Being surrounded by the history and culture of a new country are often the inspiration for great photographs, and the photographs displayed in the lobby of Shwayder Art Gallery tell a story, both collectively and individually, from students’ perspectives overseas.
“If you are taking photographs, you are part of the history of photography and [that history] is our story,” said Roddy MacInnes, associate professor of photography and leader on the Photography and the Invention of Photography winter interterm class, a class structured around the history of photography.
Last Wednesday night at 6 p.m., the students that participated in the 10-day course throughout Paris and London showcased their photographs in an exhibit, titled Capture, in the lobby of Shwayder Art Gallery.
The exhibit was spearheaded by two students on the trip and they were responsible for curating the entire exhibit, with help from faculty member Rupert Jenkins. It was inspired by photographs by Jacques-Henry Lartigue at the National Photographer’s Gallery in London, according to Tingyu Lin, a senior Bachelor of Fine Arts major from Taiwan.
Each student submitted their top 10 favorite photos to MacInnes, Jenkins and Brandon Finamore, the three faculty members on the trip, and they chose the top three photos for each student based on originality, content and quality.
The Capture exhibit features the three photos from each student, as well as quotes from their class blog that are displayed on the front wall of Shwayder Art Gallery. The photos include still life shots of fruit from an outdoor market around Paris and London, to black and white shots of historic buildings, as well as candid shots of a group of students from a subway ride in London.
Alongside each set of photographs is a quote that displays each student’s relationship with photography over the trip. According to MacInnes, it is one’s personal history that makes a photograph even better and he believes the quotes represent this.
“That’s the thing that impresses me the most, I love the photography, but I am more impressed by the quotes from people’s blogs,” said MacInnes.
Despite student’s various skill levels with photography, the photographs on display showcase a sense of enjoyment, a connection to a person, a place and an experience in a foreign place.
“The experience of taking the class, outside your comfort zone, with another culture in a place you don’t know very well, you can break the limits and try new things and try advancing not only the technique of taking pictures but a different way to see the world,” said Mohammad Mirza, a junior computer science major from Saudi Arabia.
Mirza, who had taken two photography classes over the summer with MacInnes, was inspired by MacInnes’ motivation and decided to partake in the interterm course.
MacInnes, who taught this interterm course last year, likes getting students out of their normal classroom element and into a new scenery.
“This class has always been a dream of mine because I teach a little bit of the history of photography and I wanted to make a class go where the first photographs were made and I hoped that it would have some sort of impact on their lives and on how they make photographs,” said MacInnes.
Each day of the course, students went to various museums and galleries throughout London and Paris, and they also went to the place where the first photograph and negative were made, according to MacInnes.
“It is amazing to see the scientific and social development of photography throughout generations. Visual arts can be created in so many different mediums, but just because the material is not the same, does not mean the concept and the visual quality have to be different,” said Lin.
While the photos from each student are unique to that individual, together the Capture exhibit represents a collective experience.
“Being with a group that had a lot of motivation, taking pictures of each other, this is what came out. A huge selection of photos that we are proud of,” said Mirza.
The Capture exhibit is on display until Feb. 18.
