Composing Spaces

Pangea Day is this Saturday, May 10th. I’ve been working with two students to plan the only public screening event in Southern Jersey. The planning is getting intense and exciting. We’ve posted signs everywhere, invited local schools and community members. One of the student co-coordinators has been on the radio (.mp3). We’ve got a Facebook page, and we’re hoping for a respectable turnout. And for the weather to be nice, as expected.

The Pangea Day folks have released a new trailer which seems to include portions of the 24 films that will be shown:

In 2006 Jehane Noujaim won the TED prize for her wish “to bring the world together for one day a year through the power of film.” Pangea Day is the realization of that wish—a global event with thousands of screenings in homes, fields, stadiums, and, like at Rowan, auditoriums. In these public and private spaces people will come together to get to know each other, to learn about each other, to celebrate each other in ways that only film can provide. Photographs and video that we take at the event will join those from around the world, adding Rowan, its students, and the South Jersey community to a world-wide text that encourages openness, curiosity, friendship, and hope.

Here is here 2006 TED talk:

It’s been a while since I’ve blogged regularly, partly because I have been traveling. I also got a new toy: a Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ50 digital camera, which I am becoming more fond of every day. Here is a small selection, though representative, of what I have been seeing lately through its (wonderful, 12x digital zoom) lens, shown in roughly the order they were taken.

Several weeks ago I came across an open call for work to be considered for a photography exhibit that asked, "Is it possible to make a photograph of New Jersey regardless of where you are in the world?" The wording of the call is wonderful, and brings into focus the relationship among space, geography, image, and interpretation:

You were born in New Jersey. You’ve been there. You’ve never been there. You know it from movies. TV. Songs. Newspapers. You’ve Googled it. YouTubed it. Wikipediaed it. Flickred it. You’ve never even heard of it.

So ask yourself: is it possible to make a photograph of New Jersey regardless of where you are in the world? The Pierro Gallery and iheartphotograph.com invite photographers, designers, and artists of all kinds to participate in this global open call for work.

Are ideas about place dramatically different since the internet has allowed us to participate in culture on such a global scale? Despite the endless stream of information and images available through mass media, are there limits to how we perceive, imagine, and understand the world? Exactly how do you picture New Jersey? What would you say about it in a photograph?

Your most striking responses—from the literal to the conceptual—will be included in the exhibition "Is it possible to make a photograph of New Jersey regardless of where you are in the world?" curated by I Heart Photograph for the Pierro Gallery in New Jersey, on view from April 6—May 25, 2008.

Exploring the ways that digital technologies impact how we see, circulate, and understand art, works for the exhibition will be submitted, curated, and produced exclusively through the internet.

I thought it was an interesting question and a wonderful topic for an exhibit, so I took the risk and submitted a few images. My rationale was that I, as a Jersey native, might know a few things about New Jersey.

I submitted 8 images in two groups (the first 2 images, the second 6 images), and I am pleased to announce that all 8 were accepted.

This is very exciting for me as I am a lover of photography but rarely have any time to actually get out and take pictures, spend time in the darkroom, or learn more about photographic and darkroom techniques. So, I’ll get a kick out of seeing my photos on the wall somewhere other than in my office and my apartment. Here they are:

Updated 3/8/08, 11:31pm
I submitted Train 1 and Train 2 because to me New Jersey is and has always been about shipping, freight, and transportation. I grew up enthralled with car carriers that I later learned were transporting cars that came through the Port of Elizabeth, and on a daily basis my school bus would drive under the train tracks on Deans Lane. These days I am reminded of Jersey’s reliance on trains because a freight line runs through my little town not 100 yards from my apartment. Two, three times a day I hear the train whistle and feel my apartment shake with the train’s massive weight and energy and importance.

The latter prints are of my maternal grandmother who is suffering from a form of Multi-infarct dementia, an illness related to Alzheimer’s. The experience has been one filled with frustration, anger, fear, loss, and begrudged acceptance for my entire family—and, I imagine, thousands of New Jersey families who have a relative suffering from a similar illness. Yet it has been incredible to see what strands of my grandmother have remained—her sense of humor, her feistiness, her ability to surprise, her love of art and flowers and concern for her grandchildren (whenever I see her she questions me about my "lady," a question that is about the dissolution of my marriage). There is, indeed, a beauty in her that is markedly different than the beauty that was there before, one that is masked by the pain of witnessing what can only honestly be called withering away. So often I have heard my grandfather, mother, aunt, and uncles talk about finding a way into her, and that is why I like the presence of the door knob in several of these shots. Here, for me, it is not merely an artifact of both the semi-locked environment in which she now lives (physically and mentally), but a talisman that reminds us of the struggle (for her and us) to try to unlock what has become locked, to gain access to that what she once knew and felt and could articulate. On this day I brought my grandmother flowers. She rubbed the petals in her hands and smiled and spoke of how gorgeous they were. It was a long visit—over an hour and a half—and we see her tiring in these images. On her floor I see many other families making similar visits with their loved ones. The concerns of aging and sick family members is a community, state, and national issue. She is a portrait of an aging, fearful, desperate New Jersey populace.

Via PhotographyBlog, World Press International has announced its photograph of the year for the year 2007, Tim Hetherington, UK, for Vanity Fair, of an American soldier resting at bunker, Korengal Valley, Afghanistan, 16 September. Jury chairman Gary Knight says that "This image represents the exhaustion of a man - and the exhaustion of a nation. We’re all connected to this. It’s a picture of a man at the end of a line."

See World Press International for their official announcement and a complete list and gallery of winners. Some specular and gorgeous and horrifying images in the gallery—a gallery which is going to come in handy this week in my Writing, Research, and Technology course as we consider the stark, engrossing, and oddly beautiful photographs in Luc Sante’s Evidence: NYPD Crime Scene Photographs: 1914 - 1918.

Lauren Mitchell at Viz points to Square America, which is a gallery of vintage photographs found and purchased at garage sales and flea markets. The site’s developer, Nicholas Osborn, writes: "Square America is a site dedicated to preserving and displaying vintage snapshots from the first 3/4s of the 20th Century. Not only do these photographs contain a wealth of primary source information on how life was lived they also constitute a shadow history of photography, one too often ignored by museums and art galleries." I really like that phrase, "the shadow history of photography."

One of the more striking exhibits in the Square Photography gallery is called "What Was On (November 1963)." What Was On is a series of 140 photographs taken by Martin Johnson of CBS’s coverage of the JFK assassination and funeral. Osborn presents 33 of the 140 images—each of which essentially the 1960s version of contemporary screen shots, providing a window into the events of the day and the medium being used to present those events. Consider these images:

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Frans Lanting’s "A lyrical view of life on Earth" filmed in Feb. 2005 at TED.

Toomer from Manning, 2:57 remaining in the 3rd quarter:

The first snowfall came to southern Jersey on Thursday, starting around 9:30am and ending around 11:00pm. About 3 inches in total. I, like many others I imagine, enjoy seeing how snow transforms the spaces we take for granted everyday. While walking around campus I snapped a few photos of Rowan Hall with my cell phone.

While in Rochester, NY, over Labor Day weekend for my cousin’s wedding, I had the opportunity to go to the George Eastman House gallery. It was the final weekend of an Ansel Adams exhibit. I had seen one of his exhibits when some of his work was displayed at the Harry Ransom Center on the campus of The University of Texas at Austin. The exhibit in Rochester was bigger and more thorough than the one in Austin and, as always, it is great to see master photographs up close.

The images that stuck with me from my time at the Gallery, however, were by Robert Polidori of Chernobyl after the nuclear disaster and New Orleans after hurricane Katrina. What struck me of these large-scale photographs was the similarity of the decay–and how the decay has completely redefined the spaces themselves:

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Today, as part of International Day of Peace activities, Rowan University’s College of Fine Arts hosted an exhibition of Pinwheels for Peace (1 of 4 such exhibitions in Glassboro, NJ) on the lawn between Science and Westby Halls.

This non-political organization aims to provide an alternative to the violent images that bombard children via TV, video games, and the movies. The organization web site says that it is their “hope that through the Pinwheels for Peace project, we can help the students make a public visual statement about their feelings about war/ peace/ tolerance/ cooperation/ harmony/ unity and, in some way, maybe, awaken the public and let them know what the next generation is thinking.”

I walked over to the exhibition with Sandy Tweedie, expecting to take a few pictures of it for an old friend who is an elementary school art teacher, and then be on my way to the Amish market in Mullica Hill. I didn’t expect there to be a table outfitted with markers and pastels so that passers-by could make their own. Some of the pinwheels were exceptional–amazing colors, wonderful patterns–and clearly took a lot of time and thought. On the other hand, my pinwheel (front and back):

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