GOCA Assignment 1 & 2

While walking through downtown Colorado Springs, I began to realize how often we overlook people that are right in front of us. What we see is of our own choosing, and unfortunately we often choose to not truly 'see' other people. When looking at this photo, is the person crossing the street the first thing you notice? Probably not.

We walk around, immersed in our own conversations and thoughts, and forget that each person around us is doing the same thing. We just keep walking, keeping track of time, almost as if we are alone while surrounded by people.  Yet, each person that walks past us is an individual whose life involves friends, family, struggles, etc., all the same things we go through every day.

I saw a woman tending to her child. When thinking back on my childhood I thought of how impressionable I was. As I walk by them, barely taking a moment to recognize their existence, that child is making memories with her mother that will last a lifetime.

There are children playing on a balcony on the top floor of this building.  Do you see them? Notice them? I feel as though we are so busy looking down, looking at our phones, down at out own feet, on our own path, that we often fail to just look up, and see that life is happening on other levels around us.

I took several shots of this sidewalk, and as I went back through them, I noticed that in only one shot did I catch this man walking through. When browsing though the shots, it was like one moment he was there, and the next he was gone, as though he had never existed. But that's just the problem, this man does exist, and had it not been for this one photo, I would have never remembered him, never thought of him or the impression I get when looking at him ever again. 

Part 2

      Of the photographs exhibited at GOCA, the pieces that really stood out to me were those of the handicapped children. The images of their punctured, bruised, bandaged and warped bodies stung my consciousness in a way I cannot explain. I did not know these children, yet the way the artist captured them was intimate, making me feel as though seeing them in photograph form made them a reality in my own world. Thus, I felt as though the photographer had built a bridge between myself and my immediate world and that of the world of these children, with their own set of dreams, struggles, and everyday lives. As Berger said, “we are always looking at the relation between things and ourselves” (Berger, 9).  That being said, it made me wonder what the relationship was to these children and myself. As a child I never had any severe handicaps or injuries, yet I suffered with the emotional and physical trials that any human being struggles through to reach maturity while desperately trying to make sense of the world around them. Was there any true relationship between these children and myself? The photographer had made it feel as though there had been.  However, I suppose, “the relation between what we see and what we know is never settled” (Berger, 7).  So, perhaps Berger is right, perhaps I will never really know or understand my relationship and connection to those children, because what I feel when I see those children, frozen and immortalized in time, I may never be able to explain in words.  That is the true beauty of photography. It allows us to capture images that can last a lifetime and be filled with meanings that may touch others in different ways that we may never come to understand. But, what’s most important is that we do feel touched by them, and we make a connection to ourselves and the images presented to us, helping to draw us back into inner reflection upon our relation to the world around us. A relationship that is so often lost in our modern world.

Berger, John. Ways of Seeing. British Broadcasting Corporation and Penguin Books Ltd: London     1972 Print