The Meaning of Your Life

Photographs impact our lives greatly. In my journalism course, my classmates and I explored different influential photographs and how they tie into being a journalist. There’s a lot that goes into taking a photo. In class, we learned about the different components of capturing something, those being: aperture, shutter-speed, focus, composition and the rule of thirds. For an external investigation and to test our abilities, we went outside of the classroom and used our own cameras to take photos while being aware of these different properties. To apply what I've learned in this unit, I did a project on the meaning of life.

I’ve never heard a clear meaning of life that applies to everyone across the board. There are too many circumstances and too many perspectives to have a clear cut meaning. For this project, I interviewed the people I am surrounded with. I talked with them about their identity and what their world looks like, ultimately leading up to me asking each person “What is the meaning of life?”

The Meaning of Your Life, AP2

     

After interviewing my peers, I still don’t think that there is a clear meaning of life but that doesn’t mean that there isn’t one. Just like if you ask someone “what is love” there wouldn’t be a clear definition. Intentionally, each interview was as natural as I could make it. It was interesting to learn more about my friends and how they view the world.

Chicago; The City That Works

The City That Works is a project that I did for my photojournalism course. For the winter term, I took an independent study in Photojournalism. In order for me to take this course, I had to do a proposal. I chose to focus on this subject because it's something that I've been passionate about and I wanted to dedicate more of my time to it and figure out what I truly enjoyed about it. One of my inspirations coming into this class was Vice's style of documentation and Adrienne Salinger's "In My Room" project. I started the course off with research. I learned about influential photographers in the community like Larry Clark and Erika Bowes. That was probably my favorite part of the course because I learned so much about the development of different styles and how important photography is to me. It was really fun to look at the process of some well known photographers. Here's some of my favorite works that I discovered:

Philip-Lorca diCorcia, DeBruce, 1999

Nan Goldin, Misty and Jimmy Paulette in a taxi, NYC, 1991

At first, I didn't know what I wanted to make as a project to show of what I learned. I knew I wanted to interview people because that's something that I enjoy because it allows you to know the subject beyond the photo. The process of finding out what to wasn't that hard but I had to be practical and consider who I had access to. A consistent thought was I wanted to document people doing what they love or something important to them. It then came apparent that I should do workers in Chicago and it was a good opportunity to have an insight of how this city is actually ran beyond the politicians and news casters.

Overall, I'm so glad that I proposed this independent study. This was a great opportunity for me and a great learning experience.