Why Do People Practice Photography?

In On Photography, Susan Sontag discusses the negative implications of photography.  She states that photography is a "form of mental pollution" that has turned "citizens into image-junkies" (38-39).  Sontag believes that these "image-junkies" need "to have reality confirmed and experience enhanced" (35-38).  However, I disagree with Sontag because, to me, photography is a way of capturing moments that would otherwise be lost or forgotten.  People become "image-junkies" because they need to preserve memories and to develop a hobby, or a method of relaxation (38).  

There are many reasons why people take photos.  Specifically, photography is a practice that expresses emotions.  For example, photographs of family and friends are taken to send to loved ones that are far away.  To these recipients, these photos are candid and gratifying and make them feel closer to home.  In addition, people do photography as a form of relaxation.  Personally, my grandfather is a cancer doctor in India, and he does photography to relieve his stress.  He is primarily a nature photographer, and his photos are absolutely stunning.  Below are three of his photos of a 'Palash' tree, scientifically named Butea monosperma. Its flowers resemble bright orange flames; therefore, this tree is commonly referred as Flame of the Forest.  

Rose-ringed Parakeet 

Rosy Starling Bird 

 Flame of the Forest Flowers

A couple of years ago, my grandfather taught me nature photography.  Below are some of my photos that were taken in America and India.  

Pride of Barbados Flowers- Photographed in India 

Cone Flower- Photographed in America 

Common Grass Yellow (Butterfly) - Photographed in India 

Crayons!!!!!!

Everyone has used crayons at least once in his or her school career.  Crayons are usually used in elementary school because, according to The Bluest Eye, a person's childhood is not complete without  the fundamental "paints and crayons" (Morrison 110).  High schools dislike crayons because they view crayons as "not nice to look at" (Wallace).   To explain, they believe that crayons are a worthless disbursement.  Actually, high schools should invest in crayons for its vast educational capabilities.
Crayons are a great tool to teach chemistry *1.  For instance, teachers can melt a crayon to demonstrate a physical change *2.  In addition, students can do labs with crayons to test the variety of ways crayons can be transformed *3.  Advanced chemistry classes can even mix Paraffin wax, Beeswax, and Stearic acid *4 to learn how to create crayons.

Melted crayons

Crayons are an even greater asset for teaching art classes.  Personally, I had taken a college art course this fall called Color.  The class' purpose is to present how to mix primary colors *5 to produce secondary and tertiary colors *6 and to reveal the difference between cool colors and warm colors *7.  Teaching these skills to students in high school develops their skills in becoming more proficient and more experienced artists *8. 

Color Wheel

Footnotes:

*1- Fun Fact!  Did you know that QueInteresante, a seller on Etsy.com, offers a 120 set of crayons that has its individual chemical formula on the label? 
*2- Use a hair dryer to melt crayons.
*3- Melt crayons into coconut oil to create 'Crayola lipstick'.
*4- The Stearic acid chemical formula is CH₃(CH₂)₁₆COOH.
*5- Primary colors are the three basic colors on the color wheel - they are red, yellow, and blue - that create all other colors.
*6- Secondary colors are the colors made from the primary colors. These are orange, green, and violet.  Mix primary colors and secondary colors that are next to each other on the color wheel to create tertiary colors.  There are six tertiary colors:  red-orange, yellow-orange, yellow-green, blue-green, blue-violet, and red-violet. 
*7- All colors result from mixing only cool colors, only warm colors, or both cool and warm colors.  This concept also applies to the primary colors.  In other words, there is a warm red and a cool red, a warm yellow and a cool yellow, and a warm blue and a cool blue.  Mixing warm red and cool red make primary red, or Crayola red (In the college course that I took, any primary color that results from its warm and cool color mixture is called a Crayola color :) ) , mixing warm yellow and cool yellow create Crayola yellow, and mixing warm blue and cool blue produces Crayola blue.
*8- Fun Fact!  Did you know that Crayola created the word purple, and that purple is not an actual color?  The proper term for the mixture of red and blue is violet.  

How Do People Express Their Love for Each Other with Technology?

There are many similarities and differences between Mrs. Dalloway and "The Hours".  Mrs. Dalloway is the story of Clarissa Dalloway, while "The Hours" intertwines three lives, Virginia Woolf, Laura, and Clarissa.  Both the movie and the novel illustrate one day in their lives.  In addition, Clarissa has different living arrangements in the novel and in the film.  In Mrs. Dalloway, Clarissa is married to Richard, and they live in a mansion.  In "The Hours", Clarissa and Richard are divorced.  Richard - he lives alone, but Clarissa still visits him - is poor and lives in a dangerous-looking apartment building, and Clarissa lives in a flat with her daughter and with Sally Seton.  Clarissa and her daughter get along in the movie, but not in the novel.  Both mediums have a traumatized person commit suicide in the end by jumping out of a window; Septimus dies in the novel and Richard dies in the movie.  However, most importantly, both Mrs. Dalloway and "The Hours" stress Virginia Woolf's theme that time connects everyone's different lives.  

Both the movie and the novel contain the symbol of flowers.  However, the flowers in Mrs. Dalloway are only red and white, whereas there are a variety of flowers in "The Hours", such as purple flowers and yellow and orange flowers.  Nevertheless, the film and the novel both depict the flowers as gifts and as symbols of unspoken love.  

While love can still be expressed through these simple gestures, technology is allowing individuals to use text messages to convey it.  "cellular technology has greatly advanced and ... it is very common to see love being expressed on [text messages]" ("EXPRESS LOVE THROUGH MESSAGES").  In addition, individuals can now send messages called 'love SMS'.  With 'love SMS', a person can send his or her "own words and ... phrases of love taken from a book or a speaker" ("EXPRESS LOVE THROUGH MESSAGES").  

'love SMS' Example

I do not normally like to express my individual opinion, but I must say that 'love SMS' is silly.  Love is best expressed through kindness and simple gifts, such as flowers.  

How Does Time's Orderly Chaos Affect Artists?

"but here the other clock, the clock which always struck two minutes after Big Ben, came shuffling in with its lap full of odds and ends, which it dumped down as if Big Ben were all very well with his majesty laying down the law, so solemn, so just, but she must remember all sorts of little things came flooding and lapping and dancing in on the wake of that solemn stroke which lay flat like a bar of gold on the sea.  Mrs. Marsham, Ellie Henderson, glasses for ices.  She must telephone now at once" (Woolf 128). 

This passage in Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway connects time to the motif of waves.  Big Ben is the grand representation of time.  Its central location in London implies that Big Ben has "majesty" and is the 'king' of time (Woolf 128).  This king is always "laying down the law" (Woolf 128).  Although it appears that Big Ben is "solemn" and coordinates - for example, a particular clock "always struck two minutes after Big Ben" - its kingdom is in chaos (Woolf 128).  Time's orderly chaos is comparable to a wave's.  They both have laps "full of odds and ends" that "came" "shuffling in" and "flooding and lapping and dancing in" chaos (Woolf 128).  However, like a wave, there is a rhythm to this discord, consisting of both sharps and "flat[s]", ups and downs, flows and ebbs (Woolf 128). 

This discord after World War I greatly affected European artists.  Many artists "turned away from prewar experimentalism" and "returned to the classical past, seeking tranquility, order, and enduring values" (artdaily.org). "classicism ... dominated the discourse of contemporary art" (guggenheim.org).  Subsequently, Guggenheim Museum exhibited this confusion in the art world in Chaos and Classicism: Art in France, Italy, and Germany, 1918–1936.  This installation "traces this interwar trend ... from ... a political, historical idea of a revived Roman Empire ... to the chilling aesthetic of ... Nazi culture" with a vast variety of mediums, including "painting, sculpture, photography, architecture, film, fashion, and the decorative arts" (guggenheim.org).  

Blue Painting by Kandinsky, Exhibited in Chaos and Classicism:  Art in France, Italy, and Germany, 1918-1936 

How is Life Perceived Through Glass?

"He had only to open his eyes; but a weight was on them; a fear.  He strained; he pushed; he looked; he saw Regent's Park before him.  Long streamers of sunlight fawned at his feet.  The trees waved, brandished.  We welcome, the world seems to say; we accept; we create.  Beauty, the world seemed to say.  And as if to prove it (scientifically) wherever he looked at the houses at the railings, at the antelopes stretching over the palings, beauty sprang instantly.  To watch a leaf quivering in the rush of air was an exquisite joy.  Up in the sky swallows swooping, swerving, flinging themselves in and out, round and round, yet always with perfect control as if elastics held them; and the flies rising and falling; and the sun spotting now this leaf, now that, in mockery, dazzling it with soft gold in pure good temper; and now and again some chime (it might be a motor horn) tingling divinely on the grass stocks - all of this, calm and reasonable as it was, made out of ordinary things as it was, was the truth now; beauty, that was the truth now.  Beauty is everywhere" (Woolf 69).  

In this passage of Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf is illustrating the perception of nature and the seemingly small instances of beauty.  Beauty is found in ordinary exemplars, but only if individuals, such as Septimus, can perceive it through his or her "pane of glass" (Woolf 87).  Dale Chihuly demonstrates this perception through his stunning artwork and installations.  

Dale Chihuly is a glass artist.  To explain, he uses glass as his primary medium in his works because "The process is so wonderfully simple, yet so mystifying" (Chihuly).  Chihuly is inspired by glass, since "Glass itself is so much like water.  If you let it go on its own, it almost ends up looking like something that came from the sea" (Chihuly).  This simile is similar to Woolf's beliefs of water that waves are like the life cycle, beautiful and continuously ebbing and flowing.  

One of Chihuly's famous installations is Artpark Installation.  Artpark Installation, located near Niagara Falls, is an outdoor installation comprising of "handblown sheets of stained glass in simple arrangements" (Chihuly).  Although it is simple, this installation comes to life with "The magic ... in the light" (Chihuly).  In other words, the glass gives "physical expression to light" (Chihuly).  

Artpark Installation 

Artpark Installation 

Artpark Installation's location near Niagara Falls emphasizes the representation of water as the life cycle.  Glass, or perception, influences life.  Perceptions discern beauty individually.  Life is beautiful through a clear glass, but perceived differently through a colored glass affected by "pane" (Woolf 87).  

How do Artists Exhibit the Life Cycle?

In "The Death of a Moth", Virginia Woolf explores the life cycle of a moth, a "simple ... form of ... energy" and "zest" (Woolf 696).  She emphasizes that death is a part of life, but that life itself is more powerful than death.  Also, she illustrates that perspective influences the regard of life and death through the "windowpane" (Woolf 696).  This regard greatly impacts the work of artist Damien Hirst.

Damien Hirst is a non-traditional artist that examines "the deep profundities of life and death" (Damien Hirst).  One of his earlier but "most important" works is "A Thousand Years" (Damien Hirst).  Hirst describes "A Thousand Years" as a "'life cycle in a box'" (Damien Hirst).  It is composed of a "vitrine ... split in half by a glass wall" (Damien Hirst).  On one side of the glass wall, there is "a box reminiscent of a die" that contains "newly hatched flies"; they can fly through small holes in the glass wall to the other side, "where an Insect-O-Cutor hangs" and "a decaying cow's head is presented beneath the fly-killer" (Damien Hirst).  

"A Thousand Years" by Damien Hirst 

It is elemental for Hirst to create "'bookends'", or "pairs and duplicates", in his sculptures (Damien Hirst).  In "A Thousand Years", Hirst develops the pair of life, the side of the sculpture with the "newly hatched flies", and death, the side with the "decaying cow's head" and the "Insect-O-Cutor" (Damien Hirst).  He does this in order to present life and death as not unique, yet "'independent of the other, but they live together'" (Damien Hirst).  Also, the glass wall is like the "windowpane" in "The Death of a Moth", since they both allow reflection on "The possibilities of pleasure" in life as well as the "hard fate" of death (Woolf 696).

How Is Music Incorporated Into Installations?

In "Because My Father Always Said He Was The Only Indian Who Saw Jimi Hendrix Play 'The Star-Spangled Banner' At Woodstock", Sherman Alexie uses music as a motif to demonstrate that it is a "powerful medicine" that has both "form and function" (28-29).  Music is a compelling art medium that can mend "broken hearts" and can inspire others (30).  Recently, artists began to incorporate music into mesmerizing installations, in particular Janet Cardiff's The Forty Part Motet.  

In the fall of 2013, the Metropolitan Museum of Art (MOMA) exhibited The Forty Part Motet as its first sound installation.  According to ARTNews, The Forty Part Motet is a "14-minute work [that] ... continuously [plays] a composition by 16th-century Tudor composer Thomas Tallis with individual voices coming from each of 40 loudspeakers" (Pollack).  In his composition, Tallis wrote lines for each of these 40 voices, or singers.  Hence, individuals can listen to a single singer, several singers in unison, or the harmony of all of the singers.  The most effective component of this installation is that there is a pause at the end of "each 'performance', during which you can hear the sounds of the people around you" (Schaefer).  This pause allows the audience to comprehend how each individual voice conduces to a captivating "choral effect" (Pollack).  

The Forty Part Motet 
Fuentidueña Chapel, MOMA