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The Worlds of Ntozake ShangeAND DIGITAL STORYTELLING

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Making Images vs. Taking Photos

by Michelle 1 Comment

Visiting the International Center for Photography last Monday for class was a truly inspirational and motivational experience for me!

It feels appropriate for me as I took Photography 1 last semester with the Visual Arts department at Columbia University. It is cool to contextualize the world of photography and understand the limited accessible spaces for dark rooms and film processing. I am excited to be able to use these facilities for our final project!

The presentation on photography was also interesting and reminded me of the ways in which we talked about art and photography in the art history classes I have taken. In fact, Bradley, with whom we will be working closely, concluded the presentation with works by Brooklyn- based artist, Lorna Simpson, an artist I have written about for the class, Feminism and Postmodernism in Art.

to revisit old pains

by Melissa 2 Comments

Our conversation at the ICP about the practice of imposing text on photograph to produce an image – distinct from the practice of photographing – to relay a story/narrative that is non-linear and moves in liquid form through more than a single channel amplifies my understanding of embodied knowledge.  Both Decarava/Hughes’s The Sweet Flypaper of Life and Shange/Kamoinge’s The Sweet Breath of Life are artistic undertakings that function through text and photograph to relay multidimensional images/narratives/stories. They attempt to render a full account of Black livelihoods via explorations of the extraordinarily mundane and familiar landscapes around which existence in kinship and individuality take form.

“Poetographics”- The conversation between poetry and black photography

by Dania 1 Comment

“Photography is writing through light”

Central to Shange’s writings and black photography is the ability to capture emotions and life’s mundane activities. Stories of the black individual’s experience in America. The impacts of societal organization on the realities of each lived experience. Kamoinge’s photographs in conversation with Shange’s words grant access to an intimacy that one may not be worthy of or does not have the tools or experiences to understand. The writing as well as the photograph expands, complicates or perhaps simplify narratives by granting permission to the consumer. With this permission explicit contexts may not be available and thus allows the consumer to feel and imagine beyond the scope of the artist’s intentions. The writings and the photographs give language to what is or what may seem inexpressible. As shange mentions, photographs hold memories beyond what is captured in “a bit of the Lord will take you thru”:

Exploring the Public Domain & Week 2 ICP Class

by Kim Hall 2 Comments

The Travelers’ Green Book: 1963-64 International Edition. From the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Jean Blackwell Hutson Research and Reference Division. NYPL Digital Collections

How many times have you sung “Happy Birthday” in your life? Did a representative from Warner Music show up and ask you to pay  a fee?  I’m guessing not. However, until the beginning of this academic year when the song was ruled to be in the public domain, if you showed characters singing “Happy Birthday” in a TV show, film, greeting card or any media that was either public or commercial, Warner Music would have vigorously asserted its right to that material and you would need to pay for something that many assumed was just “public property.”

Finding magic behind the lens (in your backyard)

by Danielle 1 Comment

I was really taken by Bradley’s final anecdote about learning to take photos in your own backyard, and how humbling that can be. Often our everyday blurs into the mundane. Holding a camera, I think there’s always an initial desire to capture something fresh and new; something you’ve never seen before. But I believe the most empowering kind of photography requires using your lens to kindle the magic of your mundane.

Shange, DeCarava, and the mundane

by Sophia 2 Comments

I was very excited by our class visit to the ICP. I have practically no experience with either the technical or historical practices of photography, and it was incredibly special to be taught by someone who was clearly a passionate expert, and who integrated so much of his personal relationship to the medium into his instruction. I’ve never looked at an image with such love and intensity as I did this past Monday, and I am looking forward to getting to do so more often, and with more developed tools.

The Things An Image Can Say

by Nadia 1 Comment

I was really blown away by Bradly Dever Treadaway’s presentation at the International Center for Photography. Last semester in the Shange course, I learned how text creates images and last Monday I learned images can create text! The images by Robert Frank Bradly showed us was a prime example of this. I found the image of the trolley in New Orleans particularly striking because of the way in which a simple, candid shot was able to say so much about the social hierarchies of the time and the linear space in which people lived.

Robert Frank | Trolley — New Orleans (1955)

Black Presentation and Authenticity through Photography

by Clarke 1 Comment

who’s hair isn’t done / let me get in that head honey / the day is lace and crinolines / curls, satins, and layers of beauty / who’s mama wouldn’t be proud / who’s eye won’t be turned when / i saunter outta this room where / the magic is and become it – The Sweet Breath of Life

 

And they has a party every Saturday night / usually not no big party / Just neighbors and home folks…But it’s nice to young folks all dressed up going somewhere–maybe to a party. But it’s sad if you ain’t invited.

The Sweet Flypaper of Life

A number of continuities exist between Shange and Kamoinge’s The Sweet Breath of Life and Langston Hughes and Roy DeCarava’s The Sweet Flypaper of Life, including authentic representations of black families and neighborhoods, and the power of pairing image and text.

much ado abt black photography

by Kiani 2 Comments

This week’s introduction to Shange’s work and black photography at the International Center of Photography was exciting and enlightening for so many reasons. As a student of photography and a visual arts major, I have visited the facilities on a number of occasions for classes and shows. It was particularly interesting and relevant to experience the Center in this specific way. My work for my thesis and as a practicing art is so intertwined with my identity and my experiences as a queer person of color from the South in New York at Barnard/Columbia and abroad.

Images and Text: Questions of Identity and Meaning

by Nicole 1 Comment

I learned in a photography class at Barnard that early photography began to flourish among the masses with the adoption of portraiture by the middle class in the mid-1800s. Disderí, the European photographer who became famous for photographing the masses, created small photos of people called carte de visite that were more accessible to the middle class. He was often contrasted with other photographers who only photographed the rich. The professor argued that the middle class used photography as a statement of their status and as a way of self-fashioning. We, the students in the class, were prompted to inquire as to what the subjects of photographs were trying to say. Most of the photographs we looked at in this class were not created by black Americans nor did they feature people of color.