Category: HW1-Composition (Page 1 of 4)

https://www.malinfezehai.net/projects/displaced
The photograph I chose for the assignment was taken by an Eritrean-Swedish artist Malin Fezehai. It is a part of her collection named “Displaced” that covers stories of people who were forced to flee their homes due to wars, food insecurity, climate change, and other triggering factors.

It pictures Attah Modu, an IDP (internally displaced person) living in a camp in the border town of Ngala, Nigeria, with her child in the foreground and other women and a kid in the background. Attah had to leave her village after multiple attacks by Boko Haram (a terrorist organization based in northeastern Nigeria, which is also active in Chad, Niger, and northern Cameroon). She remembers feeling unsafe at her home and losing neighbors and friends to daily violence.
In this photograph, Fezehai tries to create a visual representation of the people who are weathering through crises and tough circumstances of Boko Haram’s insurgency, showing the effects of women’s past on their current life. When you take a look at the image, you can feel the heaviness that lies on these women’s shoulders after everything they have been through. I chose this photograph because I was lured in by its composition and use of color. Attah’s pose also reminded me of the Renaissance-era Madonnas.

There are a few formal elements used in this photo: symmetry, diagonal lines, and leading lines.
The element of symmetry in the photograph is pronounced both through the portrayal of the women sitting behind Attah, and the metal/wooden scrap and branches leaning on the wall. The scrap also acts as a representation of diagonal lines, as they reach the opposite corners of the photo, as well as leading lines, as they point at the women sitting on the floor. One can also argue that they are creating a frame within a frame, too, pointing the viewer’s attention not only to the faces of the sitting women, but to the shadowy figure of the woman in yellow, and the wall behind them that is covered in scribbles.
The contrast of women and their children with the background accentuates the unsettling feeling of being displaced. It shows the difference between the warmth of the community vs. the makeshift and temporary “home” they have to settle in.

This photograph was taken by Christopher Gregory-Rivera, a Puerto Rican photographer. This image is a part of a series titled Hurricane Maria, in which Gregory-Rivera documents the destruction the year the hurricane hit the island in 2017, and then again in 2018–just one year later. This photograph is meant to display the quotidian nature of Caribbean life–one can see paradise while doing the dishes. Within the context of the larger series, this photo is from 2018, which displays the aftermath of Maria. By demonstrating the proximity of nature, Gregory-Rivera is demonstrating to the viewer the duality of nature: its beauty and destructive unpredictability.

I chose this photographer’s work because a lot of his work is set in Latin America, namely the Caribbean. Being of Latin American descent, this work deeply resonates with me and captures my experience. I can see this photo and feel like I have been in this kitchen, I know this tile, this sink. I have seen this view while looking outside of my parents’ kitchen window. To be in parts of Latin America is to deal with the contradiction of being amongst some of the most beautiful natural sights and smells, eating amazing fruits I can only name in Spanish, all the while contending with extreme levels of poverty. In Gregory-Rivera’s case specifically, seeing this paradise in shambles due to the lack of government response on a local level, and as a subject of colonization by the US Empire.

This photograph demonstrates 3 elements we discussed in class: a frame within a frame, figure to ground, and contrast of light and dark. These three elements all work in conjunction to highlight the palms in the center of the photo. The window acts as a frame; the contrast draws our eyes to the plants outside the window. Nature is the subject, this ever-present force and reality for Puerto Ricans, whom inhabit this small, precarious island.

I am in love with this unnamed portrait by Malin Fezehai. This portrait was taken in landscape orientation, capturing a scene of two young black girls in the foreground, and several similarly dressed adults in the background. The two girls in the foreground both wore gray hooded shoals, floral gowns tattered with white buttons, and a necklace with an iteration of a cross at the center. The two girls occupy the left two-thirds of the frame, looking directly into the camera with a piercing stare, almost as if to reject the viewers’ presence into their cultural space. The centered girl did not have her hood on and was holding a flaming stick, serving as a torch, at around chest height. The flame illuminates her face and exposed clavicle with warm-toned natural light, casting shadows above her lips, down her nose bridge, and atop her clavicle. The other girl on the left third of the frame, who, judging by proximity and appearance, appeared to be her sister, had half of her face submerged in shadow. The position of the flame cast a heavy shadow on the right side of her face, essentially splitting her face in half with highlights on the tip of her nose, left half of her jaw, cheek, and eye socket. By utilizing high contrast of lights and darks paired with the girls’ seemingly unshakable glare, Fezehai established intense visual drama by creating an extremely unsettling atmosphere. Looking at this photograph, I felt that the two girls were studying me, declaring that they could see me even if no one else could, and telling me to leave all at once.

Fezehai frames the adults in the background across the top third of the frame, creating a visual hierarchy that begins at the eyes of the children and guides the viewer to the adults in the background. This framing can also represent the cultural hierarchy of the community, with the elders at the top and children below. The adults are wearing gray shoals wrapped around their heads and some of which are also carrying torches. The torches the adults are holding are considerably thicker than the one the young girl in the foreground has in her hand. Furthermore, in the rightmost third of the frame, the background shows a woman wrapped in a red and gray shoal instead of the much more prevalent solid gray shoals that almost everyone else wore. These differences between the children in the foreground and the adults in the background could represent the childrens’ cultural infancy to not yet being able to fully embody the traditions of their elders. The asymmetry of the composition and the lone hooded person in the bottom right corner of the frame also contributed to the mystery of these people’s culture. Whether they were crouching to pick something up, or they are a dejected member of this community the viewer will never know. Still, framing the children by surrounding them with their culture’s elders creates a strong sense of belonging, community, and protectiveness from the children’s perspective, while also instilling an ever-present unease to the viewers for intruding into a cultural space many of us have no part in.