3,2,1 Cheese! Chike! Chike!

The International Center of Photography was a pretty cool place and seemed to have more meaning than I originally thought. As I walked around the first time, I saw a lot of seemingly purposeless, random pictures, some of people smoking, some of people laying in bed naked, or just people moseying around blankly. On my first run through I couldn’t fully see why this was classified as art, because most of the pictures could’ve been taken by me, yet I bet they wouldn’t take our pictures and put them into the ICP.  On my second walk through, where I was accompanied by PAtrick, we discussed why this could be art and came to the conclusion that it was classified as art because it’s real. By that we meant that unlike most photos which try to glorify human life, and make it seem surreal and unimaginably beautiful, these photos captured the average human life in many aspects. Some pictures were boring, mundane, and forlorn, while others were fast-paced, calm, and fun. This perspective on human life is what made it a different type of art form.

Anyway, enough about that, the most striking picture in the gallery was a photo by Lewis Hine, whose title escapes me. The picture shows the progression of time from the times of simple farming, to full industrialization. On the left is a picture of boys working in the field doing everything manually, with a gigantic open sky above them as if to show that they are truly free. As you look more to the right, the photo begins to rise on a slight incline, which shows early machines and people using them, still overlooked by an open sky. When you get to the far right you see many buildings and 2 Empire State buildings that block out the open sky, showing how truly industrial things have gotten, where we can’t see our own skies due to buildings. The Empire state buildings cause the incline to rise sharply as if to relay the exponentiation of our technology in less that a century. Another thing to note, that I noticed while talking to Jonah is that on the left of the picture where the sky is open and vast, conveying freedom, the time period is when people has less freedom and rights and were put down constantly by others. Conversely, on the far right where the Empire State building is blotting out the sky, the time period is when people gained more rights and people became more equal, very interesting.

This was a fun trip, more so than I assumed.