Category — Site Authors

The topic of racism is often a subject that is far too racy to talk about. Although, it is agreed upon that we should not forget the past, it sometimes come to such a point where we will not talk about it at all due to the amount of emotion connected to it. However, Scottsboro Boys introduces the topic of racism with a certain Broadway twist that appeals to a wide variety of audiences. In the end we are presented with a play that reaches the roots of many of the issues during the 1930s, while maintaining our attention through a musical and comical form.

One of the few things I noted when I walked into the play was the variety of people that were sitting there watching. It goes to show that this play connects to a wide array of cultures and people. There were african americans, koreans, chinese, hispanics, and caucasian. Not only was Scottsboro Boys a play that appeals to the public, but it works on educating everyone of the past. This aspect of the play appealed to me the most because it is rare that the general audience comes together for one play. We are able to tell that Scottsboro Boys aimed at educating rather than pleasing by the way the story unfolded. For example near the end of the play each character gave different skits of true events. They even mentioned lynching.

It is interesting to note that for a play that took place in the South where the white held all the power, there was only one white person throughout the entire play. John Collum played a minimal part in Scottsboro Boys, but his presence is magnified due to the fact that he is the only white person in the play. The director of the play seems to be drawing attention to the idea that this is not the white man’s story, but the story from the perspective of the Scottsboro boys, in fact many of the white characters are played by two people.

Colman Domingo and Forrest McClendon played most if not all of the roles of white characters. Domingo and McClendon played the jokingly awkward Sherriff and deputy, Mr. Bones and Mr. Tambo. They both did an amazing job portraying the two officers of the law as nothing more than a couple of ridiculous people. Many of the officers played by black counterparts introduced a much needed comic relief as the audience saw them waddle around. It further serves to provoke thought in the audience members. Many times throughout the play I thought that the white southerners were nothing more than a bunch of cowardly losers, only protected by the color of their skins. This play also portrays northern whites similar to southern whites, indicating that perhaps the whites in the play were all the same no matter where they came from.

All in all, this play was truly a unique play that serves to send a message and entertain the audience. It does not matter whether you are sitting at the highest seat or seeing the actors face to face, you will be mesmerized by the acting, the sight, and the songs.

(http://scottsboromusical.com/photos.html)

While the racial struggles of African Americans are certainly a serious historical matter, The Scottsboro Boys shows that the gravity of this issue can be successfully preserved through comical entertainment. Following closely the outline of a minstrel show, the play not surprisingly introduces a series of amusing characters. Perhaps the most striking of them is Sheriff Bones, who walks like a duck and speaks with a heavily exaggerated southern accent. Waddling from the beginning to end, he is quite a sight to watch. However, the two white women, Victoria Price and Ruby Bates, rival the sheriff’s humorous role. Ironically played by two black men, the plaintiffs are inherently funny characters.

In spite of the jokes and twists that are present throughout the musical, truth and justice remain prominent themes that hold the plot together. Joshua Henry emphasizes the importance of these values through his role as Haywood Patterson, the most outspoken of the nine Scottsboro Boys. At times, one can even taste the young man’s bitter rage and frustration with the South’s discriminatory ways and corrupt legal system. Later in the play, his decision to save the truth over his own freedom creates a powerful statement. Henry’s performance will be forever etched in my mind because of his charismatic and genuine portrayal of a young man living for justice.

Aside from the credible acting, there are also musical numbers worth mentioning, most notably the “Electric Chair.” Although simple, the sound effects and lighting are able to transform a plain wooden chair into one that seems deadly and terrifying. The energetic song and well-choreographed movements also work in perfect combination to create a haunting dream. The star of this scene, Eugene Williams, who plays the youngest Scottsboro Boy, effortlessly depicts a naïve, yet endearing character whom the audience cannot help but love and pity.

Moreover, the simplicity of the set is complemented by the clever use of props. The chairs are constantly moved around to form different environments. They are ingenuously and effectively used to create a train, a bus, a jail cell and a court. When the actors sit on the wooden planks placed carefully above the chairs and bounce along in song, the train they are riding magically becomes real. When they sit in their seats and swerve in unison as the vehicle makes a sharp turn, the bus they are traveling on comes to life.  When they shake the chairs as if they are bars and fight with each other within the square space provided by the chairs, the jail cell they are stuck in appears to truly confine them. When they sit properly, with their hands on their laps in a neat semicircle, the stage turns into a real courtroom. Clearly, it is not extravagance or intricate designs that make a set incredible, but rather the actors’ use of imagination to carefully execute motions that make each place feel alive.

In addition, an aerial view of the entire performance surprisingly enhances a spectator’s experience. Every detail and action is visible from above, including the flawless symmetry of every dance number’s formation. Furthermore, each actor, regardless of his place on stage, is seen during each dance, which a front row viewer would unlikely be able to enjoy. There is also a scene in which one of the boys writes letters on the floor of the stage. Only those on the balcony are able to witness this small, but significant detail.  All in all, every aspect of the show, from the tambourines to the actors’ wild gestures and theatrical facial expressions, contribute to a passionate, lively and informative performance.

Click here to see the collage!

In my original collage proposal, I presented the idea of combining many pictures from different cars into “one” supercar. Since then, my idea of the perfect car collage changed. I incorporated that original idea in the introduction to my new collage by having forty-two cars flash by very quickly. These first forty-two cars are part of my top 100 list that can be seen here: http://bit.ly/aqHE7W. The cars flash by too quickly to focus in on any particular one, so I used the rest of the video to take a closer look at my favorite engineering marvels of the automotive world.

I used the instrumental track from the Swizz Beatz song – It’s Me Snitches to augment the stop-motion nature of many of the shots in my video. Since the song is perfect for pop-lock-and-drop dance, I envisioned it tying together the choppy nature of my collage, and it fit the video perfectly. I synchronized the shots and clips to match the sound effects from the music track, and this can be seen at various moments in my collage. For example, at 0:27, a GT4088R turbocharger from a Mazda RX-7 spools up together with the “spooling up” of the music.

Opening the video is a stop-motion capture of my favorite car, the Toyota Supra Twin-Turbo. This is Steven O’Donnell’s 600HP Pearl Blue Toyota Supra, owner of www.ClubSupra.com. Shots of his car are followed by two separate clips from the 2001 movie, The Fast and the Furious. The first clip has the camera moving towards the back of the rear wheels of the car. This was shot inside the garage where the car was being worked on. I noticed that this was the same exact angle that the wheels were being shot from during a race against a Ferrari F355, so I combined the two clips. At first glance, it even appears as though the Supra is launching out of the garage.

The next car in my collage is an R34 Nissan Skyline GT-R. This particular car was used in the 2009 Fast & Furious. Godzilla, as the Japanese call it, can be seen as a direct rival to the Supra, and I found it appropriate to have a juxtaposition of the two Japanese supercars in my collage. It is illegal to import any more of these cars from Japan, and since they were never produced in America, they are very expensive, and a rare sight on the streets.

The BMW GINA is a concept car that was designed by a team led by Chris Bangle. What makes this car unique is its exterior. The GINA uses a flex-fabric that can be customized into any shape that the user wants. A few shots of this magnificent car capture the magic of this design and the talent of BMW’s finest engineers and designers. Once again, the sound track is synchronized to the lights shutting off, and the headlights closing.

Bugatti has been consistently producing the most impressive, and expensive, cars known to drivers. Featured in my collage is one of their latest concept cars that is expected to reach the market in 2013 – the Galibier. This four-door sedan, which will cost more than a million dollars, combines art, technology, and passion. The full-length promotional video of this car does a much better job at capturing the beauty of this car, and can be seen here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTgoj6SNfVc.

Finally, I ended my collage with my favorite form of car racing – drift. For a split-second, you can see another shot of my favorite car to match the choppy nature of the music. This is followed by various drift racing clips. The majority of the clips here have been taken from Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, which featured cinema-grade racing.  The collage is resolved with a drifter sliding through a parking garage ramp onto its roof where his peers cheer him on, and the bright lights from the Tokyo advertisements illuminate the setting.

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Sometimes, we get lost in the flurry of life. Things are born, things happen in between, and then things are gone. But how often is this all thought about as a whole? People either dwell on the past, enjoy the present, or plan relentlessly for the future. In my street photography project, I attempted to chronicle life cycles with a universal approach: noticing all parts of life working together as time passes us by.

At first, my perspective absorbed only architecture—new construction, decaying buildings—and I began to see the sheer contrast in the design of New York City itself. Writer and composer Stephen Christian wrote of decaying buildings as “The orphaned anythings,” a troop of disregarded beings taking up space and watching time pass by without so much as an appreciative glance—but I made a point of looking for the ghosts of fervor in cracking walls and chipping paint. Sometimes, I was able to see these “orphaned anythings” so close to the newer, shiny glass and metal buildings that they were touching corner bricks, narrating the stories of technological advancement and architectural preservation–but then, I started to look at the bigger picture in an even bigger way: I began to look at the cycles of human life and activity.

Never before had I noticed such a beautiful melding of youth and age on these city streets, side-by-side going about various businesses without so much as a second glance. What seemed most intriguing, though, was how similar the facial expressions of all of these people could be. Nearly identical instances of joy, sorrow, curiosity, and pain could be seen on the faces of these people that I’d never even seen before, these people that I will likely never see again—much less learn their names, the reasons for their expressions. My favorite picture out of my twelve is “Old Man Enjoying the Sun:” as I crossed Allen Street on my daily walk home from class, I watched as a man closed his eyes and stopped for a brief moment, gratefully taking in the Sun’s last few rays as the wind picked up. I fumbled desperately for my camera, at first not even thinking that a shot of this man would work so well for my street photography project, and I snapped a quick shot over my shoulder as he turned and went on with his life up First Avenue. When I looked down at my camera to see if I had actually gotten the shot (after enduring a long list of failed “inconspicuous-angles”), I paused in shock: even after the moment had passed, this man had a look of hope on his face that was unmistakable. Looking back as he walked slowly uptown, I saw that frozen expression in my mind’s eye on the faces of two children skipping under a father’s arms to class that very morning, on the face of the man that washes the same section of sidewalk every morning on Third Avenue, on the faces of a soon-to-be-known band’s youngest techies running back and forth with amps and cases too big for them at The Bowery Electric. It was at this very moment that I noticed how powerful these life cycles are—especially as they work side-by-side to produce the remarkably full atmosphere of New York City.

As I walked slowly home in a chilling wind only offset by the warmth of shop entrances, I endeavored to capture these life cycles side-by-side in the same pictures, finding decay over growth, growth after decay. It started off with fences and plants, graffiti with traffic cones,

But then the camera became more than just a simple lens: it became a small avenue into the passing of time—and how though nothing may escape it in the end, we find ourselves in a beautiful world of conglomerate means towards that very end, an end that will never see the life cycles of New York City—or any place for that matter—reach it as a whole.

Because there are no classes on Fridays, it has become somewhat of a tradition for my coworker and I to go out to dinner after we close up the store. Being located in the East Village, we never have to worry about restaurants being closed. The city is very much alive with a vast array of people. The East Village is, in my opinion, one of the most cultural diverse spots in New York City.  Dallas BBQ, a Ukrainian restaurant, a pizza place, and a Japanese bar stand side by side along second avenue.

As I am from Florida and my coworker is from Hawaii, the diversity and wild nature of New York City at night is still relatively new to us, and we look forward to our every Thursday adventure. Last Thursday, we decided to take a bit of a walk and try out a Spanish restaurant she heard was relaxing, cheap, and open late.  We end work at eleven, and often find that our conversation is only beginning to wind down as the clock approaches two, so we are always eager to find restaurants that will not kick us out as midnight strikes.

The restaurant was cozy, with an extremely authentic atmosphere. Spanish music floated lightly through the speakers, and each table was decorated with a quirky ceramic flower vase. The authenticity of the restaurant made us very excited and eager to try out the food.

Before we could even open the menus, a waiter came and plopped a huge pitcher of Sangria on our table and briskly walked away. We were at a loss for words. We had no idea what to do.

“Maybe it’s just grape juice?” I asked.

We leaned in to sniff the red liquid, and pulled back quickly. It was not grape juice. We shrugged and ordered our food when the waiter came back. The food arrived and we were about to dig in, when the waiter, a fat, jolly man, asked up why we were not partaking in the Sangria with our food. Glancing at each other, we began attempting to stutter out a reply.

He was having none of it, however, and poured the Sangria into our glasses for us. He would not leave the table until we each had sips, and he then proceeded to rave about the Sangria (which they make in the restaurant, fresh, every night!) for ten minutes. My coworker and I listened politely, trying not to laugh at the ridiculous situation we had gotten ourselves into. Apparently, the legal drinking age in Spain is 18, and the restaurant is so authentic that it decided to adopt Spanish laws on drinking as well. Only in the East Village.

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I love biking, though I rarely get to do it in New York City. I spend my summers at my grandfather’s house in the countryside and I bike everywhere during those months, from my friend’s house to the nearest food store, which lies miles away. The feel of the wind on your face and the different sights and smells that you experience cannot be felt anywhere but on a bike. In addition to being enjoyable, biking is also a great way to stay fit; a much more stimulating form of exercise than a treadmill or a stationary bike.
 
Though I have my own bike here in New York, I never use it. I do not feel safe pedaling through the streets on my tiny bike, among reckless drivers in oversized SUVs. On top of this, my dad has many alarming stories of all the injuries he and his friends have sustained while biking in the city. Despite the apparent danger of biking, I have noticed that it has been growing more and more popular in New York over the past few years. Biking is no longer just limited to Central Park and deliverymen and this is what I wanted to capture in my photos.
 
There has been much talk over the past few years of building more bike paths in New York City. The goal is to have them extend all the way throughout Manhattan. There have been efforts in NYC lately to emphasize transportation via bicycle rather than car as part of the budding “green” movement. Lower Manhattan especially seems to have been affected by this cause. When I was taking photos there I noticed that the streets were full of chained up bikes. There were many young people biking on the new paths, schoolbags on their backs. Biking is becoming a “hip” thing now, which means a lot of support from enthusiastic youths in the current efforts for a green revolution.
 
One major issue for me in this project was taking pictures of people on their bikes. I felt very awkward doing this and would therefore jerk away my camera too quickly when snapping pictures of people in order to avoid being seen by them. This resulted in many blurry shots. I definitely missed out on several good pictures due to my hesitation.
 
Initially I did not edit my photos in any way. However I thought the colors in the pictures were very dull and I enhanced them using iPhoto. This did not really alter the pictures too much, it just made some of them lighter and brought out the greens in the park pictures.
 
As I mentioned before, I started out in lower Manhattan taking pictures of people actually using their bikes as a means of transportation. This contrasted with the Central Park photos, where people bike for pleasure or for exercise. I think that I captured a fairly wide range of images. However, I regret my reluctance to photograph people as this was the main element I want to convey in this project: the relationship of New Yorkers to their bicycles.
 
 
 
 

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Because I use film rather than digital photography, and because I am lazy, it often takes me a very long time to schlep myself to the drugstore so that I can develop my film and actually see the photos I take. Although it is somewhat annoying that I cannot just plug my camera into my computer and see the photos instantly, this is also one of the reasons why I love film photography. Each photograph is a surprise, the rebirth of a forgotten memory.

I had originally planned on doing my street photography project on the interesting buildings, people, and events I pass on my walk to work. I snapped over sixty exposures while I dawdled down the sidewalk. When I developed all the film I had accumulated since August, however, I found those photographs did not really have any substance or presence for me. I probably thought too much about the image, trying to imagine what would look most aesthetically pleasing for my assignment. Because of this, the photographs came out with a total lack of authenticity. They had no feelings or emotions put into them.

The photographs that seemed most genuine, and also held the fondest memories, were those I had taken during my visit to Japantown’s Soul Food Festival in September. Previously known as the NYC Japan Street Fair, this festival displayed a huge array of Japanese food, art, and traditional wares. Looking at my photographs, I remember the positive energy that resonated through those two closed off blocks of Lexington Avenue. There was a large sense of unity and pride in the air that I could feel as I snapped each photograph.

Japan is a country that prides itself on its culture; its tradition; its history. Some people may be turned off by the somewhat nationalistic opinions that Japanese people seem to hold, but I am intensely drawn to it. Growing up with hardly any cultural traditions or values taught to me, I am incredibly fascinated by the deepness in which Japanese people pride themselves on the values of their society, even while they are not living in Japan. While Western society usually promotes individuality, Japanese society is based highly on collectivism. Many people do not find collectivism appealing. They believe it stunts personal growth. I found myself, however, filled with admiration for the all-encompassing unity that surrounded the street fair.

The pride that Japanese people take in their culture, and their desire to share it with those who will listen, is what I feel my photographs have captured. At the time I took them, I was simply trying to capture scenes that appealed to me. I realized only after looking at them almost two months later, that the scenes were appealing because of the feelings of my subjects. Everyone always happily agreed to my request for a photograph; I thought nothing of it at the time. I feel now, however, that maybe the reason they were so willing, and the reason the photographs came out so well, was because of my subjects’ strong desire to show how proud they are of their country and culture, and their desire to send that message through my lens.

The Scottsboro Boys was not the first musical I have seen, and certainly not the last. It was, however, a new experience to watch a musical from, what felt like, the sky. As a few people in the row behind me began to comment on how impossible it would be to see anything, I started to feel a little uncomfortable too. I was pleasantly surprised when the show began, and I felt that the eagle-eye view was better than from any other seat I could have asked for. So before beginning this review, I would like to thank Professor Bernstein and the Macaulay Honors College for setting our IDC classes up with such great seats to a spectacular performance.

“One-thousand laughs guaranteed,” the sign outside the Lyceum Theatre read. Skeptical at first, I kept this line in the back of my head. The dramatic entrance that the actors made caused my first laugh. Traditionally, you would see actors magically appear on stage after the lights come on, but the Scottsboro boys made their entrance from the rear of the auditorium. Breaking traditions was a recurring theme throughout the musical. The whole story is about nine young men being accused of a crime they never committed, and their fight to break the prejudice that plagued the United States in the 19th century. Other broken traditions included the use of men representing women, and blacks representing whites. It got exceptionally confusing when black men were presented as white women.

There was also another representation of a specific woman, which was not very obvious. For the audience (myself included) who thought that The Lady, who is present throughout the entire musical, was an angel, a ghost, or simply a witness, Rosa Parks elucidates her identity at the resolution of the show. It seems as though the director did not want her identity to be clear to everyone, because even the playbill had her character listed as “The Lady.”

I lost count of how many times I laughed, so I can neither testify, nor disprove, the 1000 laugh claim, but I can vouch that The Scottsboro Boys was a musical that would put a smile one anyone’s face. From the clever puns, to the ironic drama, the musical took the audience on a roller coaster of emotions that left them in awe of the spectacle beheld to them. The Scottsboro Boys was, in itself, a history lesson, as well as a great performance. The colorful costumes and set design, as well as music that would rival Broadway’s finest, only adorned an already fantastic story that left us all in awe, but did not leave us in spirit. It served as a great lesson on truth and honesty, as well as history and prejudice, and did it in a way that only a musical could – with laughter and entertainment.

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It’s funny how different aspects of a fad or trend are so differently received in different places. The same clothes, same music, same label can mean one thing in one place, and mean the complete opposite just an hour’s drive away. Just one example of this stark contrast happened to me this very weekend—and not even in the city.

I went home for the weekend to help my parents around the house. To help out with all of the extra work—there’s lots of heavy lifting involved when it comes to horses—my mom asked her friend’s son Joe to come over. As we moved wood chips, branches and other ridiculously heavy things, we ended up talking about music. He tried to peg my musical interest: “You’re definitely a country girl, aren’t you?”

“That’s what my mom would want you to think,” I snorted as I carried a saddle past him. He tried to justify his guess, by saying that the plaid shirts and the boots that I always wore seemed to fit perfectly into a Garth Brooks video—not to mention the whole “horse thing,” he joked.

Sure, his assumptions seemed to make sense to me—but now that I live in the city, his strategy seemed a bit off. Here, everyone’s perspective seems so different than from Manorville, the little farm/forest town that I hail from. The exact same outfit that I was wearing as Joe dubbed me “country” jokingly got me labeled a “hipster” in my dorm’s common room. What’s the difference? How is it that the East End of Long Island has such a different opinion of various trends, when compared to Manhattan? And most of the people that called me “hipster” weren’t even from Manhattan—so even on different ends of the same island, perception can alter greatly (even about the small things, like flannel and boots).

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It’s easy to mindlessly walk through the city without looking a single person in the eye. It’s easy to glide through the streets as they blur by you in a monotonous gray tone. It’s easy to not care a single drop where you are as long as you get where you’re going. But lately, I have found it all so difficult. The weather has gotten reasonably colder, the breeze a little brisker, the sun weaker by the second. And the leaves on the trees have been changing. Yes, I said trees – in New York, too.

For the past month, I have spent everyday passing by a beautiful park that screams of a photo-op on my way to rehearsals at Baruch. One day, I brought my camera along with me so the scenery would finally stop yelling at me. Ever since, I’ve found beautiful scenery in the strangest of places.

When people think of New York, they don’t think of maple trees and grass. They think of the cement scenery, the brick backdrop of grim, overbearing buildings. It’s not easy to stop and smell the roses, especially if you can’t even find them behind the skyscrapers.

But if you keep an eye out, they are everywhere. Pots of flowers litter the pedestrian plaza on Broadway; scant little trees brave their way onto every street, squished between No Parking signs and bus stops; and before you know it, you’re not in the concrete jungle anymore. You’re in an urban forest.

The pictures taken were many and far between, but it is hard to catch the melancholy attached to these beautiful, lonely trees. First, I dabbled with the idea of documenting the life of one simple tree on Lexington Avenue. He quietly looked on as countless passersby and taxis whizzed past him, not giving him a second glance. I situated myself in a doorway of the building directly across, and stood by as I watched what he got to watch every day.

But then I took another look around, and realized that there were more trees that wanted their limelight as well, and it would be selfish to not give them their fifteen minutes of fame.

Each one felt like a ghost of The Giving Tree, saddened by its uselessness as it stayed put while the surroundings paid no notice. But each tree was different, and had a different view of the city, and its own painfully lonely story to tell. But in their misery blossoms a tragic beauty all in its own. Although they long for attention, they still have a regal presence that cannot be denied.

The misplacement of all these creatures brings an interesting light to the contrast of their environment, and how they adapt. Or rather, how they cannot adapt. On none of these city streets I roam do I see a fully-bloomed, growing, healthy tree. More often than not, I see twiggy, lanky, poor little trees that are fighting their best to grow.

So, I believe it is their time to shine. These lost souls have been ignored long enough, and have long paid their dues. They have seen more of the city than anyone ever will.

I have split the collection in two parts: the first, of many trees and scenes of foliage found across the city; and second, of the loneliest tree of them all.