Category: Visual Art (Page 1 of 2)

Unfortunately, I was unable to make it to Macaulay Snapshot Day. Fortunately, all of the photos are online! Although I definitely missed out on seeing all of the photos printed and put on the wall—especially in the curators cohesive arrangement of them, I can still conclude that I benefited from seeing the varying perspectives of the Macaulay Class of 2019, which I’m sure were only exemplified in being displayed inside a museum.

My photo was taken outside the Avenue H subway station (Q line), which is about ten minutes away from my apartment. Usually there are people sitting in these chairs, but I was too afraid to attempt to capture them. Instead, I captured the lonely mood of isolated chairs. To be honest, I find my photograph to be somewhat strange because the chairs outside the station remind of love and community. I guess that demonstrates the power of a camera. And a black and white photograph.   🙂

Unfortunately I couldn’t make it to this event, instead I spent the afternoon in an airport seeing some extended family off (boring) .  So instead I’ll just show you off my photo and highlight some things I liked, as it wasn’t my first take.

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On Thursday, September 24, we visited the High Line in Manhattan. We walked across the High Line and got to see some pretty cool works of art (which were only enhanced by the scenery). Of all the works of art that we saw, I think my favorite ones were Physical Graffiti #1-3, by Damián Ortega. However, what I found very interesting was the differences between them. I noticed that Graffiti #1 and Graffiti #2 were suspended against the white backdrop of an adjacent building. Graffiti #3, however, was suspended against the backdrop of the city itself, and was therefore
hard to make out when viewed from certain angles. I imagine that Graffiti #3 was meant to stand out to the viewer when it snows, and almost seem like it is truly spay painted in the snow down below (no rhyme intended), just as Graffiti #1 and Graffiti #2 seem to be spray painted on their respective buildings.

I signed up to be a student curator for the Snapshot Exhibit because I’ve always been obsessed with the logistics behind planning events and I thought planning the Snapshot Exhibit would be interesting. I particularly liked that we decided to use the theme time since all of the photos were taken on the same day, October 11th. It was also cool to use strange times like 9:58 or 11:12 rather than 11:00 or 12:30 because that made it much more intriguing.

The hardest part of curating the exhibit was figuring out whose photos were whose. It was even more difficult since smaller photos (4×6) were ordered first, but we decided we wanted them blown up even larger (8×10). Once the larger-sized photos came, we had to match them with the smaller photos so that we wouldn’t separate the groups of photos that were already created. I remember having a stack of photos next to me and me scrolling through the whole submission page to try to figure out who took those photos – what a pain!

Overall, I thought we did the best we could with the space that we were allotted. It would have been a lot cooler if the photos were displayed like an actual exhibit (actually on walls and not on panels). Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case, but nonetheless, I thought we still did a good job.

Here’s my photo. The Nets’ open practice just happened to be the same day!

Unfortunately, due to the dance competition I wrote about previously, I was not able to make Snapshot Day. Therefore, I will be reflecting on the image I submitted for Snapshot Day instead.

The picture I took (attached here), was taken on a LIRR ride going from Atlantic Ave to Oceanside, NY. It was a peaceful Sunday, and I was on my way home to have dinner with my family when I saw this sight. Although it was two months into the school semester, I can’t say it truly hit me that I was going to school in New York City, a global attraction, until that moment.

Although it seems insignificant, that picture really captured what I thought was going to be my experience in Brooklyn. The way the sunlight hit the buildings, halal carts lining the street near a meatpacking place, it finally hit me that I was in for a culturally enriching experience in my next 4 years.

And I have to say, the end of the first semester, I am beyond grateful for the opportunities Macaulay has given me to expand my knowledge of New York City.

**I can’t find the picture I submitted for Snapshot Day, so I guess you’ll just have to imagine it!! :)**

Macaulay Snapshot Day was a great day for the entire Macaulay Class of 2019 to share our view and perspective of the Great New York City. It is amazing to see such varying perspectives of the city that we are all a part of. It was exciting to be inside of the New York Historical Society, and what really caught my eye was the toy train running on the tracks over my head.

Once I got to the actual gallery of photos, I was a little confused at the photos and the times. Why was it in military time? And why were the times so precise?

Nevertheless, it was a fun day to look at some of the seemingly professional work of the class of 2019. Snapshot was a very enjoyable event, and it’s a great opportunity for average students to get some recognition.

Upon entering the Macaulay Snapshot Exhibition, I thought that something completely different would be shown. Later on, when I saw how the pictures were organized, I was somewhat surprised, and disoriented even. The images were supposed to be organized by time frame, throughout the day, but unfortunately, not all of them were. For example, even though my picture was of a sunset (and the title gave it away too), it was placed on the 7 am board. When I later found out why, one of the curators said that since it involved the sun, it could have been taken in the morning. Another critique I had was that the title of the images was not provided. Although the image is still there, I believe that the title gives the viewer a sense of what the photographer thought of the photo. Finally, as for my photo, I have to say that it was difficult choosing what photo to submit. Since I have taken multiple photos that day, I did not know which one would be more appropriate. The reason I chose the current one was that it took multiple attempts to take, so that the waves were positioned in such a way, which made them seem “angry”. Because I do not want to skew anyone’s interpretation of the photo, I will not talk more about it. After all, the viewer is responsible for determining the purpose of the image, and the artist should not influence their opinion.

One of the things I was really excited for when starting the school year was having my own photograph displayed in a real museum. I have grown up around artists and I love to paint myself, so when the opportunity came to curate the exhibit, I knew I wanted to do it right away. I didn’t go every week, but the weeks I did go were extremely fun. The first week Nadiah asked all of us for ideas for the exhibit. We came up with pretty extravagant ideas that could never realistically be implemented, but it was great to use our imagination and come up with a concept that worked and could be done in the time we had. The work was extremely tedious. We had to separate the little pictures into themes and match them with the bigger pictures. We then had to label each photograph with the right person’s name. There were over 300 photographs! The photo that I submitted was a picture of the Greenwood Cemetery. The focus of the photo was on the leaves that made a border around the edges of the photo and the graves were out of focus in the background. I chose this picture because I really love Greenwood Cemetery. It is peaceful, beautiful, and holds a lot of history. The picture itself didn’t clearly show the graves, it focused more on the leaves, which I also liked because it took a few seconds to register that the background was of graves. Overall, I really liked the idea of Snapshot day. It is interesting to see how many different types of pictures a group of students can come up with in one day, and it shows just how diverse and interesting our city really is!