Exhibit Review

We took a trip to the Museum of the City of New York where we visited 2 exhibits that included Interior Lives: Contemporary Photographs of Chinese New Yorkers with photographs by Thomas Holton, Annie Ling, and An Rong Xu. As well as Through the different lens: Stanley Kubrick Photographs.

The first exhibit which we stepped into was the Interior Lives exhibit and as soon as you walked into the exhibit you first notice how many rectangular shaped photographs are hung up across the big squared room as well as the dimmed lights in the exhibit. As you begin to walk around you notice Thomas Holton’s Description and Many of his photographs followed by it. As you walk more inside you see many other photographs of different photographers including Annie Ling and An Rong Xu with their descriptions as well as their photographs followed by it. The exhibit also consisted of a middle area in which people can take a seat in this squared off rug section which consisted of seats. In the second exhibit; Through the different lens, you walk in and see a really weird non-squared room like in the first exhibit but you see a different kind of section in the room in which you can walk around in like a donut-shaped matter. While walking around the exhibit you see many photographs along the really nice walls all having to do with New York and most of the photographs having black and white on them. Each photograph shows a moment through time in which what and where in New York it was taken place. As you walk toward the end of the exhibit you see a TV playing a movie or part of a documentary explaining one of the photos thats in the exhibit while also 2 small seats for people to relax while watching.

One of the photographers I really liked was Thomas Holton and his project of following around a Chinese family and taking photographs of them all the time. While watching them grow in the process and being in their home and experiencing everything first hand and capturing their living space; especially how they lived and how they gradually got older and things changed over time for them. It generally caught my interest because it’s so unusual to let someone photograph your whole entire life for 10 years and continuing and capturing each moment as they occur since not many people would do that since they wouldn’t want to be bothered in the comfort of their own home. One of the photos I really love is the photo titled “Passport Photos, 2003” in which shows 3 of the children of the Lams family with their new passport photos standing each on a little stool overlooking a very tight apartment space in which many clothes were to the side and was black and white as well and it was the first day they initially met Holton. He explains that this was his first time meeting them and that little did he know he would be photographing them for the next 15 years which to me speaks a lot because of how now if you go through the exhibit you see so many photos of the age process of the children and how they’ve grown and how many things changed throughout the years.

In Kubrick’s New York, he tries to explain how harsh and cruel NYC can be. In one of the photos that is the most interesting to me, is the one taken on West 81st Street subway platform which had Kubrick’s future wife shows a person laying on the floor dead or asleep. The way Kubrick described the new york subway system was “practically everything and anything can happen.” Which shows how Kubrick thought about NYC and how literally anything can happen here even on the subways.

One of my favorite that I loved in the exhibit of Interior lives was the photo Thomas Holton took that was called “Steven’s Walk-In Closet, 2014” in which showed his sister looking through the walk-in closet while it having a mirror and reflecting it on her brother Steven. I love the use of reflection and the rule of thirds in this photo because it makes it a lot more interesting to look at. As well as her looking through it because it gives it a sense of mystery and as if she’s hiding by the way she’s looking in. It makes me feel interested and overall wanting to know more about the photo in general because of the composition and how it uses the dominant eye as well to give it more of a feel which makes it really interesting.