What's the difference between a moving image and a photograph? Both require the photographer and film director to be present in the moment. I know that it'd be difficult to compare two very distinct forms of art, but Barthes' liking of photography "in opposition to Cinema" made me want to explore this concept (3).

Thursday’s Meet the Artist event at the MHC was more than I expected it to be. It started as a usual symposium: a guest speaker, a power point presentation, and a public. This time, the combination of the three composed an unforgettable sensation. Topic of the speech: Surviving Katrina; a subject many of us seem to forget about. A terrible hurricane that hit New Orleans in 2005 still causes misfortune for many habitants in that area.

 I had to admire Thomas Neff who was in New Orleans after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina and captured both the horrifying reality of the destruction but also the hope and resiliency of the people. It wasn't just the photos, but the stories which accompanied them which truly made one appreciate the gravity of this tragedy. Some refused to leave their home and belongings behind or they were protecting their property. Others simply didn’t have the resources to live somewhere else.

 In our last class discussion of Camera Lucida Professor Bergman expatiated upon her favorite segment of the book: "...the punctum is: he is going to die. I read at the same time: This will be and this has been; I observe with horror an anterior future of which death is the stake. By giving me the absolute past of the pose (aorist), the photograph tells me death in the future. What pricks me is the discovery of this equivalence.

On Thursday night, I ventured across Manhattan to the Macaulay honors College to my first Meet the Artist event. I didn't really know what to expect at first, I was little informed about what exactly we would be experiencing there that night.