"Hey! Sing me a nice Italian' song!"

Waking up a little late this morning threw me off but everyone else seemed as tired as I was as we walked the same six blocks to the Tisch building. This morning was devoted to our critiques for the digital portrait assignment where we had to make 36 self portraits of us taken in one day, a post card of our favorite portrait, 3 self portraits as a triptych and 6 portraits of other people. Everyone had a different take on the assignment and showed what they could capture on their digital cameras as their point of view. Some portraits had people posing in the studio at Tisch while others had people sitting in subways and walking in and out of porta-potties as strange as that is. Overall, everyone has improved in some way from week one and everyone is excited for our next and final assignment, a narrative.

The narrative assignment is our biggest assignment yet and everyone is looking forward to expressing themselves as an artist for the final show on August 8th. A narrative tells a story that generally has a beginning, middle and end which can be fictitious, convey a specific idea or be completely constructed. We can choose those options and whether or not we want to shoot with digital or film and whether we want it staged on the street or in the studio or just taken by accident. These images should illustrate a cohesive and complete body of work focusing on one concept. We will have to write two papers for this assignment with our project proposal due this Friday giving us only two days to come up with something brilliant and completely unique to create with our photographs. Everyone is thinking of different ways about how they can approach this assignment and the ideas are very broad. For example, Edward is thinking of using a poem he wrote about love while Martin wants to take portraits of street venders. Kelly wants to create a story about a girl running away while Jane is inspired by her book Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov and Sandra is thinking about taking portraits of children. Myself, who knows my story yet but I want to create certain feelings through peoples body gestures. This is just an idea and everyone is uncertain on what to do but at least we have something in the first seven hours of this project.

Later this afternoon, a local New York artist named Jamel Shabazz came in and talked to us with enthusiasm and excitement bursting throughout the room. Jamel had a very powerful presentation of his work showing us his portraits of teenagers in the Harlem streets, beautiful scenery of Morocco and his deuces collection of couples and best friends. He encouraged us to travel the road less traveled when it comes to photography, go against the grain and it does not matter what type of camera you have, but it all has to deal with the eyes and the ideas in your own head. Jamel's life gift of photography is to make people think and make his work a universal language for other people to read around the world. Jamel inspired us to take photographs with meaning but most importantly, love. Jamel might be attending our August 8th show and we hope he can because his work has inspired us and we would love to see him again.

Dinner came rolling around and once again we ate at the lovely Weinstien hall where every type of dorm food can be found. After that, we headed to Strand book store where there were thousands of books that can be stretched out into 18 miles of pure reading enjoyment. All the bookworms came out of us and we ran all over the book store to find any type of book you want from cooking to photography to Where's Waldo? Many of us could spend hours upon hours in that store but we only got 45 minutes of searching for books. I purchased One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey which Ryan recommended to me on the first day. Once I get some free time, I will be sure to enjoy reading this book. My amazing roommate, Liz, got two photography books and one of them is by Sylvia Plachy who came in and talked to us in the first week of this program. It seems so odd that this is the third week and next week is the final week all of us will be together as artists, photographers and as a family. As this week goes on, it will only get more stressful with creating our narrative story, more sleepy as we go to bed early at 1:30 a.m and more fun as we continue hanging out in the dorms and going to all sorts of new places. For now, I need to get to bed and laugh it up with Liz until the high heavens can hear us.

Kinda scandalous,
Blair

Work In Progress (Better Late Than Never)

Sophi & Ryan checking in!
This is actually Monday's update, but we forgot to write on this due to our obsessive immersion in photography (a.k.a. working our butts off), so here goes.
After having our individual weekly meetings with Nichole and Jessica, we toiled hour upon hour, eyes super-glued to computer monitors, striving to achieve portraiture excellence.
After what seemed like an eternity in the digilab, T.A.'s Sophie and Lauren presented their work. Sophie's work was centered around air travel and people in transition. Lauren's work ranged from portraits of herself, family and friends. From there, she discovered her passion for art therapy and her work became more of a gateway to self discovery and deeper meaning rather than standard observation.
Then NYU graduate, Rian Dundon, came in to present the class with his photographs of a bar in Queens and his unique and unfamiliar insider's view of rebellious teenage culture in rural China. He explained how photography is more about connecting with your subject(s), surroundings, and vibe rather than becoming overly attentive to the technicalities. Rian was really down to earth and his edgy style gave us a different outlook on Chinese culture diverging from all the stereotypes we are accustomed to.
As the day ended, we strolled around east village, and then rushed to the dorms. We were overjoyed when we realized we still had a lovely reading assignment. The end.
---Soph and Ry