Macaulay Seminar One at Brooklyn College

There was nothing comforting about looking into those two huge pits at the 9/11 memorial with the water flowing nonstop and disappearing into an endless black hole. The feeling that I got from staring into that hole, was a feeling of hopelessness. To me, that giant hole was symbolic in that sense that it represented all of the lives lost and how those innocent people died for no reason and inevitably fell into a “dark hole” that they would never be able to escape.
Another reason why I felt a feeling of hopelessness was because the overwhelming amount of names there were written around the memorial. As I stood in front of the fountains, I just kept reading as many names as I could and I couldn’t help but wonder if that person was a mother, father, grandmother, grandfather, aunt, uncle, brother, sister, or child. This depressed me because I wanted to know more about these people who passed away. I felt as if the memorial was trying to tell me that there was no point in even trying to find out who they were because they are gone, they fell into that black hole in which they would never escape.
The Vietnam Memorial gave me a little bit of a different feeling. I wasn’t disappointed in the memorial and I wasn’t in awe of it. I think that I possibly felt that way because I am obviously detached from the Vietnam War since I was no alive when it was taking place, but rather I feel a deeper connection to the collapse of the Twin Towers because I remember every detail of that day. But, I did like the memorial because I felt like it was very personal. The letters and words and quotes written on the wall were very touching and it showed me that these people that fought and died in the war were just regular people who were living every day lives until they suddenly had to fight. The letter that caught my eye the most was the one in which a son was writing to his father and telling his father to apologize to his mother for him and that he just had to go fight and that it was very sudden. This really hit home hard.
In all, I really enjoyed going to the memorial as a class. I loved hearing what my friend’s interpretations of the memorials were because I find that the goal of the memorials are to let people find their own meanings. 

I wasn’t exactly sure what we were supposed to look for or notice when we were walking around. As I continued to notice more things about the memorial, I started to realize what it was that we’re supposed to notice. Of course it was with the help of others… Cale explained that the way the water pours out of the sides of the memorial, it’s supposed to reflect on how the texture of the towers looked. Once, I got some clarifications on that I understood… It was really cool how the texture could be somewhat replicated with water.

I don’t remember who told me this, but I thought it was really interesting that apparently the way this memorial was built is to be in contrast with all the tall buildings around it. All the buildings are going up and the memorial is going down into the ground. I’m sorry whoever it was! I’m not quite sure what that is supposed to represent but I think it may show that at this place we were left with a void. Here was a time when there was a flaw in the city. These buildings were not supposed to come down, yet they did and that was the flaw. We lost many people. Families were left with an emptiness and unclear answers as to where their loved one is.

However, to counter that mishap and the death that surrounded it, the area is now filled with life. I once interviewed a police officer who helped out during the clean up. He said that it smelt like a death camp. Now, there is no death, but constant life. I looked around and I realized that the memorial was bustling with lively people. Even once the day is done and the memorial is closed there are still trees all around that keep up the life whether it is day or night. Also, water is a source of life and everything surrounds the fountains.

I don’t know how I would compare the 9/11 Memorial to the Vietnam Memorial but I did find something interesting while I was looking at the Vietnam Memorial. I realized as I was looking from a side view at the memorial, it seemed to me as if the walkways to go to the other side of the structure was a walkway to enter the horrors of the war. On either side there were letter from soldiers to loved ones about what was going on at the time. As we’re walking through the memorial, we’re walking through their memories. I also kind of saw it as I looked slightly through the walkway.

Also, I noticed that this isn’t the whole memorial… It starts off way to the side of this structure with a map of the war and then an aisle with the names of those who have fallen on the sides. To add to the thought I just wrote about, it seemed to me as if I was walking towards the horror scenes… The structure was walking in the horror scenes.

So I guess to contrast the memorials I could say that the Vietnam Memorial is a walk to remember the death and horror while the 9/11 Memorial also incorporates our proclamation of continual life.

I think that the difference between the 911 memorial and the Vietnam memorial reflected more than just a varying artistic approach, rather, I think it matched the differing feelings the architects intended to provoke in connection to each event being memorialized.

The 911 memorial was a very low structure –  or more specifically – below.  It was very deep hole, made of dark stone, with water pouring continuously but never filling up. From a height perspective, it stands out in contrast with the tall buildings in the skyline around it. In relation to color, it also looks different, while the glass and brushed metal of the buildings around it reflect the sun, this seemingly bottomless pit is just full of darkness.  I think the purpose of the memorial is to create an opening for people to pour their sorrows out.  It is called a reflecting pool, but it isn’t a still body of water that reflects.  I think the real reflection is what is going on inside of every individual who visits the site.  All that we have left of the terrible tragedy of 911 is a feeling of lack and sadness for all the innocent lives that were lost.  Standing at the edge of the reflecting pool, hearing nothing but the rushing water, I really felt that emptiness.  No exciting city noises and sounds to fill the void, just the rushing water and deep, dark, pool to give you a moment in time to look down, literally and figuratively, ponder and mourn.

In comparison, the Vietnam memorial was different architecturally and led to emotions that differed in a way from the 911 memorial. It was not tall, but definitely high, as it rose up. It was a wall made of glass cubes, and had writing on it that wasn’t visible if you saw it from afar.  While the 911 memorial focused more on personal remembrances, this one is more to combat the ignorance of many people to what was lost in this war.  Many people don’t have a close connection to the Vietnam War. It was “long ago and in a far away land”, not close to home and recently enough like 911. The people who died were soldiers, who we tend to think of as a whole but not really in the individual sense.  I think the point of the memorial was to show the viewer that we didn’t just lose a “wall of soldiers”, we lost many different “cubes” – people who had individual thoughts, fears, loved ones, and whole lives. The memorial causes people to lift up their heads, also literally and figuratively.  It forces people to shed their ignorance of a hard subject to deal with and spend the time on something that takes more thought to understand and feel. At least that’s what I got out of the experience.

All in all, I found it easier to connect to the 911 memorial more so that the Vietnam one.  I guess I understood it better because I am more personally associated with it.  While I hypothesized about many things in the Vietnam memorial, There are many things I am still curious about that I cannot answer on my own.  Why were there doorways through the Vietnam memorial?  Why make the letters so hard to read? How were the specific texts on the memorial chosen? If you have any ideas, please let me know!

 

Hey guys,
This trip to the memorial was surprisingly really inspiring to me. I expected to feel emotionally connected to such memorials, especially considering that I went to the 9/11 one last year. However, this time it all just felt different.Trying to capture the experience on a camera actually made the experience at the 9/11 museum much more memorable. If you were near me during the beginning of the trip, you probably remember hearing me constantly say “Where are the scrolls? I want to draw over them and end up with the names!!” That was all I expected to actually inspire me about this memorial. I still can’t understand why. Then, when I talk a moment and looked down at the memorial, it hit me. Every name engraved around me was someone I could’ve walked by in the city years ago. They weren’t just strangers: they’re people! I think that every life matters, so the loss of so many struck me. The concept of the pools was honestly one that was hard to connect for me. Eternity pools? But they don’t represent forever. They represent loss. That moment my perspective changed. Those pools transferred from one place to the next and then to….? We don’t know where they went. To me, that was huge. No one know where we’re going in life and what could randomly happen at any moment. That’s why we should cherish every single moment of every day. You can never guess where life will take you, but you can guess where you take your life. You could make your life something special. You could do nothing, and just live. OR, you could do something great and be memorable, like all those people who passed away. Their names will live on until eternity. I hope that one day mine can, too. (just in different circumstances, of course.)
Well, a picture that I took that I really enjoyed capturing at this memorial was this one:

This same photo flipped vertically is this:

The reason I like this photo so much is because, not only does it capture the water falls along the pool, but it also captures something amazing. If you look at the 2 lines of light (one shorter than the other), it kind of looks like the twin towers. The longer tower is yet to get hit, while the shorter one is crashing down into that hole of nothingness.
Another image that I really enjoyed taking was this one:

I’m sure Gary Lee Bright was a great man. Honestly, I don’t know much about him. But as I said before, he was a man that was remembered. I love the way the light reflects on the plate where it says bright. I think it manages to make something so sad, into something uplifting. Like his brightness will forever live on. The tree that survived is pretty cool, too. My hand’s hurting too much to type about it though, haha.
Okay,Vietnam. I was dreading this part of the trip the whole walk there. I wasn’t feel well and this ten-minute walk sure did extend! “I just want to go homee!” “I wasn’t even alive when this happened!” “Why do I have to keep walking?!” -typical negative me. But when I got there, I was intrigued. It felt so personal. Maybe even more personal than the 9/11 memorial, which was really odd to me. It was so small and confusing, yet it was amazing. Even though I didn’t understand why it was structured the way it was, the words plastered all around me were beautiful. Even though it’s still hard to figure out what beauty is, I know it was definitely that. Every quote that I read affected me tremendously. “Dear daddy” These were REAL people that had families waiting for them. It was really incredible to see the things they’d say. One of my favorites was this quote:

I typed the quote on top of it, if you guys wanted to read it.
I really had an enjoyable time, laughing with you guys, being inspirired with you guys, and just getting to know each other better. This experience was definitely a positive one. So, overall, both of these memorials were amazing in completely different ways. They’re incomparable. So even though my title is them against each other, no one wins. It’s a tie.
Enjoy a few more pictures if you’d like:

See you guys Tuesday! (:

Though I’ve visited the 9/11 memorial two years ago, today, after learning how to see the deeper meanings in things, I saw it differently. At first when I looked into the huge hole, within it yet another hole, I thought of a children’s song called “There’s a Hole at the Bottom of the Sea,” based off the idea (unknown/belief/myth, whatever it is) that there is a hole at the bottom of the sea leading to a deeper world that we don’t know about. This idea fit well, reflecting on all the unknowns resulting from the deaths of all these people. The water was disappearing into somewhere we couldn’t see, somewhere we really didn’t know anything at all about.

I also felt a void, this hole an astonishing abyss. Sure, the water was passing through, but only on the edges, and it wasn’t even filling up. The hole was just emptiness, and I think that is the very reason why this memorial is so beautifully fit for this tragedy. The events of 9/11 left us with emptiness, a feeling of confusion and “now what?” The tragedy is mind boggling, and the loss is indescribable. This memorial features a hole within another hole, and, forgive me for the play on words, there’s no real closure after something like this; it sort of just gets deeper and deeper as you go on.

In contrast to this, the Vietnam Memorial Wall was nothing but a simple wall. I don’t really understand the significance of putting up such a meager looking thing. There were some things I did find interesting: 1. Why is there an archway to allow you to pass through to the other side at the middle of the wall? After all, it really isn’t that big of a wall anyway.. 2. There was something fascinating about the way they inscribed the words. Especially with the smaller texts, it wasn’t easy to read, especially since it was so widely spaced, each word generally splitting between two blocks. I found that when I read these, some out loud and others in my head, there was a sort of monotone to it due to the difficulty in reading it quickly. It sort of gave me a dull feeling, since I couldn’t really put emotion into the quotes the first time I was reading it. I felt like a narrator of a really boring historical article, and it made me think of the dreadful feelings post-Vietnam. Loss isn’t easy, and sometimes it can really suck the emotion out of us.

I also really liked this quote: “One thing worries me- will people believe me? Will they want to hear about it, or will they want to forget the whole thing ever happened?” First of all- who is the speaker? Why are these quotes nameless? It also made me think of the Holocaust and its survivors. I feel like this is a feeling that can come after such intense tragedy, where your world is destroyed, but you wonder if it will matter in the least to anyone else.

Both of these memorials have one thing in common: acknowledgement of the tragedy’s survivors. I think it’s important to note that the fact that there are survivors doesn’t mean the tragedies, or the survivors themselves, are any less tainted.

Photography always grabbed my attention as a very unique art form. Photography to me is an expression of the way we see the world. We all see the same thing but photographers present them to us in “artistic” ways that we can be reminded of. Garry Winograd truly adopted this. His story personally reminded me of a journey in which he documented his steps by means of his photography. What really stood out to me about his pictures was the thought and effort he put into it. I recall the one picture that really stood out to me. It was possibly the worst quality picture in that most of the picture is blocked out by a person’s body. There’s only a small gap in the middle but through that gap you can see the faces of Eisenhower and Nixon. Out of the experiences he went through this stood out to me because he probably had to go through much effort to get the shot. As a photographer he was probably placed behind all the press cameras with no clear angle. He went out on great journeys across New York City and America. I appreciate the fact that this picture was up in the museum because it really told much about Winogrand’s prowess when it came to photography. 

After hearing the introduction in class about Winogrand’s photography, I was unsure if I would enjoy the exhibit. It seemed like an odd concept to go around and take photographs of unaware people. Also, I went on an international trip this past summer and one of my friends had quite a similar hobby as Winogrand. At various tourist attractions, she would discreetly take photographs of strangers in interesting situations. With an open mind, I adjusted my mental lens and stepped into the exhibit.

The Gary Winogrand exhibit definitely ended up being a new and exhilarating experience for me. I enjoyed Winogrand’s ability to capture specific elements of human interaction. Some of his photographs were like watching an old movie and hitting the pause button to stop at a specific moment in time. Certain scenes captured sly flirtatious glances whereas others displayed uncontrollable laughter. At first, I was dissatisfied that the majority of the photographs were untitled. I found myself desperately searching for some context to place them in. Then it occurred to me that Winogrand captures little moments that display the human condition. Even though his photographs are taking place at a specific unidentified time and place, the scenarios they depict could be seen at other given times and places in space because of our shared human nature.

I really enjoyed looking through the Gary Winogrand show. While the subjects in his pictures did not move like the ones in Harry Potter, they were still full of life.  Each shot captured a scene and froze it at the perfect or precisely imperfect moment, which made it so much more real.  I also liked that each of the pictures were labeled with a place and time.  I felt like he was giving you a sort of photographical latitude and longitude to bring you to the moment of the shot, showing that photography, when done correctly, really does take you places.  There were no descriptions or made up titles because the scene says it all; it is so real you can’t possibly assign a name to it and risk ruining the effect of the picture.

As I was perusing through the gallery I found myself drawn to some shots mores than others.  These were the perfect shots, the ones that looked obviously beautiful in my opinion.  The boy picking up the girl in the waves, the water spraying around.  The symmetry of the alignment of people dispersed on a ferry.  The football game caught in the middle of a play. Other photographs were harder to see the beauty in, and I needed to spend a bit more time thinking about them. The mother holding a frowning toddler’s hand in the water.  A rainy hazy street with a blurred figure of a man on the side.  A woman caught mid-laugh dancing with a man. Theses pictures were more common and I think reflect Gary Winogrand’s main style. Sometimes the whole beauty of a moment is not in what it looks like, but just as it is. I am sure it is a beautiful moment when a baby is born, but the newborn is far from beautiful, excuse my crude description but he/she is a little, pruny thing, covered in blood and other matters.  But is that moment in time not beautiful? The same goes for many of Winorgrand’s photos. The moments themselves are beautiful. Maybe the true beauty of photography doesn’t lie in the scene it copies, rather, it is in the moment it portrays.

Take the picture of the woman caught mid-laugh dancing with a man.  It is a rather unattractive shot for her.  If I was the woman and someone had snapped that unflattering shot of me, I would demand a retake.  If this was some bride and groom dancing at their wedding, I can say for certain this photo didn’t make it into the wedding album. Now, if the picture that been snapped a second before or after, her smile would probably be a bit less gaping and would look more conventionally beautiful. But that moment of the peak of her laughter as he spins her around the dance floor would not be completely conveyed if her smile was more reserved. Does the woman look beautiful in Winogrand’s picture? I don’t think so.  Is the photo beautiful? I think it is. And the same goes for many of his other shots.

 

 

 

I’m looking through the pictures on my phone that I took last Friday as I tried to recapture some of the photographs in the exhibit. Well I didn’t just try to recapture the photographs—for that I could easily search Google. I wanted to capture the spirit of each photograph on the wall, the feelings they evoked, the mesmerized murmur of the intrigued viewers. For that, my iPhone didn’t exactly do the trick.

Along with the multitude of other museumgoers, from the non-discreet art students to the British tourists, I was awe-struck. Those photographs were beautiful. I suppose not all, and maybe some were more beautiful than others, but as a whole that exhibit was nothing short of beauty. I know the feeling that I get from looking at beautiful artwork—my eyes widen, I become increasingly quieter, a sensation that I can’t exactly describe finds its way through my heart or my mind or whatever it is that experiences sensations, and I experience this feeling of longing. And I can’t say I’ve gotten that from photography all that much in my life, quite possibly never. Photography (or at least what I’ve seen) always bordered on the cliché. Photographing something that is already beautiful is hardly something to gawk at. I can admire the beautiful scenery in the frame but as a photograph itself it could never give me much to love. Gary Winogrand’s work is different. It is beautiful, not because what he captured was always beautiful, but because the capture itself was.

Now I realize that that doesn’t make much sense. As I was looking at the photographs, I couldn’t help but be attracted to the ones of women from the 50s and 60s. I just love it. In regards to his photographs of women, Winogrand said (as I read on the exhibit wall), “I don’t know if all the women in the photographs are beautiful, but I do know that the women are beautiful in the photographs.” I think that articulates much more eloquently what I’m trying to say. He captured reality. It was real, and that’s what I found so mesmerizing. I guess it makes sense then that I particularly loved the ones of the Bronx, Manhattan, and of course Brooklyn. It was refreshing but also nostalgic, despite my obvious not being there.

One of the quotes displayed on the exhibit wall very much resonated with me, and really spoke to the play between reality and fantasy evident in his photographs. “Sometimes I feel like . . . the world is a place I bought a ticket to. It’s a big show for me, as if it wouldn’t happen if I wasn’t there with a camera.” If that doesn’t sum it up, I don’t know what does.