Category — Rachel

The Metropolitan Museum of Art is one of the most beautiful structures in New York City. Every time I go there I am amazed at the amount of ancient works of art and objects this museum holds. Besides the permanent exhibits, the museum often houses special exhibits for a brief period of time. On Friday I went to see the traveling exhibit called, “Art and Love in Renaissance Italy”.

[Read more →]

www.motherjones.com

Since I was ten years old I have been reading biographies of famous people. I am not usually so fond of memoirs about ordinary people. Sam Freedman wrote a memoir, Who She Was: My Search For My Mother’s Life. Even though a son wrote this book about his mother, it is not written like a standard memoir, he writes it from a distance, rather than including himself in every aspect of the book.

[Read more →]

media3.washingtonpost.com/ wp-dyn/content/photo

              On a bitter cold evening my class met at BAM in Downtown Brooklyn to watch the final show of the semester, a dance performance called “Urban Bush Women”.  When I entered the building I felt a sense of awe at the beauty of the structure. BAM is a glimpse into the old Brooklyn, a place rich with culture.

[Read more →]

     Today, my grandmother, Jeannie lives in a condo in Florida. Most of her neighbors are originally from the New York area. Among her friends, there are many who also grew up on the Lower East Side and the Bronx.

       Jeannie was born on Feb. 21, 1933 on the Lower East Side. Her parents were both immigrants. Her mother, Tillie , came from Lizhensk, a village in Eastern Europe, and her father Joseph came from Russian controlled Poland. Jeannie spoke Yiddish at home, and only learned English once she went to public school. She also grew up with her maternal grandparents living in their apartment.  They were very religious people; Baba Raizl wore a wig, and Zeida Shmeil had a long beard. However, her grandmother did not think religion was as important for the younger generation; she felt there should not be that burden upon Jeannie and her two younger sisters, Sally and Sharon.

[Read more →]

In America today everyone expects things to be instant. People want to get fast money without saving, they want to lose weight immediately without diets, and they want technology to work faster and faster. Society has no patience to wait for things to happen, and they want instant gratification. The collage is designed to have a congested feeling. We expect so many things to happen instantly, that our lives have become much more complicated. Even though everything is supposed to be easier and simpler, the instant culture causes people to try to do too much at once.         

[Read more →]

newsquare.flv&fs=1&os=1&ap=1

Initially, I thought that street photography was no big deal, just find some interesting characters and shoot their pictures. Nothing in life is that simple. Often, even the most basic shots take thought and effort to capture from the right angle, distance, and lighting.

            The theme for the photography project assigned to my class is cultural encounters. The isolated Chasidic Village of New Square is three miles away from my house. My theme is a subculture of Chassidism in America. New Square is .4 square miles with close to 5,000 residents. There is an average of 5.8 people per family and the median age is 14 years old. [Read more →]

http://www.stevenkasher.com/

Rebellions against authority – government, parents, elders, and everything else were ubiquitous in the 1960’s. David Fenton, a teenager at this time, was an underground news photographer. He photographed the anti-war protests, civil rights rallies, and concerts. Now, forty years later, in the Steven Kasher Gallery on 23^rd St., these photographs are displayed in an exhibit called “Eye of the Revolution”. I found it interesting to see pictures from this time, when my parents were growing up, and to compare what they have told me to what I see in actual photographs from the period.

[Read more →]

http://www.rossevertson.com/blog/images/susan_nicarauga.jpg

Only a few hours after spending the evening with my classmates at “Clay”, we met again in the morning at ICP, the International Center of Photography. This is a museum where famous photographers display pictures they took all over the world. Photographs that depict a culture that I do not know much about fascinate me. I find that it is much easier to understand and visualize another country’s political turmoil and struggles through images rather than by just reading about them in a newspaper. [Read more →]

www.francesrichey.com

Poetry is a type of writing that requires more skill than other forms of writing. A poet has to convey a message in about 100 words, whereas a novelist can take 350 pages to say the same thing. On Veterans Day, our class was invited to the Macaulay Honors College building to hear from the poet Francine Richey. [Read more →]

http://www.lasplash.com/uploads/2/Clay_Review_6.jpg

Walking through Times Square at eight p.m. on a fall evening is an electrifying experience. My class was there to see Clay, a show that is the polar opposite of Dr. Atomic, the opera we saw at the Met the week before. Dr. Atomic had many performers who sang to slow, soft opera music, while Clay had one singer, Matt Sax, who performed hip-hop. [Read more →]