Exploring the Frame

Alumni Exhibition

        Out of all of the Alumni photos, Karen Mawikere's images stood out to me the most. More specifically her picture named "Shoes". Both images are hard to tell what the subject is but they both still say a lot. They are pictures of settings that are not commonly found in New England, and seems to be taken in a tropical country. They both are composed of many different layers, and these layers help explain what is going on in the setting.

       The picture titled "Shoes" is of a brick structure behind a wall with barbed wire over it. The barbed wire brings up many questions including, what is behind the wall, and what they are trying to keep out, or in. The subject of the picture seems to be the barbed wire, but the title is Shoes which does not make much sense.

       Something that I found really interesting is the concrete in the brick building. The concrete is both parallel and perpendicular to the barbed wire. This small detail in the composition of the photo makes it much more pleasing to the eye. The tree in the upper right corner of the photo also adds some color to the picture, which without would be a very dark and boring picture. Something that I really liked about the picture was that only the middle of the picture was bright, and it was surrounded by a darker color around the border of the image.

      The picture stood out to me primarily because it reminded me of my visits to Brazil. For that reason this picture may mean something to me, and mean something completely different to someone else. Pictures are interesting for that reason, one picture has multiple different meanings and it is all different depending on how you interpret the picture. To me the picture says safety, but to the photographer it has something to do with shoes.