THE ARTS IN NEW YORK CITY Fall 2017 | Baruch College | Macaulay Honors

Today, I discovered one of the more underrated places on Baruch Campus: The Miskin Gallery. The Miskin Gallery recently debuted an exhibit called “Portraits of the 20^th Century”. The exhibit was taken by a Hungarian-American photographer named Marcel Sternberger.               Sternberger’s “The Patriarch” was the photo that helped me best distinguish between Barthe’s concepts of studium and punctum in his book called Camera Lucida. Barthe defines the studium as “a kind of general enthusiastic commitment, of course, but without special acuity.” (26) The studium is when one looks at a picture at first glance. The initial view is detached from the essence of the whole photo. On the contrary, Barthe defines the punctum as “the element which rises from the scene, shoots out of it like an arrow, and pierces me.” (26) The punctum is when one looks at a picture and finds a piercing detail that is attached to the essence of the whole photo. Additionally, the punctum is more successful in creating a livable moment that touches the viewer.                                                                                                   “The Patriarch” was a photo in the Unknown Sitters section of the exhibit and it displayed a Wales coal miner. My initial reaction, the studium, was a picture of a man with his lips closed, his fingers on his face, and a hard to decipher look. After staring at the picture for a few minutes, I realized that the man’s hands were dirty as if he worked hard. Next, I focused in on his facial expression and concluded that he looked happy. When thinking even deeper, the punctum, I started to give a reason for the man’s hard-worked hands being juxtaposed with his joyous face.                                                                                                                              The reason I derived for the juxtaposition of the Wales coal miner’s hard-working hands on his joyous face is that through hard work one has to be true to who they are and smile. The portrait of the Welsh coal miner is meaningful to me because as I sit here working on a few essays I forget to smile once in a while and remember how fortunate I am to be here. I start to think that if the Wales coal miner can find a way to smile after a long day of hard labor than I can find a way to smile while writing a few essays.                                                                 Additionally, when walking down the streets of NYC, I took two pictures of the outside of two bars that reflect the elements of studium and punctum. Picture 1 is an example of studium. At first glance, I look at the outside of the bar and continue to go about my everyday life. Picture 2 is an example of punctum. After an initial look of the outside of a bar, the “piercing” detail that was meaningful to me was the Maryland flag. When going through the college process, I was deciding between Macaulay Baruch and Maryland. The flag is something I see in the picture that could have been an alternative future.

Andrew Langer

The “Patriarch” by Marcel Sternberger

Picture 1

Picture 2

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 11th, 2017 at 11:06 am and is filed under Blog #5. You can follow any comments to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.