International Center of Photography

I’ve never been to a photography museum before so I was excited to go to the ICP today.

The museum was, I guess, just what I expected it to look like- pictures everywhere with a little description card next to it. However, as I got to look at the pictures on the first floor, I really just wanted to get out of there. Some pictures were rather disturbing to look at and I couldn’t understand the photographers purpose for taking the photographs and displaying them in a museum. Then I went downstairs, hoping that the pictures would be easier to look at. the first thing that I noticed was that all the pictures on the lower level were in black and white and most were taken in the early 1900s. As I looked around the lower level, I began to see many differences between the two floors. The top, very colorful and bright, and the bottom, very dull and in black and white. There was one similarity, however, both photographs on the floors seem to have portrayed some sort of struggle depicted in them. The top floor – struggles with one’s body (i.e. infected body piercings, amputations, deformities) and the bottom floor- social struggles (i.e. poverty and intensive labor). That was pretty interesting to notice.

As I was looking at the black and white photos, one photo stood out to me. It was because of the Hebrew writing in the picture. It was a picture take in 1912 called “Blind beggar and poor children.” It was a picture of a fee market type area with one guy, the blind man, holding up a sign that read “Help the blind man” and directly under it it said the same phrase, but in Hebrew letters (with English pronunciation.) It took me a while to understand that the Hebrew letters didn’t actually spell out Hebrew words, but English words written in Hebrew letters. I tried looking at the background of the picture to see if there was anything else outstanding in the picture and I noticed three little Jewish-looking boys looking at the blind man. The picture was really interesting because it made me question what was going on at the time that the picture was taken. Where was it taken and what kind of town was the picture taken in that the blind man felt the need to translate his phrase to Hebrew- and then again not even to full Hebrew? The picture just made me think a lot , and I stood there looking at the picture from all different angles for a while.

All in all, besides for the few disturbing photos, the museum was really great and portrayed a nice timeline of history and the present day.