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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.”