Spring 2013 History of Photography

Personally, I find spiritual photography to be very bizarre.  Shannon Taggart has made this a profession for herself and I don’t agree with it.  I don’t agree because most of what she documents are during vodu rituals.  In my culture and with my religious beliefs, meddling with vodu or any form of Santeria is a sin; the “devils work” if you will.  I think it is incredibly intrusive because I believe the dead should be left to rest.  Furthermore, I don’t believe that such documentation is valuable.  Or maybe it is, but to whom, I’ll never know.  Also, I believe the answer to whether or not it is possible lies in each person.  That is to say, it is possible if you believe in it, if you don’t, you may choose to cancel out the possibility that whats in the picture is from another realm with a more “realistic” explanation such as, “that’s probably just smoke” or “that person is just acting like shes possessed.”  To be honest, I didn’t even feel comfortable looking at Taggarts picture.

I find it as a coincidence how the article was published 4 days after the 100th Anniversary of the NYC subway system. On the day of the opening, a man described his subway experience as “When you get in, there’s nothing to look at except the people”, a quote where that remains unchanged in some situations almost 109 years later. But a normal subway ride would consist as nothing to look at, except for the people, maybe the ads around, and subway messages on the screen on the strip map in the newest train models. But what about waiting for the train? It could include looking at the way the station is designed, more especially the design of the original stations that first opened in my opinion, more ads placed around, or artwork that is placed around all over the system. Most of the time people can mostly be thinking if they’re gonna get to where they need to go on time, and hoping no delays don’t suddenly occur. Walker Evans’ “project for love” can be more viewed as how non-New Yorkers can get to see what was it like riding the NYC subway. And winter did seem like the right time as the coat can be used to disguise the camera. Compare those images to today, people can still be seen looking around or reading the morning paper. But what is also seen today is people going through their electronic devices, or find themselves sleeping on the train. They seem fascinating in a way we can see how one decade is, and one after another it is visible to see how at the same time society changes with it.

To be able to document religious rituals is difficult. I think it takes the right timing to be able to catch pictures of spirits taking over bodies of people. Documenting this may take many tries for it to be exact. For those that believe in voodoo, these documentations are valuable because they believe in it. They want to see the god and Loa. For people who do not believe in voodoo it may be intrusive. Many people think voodoo is dark because we do not know the true meaning behind it. We find it scary and frightening to see. Media always depicts voodoo as dark and evil. From the pictures, the guy with the machete seems very scary. If people who did not know about voodoo enough, would find it frightening because he is holding a machete and the emotions in his eyes are intimidating. For non believers of voodoo, they would think the idea of connecting to spirits is absurd and bizarre. We all believe in science and what we can see with evidence. The idea of spirits can not be seen, so it is hard for people in this century to think of it occurring. 

I liked how Evans described people riding the subway, “People’s faces are in naked repose down in the subway.” We all know how it is riding the subway, most of the time it is very chaotic, and sometimes at some stops it might be calm. The expressions that most of these photographed people have in the images is like that of daydreaming, perplexing faces. I think what Evans did was very interesting, clandestine photography is great use of documenting a social circumstance. Evans wanted nothing but to look at people, and people working hard to wrap themselves in solitude. But what is very interesting and it really catches my attention is the fact of photographing people inside the subway. Having a camera hidden inside your coat and pressing the button to take a photograph, and more fascinating the way he tried to estimate the right angle so that his target will be inside the frame of the photo. I think that if that project was done this time, most of the photographs will be of people sleeping, looking down to their electronic devices, wearing headphones and reading newspapers/books. Moreover, subways is more heavy advertise than before, so people have more to look at, instead of just looking at each other.

This topic is quite interesting to me, because I do believe spirits,but it just something we can’t see in real life. However, by looking at the photographs I feels a little bit creepy, but so weird and personally I really don’t like those photographs. Although the photographs are just shows people who has captured were screaming, yet it shows out of mind, but it doesn’t show actuation and motivation. Also, it doesn’t show any spirits at all. I was wondering how the photographer took those photographs and how he or she felt while in that situation and environment. Moreover, I hope the photographer will takes more photographs about spirits and how those people do to connect with the spirits instead of those photographs.

After reading the review of the new edition of Walker Evans Photographs It seems like it was his passion to take pictures in the Subway, Which He called it “a project for love” he enjoyed doing what he wanted to do. He said that while people travel they have different types of personalities, he describes it as public awareness and private abandon which he says that its something unique in the people that travel on the subway. He also said, “the subway was a sociological gold mine waiting for a major artist, and that artist ended up being him. In the photographs you can see that most of them looked really pensive worried, others reading the newspaper, they seemed like they were daydreaming. Perhaps most of them were thinking about the crisis that was going on during the great depression. Compared to now it is completely different, our style of dressing and even our activities while we travel most of us now use our phones to read the news, listen to music, text and play games. Although there are some similarities to before, sometimes you still see people that by their facial expression look worried, sad or pensive.

Evan’s subway photography project is really interesting and draw my attention, especially I’m the one who always go to school or work by subway. From his collection of subway portraits, we can still recognized some of people’s face comparing with nowadays people. Those people exposed their different expressions during the riding. One of great things of photography is recording everything including any object and important events. No matter what generation you are, you can see the past objects or events through the photograph. Thus,  Evan’s work really draw my attention. All the works he had done is by using his spy camera. Private is always a sensitive subject. I can’t judge the way he did or i agree with him because every question is not always has a right or wrong answer. But when I look at Even’s photographs,  his work is valuable and impress me. My points is photography is wide, there’s no certain rule to determine what is right or wrong except the bottom line seems clear. As time goes by , people eventually accept photographers their ideas. I like Even’s subway photography project and put more attention to it rather than  his approach to photography.