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The Morning News Digital SLR Alina Aksiyote © |
"In Our Lives We Are Whole"- The Snapshot Revolution
Museums are the place to go to see art... or that is what we are told. Who decides what art is to be placed in these museums; what art is going to represent a certain people or a certain generation? Who decides what really is the art of the times, the art that future generations will look at to analyze our world?
It's an interesting thing. Last summer, I visited the ICP's museum, the International Center of Photography Museum; spending hours in their exhibit, "For All the World to See: Visual Culture and the Struggle for Civil Rights ". This exhibit consisted of a full floor of photographs, videos, silkscreen images, posters, comic books, television series, media of every kind- all complied together to show the influence of photography and other media on a racial America, from the early 40's until the mid 70's. It showed how visual art and media could bring about change. If you live anywhere near New York City or find yourself wanting to go to New York City, do yourself a favor and take a subway train (the F or the 7) down to 42nd St. Bryant Park.
This media represented the African American culture during this time, with Malcolm X and its radical groups, with black television programs and newspapers, with a new and amazing culture rising up, fighting for civil rights and equality. Black is Beautiful. BUT, if people allow only the media to represent them, where is THEIR voice? This is where the "Snapshot Revolution" comes about.
One television screen, among the many at this exhibit had a slideshow of regular people, everyday photographs. A graduating daughter and her mom, a young boy smiling up at the camera, the individuality of people of the time. Just as I started reading its description, a tour of several little boys and a their parents pulled up next to me. Bear with me as I reenact the scene: "Who's that mommy?"... "yeah... who's that?". She looked curiously at the screen: "they're just people son." "Just PEOPLE?". "Yes. Just regular people", she answered... He was clearly taken aback, "No one famous?"
If there is anyone more honest and insightful, even if rudely so, than a child, I have yet to meet him. The point is: there was something exciting, exhilarating about seeing these regular everyday photographs in a photography museum, just as there is something exciting and exhilarating about Guerrilla Art. It was the snapshot revolution. Though media did create change and did create a new way of thinking, a struggle for equality, it could not do what these snapshot photographs did. The media portrayed African Americans as one person, easily stereotyped, while the art they created themselves did not. "... Snapshot by snapshot, these amateur photographers, did for themselves what decades of mainstream representation could not: made visible the complexity of a people".
That is why I ask you to make your own art, whatever it is you are good at. If you cook, if you paint, if you sing, if you write, if you compose, if you're into geeky computer games, whatever it is, put it out there. Start a blog if you want. For representation that is not our own, will never manage to represent us. It is only in our lives that we are whole.
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