Well I have to say that this week has to be the most depressing one I’ve had in this class. We focused on photography, and photography always leaves me depressed. Photography is very powerful, but for some odd reason, only the powerfully devastating images are embedded in my mind. And as I expected most of the things I saw this week were depressing- gut wrenching in some cases.
Craig Hickman was our guest speaker for this week. He specializes in photography. I have to be honest; I did not like how he presented. He did not have a slide show and so he relied on the internet. It was hard for me to follow him since his transitions were abrupt and I didn’t really get a good grasp on the topic. However, Hickman showed us many photographs that I found very interesting. One that really stood out was the picture of the twin girls by Diane Arbus. "Identical Twins, 1967" was a photo by Arbus that was so captivating. There is just something uncanny about it and I can’t place a finger on it. When I look at this piece I get a feeling of discomfort. The girls look you dead in the eye and they have that expression that says “Yeh… the coffee you’re sipping… Yeh we peed in it.” The discomfort I’m feeling is what draws me closer to this picture, I can stare at it for hours.
What I learned from Craig’s presentation was something’s don’t have to be explained. He just bombarded us with an array of photos. Not having something explained by someone else makes me conceive my own opinions effectively. For example, I may hate a piece of art but then someone comes along and makes sense out of it and suddenly it’s a masterpiece in my eyes. I think that I was manipulated to share the same views as the person explaining. So Craig gave me the freedom to like or dislike many of the pieces he displayed.
Errol Morris talks about this more about this in his blog. The explanation or the caption to a picture really has an effect on how one views an image. In midst of the blog, Morris describes photo’s presented by Colin Powell to justify the war on Iraq. My first impressions of the photos was that they seemed something from the military and they were unclear. There were captions labeling things in the photo with words like “decontamination vehicle” and “chemical munitions bunker.” I instantly get a feeling of panic and red flags shot up. As I scrolled down, the captions changed to “International House of Pancakes” which made me laugh. Instantly, I went from a state of discomfort to a state of joy. “I’m not an aerial intelligence expert. I could be looking at anything. It is the labels, the captions, and the surrounding text that turn the images from one thing into another.” This made a lot of sense to me and it explained how I felt. Morris goes on to say, “But I do know that the yellow captions influence how we see the pictures. “Chemical Munitions Bunker” is different from “Empty Warehouse” which is different from “International House of Pancakes.” The image remains the same but we see it differently.” This is echoed by Craig Hickman’s presentation, if Craig explained the photographs I’m sure I would have had a different opinion about them. As humans, we are emotionally sensitive. It’s funny how a few fabricated words can justify war.
Moving on towards to more depressing issues, our artist of the week is Alfredo Jaar. Looking through his work I can see that it is about society and politics. His work titled “The Rwanda Project” is one that really grabbed me by the throat. It consisted of 21 pieces that took him six years to make; and they all failed. He says “basically, when we say one million dead, it’s meaningless. So the strategy was to reduce the scale to a single human being with a name, a story. That helps the audience to identify with that person.” I totally agree with him. Numbers are meaningless. Open today’s news paper, some thousand people reported dead, another hundred died in another tragedy. I just got immune to it. I know it seems heartless but every time you watch the news and every time you turn a newspaper page it smeared with blood. I got used to it. But when I hear something happen to a single person, it’s something different, I sympathize with that person. I feel sorrow towards them. It is kind of like how Errol Morris stated “You don’t need sophisticated digital photo-manipulation. You don’t need a computer. All you need to do is change the caption.” In this case, Jaar decided to manipulate the public’s emotion by focusing on a single person rather than a large number of people. Jaar’s piece “The Silence of Nduwayezu” is about a boy who watched his parents get murdered with a machete. I don’t know what to say. I don’t know how to react. This is really hard to express. I think Jaar did a good a job in communicating what he has to say. He created a mound of one million slides of Nduwayezu’s eyes, and his eyes do the talking. The mound as a whole can be seen as a single work. The dark ambience makes me see it as accumulation of sin, of blood, and death. I tried comparing this with Craig’s photo’s but Jaar’s is way too serious while Craig’s is more curious and innocent.
Now I think it’s my turn to share some images that have been burned into my eyes. Whenever the subject matter is mentioned, the corresponding image manifests in my head. Let’s start early, 1989 in Tiananmen Square. A massacre occurred there where large number of people were slaughtered. The corresponding image would be the famous Tank Man. All I can say is “damn the dude has balls of steel.” A very inspiring image indeed. A few decades later, Palestine, A boy throws rocks at a tank. Let me say that again, a boy throwing pebbles at gagillion ton, man-squashing, shell-shooting tank. I don’t know where to start. What the hell is the photographer doing? Why isn’t he getting that kid to safety? Why is that tank going to kill a little kid? What is the kid thinking?! I don’t know what to say or how to react! So many questions not enough answers. Finally, December 17, 2010, Tunisia, a man lit himself. A response to the oppressive Tunisian government. His actions ignited a revolution, forcing the Tunisian president to go into exile. This revolution ignited the Egyptian protests going on right now. A man lighting himself on fire, changed the lives of millions of people. 
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Great engagement with the topic and materials, nicely done!
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