Death Comes in Three's.

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/

September 18th

" If I like many photographers, and I do, I account for this by noting a quality they share- Animation. They may or may not make a living by photography, but they are alive by it. "

When taking a successful photograph, you must live through it. Not in the way that your name lives on, but your experience. If there is no "animation", what is the point of the photograph?  We photograph to capture, to remember, to simply tell a story. To me, one of the most important aspects of a photograph is that it couldn't be taken by anyone else, and if it could be, how would you photograph it differently than through the eyes of another photographer? As Robert Adams says in the beginning of the reading, " Your own photography is never enough. Every photographer who has lasted has depended on other people's pictures too-" It is important to be influenced by other photographers and artists, but what are you contributing to your own photograph that makes it different and your own? If we continue to create things that have already been created, then what is the point? I believe the point of photographing is to show your perspective and point of view on a given situation. My goal as a photographer is to share my experience with my viewer, and maybe they won't feel the same way as I feel, but my intention is to leave them with any feeling as long as it's just as strong as my own, whether they agree or not. 

Something I've been doing recently is making rules for myself before photographing. I'm still trying to figure out if this makes photographing easier or harder as of right now, but I know it will definitely help me improve as a photographer. I think it will help me develop a better understanding and more clarity of what I am capable of. One main goal is to step out of my comfort zone which is something that Robert Adams mentions in the reading when he refers to his friend driving through the sun roof of his car and driving with his feet. Of course, this wouldn't be my literal idea of stepping out of my comfort zone, but I definitely think that when a photographer takes risks, they are able to make a stronger photograph. Recently, I just asked Cadisha, a girl that I graduated with to photograph her. I was extremely nervous because we weren't really friends, all I knew about her is that she has Hodgkin's Lymphoma, a type of cancer. This was something that I would never do a few months ago. It was not until I was introduced to Diane Arbus' work that I was inspired to create photographs of people that were out of my comfort zone, rather than photographing family and close friends.

This was the first time in my life that the experience of photographing, the process that lead me to my photograph, was just as riveting as the outcome of my photograph. I'm not saying I haven't been moved by the process of photographing, but there was something different when I was photographing Cadisha. I was not only proud of myself, but honored to be photographing such a beautiful person that I wouldn't have known if I didn't go out of my way to ask if I could photograph her.

Dru Donovan

When you look at a photograph made by Dru Donovan, questions immediately rise. You don't just sit there are say, " oh it's just three men getting extremely intimate and the two men on the outside are kissing the man in the middle's neck!"  "Just" is not a word that is used in the process of describing one of Dru Donovan's photos. She not only takes an idea and digs deep with it, but she presents it in such a way that more questions are asked by the viewer than answered. I think that's what Dru accomplishes best in her photos. Not only does she capture an intimiate situation in a remarkable way, but usually she is a third ( or fourth or fifth) party looking into a scene, which as the viewer of the photograph can gives off an odd vibe. It's not every day you see three men of different race openly kissing, but also, are comfortable enough to do it in front of a camera.

Not only is it conceptually appealing, but visually appealing as well. The choice of clothing of the darker man on the right is just perfect and is complimented by the wooden rails. As much as the subject matter can be uncomfortable to some viewers, it is so pleasing to look at. She captures something that might be considered " socially unacceptable" and makes it beautiful. I can't stop looking at it. I've looked at this photo for so long just admiring it's unique sense of beauty. It seems to me that Dru plans out the outfit's that people are wearing in her photographs, or at least making it seem purposeful which I think is extremely important.

The way she has the passed out boy in the middle, wearing stripes, works so well. This has potential to be a juvinial photo of someone just photographing a teenage scene, but the way she uses clothing, or positions the people in the particular clothing, shows how thought out this photo is. The two outside figure's attention is on the " middle man" in both photos. I really admire Dru's use of dense dark background in this photo. I think if the background in the first photograph was dark, it wouldn't be as strong, but i'm glad that she made that choice in this photo.
Dru takes intimate situations, and exploits it, just as she does in the photo of someone being manicured.
We over look something like a manicure being intimate, but the way she captures it from an areal view, makes it a much more bizarre concept. The photo changes the subject from a manicure to a photo about touch and intimacy, which is something I've never really thought about.