Fake It: The Endless Fight
This project was meant to challenge the idea of Media and how it visually communicates a completely false idea. Regarding my idea, I wanted to emphasize and compare how society was faced with a subjugated topic that's been carried from the past to where we are now.
By looking back into the period of the Civil Rights Movement, I challenged the idea of racism with one of the movement's figureheads, Rosa Parks, in a scene where she was by the bus driver, James E. Blake, from the first incident of her sitting in the front of the bus. Her story involves running into the driver where he make African Americans get off the bus to make them go through the rear of the bus after paying. The driver yelled racial slurs and pushed her off the bus entirely. By bringing this kind of narrative, I challenge the modern viewer to a past-day injustice to make them question the factuality of racism.
When it comes to my execution of that idea, I wanted to make a believable of Rosa Parks being harassed by police offers that forced her to not get on the bus. I decided to make it look a little more like a Wet Plate Collodion for multiple reasons: photos at that time were in black and white wet plates, black and white photos are more likely to seem believable, and to emphasize the fact that it's an old photo and the rest of the images are from Unsplash, Pixabay, Wikimedia Commons, and Library of Congress. The reason many sources involved some images of certain poses, the right clothing, and the right facial expressions were difficult to find.
This work by Jazmine is a black and white image in the style of a wet plate. Because of this, there are distress marks and writing on the plate. In the content of the image, we see an old bus, a wall of policemen in riot gear, two officers with a woman, and a background setting that looks like a parking lot to a mall strip. The riot officers are in front of the bus, encroaching on the two officers and woman.
ReplyDeleteLooking at this work, I would say that it is likely a statement on police brutality and the increasing danger for citizens to take part in a peaceful protest. Because of the aging of the image though, I also think that it is a commentary on how this isn’t anything new and that racism and police violence is something that has persisted throughout our nation’s history. However, without reading Jazmine’s description of the work, I did not realize that it was an image of Rosa Parks. Knowing that the intended main subject is Rosa Parks, I am more inclined to think that this piece is meant to highlight how police brutality in relation to racism is not anything new.
The concept of this work is something I think that is incredibly important in today’s society, and I find that the actual photoshop work has been done quite well and the image looks, overall, convincing. The only technical photoshop critiques I have are that 1. The added bush/island needs to have the contrast lowered because it doesn’t look like it fits in with the rest of the shrubbery, and the police officer to the right of Rosa Parks needs the same thing (the black of the pants and hat does not match the rest of the image). Second, adding more of a shadow for the right sided police officer. Composition wise, I would have liked for more emphasis on Rosa Parks. At first glance, it seems like that same right side police officer is the main subject, especially with his weird contrasted look compared to Rosa Parks. I also think the idea to do it as a wet plate was not the right style for this era. The civil rights era had sharp black and white and color film at hand for photography. I think this image would’ve been so much more impactful as a sharp “modern” looking film image.
Like I said, this topic is very pertinent to our current political landscape. I think that making work on the topic of the civil rights era and how it connects to what is happening today is a rich theme with so many options, and I would love to see Jazmine make more work like this.
Overall, the technical skills were solid, including the areas where shadows were added. I would have liked to see the composition approached differently perhaps, but the subject matter is compelling and well thought out.