Sunday Night, 40th Street, New York, 1925,
Our fourth installation of Exposing the Mead was our final discussion that was focused solely on photographs from the collection. The founder of the series, Alex Strecker, led an engaging conversation on photography and the urban environment. Most of those in attendance were our regular audience, who’s devoted following we really appreciate, but there were some new faces as well. Before beginning his discussion, Alex explained the student-work component of the final installment of Exposing the Mead. He asked the student photographers in the room to submit photos inspired by three photographs from the collection that represent different stages of aging. The fifth and final discussion will be focused on these submissions
Alex prefaced the discussion by asking the audience what we think the essence of New York City is because it is the subject of both photographs. People seemed to reach a general consensus that Alicia Keys did a pretty good job capturing the essence of the city, but Alex filled in the rest of the picture with his idea of New York. He left us with a quote: “If you’re extraordinarily lucky, you might just be able to capture the essence of a city in a single photograph,” to keep in mind as we proceeded. Can you truly capture the essence of an entire city, especially one as immense and multifaceted in a single photograph? This question served as a base for us to return to and ground our conversation in.
After giving the audience the opportunity to get up and examine the photos up close, Alex reconvened the discussion, focusing first on Steichen’s photograph. We agreed that the subject of the photograph was the space created by the buildings and turned our attention to the very geometric shapes created by the straight lines. The ambiguous light emanating from the street stimulated extensive speculation, with many audience members commenting on its strangely soft, organic quality. Thinking about the unique perspective from which Steichen captured the image—aerial yet not from the very top of a building—led us to the conclusion that Steichen presents his point of view of the city to create a specific state of mind.
Moving onto Paulin’s photograph of Times Square, we immediately picked up on the transience of the captured moment. The discussion took a turn when we started talking about the presence of humanity, or lack thereof, in the photographs. Though Steichen’s photograph seems at face value to be more cold and removed, many people felt that there was less humanity in Paulin’s photograph in spite of the hustle and bustle it portrays. Though the Paulin is full of bright lights and advertisements that are clearly constructed by humans, it does not show any faces or any interaction between people, giving it an impersonal quality.
Alex read a quote from Paulin about his desire to produce images that border on surreal and asked the audience to compare the reality and surrealism of the two photographs. The intense contrast between the dark and light of the Paulin makes it appear impressionistic, but many people thought that Steichen’s photo is more surreal because it is more focused on the shapes created by the buildings than the actual buildings themselves. Jumping off of Steichen’s rectangular shapes, we talked about how the straight lines contributed to a sense of stillness and quietude in his photo whereas the circular lines in Paulin’s photo created a feeling of dynamism and chaos. We wrapped up the discussion by concluding that it is impossible to capture the city completely in any medium, but photography allows us to capture particular perspectives and single moments that represent important qualities of the city.
No comments:
Post a Comment