STREETWISE (1984) Dir. Martin Bell and Mary Ellen Mark

The movie follows a group of children who’s livelihood revolves around dealing drugs and prostitution. The draw of this is that they’re all around the age of 13-15 which puts an eery sense of innocence into these very adult realities. The director and cinematographer did an excellent job of not romanticizing their experience by getting a very gritty and transparent view. I imagine that in order to get this footage a very personal relationship needed to be have between the director and the children/parents which is also why I assume the footage was very brief when Dewayne died.

I wanted to portray how it feels to follow societal expectations. Theres a dichotomy in this because on one hand it’s safe and easy so we impose ideals on ourselves and cling to an idea of what is considered good. On the other hand it’s constricting and doesn’t allow for much room to be an individual. I chose the chain because it accurately depicts how we are held to expectations but also how we constrict ourselves.

a wall of photographs of women taking birth. This piece was initially intriguing because I assumed all of the pictures did not have a theme. There was a shock when I realized it was all women giving birth, a normally stigmatized and alarming sight and then there was relief because it’s the one universal action that has been taken for life to become life.

These vintage pictures against yellow paper was stark and beautiful. I think they represent the era in a nostalgic way that reminds me of a film reel.

The composition of this is alarming yet calm. The blood splatter and close angle are mixed with the solid figures standing.

Coney Island Strangers

I’ve always enjoyed the classic use of bright colors used in america during the mid to late 1900s. I wanted to find people who looked happy and relaxed because amusement parks are only meant to bring joy. Being surrounded by all of this allows people to live in a idealized simpler time for a second.

2 Guys

“We just boolin”

MingLi

Danny

“I’m from LA, it’s too fucking hot here. Do you have instagram?”

Diane

“Oh my god I look so ugly right now”

Jose

“I’m just thinking about freedom. Water is pure freedom”

Vinny

“I come here to listen to music”

Edouard

“I want to be a teacher here. I love New York and I need to learn the language”

 

Kids

Bonjour!

 

 

A. Murray Shafer “I Have Never Seen a Sound”

From this reading I understood that all senses are two sided. Sounds do not exist without at least two things making contact even if we sometimes only acknowledge the main object. Through this idea of interaction and the acknowledgement of it, I want to explore the idea of needed contrast. As A. Murray Schaefer mentions, sound lasts only for a second much the moments we capture in pictures. We have ways of manipulating the idea that comes across and the hope is that the final product is accurately mirroring ideas.

Tony Hliss’s In Motion: The Experience of Travel

Hliss touches on the idea of how travel expands your mind and makes it so you can see a new world as a child does. He explains how we do not connect to nature because the vastness of it allows us to make it a rarity. He explains how fear tends to linger in travel since 9/11 but I think for my generation where excessive travel and border protocol is normal the excitement of exploring a new place overrules the fear of weaponized travel and terrorism. I wish he would have gone into detail about what he perceives to be deep travel because I think a sense of wonderment in this acts as another muscle whereas I see traveling more as a learning process and a new range of emotions.

This essay reminds me of the book “A Field Guide to Getting Lost” wherein the author explains the necessity of getting lost within yourself and your surroundings. Hliss makes the argument that travel is a way of life however I see it as another form of escapism. A human condition is that we find new ways to perceive the world and traveling is another way to find the world you want to understand and reconstruct ideas of.