cry” sends a message of wisdom beyond her years.  

The video definitely helped me learn not only about personal histories and photography but also about women on the ‘other side’. It would be impossible for me not to feel empathy but at the same time grateful that I have grown up in relative safety and without this oppressive atmosphere of death and fear surrounding me.  

Sense of Place

For my sense of place project, I was inspired by the Surrealist movement. L'Ange du Foyer by Max Ernst was the main work I wanted to emulate through photography. The featured photo is of the Star Flyer ride in Germany during Oktoberfest. See the rest of the series here.  

Personal Paradigm Shift

When I was 19, I had a life changing experience that affected my perspective on the world. It was around Christmastime that my grandfather Ken passed way after spending four days in a coma. He had fallen in the upstairs library and hit his head on the marble table. It was sudden and traumatic. No one told my dad (it was his father) that he had passed for almost a week after it happened. Apparently, because of things my dad had done in his adolescence, we (he & his family) did not deserve the information. The “things” my dad had done includes lightheartedly making fun of his older sister throughout childhood, being a liberal and overall being human. My dad was always the black sheep in the family but he did not deserve that and it changed my view on people. No one is sorry. I have not seen or spoken to grandmother in almost three years. She does not care, though so I suppose it’s ok. I called my aunt the C-word to her face. She said horrible things, too but no one cares about that. My dad tries to laugh about it but I still cry about it. 

Letter To Myself

Dear Me,
This is ok.

Narrating the Self

           The article Narrating The Self by Elinor Ochs and Lisa Capps examines the personal history of an individual from the perspective of linguistics, which includes language and storytelling. The activity of narrating brings meaning and conjoins various aspects of the self, which are separated by time, environmental factors, the psyche, our individual concept of right and wrong, etc. It is also a way for an individual to compromise her expectations and her experience.                

            My overall view of the article is that it was a bit wordy but interesting anyway. I found most intriguing, regarding my own personal narrative, the writer’s words on silence. “Silencing is a product of internal and interactional forces in that a person may repress and suppress emotions and events, but these processes are linked to external circumstances, including others’ expectations and evaluations. Silencing takes many forms, most of which do not lead to severe psychopathy” (32-33). Silencing myself from photographs most of the time is probably not psychologically detrimental to me nor does it represent a deeper issue.

           The idea of the personal narrative relates to photography in that the individual (photographer and/or subject) shapes the ‘telling’ of her story (photograph). The same things that shape her linguistic narrative shape the characteristics of her photographic perspective. The photograph has a sense of permanence – tangible - over storytelling. The manifestations of perspective into the photograph can convey a sequence of events, such as a childhood, that usually carries a coherent mythos consistent to that of the verbal narrative. Yet, we have ways of hiding our narrative from others, even from ourselves. Other times, our narrative only becomes apparent in retrospect. Even other times, outsiders are keener to our personal narrative than we are because they provide an unobstructed objective perspective.   

            The writer spoke briefly about the way artists use narrative that “unsettles status quo principles of a genre” (29). I can think of this being a significant proponent of Modernism in art, literature and performance where the avant-gardes turned the middle class on its head. The list of the movements (almost every one from late nineteenth to the 1960’s) include Impressionism, Dadaism, everything Picasso did, Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism, etc, etc. Artists love the idea of confronting an audience with their narrative and the stronger the reaction, the better.