Probably the most incomprehensible life to us city people is the life of bush women. It is no surprise then that audiences of Les ecailles de la memoire (The Scales of Memory) are still left confused about what they’ve seen in the performance.

The work addresses the rich history and culture of African-Americans and is supposed to explore elements of slavery through dance movements. In addition, one easily comes to deduce that most of the performance touches on nature and culture.

All of the dancers wear African dress while on stage, a wonderful display that sadly fails to smudge over their mediocre choreography. The first dance on stage is a single woman who moves her feet and hands in a zigzag pattern and hisses softly at the audience. Her movements are similar to that of a snake and at a few moments, she strikes at the audience. Her act is followed by a man who annoyingly stomps his feet around as if smashing bugs.

The dances get more complex after the first two acts pass. The third act features women calling out to and trying to find one another. The end of the act is strong, as the lighting director uses a box of light to enclose the women, using it as a metaphor for slavery. This contrasts with the fourth act, which displays a less serious mood by introducing an enjoyable couple dance.

The audience is immersed in a taste of African culture by the end of Les ecailles de la memoire. The fifth performance incorporates beat-boxing techniques and hip-hop-like dancing all to show the influence of African rhythms on current music. Furthermore, it throws sounds of Soca into the mix, which is a genre carried out in the Caribbean (another area African slaves were taken to). The end of the dance presentation is akin to a party on stage; several couples are revealed while they dance and make merry. It seems to focus on the positive side of love while a previous theme announced during the performance displayed love as “torture.” Torture is the cause of love allowing relatives and friends to care and worry about those who have been taken as cargo abroad.

While you might think you have understood the contents of this review, seeing the dances of Les ecailles de la memoire might be a completely different experience. Personally, if I did not have any knowledge of African history, I would have been lost as to what connected all the dance routines present in the entire performance. I wouldn’t recommend this dance presentation to anyone who is oblivious to African history and to anyone that looks for amazement in dance. You could notice similar movements in a club or party. The simple choreography (e.g. foot-stomping, hand gestures, and non-creative partner dances) featured here just fails to blow your mind.

What would you do after a loved one died of a heartbreaking disease? How would you cope with the situation? Would you try to fill the missing holes in his/her life or would you make peace with the person you knew him/her as? By writing Who She Was, Samuel Freedman answered all of these questions.

On November 25, 2008, he entered the classroom breathing heavily, as if he just suffered a panic attack. Then he leans on the professor’s desk and comfortably begins explaining how worried he was about being late. He speaks as if he was familiar with the students in the classroom, which wasn’t too hard since he is a professor. Freedman starts speaking about his feelings regarding his book and mentions that it took him a while to start it after his mother’s death from cancer. He wrote Who She Was as a tribute to her individual life instead of her life with his family and stated it was “fascinating because I knew who she became but not how.” The purpose of writing his novel was to offer it is a final form of forgiveness to his mother. Freedman explores his mother’s life in the Bronx because of the remorse he “felt for not being more attentive when she was sick.” He admits that his former career as a theater reviewer plays a major role in helping him connect his book to a specific audience: young adults.

Freedman then opens up his Q&A session by relating past and present through the way historians of the future will see our world. Subsequently, he jumps into the rivalry between historians and journalists, wherein historians claim journalists “don’t know how to do research” and journalists claim historians “don’t know how to tell a good story.” Of the “wonderful narrative storytellers that do primary source research” and thus influence him, Freedman names Doris Goodwin, Anne Douglas, Paul Johnson, and Erik Larson.

The first question directed toward him pertained to his novel and how it changed his views on his parents’ marriage. He answers by saying he has more compassion for his father after learning his mother loved another man (Charlie) and digresses away into his feelings about his grandmother. Shockingly, he states that he hated her after learning the things she denied his mother but goes on to say that he realized the difficult situation she was in at her time and that allowed him to understand her actions. One thing Freedman tells the students while in the spotlight was: “There’s no question you guys can’t ask.” He holds true to his statement by covering all the bases of the questions he was asked, including one that inquired into the relationship between him and his kids after creating his book. Focusing on conveying the importance of his kids’ happiness to him, Freedman says “You have to be careful in denying their heart’s desire.”

Finally, the moment the students have been waiting for arrives when a student questions Freedman about how they should approach their “Who She/He Was/Is” papers. He cleverly states: “Be an insider and an outsider.” This correlates to his honest portrayal of his mother’s sexuality and alcoholism; they’re things he writes and doesn’t deny. After all, Freedman says, “Your obligation is to your reader.”

An example of a “chopine”

On my second visit to the Met, I spent a couple of minutes in the lobby admiring its size and design. The many exhibits held by the building and the routes you take to get to some of them have always bewildered me. I admit that during a class trip in high school, a friend and I got lost in the museum for an hour. This time, however, I knew for sure the exhibit I was going to visit and how I was going to get there.

The country of Italy and its contributions to culture through art and food are definitely among my interests. Thus my first stop at the Met was the “Art and Love in Renaissance Italy” exhibit. Most of the artwork featured here included plates and metal objects, paintings, and sketches. The applied designs themselves were directly related to mythology and women. The presence of the Medici family within these works was also expressed; this family sparked the obsession for art in Florence, Italy and passed its name down to three ruling popes.

One of the artworks that I feel captured the cliché love story was “Portrait of a Woman and Man at a Casement,” by Fra Filippo Lippi. The painting looked aged and had a classical mood to it, as the colors used were not very shocking or experimental. The first subject to gain the viewer’s attention is the woman in the picture, who’s flat and non-dimensional profile gives off a stoic expression. The only thing elaborate about this simple-looking woman is her decorated Renaissance attire. She is staring at her lover through a “casement,” or window with a sash made to open easily. They are lost in each other’s eyes and it seems as if he is secretly meeting her.

The second work that I’ve chosen to describe is “Chopines.” These shoes worn by women in the 16th and 17th centuries were among the objects that fit into the “art” category of the exhibit. They certainly looked unique and had a structure that resembled an abstract, marble ornament. The description on the pair of shoes read that they were made of wood, which is sure to cause discomfort for the feet. The shoes also displayed a leather exterior, showing how Italian shoemaking can be traced back to such an early time.

Being in the exhibition room of “Art and Love in Renaissance Italy” allowed me to experience a sample of Italian culture and history. It places the viewer in the time of the Renaissance and creates a milieu similar to that of any museum in Italy itself.

For around 800 years in Spain, Christians and Muslims fought to claim the land as their own. Previously inhabited by the Visigoths, a barbaric people, Iberia was viewed as a mystical land with an improved condition since the Moors ruled. As the success of their rule there grew, their territory grew as well. The popular belief during this time, however, was that the Moors oppressed the population under them. Reconquista, the name of my collage and the period during which the war between Muslims and Christians occurred, focuses on the cultural exchange and highlights of this piece of history.

My collage was done on my computer using a program designed for image editing. I decided to follow this format because I had designed some collages and blends in my early years of high school. I personally feel that this method fits my abilities best and creates a unique look for my collage. I also felt that printing out my collage from my computer wouldn’t do it justice and come out looking the way I wanted it to; printing it out would confine it to the flat, white surface of paper whereas keeping it on a computer would preserve the digital effects that I added.

There are various contents in my collage that overlap and cover white spaces as to convey the chaotic nature of the Reconquista. The top of the collage represents the “Christian side” while the bottom represents the “Muslim side.” On the Christian side, I included pictures of Christian architecture, soldiers, a shield, religious figures, and of Pope Urban II, who declared the Reconquista “holy”. I also added stamped patterns of angels to signify the deep connection that Christians had with their faith and of boards woven together with rope, to signify the stepped path that they took in retrieving Spain by 1492. The Muslim side of Reconquista focuses on the contributions that the Moors made to Spain: architectural design, the astrolabe, and advances in medicine. In addition, there is an artwork present that displays the way the Moors were interpreted by the people they reigned over (see picture of them playing chess) and wooden buttons added alongside the astrolabe to give the collage more texture and a sense of antiquity.

The image that I layered above all of the elements of the collage is a map of Spain. This is to represent how one event in its history helped shape its being.

My brother (age 3) and I (age 4) in front of our home right before I was off to school.

As she drove back to their home she tried to hold back her laughter. During the five-minute ride, she glanced several times at her rear-view mirror showing the incredibly naïve and adorable creature she helped create. After a few seconds of coaxing him to show it to her, the mother noticed that the test paper her six-year-old son produced was a fake. At the top of it in thick writing read “90000%.” But she didn’t let him know his mistake. She loudly praised him just to allow him the moment of smugness he experienced while seated in the back of the car.

July 9th, 1992: his birth. Around 12 P.M., he entered the world as Kevin Saroop. The proud and exhausted mother took one look at him and her happiness quickly turned to concern. The boy didn’t look similar to any of her or her husband’s family. His skin was dark, his nose wide, and his hair thin. “Oh no,” she thought lying on the hospital bed. “This boy isn’t going to look nice.” Back at home, her husband was drinking and celebrating his son’s arrival. The boy was introduced to his older sister who quickly took to him. Since Kevin was unexpected, his parents had to clear a room in their home that was originally intended to be his father’s office.

As a toddler, Kevin was often bullied by his sister. Being that he was younger and given more attention, she found it easy to displace her emotions through bossing him around. At first, Kevin didn’t object as he was too young to do anything. Through older age and greater sense gained by his fourth birthday, Kevin began to fight back. No matter how much they fought, however, his sister never brought up his greatest weakness, his greatest insecurity: his bed-wetting accidents. Every time Kevin wet the bed, he would cry incessantly due to a heightened sense of guilt. At those moments he felt like a mistake and sought solace in his family.

Although they fought often, Kevin and his sister enjoyed each other’s company. They were only one year apart and liked to do kiddy activities together. They also liked learning about one another. By the age of five, his sister graduated kindergarten wanting to be a doctor. This was something her parents were proud of. When she asked Kevin what he wanted to be at that age, he answered “a chicken man.” This term was used by Kevin and his sister to describe the men who killed chickens at the Halaal farms for paying customers. “And if you can’t be a chicken man?” his sister would ask. “Then I’ll be a garbage man,” he would answer.

When Kevin entered the first grade and his sister entered the third, he began realizing the problems of being a younger sibling. They both attended the same parochial school, which started using an honor roll list when a student entered the third grade. Kevin’s sister was unaware of this and was put on the honor roll list for her hard work. Her teacher complimented her good efforts during PTA meetings, which circled back to increased parental attention at home. Realizing that he could get the same result if he did well academically, Kevin struggled to keep up with his work in the first grade, most of it assigned by a bad-tempered teacher.

In the following years, Kevin and his sister continued to attend the same school. While she participated in many competitions and won some, pressure was put on Kevin to do the same. She also came out on top of her class, something her parents expected of her. They expected Kevin to do well too, if not better, since he was supposed to learn from her mistakes and achievements. Thus he secretly admired his sister and, at the same time, secretly hated her for outlining his life for him. He rebelled by refusing to do well in school without incentives, which his parents readily prepared. To him, the gain of these incentives represented a form of affection. They were tangible signs of love.

When the time came for his sister to move on to high school, Kevin felt slightly relieved. No longer would he have to be in the same academic environment as her. No longer would he have to be compared to her. But the great shock came when his sister passed the “Specialized High School Admissions Test.” After news of her acceptance into one of New York’s specialized schools, Kevin’s sister became the gleaming pride and joy of their parents. Boastful words were transmitted to relatives via phone and in person while Kevin dreaded the moment he would have to take the test. It became so overbearing that at the mention of his sister’s news, Kevin would hang his head down and usually exit the room. Two years later, after attending two different test preparation programs and receiving a bit of tutoring, he took the test. Kevin was not admitted into any of the existing specialized schools.

The disappointment of his parents reached an all-time high at the receipt of his test score. The idea of him not being able to attend a specialized school was devastating so much so that his mother actively sought out newly built specialized schools within New York City. When she found out about Brooklyn Latin High School she immediately forced Kevin to investigate admission into the school, which he eventually was granted and had taken. At the same time, his sister was rejecting the proposal of becoming a pharmacist by her parents. In an effort to further win his parents over, Kevin assumed the role of aspiring pharmacist within his family. This would follow in the steps of his father, whose approval mattered to him most.

This took a drastic turn once Kevin entered high school. As you probably already know, high school is a learning experience. It’s a time when most of us discover what we want to do with our lives and the last time we’ll be regarded as minors. Kevin’s time in high school helped him further define his being so as to point toward the direction of the career he wanted to pursue. Being a fan of wrestling for over 13 years, Kevin always admired the high-flying tactics of wrestlers such as Rey Mysterio and Jeff Hardy. He always said that he’d be a “high-flyer” one day and engross himself in the exhilarating feeling. Upon declaring a possible goal to become a wrestler, Kevin was seen as a joke by his family. His parents and sister laughed at his unrealistic assumption, which he defended by saying he’d work hard to make real. His “back-up plan” is pharmacy, which he plans to attend school for after graduating from high school.

Eight years ago, my astrology-oriented cousin read Kevin’s palm. She claimed that one of his lines spoke of success and money. Although Kevin doubts himself and tells all of his friends that I’m better than him at everything, I know that the story on his palm is correct. He’s taking his own route instead of an expected one, and working toward his own dreams is the greatest sense of fulfillment he can ever achieve.

The first step I took in working on this project was choosing a theme. I figured that since the city is such a diverse place, I would need to narrow down the subjects of which I took pictures. From my frequent visits to Chinatown in lower Manhattan, I decided that street vendors would be the perfect theme. Prior to completing the album Street Stalls, I thought I would focus on capturing the essence of these stalls and in some cases, their owners.

I began shooting a week before the project was due, as it took me a while to decide on a theme. The two places that I figured would have the most diverse street vendors were Chinatown and SoHo. Coming out of the Canal street station, I noticed an entire block of street vendors and knew I had come to the right place for Street Stalls. In SoHo too, I noticed a few stalls that were located in random places that served as subjects for my album. All I had to do was figure out how to shoot.

One of my main goals in carrying out Street Stalls was to realistically capture images, meaning that subjects in the frame would be in their natural environment. I didn’t want to ask permission from street vendors to take their pictures because I want my viewers to see their usual means of conducting business. I also wanted to expose a bit of their lifestyle to my viewers, hoping that my viewers would realize that with running any type of business, hardships are always present. I wanted to get rid of the pretense that street vendors aren’t as hard-working as employees in fancy business firms.

Even though there were plenty of examples of street stalls in both of my locations, I found myself shy to shoot them. I received many blank stares from passersby and from the stall owners themselves as I attempted to discreetly capture them. Undoubtedly, this made me very nervous as I remembered the talk with Jeff Mermelstein. I imagined being cursed at or threatened if I took their pictures. I even imagined my precious camera being confiscated and destroyed in the hands of an angry stranger.

In order to combat this fear, I came up with an idea that would make people less suspicious that they were being “snapped” by a madwoman. I invited a friend to accompany me while I was taking pictures, which turned out to be quite convenient. Not only was she a resident of Chinatown (one of my project sites; also next to my other site) but I would be able to pretend I was taking pictures of her when I was indeed not. I found that vendors and customers seemed to care less when I appeared to take pictures of my friend. The only photo in which a vendor was camera-shy, even when I pretended to focus on my friend, was “Hanging Treasures.”

Through our Interdisciplinary course, we were able to explore the works of great photographers. During this time, I noticed that most of their work was in black and white (Mermelstein being a happy deviant), usually for a reason. It was then that I decided that my album would be in black and white too, as I had a compelling reason to do so. Being a street vendor is no ordinary job. You don’t have an office to work in, not many people working under or near you, and not much room for growth. It’s a demanding job most people do just to get by. Hence, black and white was definitely the way to go for Street Stalls. This effect shows viewers the gravity of the featured theme. Moreover, I added a blur effect to some of the photos for increased texture and to act as a surreal release from their reality.

All things considered, I was completely satisfied with the end result of Street Stalls. If I was to name my favorite photograph of the album, I would choose “He Has Hope.” This piece embodies what I hoped to capture on the New York City streets and the subject readily allows us into his milieu.

Shooting Street Stalls also helped me further appreciate the works of street photographers, especially because of the trials they must face.

Classified as a “concerned photographer,” Cornell Capa worked to expose revolutions and hardships, especially in Latin America. Capa was born in Hungary into a secular Jewish family in 1918. He was inspired to go into photography due to his brother, Robert Capa−a war photographer who was killed while taking photos in Indochina. In 1974, he created the International Center of Photography (ICP) in order to honor his brother’s cause and to strengthen photojournalism. Currently, the ICP is featuring an exhibit of his various works.

One of Capa’s photos that managed to epitomize the working class in Puerto Barrios, Guatemala was of a “Peasant with patched pants listening to land distribution speech.” The photo was taken during the summer of 1953 and featured a poor man with battered clothes listening intently amongst a crowd of people. This one man seemed to represent the entire laborer population of his time, as he had his back turned away from the photo so as to not put a face on poverty. It was captured during the presidency of Jacobo Arbenz Guzman, who strongly supported agrarian reform and the redistribution of land to peasants. In this manner, the photo shows what Capa referred to as “…a beginning of a new life” for the less fortunate population of Guatemala.

Another country that Capa visited was Argentina. What he focused on the most while there was the dictatorship of Juan Peron and the effects that it had on his followers. A piece that I found amusing was “Portrait of Eva Peron being hoisted before rally at which Juan Peron announced and withdrew his resignation,” taken in Buenos Aires the August of 1955. The story behind this dealt with Peron’s supporters rallying to get him back in office after he resigned, which resulted in his invalidation of the resignation. The mere presence of these huge portraits of Juan and Eva Peron within the photograph is enough to make any viewer chuckle, for the idea of someone putting a self-portrait large enough to cover a building side seems crazy. Considering the amount of respect and reverence that Peron’s supporters had for him at the time, it seems plausible that the pair would be hailed in such a way. Yet the absurdity of this photograph and its benevolent portrayal of the two leaders disappear in the subsequent photos of the exhibit, wherein former supporters are shown rallying against them.

Although his profession was viewed to be of artistic value, Capa did not focus on making his photos visually pleasing. He wanted his photos to tell a story that would move his viewer and inform him/her about the existing conditions of the world. Through his work in Guatemala and Argentina, he thoroughly expresses his concern for his subject matter and dedication to his purpose as a photographer.

In a loud and slightly nervous manner, Frances Richey made her way to the small stage in the Macaulay Honors College Common Room. Her unexpectedly tranquil and flowing voice began to guide her audience into the shallow details of her life (where she was from, what college she attended, etc.) Then, as the evening progressed, it dived into the depths of her soul.

Before reciting to us the intimate poems of her son’s deployment to Iraq, Richey gave us a background on what helped her turn to poetry.  Richey lived with her son Ben as a single mother. While he was in high school, she decided that her life needed a deeper meaning. She then volunteered at a hospice and taught yoga in order to find the path through which her life was meant to be traveled, leading to her first poems and, eventually, first book. The Burning Point was a collection of poems about her mother and the processes of life. The Warrior, on the other hand, lashes out Richey’s honest emotions about her son’s involvement in war: an event that threatens life itself.

Richey proceeds with her poem-telling in a chronological manner, beginning with Ben’s graduation from West Point to her feelings while he was in Iraq. In “The Barn Swallows,” Richey abruptly states: “My son is suddenly a man.” In addition to recognizing his growth, she notes how he’s always leaving her. This serves as a perfect transition into “One Week Before Deployment,” a six-piece poem about her exploration into her son’s position before his arrival in Iraq. Out of the three parts she read, her most stunning statement is of her search for her son’s gun among his luggage. Richey describes never seeing her son with one and looks for the gun as she did “a rattlesnake.” Richey continues her gripping momentum with “Kill School,” a description of what her son learned at West Point. Among one of his lessons was one where he was taught to kill a rabbit, which Richey innocently portrays as a baby rocked into a human’s arms then smashed into a tree.

The poetry session ended with a Q&A, facilitated by the students of the Macaulay Honors College. It is here that Richey admits her son’s conflicting viewpoints on politics compared to her own and also where she expresses relief for the “best news of all” (her son no longer being in the military). Her roots in poetry are further exposed when she tells the audience that she “wrote poetry in college…about how life sucks,” and then went into business afterward because she was a single mom. Most of all, Richey states her main position on writing: “Better writing comes when you don’t know how things are gonna end.”

Hip-hop is essentially unheard of in Broadway and off-Broadway shows. Usually when you happen upon tickets to the typical musical, the numbers included in it tend to be poppy and understandable to all members of its audience. In October of this year, however, Clay was released in New York to be an off-Broadway anomaly.

The brains behind this operation is Matt Sax: a 24 year-old graduate from Northwestern University who is the star of the entire play (that’s right folks—it’s a one-man show). But that doesn’t seem to hold back the deliverance of the plot one bit. Sax defines each of his characters well enough so that the audience knows who he’s playing and when he’s playing him (or, in some cases, her). The real difficulty lies in the unique genre of the show. Being that Clay is a hip-hop musical, the details of the play seem to fly rapidly in your face as Sax delivers his rhymes on his co-star microphone, which he sometimes uses to portray characters. At certain points during his freestyles, you could look into the audience and notice the confused faces of members who are not too familiar with the slang and speed of rap.

The story within Clay, as its genre, is contemporary. Clifford, a kid from Westchester, is faced with the divorce of his parents who both hail from different social classes. As Clifford grows up and after the death of his mother, he finds himself strangely attracted to the power of hip-hop. While this attraction is forming Clifford’s attraction to his new mother deepens as well, sexually and emotionally. Soon, Clifford is banned from his materially comfortable life and forced to find himself through the teachings of hip-hop from a man who knows life’s troubles. It is at this point that he becomes “Clay.” The play starts and ends with a performance by Clay but by its end, you will find yourself questioning whether or not Clifford’s character actually developed. He ultimately transforms from an unhappy and confused kid to a magical lyricist with a new name—who still carries a great deal of hate and resent for his father as a mode to cope with his mother’s death.

Through Clay’s flashbacks, the audience gets to encounter momentous events in Clifford’s life. Sax’s narrative role strengthens the play by smoothly guiding the audience through each event while adding an element of entertainment, especially when Sax decides to challenge the invisible barrier between stage and audience by asking for cheers and personally visiting audience members. If not by its story, Clay seems to be held together by the outgoing character of Sax himself and is a play that I would recommend to any fan of modern stage performances and/or hip-hop.

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.

Mermelstein started his career in 1981 after an internship at the International Center of Photography, where he continues to work today. He claims to have fallen in love with color photography since this time as it possesses an “M&M candy-like seduction.” The camera he used to shoot photos during the early side of his career was a Nikon One-touch camera that was described as “amateur.” The cameras he currently uses include the Lica M6 (which he praises as a treasure) and a Canon T-90.

Most of Mermelstein’s photographs featured in the presentation at Baruch were taken during the 1980s. Among those photographed were his own family and people on the New York City streets. In one photo featuring his family, Mermelstein pointed the camera at his female relatives (mother, aunts, etc.) while they enjoyed a game of mah-jong. In another family photo, Mermelstein’s relatives are seen conversing emphatically at a table. Perhaps the one photo that stood out to me the most out of his street collection was of a man standing between what appears to be two police officers. He captures the arms of the policemen and takes the shot from a vantage point that exploits their towering figures while the subject between them intimidatingly looks on.

Although New York City seems to be the location for most of his works, Mermelstein has explored other parts of the country in search of places to show American social conditions. One of the challenges he finds with taking these photos is that in some instances, foreigners and/or foreign places will not consent to having photos taken. An example that he cited was from his experience in London, where parts of the city prohibited photographs due to fear of terrorism.

During his entire presentation, Mermelstein remained cool and casual. He openly addressed any questions concerning his work and humored students. This in no way undermined the artistic gravity of his work, as students were moved to appreciate the subjects he decided to capture and the ways he decided to do so. When asked how he chose what photos to display in his collections, Mermelstein answered: “Pictures like these are hard work—perpetual. It’s always hard to pick the perfect shot.”