Posts from — November 2008

At first, I didn’t know how to respond to Jeff Mermelstein as he began to prepare his old-fashioned slides for our class. He seemed a little confused and I was nervous that he was going to turn out to be a grumpy old man. I was half-expecting a boring presentation, one slide after another with a few monotonous descriptions of when and where each photograph was taken. Then, Jeff Mermelstein began to describe, with fervor, his experience with being a street photographer. All of my predictions were proven wrong. His use of language was vivid as he spoke of his love of color photography. He mentioned how seductive color photography is to him, like “colored M&M’s.” [Read more →]

My mixed emotions about Dr. Atomic, an opera composed by John Adams, are quite alike those of Robert J. Oppenheimer when he was creating the atomic bomb. The process of watching the opera in its beauty was alluring, but the end product was puzzling. My expectations for an intriguing opera ended with disappointment. [Read more →]

Weird Dream

With a title like “Waltz With Bashir,” one may expect a dance documentary or a movie about ballroom dancers, but that was not the case at Ziegfeld Theatre for the New York Film Festival this year. Instead, I was blown away by an animated feature about the 1982 war in Lebanon. It is the personal story of its director, Ari Folman. [Read more →]

Who is Jeff Mermelstein? Some who accidentally notice him in the street with his Leica lense might think he is a tourist and yet others might even think of him as an invader of their privacy. The fact is though that Jeff Mermelstein is a street photographer, and definitely a passionate one. He takes pictures of anything that catches his eye, whether it is fruits and vegetables, animals, or people. Vivid color is his main criteria, and this makes his photographs absolutely ravishing. [Read more →]

War, tragedy, catastrophe, massacre, bomb, horror, radiation poisoning. These are just a few words that we can associate with the end of World War II and the dropping of the first atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Each one of these words evokes many negative emotions and may even bring some to tears considering the magnitude of destruction that this event caused. As viewers went to watch Dr. Atomic, an opera depicting the Manhattan Project itself, they expected to get the sense of these feelings: to put themselves at the scene and to experience what the scientists experienced. Unfortunately, due to sub-par voices, an overly simplistic story line, and a dissatisfying ending, this opera did not evoke much empathy or feeling. [Read more →]

As Jeff Mermelstein displayed his collection of photographs, all went silent except for the old-fashioned whirring sounds of the projector. At times, he stopped at a photo and briefly gave a caption. The class burst out in laughter at some of his photos: a model’s almost-naked photo shoot, a woman’s badly sun-burnt back, a yawning businessman, and the behinds of elephants. Mermelstein’s photos were amusing and filled the room with laughter. Not only did he share his collection of street photography, but he also displayed his humorous personality. [Read more →]

My street photography project is centered on a cultural encounter I personally experienced when I moved from Manhattan to Bushwick, Brooklyn. Bushwick has a particular duality about it; there is a rugged, industrial ambience as well as a palpable artistic presence. This conflict within the neighborhood, the constant juxtaposition of art and industry, inspired me to shoot there. [Read more →]

Street photographer Jeff Mermelstein arrived at Baruch College last Thursday to generously share with us several collections of his work. His main objective, he explained, is to photograph the world’s gritty under-netting – that which makes America American. He has found the prime examples of this realism in the streets of New York City.

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About the picture: http://www.thirteen.org/mediamatters/303/images/photo_right_02.jpg

Jeff Mermelstein, the author of Sidewalk (which received the European Publishers Award for Photography in 1999), took time out of his schedule on November 4th to expose his passion to students at Baruch College. [Read more →]