Category — Authors

 
          Performed at the Brooklyn Academy of Music on November 19, 2008 was Les écailles de la mémoire (The Scales of Memory) by Brooklyn’s Urban Bush Women and the men of Compagnie Jant-Bi from Senegal.
          The dance opens with all fourteen dancers standing in two rows staring out at the audience expressionless. They then begin to move in excruciatingly slow motion. The audience is engaged, but soon becomes eager and restless after what seems almost ten minutes before they take their first step. The dancers begin speaking in their mother tongue, introducing themselves and their lineage. As suggested by the title, the dance attempts to convey the message of accepting the past in order to have fulfillment in the present. However, this moving message and storyline failed to translate through the dancing.

[Read more →]

           If he wasn’t working he was driving. Driving south, every few months after the divorce from his first wife Marilyn McClure and the separation from the son he always wanted, he just dropped everything and drove. On his way there he thought of her, how when he married her she looked just like Diana Ross- she still did. He thought of Bryan, their son Bryan who was so bright in everything.  It was the thought of them that kept him awake and heartened on the road. From New York City to Orlando he didn’t even make a stop at to sleep at one of the motels that lined the highway. [Read more →]

When I first started reading Samuel Freedman’s “Who She Was” I was hoping for a compelling story of a man in search of his mother’s past. However, within the first few pages of reading, I was extremely angered by his indifference and general attitude towards his mother. I could not believe that his mother’s passing was so meaningless to him. It took decades and the death of an aunt to compel him to even visit her grave. [Read more →]

 
           On November 25, 2008, renowned journalist and professor at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, Samuel G. Freedman visited our IDC class to speak about his book Who She Was: My Search for My Mother’s Life.

           After attending his aunt’s funeral, and consequently visiting his mother’s grave the first time in thirty years after her death, Freedman realized that his mother had become a “stranger” to him; “I knew who she became, but not how she became that.” Fascinated by her life as a young Jewish woman in the Bronx, Freedman went on a quest to recover her past, and return to his mother’s “stomping ground.” [Read more →]

Street photography was a realm of art in which I had never entered. It was completely foreign to me, I was aware of its existence, and that was pretty much the extent of my knowledge on the subject. So, any type of exposure to the subject of seeing any examples of it from any artist would have been an enriching experience. When I was told the prolific street photographer Jeff Mermelstein would be coming into our class to personally show us some of his work I figured it would be something I had never really seen before and it would be intriguing to hear about the photos from the person who actually took them. [Read more →]

           Currently on display at the Special Exhibitions Galleries on the 2^nd floor at the Metropolitan Museum of Art is the exhibition titled, “Art and Love in Renaissance Italy.” The Italian Renaissance was a time of incredibly high achievement. It is during this time that some of the greatest artists were discovered including Michelangelo, Raphael, and Donatello. Italian Renaissance put intense focus and emphasis on love, marriage, and family, which they depicted through very monumental, clear, and beautiful images.  As written in the entrance of the exhibit, the works in this gallery take an “important detour from the path of marriage and family to explore Renaissance artists responses to the sensual aspects of love.” [Read more →]

One block, one park, many personalities

           Home to fashionistas, bookworms, figure skaters, weddings, or passionate moviegoers, Bryant Park is a melting plot attracting people of all ages, interests, nationalities, and countries. [Read more →]

[Read more →]

It is strange for me to think of my father as anyone other than the person I knew him as.  It is even stranger to think of him with any other woman than my mother but once upon a time this was true. My father had been married once before and I had no knowledge of this and never imagined or thought that it was even a possibility. [Read more →]

street-photography3

(Link to Movie)

I thought that this project was going to defeat me. I had no idea what to take pictures of. The only things that I had ever taken pictures of were people or major landmarks while on vacation. I had never taken pictures spontaneously or for the sake of making art. I had only had experience taking tacky, postcard-like photos of the Eiffel Tower, or the Coliseum. What did I know about being a “street photographer”? [Read more →]