Hi Folks, sorry for the delay, but here is the link to my final project page. Also, I totally forgot to post this, but my portraits are also on a separate page which I have also linked here. Thanks for a great semester! - Jan Alex
My parents taught me that the mysteries and curiosities of life live in the most ordinary of places. Seeking for those corners, cracks and slivers is the mission I’ve been assigned since birth.
Through black and white digital photography, embracing the mistakes of traditional film practices, accompanied by the wonderful nonsense of Lewis Carroll’s Jabberwocky, our brave warrior ventures through the myths bestowed upon her, and imagination ripples into the world that surrounds her. Fantasy is proven to be a reality through this collection of photographs that explores the fascinations of a child's mind, one that seeks dreams and nightmares and claims them as treasures.
I enjoy nature. I could spend the whole day just sitting next to a tree, sometimes reading, sometimes watch people passing by. I believe in animism, which suggests that everything in our world is a living soul. Like in the movies by Hayao Miyazaki, all things become elves, and the viewers enjoy the personality and behaviours of the individuals of objects. For me, various things could be seen as human beings with distinct personalities, trees and plants specifically. And there are different interactions between human beings and natural lives; I started to pay attention and document the impacts between the two. Very depressing, there are just too much evidence show me that how we, as human, invade nature and take its space and try to manipulate them. It is extremely suffocating to see the tree I just touched last week was cut down simply because it was ugly.
I utilized a digital camera to capture the natural lives in a park that I am familiar with and focus on the effects of human activities on them, either how human are interact with the nature or how they try to control it. Along with the idea, the plants' gestures and figures are captured to show the elegance of the natural world and my intimacy and wonder to nature. From the photos, different interactions between me/human beings and the natural world are shown objectively, and the solace, warmth, and emotions from nature. The whole project is just like my diary that record my day in the park and what I see and how I feel. The colour photo of the first part of the project was to show the liveness and the power of the nature, then the sudden transfer to the black and white, which is to give a despair and hopelessness atmosphere.
Wonderer, sleepwalker, imagineer.
I have been taught by my parents that the mysteries and curiosities of life live in the most ordinary of places. Seeking for those corners, cracks and slivers is the mission I’ve been assigned since birth.
Through black and white digital photography, embracing the mistakes of traditional film practices, accompanied by the wonderful nonsense of Lewis Carroll’s Jabberwocky, our brave warrior ventures through the myths bestowed upon her, and imagination ripples into the world that surrounds her. Fantasy is proven to be a reality through this collection of photographs that explores the fascinations of a child's mind, one that seeks dreams and nightmares and claims them as treasures.
Reflections on Identity is a work sharing what it feels like to be an Asian American woman in this day and age. As an Asian American woman myself, I spent much of the past year looking back on how my identity has shaped my experiences, and further how they have shaped my identity. In media, I often see myself falling into preexisting categories—the nerdy Asian kid, the hypersexualized bitchy side character, the weird guy in the corner. The conversations I have with people in my life about identity are private, something to be hidden. Asian American issues are so often brushed over as imagined or trivial, but they have had a real impact on the way most of us move through life. This project is a way to subvert the smallness and submission that Asian Americans, and especially women, are pigeonholed into.
In approaching these photos, I wanted to capture the humanity, the ordinariness of these women. The way they hold themselves, how they choose to dress, what they do with their time, how they fill a space. 35mm color film felt like the right medium—this feeling of capturing a moment as it happens, but with a layer of intentionality and slowness to make each photo have a little more gravity, to cause lingering for a little longer. The images are bright and colorful, and the subjects interact and hold eye contact with the camera; it is humanizing and helps removes this first glance impression of just “Asian” that often comes from the outsider’s perspective. These are real women with their own lives and interests, and these images serve to capture that individual human identity.
At the same time, the text provides a layer of what it means to be Asian American. “Colorblindness” is not the aim, personal identity is. Some of the accounts are reflections on specifically Asian American experiences, and some of them are just reflections on life. For these women, those are one and the same. In talking about life, one’s identity is crucial in shaping those experiences and perspectives, and therefore fundamental to the conversation.
Ultimately, my hope is that these photos and images work together to provide a connection between the viewer and the subject and break a barrier of conversation that still exists today. These women beautiful, multidimensional humans where being Asian American women is an essential part of their identity—not all of it, but not to be ignored, either. They are soft and reflective, but strong and bold, and every aspect is worth being seen and embraced, wholeheartedly and in spite of anyone forcing them to be smaller.
Walking on the stone arch bridge, I am not far away from the pavilion. It was always a humid afternoon, when the breeze, mixed with the smell of herbal flavor and chat on a boat going far, guides me in the direction as usual. Two trees volunteered to be the natural frame. A tranquil photograph in the best angle I could gain.
Then, there comes the pavilion, with a wooden bridge welcoming my visit. It is a two-floor building. Eaves are traditional Chinese styles. The stone and woods used are quite old. From nine hundred years ago, it has been standing in the shades of the trees around. As I head up, the sky and light outline her plain but gentle-looking, and a sense of cultural identity is conveyed through the historical atmosphere—I belong to here. I know it affirmatively.
It is a watery city I live. And such kind of pavilion is quite necessary. Every rainy day or a relaxing afternoon, after school, I would walk by and have a sit. Resting inside, I feel hugged. The glasses around always bring the sound of a rhythmed raindrop in and keep the chill outside. If I happened to be emotional that day, I would take a walk on the narrow eave gallery and enjoy the cozy space that she creates for me.
I feel grateful. And such gratefulness naturally turns into a sense of responsibility, a duty to defend for her. When I was sitting inside, seeing the photos of China by BBC and other foreign media in my apps, the same feeling was triggered. In those photographs, the air was grey, the sky was dull, and the buildings were old and weathering somehow. It seemed that we are living under pollution and poverty. Those are not true. I know it, affirmatively as well. And a sense of hatred has subconsciously implanted. Every time there are reports by foreign media sent to my phone by our news apps, it was always something against us. I started to wonder: if this is the only way they could report us?
I took such a question to New York, America, the so-called outside where there should be “the rain”, the danger all the way. Well, it is actually not. And when I logged in to the BBC website and typed “China” into the searching box, it was not just those photos. Rather, there were many reports and elaborated documentaries talking about our landscape, culture, and development. Though there were those reported pictures, it was not the general condition that I expected before.
I turn around, heading to the pavilion, the homeland that was on the other side of the Pacific Ocean. An abstractive and confusing feeling overwhelmingly occupied my mind. The pavilion, watching it from this side, hid some of her parts behind the branches, cutting off the sight of one who came from it. The eave and the gate, which offered protection, limited my perspective at the same time. When I felt that others manipulated the truth of us, I myself, more or less, was manipulated to feel in a certain way as well.
It seemed that they know no less than I thought they knew, and I know no more than I thought I knew. Then, what I can trust? Well, I believe the warmth that pavilion gave me is true. I know that the landscape and her beauty are true. And I know that the variety and cultural differences of foreign lands are true. Because I saw, experienced, and felt them myself—I’ve been there. That objective existence cannot be changed by just several words with a photo of selected filters. I should tell my stories and bring more stories back. But I knew the incapability of mine in describing every detail. Thus, we need more stories, not only the stories of a normal Chinese pavilion but every corner of space that we shared and lived.
The first time I met Kevin he asked me if I was Colombian. That was almost four years ago, before either of us knew what we would experience together. Since this fateful encounter, Kevin has become my closest confidant and lifeline in a city where I knew nothing. Over the years we have been through many incoherent weekends, late-night study sessions, and tearful heartbreaks. And through it all, we know that all we need is a visit to Kung Fu Tea (passionfruit green tea for him, peach oolong for me) and a sit in the park.
In many ways, Kevin has come to represent home for me. I think Kevin is home for many people, his warmth and empathy draw people to him like no one I have ever seen. As we were shooting this project, walking through the places he calls home, Kevin would point out the important places from his childhood, memories both good and bad. While I want to keep these moments between us, what I learned about Kevin through this process was his incredible ability to love, forgive and really understand people. I’m not sure I know anyone as deserving and resilient as Kevin, and through it all he exudes such compassion for everyone he meets.
My original motivation of this project was to tell Kevin’s story, which I quickly realized was impossible to capture in a few frames. Having emigrated from Medellín, Colombia to Jackson Heights, Queens as a baby, Kevin was always surrounded by family yet apart from his home. Over the years, his family moved to Dover, New Jersey, a small suburb on the last stop of the NJ Transit. Although he moved around frequently as a kid, Kevin has strong roots and love for his family. As we walked around Dover, Kevin pulled out a book gifted to him by his dad, “Las sietes leyes espirituales del éxito.” He told me how the book has helped him understand his dad better, a relationship that could have easily been broken. As Kevin took me to his favorite spots in Dover and Jackson Heights, the search for home became a central theme of our excurisons. There was a sense of displacement in each spot we visted, of Kevin belonging and not. It is in these in-between spaces where we found ourselves, discussing and laughing, and often crying. These pictures represent a space for Kevin to exist however he likes in the places he calls home.
My choice of subject comes from different art institutions and is teemed with my interpretation of aesthetics and creative interaction within the space. With the COVID-19 pandemic still ruthlessly raging the world, art institutions are struggling to reopen with strict preventive operations. Many museums that I visited these days, restricted the usage and max load of elevators and established the one-way directional flow, which extended my explorations from exhibited artwork to more uncommon space that I would not have a chance to visit. For instance, the anonymous L-shaped pipe on the wall in the stairwell was an unexpected discovery with structural elegance. I enjoyed this subtle and acute artwork just as other exhibited artwork by notable artists, which provoked my reflection on artworks and inspired me to capture responding surroundings either viewers’ involvement or assets within art institutions. My work tries to show my perception of artistic scenes created through the viewfinder within the art institutions.
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This project started as a continuation of the time capsule, documenting what is hopefully the last stage of the pandemic. In this process of moving back towards normal life, I started to wonder about how this time will be remembered. There are different meanings to give to the last year, lenses to see it through: a sense of collectivism, or total misanthropy; as life ruining, or a time for self reinvention; as exposing unequal political systems, or entrenching us deeper into them. The moments we choose to preserve fuel the narratives we create going forward.
In Recollecting, I wanted to explore this relationship between memories and the stories we make from them. With a mix of digital and film photography, I first shot in black and white, to fit the classic idea of a historical photograph. I then used the artificial intelligence Image Colorization API to create colorized versions of each image. I chose the process of the machine learning colorization to represent misremembering, tinting perception of the past in a way that ‘makes sense’ based on prior knowledge.
In the interior section of the project, I focused on the challenge of creating a personal narrative from this last year. I documented my friends and family, and the home workspace where I spent so much of my time, also capturing technology that would contrast the historical framing. In hovering over each image, you get the bright, colorful, artificial restoration of these memories. In the exterior section, I turned the camera towards symbols of how we have been affected collectively. I chose subjects that nod to our place in the pandemic: historical photos and figures, pop-up vaccine sites and protests, expressions of joy and grief. They are presented first in color, then fade to black and white on hover.
In contrasting the color and black and white versions of each composition, I wanted to convey this choice between an optimistic or pessimistic lens on each memory, neither one exactly the reality as it happened. As we move forward, are we going to look back on this time with critical hindsight, or rosy retrospection? Will the stories we create remain vivid, or fade away?
Hi everyone, here is a link to my final, LEFT ON READ. I had a great time working with you all this semester and hope you enjoy my project!
Artist Statement:
At the onslaught of the COVID-19 pandemic, one of the hardest things we were forced to reckon with was the loss of in person communication. This lack of face to face contact exacerbated certain mental health crises and forced us to re-examine the ways in which we interact with one another. For many, life became a completely digital existence. School, work and social obligations began to take place on the same stage.
As we return to normal, there is still a question of how this drastic shift in communicative norms will affect our day to day processes for years to come. Although this feeling of uncertainty still hangs heavy in the air, it seems that people are reaching out to one another more than ever before. When I returned to New York for the semester, I started to notice little messages popping up along my daily commutes. Maybe they have always been there. Maybe they were written yesterday. Regardless of the case, I knew that I appreciated them.
LEFT ON READ, a play on the colloquial expression for being ignored, is a collection of messages left for New Yorkers by New Yorkers. Through this series of 19 images shot and edited digitally, I explore the different ways in which individuals communicate with one another through physical signage. By making use of close framing and selective cropping, I hope to highlight the emotional evocation of the messages I chose to display.
Ultimately, returning to normal modes of communications will be a slow and tedious process. For many of us, the feelings of isolation brought upon by the last year will linger for a while. As we move forward, doing our best to readjust, it is important to remember that we are not alone in this struggle. Messages, like the ones in this project, are everywhere to remind us of that.
I started doing drag under the name “Misky Toe” in January of 2020. To be frank, it was one of the best times of my life. With a full face of makeup and 12 inch heels, my friends and I would attend queer bars all throughout Brooklyn, where we would enjoy drag performances and embrace the LGBTQ+ spaces we were welcomed into. Drag was something I had wanted to do ever since my junior year of high school, and it seemed that once I found the confidence to leave my home as a queer spectacle, Covid-19 took the world by storm. Covid-19 impacted the world in a variety of negative ways, and without a doubt, it devastated drag artists. Not only does drag grant queer people with the freedom to express themselves creatively, but it also builds a sense of unity among the larger LGBTQ+ community, and for nearly a year, it seemed that this unity had been taken away. Luckily, this has recently changed as Covid-19 restrictions have been lifted due to the decrease of infections. In my work “queens out of quarantine,” I document how it’s an odd time to be a drag artist in our current day and age. While drag performers are eager to present themselves publicly in bars and clubs, there is still a sense of loathing over 2020 and the havoc Covid-19 brought into the world. Many of these photos feature drag shows I attended with my beloved drag family, including my drag mother, Freya Wray, and drag sister, Audrey Heartburn, where we bask in the community we have missed for the past year. In 2021, I will definitely be attending queer bars in a full face of makeup and 12 inch heels. I will also be happy to add a transparent face covering to that list if it means keeping myself, others, and drag alive.
Nan Golden’s most recent exhibition is Memory Lost, running at the Marian Goodman Gallery 2019-2021. It is a multimedia body of work, including a digital slideshow set to a commissioned musical score. The show is themed on reflection on her artistic career and personal life. As brought up in her bio in “Intimate Life”, throughout her career she has both documented outsider groups, and been a part of them, including recording her own struggles with drug addiction. The show uses archival photographs from her career, edited to have a distorted, high-contrast, double-visioned look. The subjects of the photos are varied: from warm-hued crowds in Italy, to a quiet blue beach scene, to a neon-hued housecat. The effect is looking at snapshots of memories into a life, but made vague and indiscernible, representing being half-forgotten through the lens of drug use.
The personal nature of this project is an interesting change from how Golden’s other “intimate” work is described by Cotton. In the past, she was documenting, up close and personal, what it was like to be an insider in her life. Although already intimate, the perspective in this collection moves even more inward, showing the world as she remembers it, rather than as she sees it. The dreamlike quality of the images, and the lack of context for them, feel as if they are recreating her mind’s eye, an innovative way of showing her life as lived first-hand.
Ashley Gilbertson is a 34 year old Australian photographer and frequent New York Times photojournalist. He is primarily known for his front-line photography of the Iraq War, and has since covered the 2008 financial crisis, 2011 occupy wall street protests, and the 2016 European refugee crisis. More recently, he has been one of the primary New York Times photographers covering the COVID-19 outbreak in New York City. I was interested in his work as an example of what types of photographs get the platform to report on historical events, and how the decisions made by the photographer have the power to shape the wider culture’s understanding of them.
His first published book of photographs, Whiskey, Tango, Foxtrot, draws from his years covering the Iraq War. Starting the assignment as a freelancer at just 24 years old, he made frequent trips alongside American troops between 2002 and 2008. The resulting photos are a wide range of dramatically framed moments: a dust-covered squadron ducking for cover, an injured soldier in a spotlight of sun, the front-page snapshot of the shadow of a helicopter over a military camp below. Although clear in their subject matter, in many ways I saw these images as challenging the conventions of wartime documentation: the cold black and white imagery of the world wars, impersonal, but heavy in patriotism. Instead, Gilbertson’s photos are instantly identified as modern in their vivid and bold colors, often taken at intimate distance, sometimes slightly blurred as if on the run.
This change in form reflects the change in warfare itself, a chaotic environment that caused PTSD for many stationed there, including Gilbertson (Mccauley). Describing his journey from “naive” to “battle-worn”, he stated “Covering the war used to make me feel like I was doing something important, but I have grown to accept that Americans will not stop dying because I take their pictures; sectarian violence won’t end because I photographed one woman’s death; and abuse won’t stop because I witnessed the aftermath of one interrogation. I’m just recording history now, documenting the decline, in the hope that the people who don’t recognize it now may one day look back at my pictures and see the war for the mistake-riddled quagmire it was—and is. (Gilbertson, Last Photographs)” His change in perspective is shown in some of the more tense photographs of the project, like the one below. The caption identifies the silhouette of a US Marine looming over a hunched figure, shot and detained. In the framing, the absence of the heroic soldier archetype, you instead see the stark shadow of violence--in his own words, “there are no good guys in Iraq”.
Gilbertson’s more recent projects include photo essays for the New York Times, Clusterfuck COVID-19 (2020) and A City Ruptured (2021). These collections are emblematic of most of his post-2008 work, which is entirely black and white, crisper, and more somber in tone. These choices, along with a more distant approach to the subject matter, give these projects a tone of historical objectivity instead of the visceral intimacy of Whiskey, Tango, Foxtrot. Many of his photos from early covid-19, like the one below, document the eerie emptiness of the city after lockdowns. There is no feeling of terror, though, instead focusing on the unchanging imagery of Grand Central Station, and other iconic New York locations.
His later images, like the winter one above, are similarly formal, embodying his earlier goal of “just recording history, documenting the decline” while looking timelessly detached from their own time period.The reflective historical gaze becomes the primary audience for these works, intending to document for a later date, rather than necessarily push change in the current one. There is no longer the sense of urgency, in all its vivid colors and cinematic framing, which felt political about his earlier work. Casting the situations as tragedies instead feels strangely depoliticizing, embracing a passive voice even in a high-stakes situation.
At the same time, the more recent topics he covers are of mostly invisible threats: economic decline, a respiratory virus, uncertainty. In this choice of subject matter I see a through-line in his work; many of the most powerful images in Whiskey, Tango, Foxtrot are focusing on what’s not there, allowing them to be about war abstractly, instead of the specific scenario depicted. In his follow-up work, Bedrooms of the Fallen, he shows the aftermath of the war by doing exactly that--portraits not of soldiers who have passed, but the empty place they left behind. In all of Gilbertson’s work, the use of emptiness is breathing room for the viewer to fill in the story happening just out of frame.
Bibliography
Gilbertson, Ashley. “Witnessing the Birth of the Coronavirus Economy.” New York Times, 19 March 2020, https://www-nytimes-com.proxy.library.nyu.edu/2020/03/19/business/coronavirus-photos-economy.html.
Gilbertson, Ashley, and Nelson D. Schwartz. “A City Ruptured.” New York Times, 9 March 2021, https://www-nytimes-com.proxy.library.nyu.edu/interactive/2021/03/09/business/economy/covid-nyc-economy.html.
Mccauley, Adam. “Overexposed: A Photographer's War With PTSD.” The Atlantic, 20 December 2012, https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/12/overexposed-a-photographers-war-with-ptsd/266468/.
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