Category: 1_Student Posts (Page 6 of 9)

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.