The first three weeks of this semester have been too surreal. It's been a crazy start. I've looked forward to school since summer started. Two days after I got back to Purchase, I found out my good friend wasn't coming back because he passed away suddenly. There is nothing worse than hearing someone young, your age has passed away. I'm the kind of person who needs to keep busy to preoccupy myself and prevent myself from getting into a funk. So I kept busy for the rest of the week. I get a call from my dad at the end of the week that my aunt had passed away. It was the second week in a row that I had to call out of work for a death related incident. I haven't experienced many deaths in my life so two in a row is a big deal for me. But of course, life doesn't work in ways we understand, the following week, the third week of first semester, I had to put my dog down. Anyone who knows me, knows that Peewee was the light of my life and that this was the hardest thing for me to do, ever. Life doesn't stop so I couldn't either. I spent all week looking at current events. This project was particularly challenging for me. Everything on the news seems so negative and depressing. I ended up choosing an article about a Florida police officer running over a man named Marlon Brown. Marlon ran away from the cop when he was pulled over for not wearing a seatbelt. Him running away from the cop led to the cop driving around, chasing him and running him over, killing him. The whole incident was recorded by the dashboard camera in the patrol car. The family settled for $500,000 dollars in court, which meant the cop wasn't getting jail time. After they settled on this agreement, the family ended up releasing the video of the cop running Marlon Brown over. They felt it wasn't fair and the family wanted justice.
I went to the thrift shop and bought an old TV for five dollars that I wanted to use to represent the video of the cop. I went to photograph my television in this open field and on the walk there, I had a mental break down. Through out the three weeks, I didn't give myself time to take a break. I had finally hit my point and had too much on my mind. I sat down on the side of the road and just cried because I needed to. All I could think of the past week was the last moments I got to share with my dog. I was in the room when the vet put her down and I kept replaying this memory over and over. I finally realized that my response to this current event was right in front of me. Death is crazy and numbing. It's something I don't understand and I don't think many people do. I could never imagine having a family member's death on video. My goal of this project was to show the emotional aspects of someone dealing with death. The video on the police's dashboard holds so much weight emotionally. It's in the perspective of the cop, and it's the last moment of Marlon Brown's life. I wanted to show what the family must be going through, since the news only talks about the actions that take place.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/09/19/family-of-fla-man-run-over-by-police-car-calls-for-ex-cop-to-be-charged/
No comments:
Post a Comment