A new place: Plaza las América’s Photo Gallery
A photo gallery can be a perfect place to contemplate our surroundings and dive in an environment of appreciation. A place like this, fills our body with many feelings, emotions, memories and passion for the art that mother nature and society hold. A photo gallery captures a divine moment, that makes us reflect on the way we see the world, humanity and even abstract concepts. It’s the art of seeing through the photographer’s perspective and reinventing a whole new world. Whether the photo contains a utopian or dystopian concept, natural or social environments, political or non-political issues, every emotion depends of the mind that sees the art through the human eye.
A photo is a sentimental souvenir of our previous moments, precious memories or even a part of history that we want to forget. A photo can contain all the meanings of the world for a person or mean nothing to others at the same time. Behind the many purposes that motivate people to go to a photo gallery and appreciate a glimpse of life through a picture, the main reason is to create unity between the artist and everyone seeing the art created through one simple captured moment. The purpose of a place like this, is to enhance those emotions that live deep inside ourselves and inspire people to create a new reality or form of art with those feelings that haunts our mind. A photo can represent any emotion: anger, joy, loneliness, sadness, melancholy etc. Depending of the way the eye perceives the art, the judge will use that lingering energy to produce a new perspective of the image facing him.
In a photo gallery, the environment is quiet and peaceful, leaving space for others to wander through the different meanings of a piece. In the photo gallery of Plaza las Américas, an exhibition about the post-María tragedy took place, leaving a feeling of grief in the air. Everybody seemed to agree, that those were some moments that nobody wants to repeat. The faces of the people near me presented feelings of sadness, terror, paranoia and other emotions that affect us in a negative way. Everybody walked in silence, contemplating those painful memories that wander in our minds. Connecting this environment through the eyes of Dean MacCannell, it showed how a very vivid and recent memory of a tragic past, attracts a big crowd with the purpose of contemplating the pain we felt at that time. “At painful memorials there is always a trade-off between what is at the site and what the tourists bring to it” (MacCannell, 2011, p. 171). This quote explains how the environment of a painful site is also affected by the people who visit it and bond over it, becoming a vital part of the ongoing pain it holds for the community around. The people that seek a place to admire the hardships of others, help keep alive the memory of it, also being a way of coping and accepting a part of history that shaped their entities become who they are now.
“The strongest storm to hit Puerto Rico in 89 years, Hurricane Maria battered the island with tornado force winds. Massive rains brought catastrophic flooding, washing out bridges and inundating entire neighborhoods. The island’s infrastructure, already shaky after years of neglect, was devastated” Months after Hurricane Maria, Puerto Rico still struggling (Brindley, 2018). National Geographic published this report stating and enhancing the drastic devastation Maria left behind in the island, along with the many victims that lost their lives in the event. A year after this natural disaster, the island still suffers from many altercations, most of them can’t be fixed or replaced. Memories of this tragedy still haunt our minds and reality, creating paranoia and anxiety as the possibilities of other events like this happening increase throughout time. One method of coping with this weigh that never fades is the representation of our memories in a more concrete way, being pictures the main example.
Putting our emotions and pain in a picture helps relieve the weigh that history and us humans carry on our shoulders, like the purpose of possessing a diary to lock away our emotions outside our body. Taking away that tension, helps us heal and ease the process of living with that part of history for eternity, that’s why this exhibition in the photo gallery of Plaza las Americas is so important for the Puerto Rican race. People that contemplated the same art as me, a type of art that was made by the product of destruction, realized the progress made by our community, despite the never-ending hardships that we still battle with. Comparing ourselves with the ones we saw in those pictures, helped us see how we became the stronger version of ourselves, a more united family. Keeping this painful memory alive through one simple picture, helps us remember in a more artistic and subtle way that nothing is impossible to overcome, no matter how devastating it can be at the beginning.
“Each painful event involved conflict when it occurred and even if the issues shift the event itself can continue to engender conflicting passions down to the present” (MacCannell, 2011, p. 172). The acceptance of our previous past can be troubling and impossible for the ones that endured more hardships than others. The conflicts that we endured such as loss of property, loss of a loved one, limited amounts of food and water, loss of jobs etc. scarred many civilians that remain troubled and scared in the present and will be until the near future. Finding a method to cure and simplify those emotions that our society can’t seem to vanish by themselves is of great demand and importance. The scary feeling that something like this can repeat itself is already terrifying, that’s why we need the reminders that this photo gallery provides, constant reassurance that everything can go back to how it was.
This opportunity I had to reflect with others about our common past made me realized that some things our bound to happen to make us stronger. No matter how destructive some circumstances can be, we will always know how to battle our enemies. This experience helped us connect with one another through a shared perspective, a perspective capture by a simple picture.
1. MacCannell D. (2011), The Ethics of Sightseeing, California: University of California Press.
2. https://www.nationalgeographic.com, “Months after hurricane Maria, Puerto Rico still struggling”, David Brindley, August 30, 2018.
