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A supposedly wise man had once said, “What makes any endeavor worthy of pursuit is not that it will uphold our original prejudices but that it will enlighten us.” I often limited that ideology to science, which I considered to be the only field where such drastically different results could be yielded.  After having done this project, however, I believe that one’s worldly prejudices can be just as easily changed with genuinely insightful thinking.
When I first started working on this collage project, I intended to address the social gaps that have forever plagued our economy and are now becoming more and more pronounced.  The phenomenon is rather simple:  whenever the economy does extremely poorly, the poor and semi-rich are driven to the ground while the elite, or the richer of the rich, are driven further into the skies.  As I was working on somehow adapting my collage to represent this theme, I came across a picture of a businessman looking absolutely horrified.  In his eyes, I saw the same insecurity for the future that people often associate with poverty.  It is no surprise that such expressions are now commonplace, seeing as how the bloody marauding and pillaging that now occurs at Wall Street leaves no one unscathed.  What was surprising was that I started to see further similarities.  When I saw an athlete in celebration, there were people next to him celebrating just as much.  When I saw poor people trying to recollect pieces of their lives in the midst of destruction, they had that same fear and anger on their faces that the businessman did.  When I saw a model, I realized that she was nothing were it not for the people who would try to emulate her look.  When I saw a cartoon mocking the loss of a sports team, I realized that such losses could mean an end to their career, which leaves them worth just as much as those people struggling to survive.  While the relationship may change from time to time, what’s certain is that neither side’s concerns are less real or terrifying than the others.
To complement this symbolic kinship, I eliminated all color from the picture and kept one standard color scheme throughout the collage.  I then created a schism using that very color scheme so as to make obvious just how self inflicted these differences are.  I also kept the copy slightly off-center, so that the white background can keep the white to black levels fairly even.  Finally, to give this a timeless feel, I used fire to burn the edges of the paper and dipped it in tea to give it an old feel.
What’s most depressing is that, despite such similarity, neither side particularly likes the other:  the rich see the poor as what they don’t want to be and the poor see the rich as what they should be.  If we were only content with our place in the world, there would be no reform, but no contempt either.

Urban Bush Women and Compagnie Jant-Bi, as a part of the 2008 Next Wave Festival, collaborated on the production of Les écailles de la mémoire, or The Scales of Memory.  Sadly, despite the involvement of award winning choreographers and world-renown dance companies, Les écailles de la mémoire proves be a disjunctive work that is far less than the sum of its parts.
Les écailles de la mémoire is a dance performance without a central plot, instead trying to convey themes regarding segregation, slavery, and French colonialism in Senegal.  While choreographers Jawole Willa Jo Zollar and Germaine Acogny both intended to explore the cultural similarities and relations between African Americans and West Africans, the laudable intention actually works against the production.  The problem here lies not in the individual skill of either the choreographers or their respective dance companies.  Zollar’s Urban Bush Women have a repertoire of over thirty works and are trained in a variety of styles, including ballet, hip hop, Capoeira, and other African Diaspora forms.  As for the males, Compagnie Jant-Bi, were all trained at Acogny’s professional workshop at the International Center for Traditional and Contemporary African Dances in Toubab Dialaw, Senegal.
Therefore, one can be sure that the technicalities of the performance will not be lacking, which they most assuredly aren’t.  If one were to look at how either company’s dancers carry themselves when performing with the members of their own troupe, they would be hard pressed to find even a single lapse in step.  That fluency, however, is lost when both companies’ dancers come on stage simultaneously, at which point the choreography falls apart.  The men from Jant-Bi clearly adhere to the rules of African dance; most of their moves, such as the cartwheels and hand-spins, display clear Capoeiran roots.  The Bush Women, however, while trained in Capoeira, have other very visible influences.  From the leaps taken from jazz dance to the shaking movements inspired by hip hop, the Bush Women don’t follow the African dancing rules as closely as Jant-Bi.  While this does complement the theme, seeing as how it is an exploration of both African and African American culture, the latter of which has many of these inspirations, it makes for disjunctive compositions.
As for the conveyance of these themes, the socially responsible subject matter is wholly in line with UBW’s and Jant-Bi’s previous works but the themes here are simply unclear.  While each dance does have its own unique atmosphere, largely due to the excellent soundtrack, atmospheric settings alone don’t state a message.  When one is commenting on social issues, some concrete facts need to be conveyed in order for the abstract themes to make sense and concrete facts can only be explicitly stated, not displayed through dance.
Never truly achieving any chemistry on stage, Les écailles de la mémoire shows how one can take talented components and make a disastrous whole.  Its difficult to say what this could have been but, as it stands, this is a memory best forgotten.

New York Times columnist and author of Jew vs. Jew, there are some circles where Samuel G. Freedman needs no introduction.  Currently a professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, Freedman has seen tremendous success in life.  Arguably his greatest work, Who She Was, however, is one that seemingly came from one of his failures in life, his failure as a son.
Who She Was, a history of Freedman’s mother as researched and written by the man himself, has become a testament to the American Jewish experience.  Freedman comments that, very early on in his career, he had learned how to conduct the kind of research a historian practices, which he described as “the method of recapturing vanished lives and remote times.”  Writing this book about his mother, though, wasn’t just a journalistic experience for him.  Freedman states that it was remorse, that writing this book was “an act of penance,” an effort to “come as close as possible to making up” with his mother.  By making this tribute to his mother, Freedman claims, “it helped [him] settle something that had been corrosive inside [him].”
The creation of this work, however, was not an easy task.  As Freedman had described in the work itself, “producing non-fiction means making one’s utmost effort to get as near to the truth as possible.”  He later stated that the important thing was “not to invent.”  While he did admit that he didn’t feel that only famous people deserve to have books written about them, he still asserted that the standard of accuracy is just as high, regardless of who the subject is.  It was here, in this genuine quest for the truth, that Freedman displayed a certain issue with writing such a work.  He explained, “objects get blurry when you’re too far away and too close,” meaning that he had to detach himself from his mother in order to see her life accurately.  An example of how successful he was in this detachment comes from the fact that he was able to discuss his mother’s sexuality in the work.  He states that he realized “If [he] blunted that, then [he] was blunting some of her life force.”  While most sons would have been uncomfortable writing about such a subject, as he most likely was, this book was an attempt to reconcile with his mother, so he perhaps found it necessary to put up with those uncomfortable moments.
For a man who seems so casual and wears his political views on his sleeve, Freedman is an insightful writer and reporter who understands his own limitations.  As much painstaking attention to detail as he might have paid when writing any of his works, Freedman admits that, when it comes to the truth, “it’s always going to allude even the most ardent historian.”

Historians argue as to what were the reasons for the world’s separation into seven continents.  Some historians, however, spend more time arguing why it became necessary for the worlds to meet once again.  Regardless of why it happened, different cultures around the world developed on their own, only to collide with others.  The result was that the people saw confusion, rulers saw gold, and artists saw a new medium of expression.
The Babylonian art sees many influences that are a direct result of coming into contact with other states.  During the Middle Bronze Age, roughly 2000-1600 B.C., trade between Babylonian societies greatly increased and ambitious rulers such as Hammurabi of Babylon created drastically larger states.  Then, to further the cultural diversity, an alliance was formed between Babylon and Egypt during the Late Bronze Age, roughly 1600-1200 B.C.  During this time, the trade often involved newer metals, jewelry, pottery, and statuettes, which resulted in a much larger palette of influences for later generations when creating artworks.
If one were to look at any of the artwork at this time, they would find that the origins were never singularly of any one region.  Take, for example, the Gold Diadem carved somewhere between 1680 and 1560 B.C.  This diadem from the Eastern Nile Delta dates back to the time when the northern half of Egypt was ruled by pharaohs with Semite personal names, whose center was Avaris.  Looking at the design of the diadem, the more accentuated features of the animals show a Canaanite background but the structures themselves, more akin to sensitive realism, are clearly inspired by Egyptian fashions of carving.
Then, we come to Master of Animals Pendant.  Made of gold, somewhere around 1750 to 1550 B.C., this piece of jewelry is an ideal example of a commonly traded commodity.  Jewelry was easy to carry, allowed a good amount of artistic expression, and easily appeased traders, so it was not an uncommon sight for jewelry from one area to often reach another.  The frequent trade and its resulting cultural influences are made visible in this pendant.  The pendant is carved in Minoan fashion but the details on the kilt resemble Egyptian symbols while the dress itself resembles other Canaanite pendants.
Finally, we take a look at the Standing Male.  This statuette, carved out of bronze somewhere between 18th and 17th century B.C., contains both Syrian and Mesopotamian influences.  The carving is clearly that of a ruler but the ruler seems to be of two lands.  If one was to look at the dress the royal member was wearing, it is a dress of Syrian kings.  However, the headdress adorned by the king is the headdress of Mesopotamian nobility, something that clearly shows the duel influences.
While it isn’t always preferable for cultures to cross over, seeing as how they don’t always click and the result is sometimes bloodshed, one can’t deny that some of our world’s best art is really a hybrid of two or more forms.

The biggest problem, and the only solution, to this assignment was the scope of the project. The fact that we were allowed total freedom in what to shoot meant that anything was available to be captured on film, something so unrestrictive as to become intimidating.  Despite this, however, I still advocate that art should never be restricted because, much like Einstein found the answers to physics hidden deep within calculus, so too can an artist find his final inspiration in an area he had previously ignored.  For me, art never meant deciding upon something and then following through with it until the end.  In my opinion, art is a constantly dynamic endeavor wherein the artist repeatedly shuffles ideas through his or her head.  The end result is that the original inspiration simply becomes a starting point and the final product is a formation of all the ideas that went through the artist’s mind in the creative process.
What I had originally intended was a simple walkthrough of my most familiar environments so that I could faithfully depict my relatively simple style of living, thus I turned on my video camera and started following my daily schedule.  However, I soon realized that my environments were much like the rest of New York and the project would thus be nothing original.  Then, a few steps later, I realized that a daily part of my schedule was the Staten Island Ferry, something even many residents of Staten Island only occasionally experience.  It was then that I looked up as I was recording and saw a flag on top of a building.  The flag was placed atop a low balcony of a tower whose highest elevation was not adorned with the same stars and stripes.  I thought to myself as to how ironic it is that the architect’s ambition is placed above the memory of all those who died to for the right to wave that flag proudly above the structure.  It was somewhat unfair, seeing as how that highly implicit metaphor could have clearly escaped the mind of whosoever mounted that flag lower than the building’s peak, but the current economic condition of the United States has made me very cynical.  Lately, all I have been thinking of is how corporate moguls have been keeping the money from Congress’s bailout plan to invest in luxuries such as cruises and better office buildings instead of refueling the economy, a deceptive, blatant destruction of the nation our forefathers had worked so hard to build.  It was this very thought going through my mind that convinced me that my work had to be a criticism of the current economic condition of the United States.
Since I realized that I had chosen one centralized focus, I thought it best to arrange my pictures in the form of a storybook.  I also realized that my work had to be highly symbolic because I was focusing on such an abstract concept, so I took the pictures I normally would have taken but searched for little nuances that could be applied to a grim situation like our economy.  Out of roughly ten minutes of recorded footage, nearing six hundred individual frames, I chose twelve pictures after noticing some detail that I could apply to our nation’s economy.  I chose images of New York City because of its significance in the world’s economy, pictures with dark clouds in the sky, and simple acts that could be used metaphorically.  Some of these I had noticed while filming, others I had not.  None of these, however, proved particularly difficult in the process of finding the right picture.  The actual problem in this project came from having to take the picture with a low-resolution video camera.  Not only were my images shot in poor quality because of the camera’s capabilities, the fact that I was isolating images from video meant that the slightest motion in the video blurred the picture even more.  It took many tries to find moments with the least motion and the result, while passable, was still not on par with some of the better digital cameras.
I know I tried something that I had never seen someone else do; to so clearly focus on a topic that can’t be communicated directly through pictures.  Such a blind leap of faith may translate to failure on my half but, as Herman Melville had once said, “it is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.”

Source: www.icp.org, Political dissidents arrested after the assassination of Nicaraguan dictator, Anastasio Somoza, Managua

Upon entrance to the museum of the International Center of Photography, one’s eye is instantly drawn to a gargantuan photograph portraying political dissidents imprisoned in Nicaragua.  The viewer’s eye, adequately appalled by the repugnance of the picture’s contents, fails to read the text accompanying the photograph.  While that wall of text lists many of the photographer’s accomplishments, those words do Cornell Capa no justice.  Like any artist, the story of Capa’s life is not his biography but, rather, the works that he created.  

Cornell Capa is best known as a “concerned photographer,” a term he himself coined to describe photographers who try to change the world with their photography, not just capture it.  In the case of Capa, it was this style of documentation, this struggle to inspire reform, that characterized his career.   Capa spent his life recording issues that humanity needed to see, and resolve, if it truly meant to advance itself as a civilization.  Moreover, Capa’s works reveal instances where the photographs not only document events and emotions but also some deep-seated reality present in the situation and in humanity in general.   An example of this is a photograph, taken in August of 1995 in Buenos Aires, portraying Juan Peron’s army marching to honor Argentine’s liberator.  The picture highlights the political condition of Argentine, the fear on the faces of civilians, and the irony present in dictatorial troops marching to honor a liberator.  Another example is a series of photographs following Juan Peron’s career.  The first two shots portray Juan Peron perched atop a lamppost, surrounded by his supporters.  Here, the vantage point, placed well above the lamppost, is used to emphasize the number of people supporting Peron.  The third picture portrays college students burning photographs of the dictator and the fourth shows the people celebrating when the rebellious naval troops arrive to overthrow his regime.  The latter photograph, instead of capturing the army’s arrival, shoots the people’s celebration, which serves the overall message well:  first the people support a dictator and celebrate his rise and then they rebel and celebrate his fall.  Capa’s style, to shoot reality instead of poses, made sure that he captured the emotions truest to the subjects; the distrust on the face of the impoverished boy talking to a white collared man, the determination on the face of protesters marching against US interference in their country, the joy on the faces of the family given a union-supported home, and the indifference on the face of the gun traders all signify things that induce far more emotion if authentic.
And it is this induction of emotions that Capa does truly well.  No matter what he shoots, Capa always manages to inspire something, be it joy, grief, hope, or depression because one sees that these are not poses.  These are real people, just like the viewer, who face these problems that the viewer might one day have to face and it is that empathy which lies at the root of all reform.

Source: www.francisrichey.com

Awkwardly seated on a chair perched atop a stage in a sloppily decorated room, Frances Richey reads from her critically acclaimed poetry collection, The Warrior.  Some attentively listen while others wonder as to why no refreshments were provided.  Yet as she sets down the book to address any questions, it becomes obvious that this poet is content with her work and her ultimate purpose in writing her works is far more personal than to just woo audiences.
Richey’s The Warrior is a poetic interpretation of her emotions regarding her son fighting in the Iraq War.  She claims that it is “[her] attempt to talk to him…about things [she] couldn’t talk to him in person about,” because she believes that “you can…heal your relationships with [art].” The first thing the listener immediately notices is that her poetry doesn’t rhyme or follow any classical meter and sounds more like a narrative.  She reads four poems, addressing her condition a week before her son’s departure, upon first seeing her son’s gun, upon hearing her son describe the training he went through, and while waiting for the days to pass as her son fights in Iraq.  While all these works are impressive and depressingly thought provoking, the best of the bunch is the last one, “Waiting.”  By repeatedly contrasting the times between the United States and Iraq, Richey expertly delivers the tension associated with the passage of time when one is terrified of the destruction the next second may hold.  What’s most riveting, however, is how visual the poems are, making chilling comparisons such as “the drag line of a spider” to emphasize objects one would normally ignore.
Afterwards, Richey goes on to describe her feelings about her son and poetry. She starts off with how her son grew increasingly conservative and it hurt their relationship that she was unable to understand how strongly he felt about certain issues.  She then goes on to describe her first work of poetry, which she states had nothing to do with her son. She also mentions that, having spent decades in the business industry before coming into poetry, such a shift from objective writing to subjective writing was not a smooth transition.  She claims that, in business, she was “always trying to sell something,” which is not the case with her poetry.
It should be noted that the lack of classic rhyming patterns may have worked well for Richey, but it is now commonly and ignorantly believed that only amateur poets strive to make their works rhyme.  If one was to look at Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven,” the rhyming pattern shows a mastery of the English language that is uncommon amongst experts, let alone amateurs.  It is understandable that rhyme shouldn’t be forced, but completely denying it as a useful tool in good poetry is also unjust.
Frances Richey is a talented poet who represents an underrepresented point of view.  While her presence is quite professional, her work is reassuringly motherly.

Source: www.stevenkasher.com

He walks into the room, momentarily addresses the class, and swiftly proceeds to installing his collection of photographs into the projector.  As if trying to avoid attention, the man works silently until his work is ready for display, only voicing his concern for the abundance of light.  Once the projector turns on, he simply switches from picture to picture and they themselves incite the questions that follow.  If you were to see a man of such simple demeanor toying with his camera in some Manhattan district, you would fail to realize that you are bearing witness to Jeff Mermelstein, worldwide authority on street photography, contributing to an art that is as much his as anybody’s.
Jeff Mermelstein needs little introduction past the fact that he is one of the leading street photographers of the world.  Winner of the European Publishers Award for Photography and holding exhibitions throughout the world, Mermelstein is one of the most acclaimed street photographers in existence today, although he doesn’t like the term “street photography.”  It’s an appropriate dislike, seeing as how his pictures aren’t confined simply to streets.  While many of his pictures are taken in New York’s concrete journal, Mermelstein isn’t shy of drifting into nature parks, beaches, apartments and a plethora of completely dissimilar settings.  Whether it is old women in an apartment playing mahjong or a young man sitting on the pavement, Mermelstein’s style is thoroughly varied.  In fact, the only central theme common to all his works is that they represent the life of real people, neither posing nor modeling and only scarcely aware of the photographer’s presence.  This unique style, coupled with his willingness to shoot thoroughly different settings, results in just one of his collections displaying a wider range of emotions than many other photographers’ entire career reels.
The greatest display of confidence by any artist is in his or her readiness to let their work of art speak for itself and, on that note, Mermelstein does not disappoint.  This artist cycles through his works, only providing background when asked to.  He claims that his roots are in “document[ing] the real world,” a style that asks for unbiased truth.  One can make a work of art look howsoever he or she pleases but documentation means to find the absolute truth and let the viewer make the judgment, something Mermelstein never fails to do.
While his down to earth mannerisms may lie in sharp contrast to the level of success he has seen, there is no denying that Jeff Mermelstein is talented, to say the least.  If you ever see him walking along your street, don’t bother with an autograph.  Instead, go visit one of his exhibitions; his works do this man more justice than his words ever could.

Source: www.apple.com

Director Ari Folman described his work as applicable to the soldiers of any war. True to this description, Waltz with Bashir, while avoiding mediocrity through its unique art style and articulate direction, fails to ever accomplish anything previous war movies have not.
Dubbed an animated documentary, Waltz with Bashir speaks of Ari Folman’s struggle in trying to understand a recurring dream of his. The struggle leads him to meet with psychiatrists, reporters, and fellow war veterans of the 1982 Lebanon War. The fact that this movie focuses so much on the psyche of war veterans means that it is bound to tread territory that has already been touched upon in recent years. The feelings of old men tired of war, the emotions of soldiers in battle, and the subtle humor behind the grimness have all been the subject of many artworks of our time and anything similar at this point seems redundant.
Despite this, however, the film still manages to feel fresh due to superior direction and aesthetic effects. The fact that this movie so strongly revolves around dream sequences means that it could have only been done through animation or computer generated imagery, the latter of which, if done convincingly, is drastically more expensive. Instead of rotoscoping (a technique where animation is achieved through tracing over live action footage), however, this movie was hand-drawn which, while allowing artists greater freedom, also makes character models move without the fluidity of actual motion. This is a problem prevalent in Waltz with Bashir, where characters, while detailed in slides, are rigid in motion. The rest of the movie, however, is visually stunning. The decrepit battlefields, the blazing balls of fire raining from the sky, and the salivating hounds are just some fine examples of the level of detail that went into each and every frame. Similarly, the color schemes, dark yet teasingly leaving specks of light lingering throughout, help to further the feelings of gauntness and perpetual waiting appropriate for times of war.
The direction of the film, too, is excellent and brings to life a relatively unoriginal concept. The dreams, especially Folman’s, are repeated throughout the movie and create an air of surrealism uncommon in films with such a subject. While this does make it more difficult to consider the film a documentary, it clearly makes it more cinematic. The pacing is also well done, with serious dreams and war sequences supplemented by absurd jokes, such as a comical break up or an explicit sex scene. The sound, consisting of battle effects and a translated war classic, is generic but appropriate. The best directorial choice, however, is the transition to live footage at the end, lending that seriousness and believability that a documentary demands.
Ultimately, Waltz with Bashir stands more as a testament to Folman’s directorial skill and less to the pains of his experiences. A passable movie saved only by its direction and design, this is one worth watching, but not re-watching.