Assignment 5: Exhibition Review

Assignment 5: Exhibition Review


Vital statistics

- International Center of Photography Museum

- Eugene Richards: The Run-On of Time

- Artist: Eugene Richards

The exhibition that I visited is "Eugene Richards: The Run- On of Time" in International Center of Photography Museum located at lower manhattan in New York City. The gallery is spaced on two floors filled with a lot of Eugene Richards' black and white 35mm photographs and some of his relics related to the story of the photographs. 

Eugene Richards is an American documentary photographer based in New York City. He was born in 1944 in Massachusetts. He was also a civil right activist and did volunteer work during 1960s; he joined VISTA, Volunteers in Service to America, a government program established as an arm of the so-called” War on Poverty.” Through his career, he devoted to exploring profound aspects of human experiences into his photographs; birth, death, family, poverty, prejudice, and as well as focusing on mental and physical health of individuals and communities. He has published seventeen books and won five awards. The first book, ‘Exploding Into Life’, is about the days with his first wife Dorothea Lynch and her struggle with breast cancer; received Nikon's Book of the Year award. For ‘Living Poor in America,’ he chronicled his documentation of urban and rural poverty and it received an Infinity Award from the International Center of Photography. ‘The Knife & Gun Club’ chronicled the scenes from an Emergency Room that received an Award of Excellence from the American College of Emergency Physicians. ‘Cocaine True, Cocaine Blue’ is reportorial book on drug usage and received the Kraszna-Krausz Award for Photographic Innovation in Books. ‘Americans We’ got the infinity award, Best Photographic Book, from the International Center of Photography's. ‘The Fat Baby’, an anthology of fifteen photographic essays’ was chosen for Best Book of the year of Pictures of the Year International. 

- How does this work compare to the work of other photographers/artists?

Richards is not the only one whose photographs devoted to exploring human experiences but his works touched people’s mind. I’m following some photographs on my Instagram and I have seen a lot of exhibitions and galleries and most of them are otherworldly for me. One of my favorite photographers, who is a Japanese young photographer, photographed is studio and sets that he made. I really love his world of illusion, as one of arts but it is kind magic but they are always out side of my experiences. Some photographs that chronicled his profound experiences, illness or poverty, are not exactly what I could co-exist with but some really are.

-Did it evoke any feeling or response from you as a viewer?

As his career to exploring a lot of aspects of human experiences, I feel that the photographs connect to my mind and personal experiences in many ways. There are filled with so many feelings that people experience through one’s life at least once: sadness, love, family, illness, and some photographs are connecting to me as a woman. I love to see and mostly take photographs that connect to people and daily life so I personally learned some compositions and was inspired by his lyrical and challenging theme, and impassioned honesty.

o   Choose a particular image from the show that stood out to you

- Describe all of the above points in further detail

The image is black and white as the most of his works are so, titled “Mastectomy” and it’s taken in Massachusetts. It is one of the works accommodated into his first book, ‘Exploding Into Life’ that basically chronicled the days of Richards and his first wife, Dorothea Lynch. It shows his first wife and her scar of mastectomy. In this image, she is laughing with wide-open mouth despite shows her pitiful scar on her breast.

- What stood out to you about this photograph/what made you choose it?

According to the information on the wall, Richards recalls a moment of laughter when making this photographs. When her doctor asked her if she felt like any less of woman, she definitely denied it. Afterward, Richards writes that “[He] think it made her feel like more of a woman because she could connect with other women dealing with this disease." I felt so much energy from this information because I honesty felt sadness and painful in this image for the first time and felt that it is weird because her mouth is laughing despite she must be facing sad and bearing the pain she got from the surgery. The image does not show her eyes so I could not expected how she really faced at the moment. However, far from showing painful she got from losing one of her breast that symbolizes she is a woman, she thought the question from the doctor was absurdity. Women are used to tend to express weak existence (especially until the end of 20^th century), but this image shows bottomless energy and strength of women. I thought ‘if I were she.’ I don’t really know what I would feel if I lose my breast that one of the symbol that I am a woman but I am sure that it gave me to think that symbol is just a symbol. There is a lot of sadness and painful in the life but they are also the elements that makes life fruitful and true.

- How do you think it fits in with the other photographs/works in the show?

I think it certainly fits to other photographs in the show. As above, all his work in the show connects to his real experiences and very humanly hat everyone might co-exist and sympathize with. There is an image that shows Lynch’s “Night before the surgery” and I could see a series of the story between Richards and Lynch, and Lynch and cancer. According to the article “Eugene Richards: A life in Photography” from The New York Times, he says “When I look at it now I realize, some of this stuff is pretty rough and more emotional than I remember it to be” (The New York Times).  As his words, I could feel emotional and humane elements and tones in the photographs. I personally don’t take black and white photography so much because I thought is difficult to illustrate emotions that I want viewers get. However, I see them there without any obstacles, like colors, that might interrupts to viewers to see the hidden emotion that the photography really wants to tell.

- Compare and contrast this image to works by other artists and/or comment on any other connections you had to this image personally.

His works illustrates ‘ordinary days’ even it contains sadness, illness and poverty, while others tend to photograph images over worldly. Or maybe, I think if it’s photographed by other, it might be sad and negative image and evoke people’s tear. Something that’s made is no sense of justice: it is a lie.

- If there were works in any other media besides photography talk briefly about them and how they related to the photographs in the exhibition.

There is a video that’s shoot by Richards himself. He is a photographer but he also a documentary filmmaker. It was very interesting because the video shows people who are in the photographs and viewers can see what he really looked and in is eye and what world he actually lived in, and how they looked and connects to Richards.

- Summary

As an unprofessional photographer myself, it is a great opportunity to look the professional’s works; besides the things that he illustrate into his images are what I normally want to put into my images. If the events that he illustrates into his work doesn’t connect to my real life it still have emotions and it is still something wild and real world. I feel that I saw the world without layer. 

I think it was communicated effectively by Richards, because I really feel and understand what he really wants to tell. In The New York Times, he says “I wanted to do something wild” (The New York Times). As a documentary photographer, I think Richards wants to records his experience more than he takes photographs as just work. I love the way he photographed his life moments as bare truth.

- Additional information 

Citation

Estrin, James. “Eugene Richards: A Life in Photography.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 20 Apr. 2017, lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2017/04/20/eugene-richards-a-life-in-photography/.