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Vietnamese Poster

Posted on April 28, 2012 by Toan Nguyen

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In this series, I explored the contrast between the country where I’m originally from, Vietnam and America. There exist two different regimes in each country. Vietnam is a communist regime while America is a capitalist country. Although very different in its governmental and social structure, The Socialist Republic of Vietnam is a single-party state. The central role of the Communist Party was reasserted in all organs of government, politics and society. Only political organizations affiliated with or endorsed by the Communist Party are permitted to contest elections. These include the Vietnamese Fatherland Front, worker and trade unionist parties.

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Vietnam

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The authoritative government maintains its power using various methods including propaganda. Propaganda posters can be seen everywhere on the streets of Vietnam. Posters provided one of the few effective means for the Government to communicate directly with the predominantly rural population of the country. The overall theme that many of these posters accentuate, is that Communism is the best form of government and ideology to ever exist. For example, the text in the first image translates “The Party is hope, the Party is intellect”. The symbol of hammer and sickle appear on almost every propaganda poster in Vietnam, representing Communist ideology.

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Vietnamese Soldier

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The solder in the photo stands to guard an army base. The Vietnamese army is occasionally deployed to disperse a gathering crowd. Thus this soldier represents force in the Vietnamese government way of maintaining power.

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Times Square NYC

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The next series of photos were shot in America. The first shot was taken at Times Square in New York. This location is widely known for massive billboards and banners. Times Square thus epitomizes the heart of capitalism, in which the audience is bombarded with advertisements, a form of propaganda. This therefore raises interesting questions of whether or not there is a stark difference between Vietnam and America because one uses propaganda to maintain power, and the other uses it to sell products – yet the method and effect on the populous are pretty much the same.

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Occupy

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The fifth photo was captured during the Occupy Wall Street movement. The OWS protests are against social and economic inequality, greed, corruption and the undue influence of corporations on government—particularly from the financial services sector. Their slogan “We are the 99%”, addresses the growing income inequality and wealth distribution in the U.S. between the wealthiest 1% and the rest of the population. This movement which this photo captures, questions the effectiveness of capitalism.

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Protestors

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The final photograph in the series depicts two women with their lips sealed. The sign in front of them reads “No Money, No Voice”. This message conveys a lack of freedom of speech and also raises questions of whether there is a difference between communism and capitalism as freedom of speech is absent in both regimes.

About The Author: Toan Nguyen is a freshman enrolled in the Wharton School of Business, University of Pennsylvania. Class of 2015.

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Editor’s Note: To read more articles by Toan Nguyen, go to the search bar at the of the page: enter name and click green icon.

Emily

Posted on April 27, 2012 by Avi Chanales

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……….Former Rutgers student Dharun Ravi sat in trial awaiting his sentence regarding his alleged hate crime against his former gay roommate, Tyler Clementi. The resurfacing of this news story almost a year and a half after Tyler’s suicide forced the world to re-confront the harsh reality of gay teen suicides. Tyler’s suicide in October 2011 marked the fifth suicide in just a short three-week period and prompted a nationwide awareness effort regarding the serious danger of gay teen suicide.

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Emily

Three weeks ago, my friend Emily, also sat in a room awaiting her sentence. After 21 years of hiding her identity, Emily courageously came out in a public speech in front of the entire Orthodox Jewish community at Penn. She bravely spoke of her struggles growing up gay in a traditionalist community, but the main portion of her speech focused on her struggles with suicide. For the Orthodox community, gay teen suicide was no longer a news story; it was personal.

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Emily

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Lesbian, gay, and bisexual youth are four times more likely to attempt suicide than their heterosexual peers. The Suicide Prevention Resource Center estimated that between 30 to 40% of LGB youth have attempted suicide. A major factor influencing suicidal ideations is internalized homophobia that leads to self-loathing and deep internal conflicts about their sexual orientation.

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Emily described her constant questioning of her own self-worth. She described days that were so overwhelmed with depression that she could barely find the energy or motivation to do anything. She would just sit, numb and immobilized.

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For many gay youth, it is their religious beliefs that add to their internal conflicts. Emily described times when she simultaneously hated God but also felt like He was the only person she could turn to.

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Emily

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In response to the suicides of teenagers who were bullied because they were gay, author Dan Savage and his husband Terry Miller founded the “Its Gets Better Project”, to inspire hope in teens struggling with their sexual identity. Emily embodies this mission. Her courage, poise, and optimism instills hope not only in those still struggling with their sexual identities, but to everyone she encounters. The faith she instills? That one day we might actually live in a world that sees sexual orientation as irrelevant.

About the Author: Avi Chanales is a Candidate for Bachelor of Arts degree in Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Pennsylvania. Class of 2012

Andrew

Posted on April 26, 2012 by Andrew Jakubowski

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………The image that I envision is a mishmash of roughly applied body paint and color-driven sensations; it also includes a body position that excites but does not reveal. This image is based on a personal belief that the erotic is a state of mind resulting from the desire but inability to know reality. For me, the act of body painting is an extension of juvenile tendencies, a return to the very stage of life during which human curiosity (and ignorance) is at its peak. It denotes playfulness, innocence, and imagination – all of which contribute to my erotic, sensual, and sexual feelings.

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Andrew

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Within the context of Philo, this image is a seemingly striking juxtaposition against the wealth of knowledge present in the halls and possessed by the members. However, I contest that such knowledge is the result of innate inquisitiveness:  intellect itself is a product of refined interests. Therefore, the image gets at the root of what Philo is as an organization. It is a reminder that we are all motivated by childish curiosities and aroused by the unknown. Both the book and the body serve as means for satisfying our personal desires.

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Andrew

To Be Continued………

Mt. Laurel Cemetery

Posted on April 22, 2012 by Jake Liberatore

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……….Every photograph captures the image of people, places, or things; forever sealing that which could otherwise be heard and not seen in a visible entity. Although photographs may distort what really existed in the brief moment of exposure, rarely do they fail to provide the belief that whatever scene is captured on film truly did exist in some form. As Susan Sontag, legendary writer, On Photography wrote, “whatever the limitations or pretentions of the individual photographer, a photograph — any photograph — seems to have a more innocent, and therefore more accurate, relation to visible reality than do other mimetic objects.” Indeed, there is a prevailing thought that photos capture reality in a unbiased way, but photographers have as much room for interpretation as do conventional visual artists. The ambiguity in every photograph grants it meaning, and therein lies it’s message.

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Mt. Laurel Cemetery

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This pair of photographs taken at Mt. Laurel cemetery in Philadelphia, ostensibly illustrates the slow decay of man’s once beautiful, yet humble tribute to the dead. The faces of the once intricately detailed statues, worn down throughout the decades to almost unrecognizable, half-human forms, project from blurred backgrounds of leafless trees. While a viewer could reasonably interpret the supposed bleakness of the photographs as a projection of malaise upon man’s all too obvious mortality, the intent of the pair was to contrast such mortality with the only thing that is eternal: the afterlife. Without any indication or suggestion of what characterizes an afterlife, the images of the statues represent an omnipresent watchful eye on the living from the dead; a guide through life, which is simultaneously the longest thing we ever experience and yet an insignificant grain in the sands of time.

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Jacob Liberatore: Self-Portrait 2012

Copyright 2012

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About The Author: Jake Liberatore is a sophomore studying Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania. Class of 2014.

Summer Palace Reflection

Posted on April 21, 2012 by Karl Gerchow

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……….My trip recently to China provided an opportunity to explore two cities – Shanghai and Beijing – largely through the lens of my camera. I specifically wanted to observe and capture images and scenes that normally escape my notice on trips such as this. I’m am avid traveler – and was one even before business school – however taking a camera with me everywhere on a trip, crouching down, leaning, or contorting my body to get the right shot was a new way to experience a city for me.

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Wuzhen

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I soon settled on a concept where a reflection, projection, or echo was an integral part of the image, if not the image in its entirety. Throughout the trip, I was left in awe of the speed of China’s progress and economic activity that we have all heard so much about. However, through this trip it became clear to me that this development has come at significant cost: traditional buildings are being torn down without an appreciation for historic value, pollution is rampant, and the country-side is little more than patches of green paddies between sprawling mega-cities.

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My first image, “Gardens of Nurtured Harmony” is an inverted reflection through a pond of the Emperor’s Summer Palace (the title of this photo being its literal name in Mandarin) in the outskirts of Beijing. It reflects the China of old, rich in culture and historical significance. Much like the Forbidden City, this palace was off-limits to all but the Emperor and his immediate family, leaving outsiders like the shadow in the bottom right of this picture left to wonder what lay beyond.

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My second image, taken in Wuzhen – a small water town in the outskirts of Shanghai – again captures the China of old, but this time a manufactured one. In an effort to show foreigners what these water towns looked like prior to being displaced by sprawling apartment complexes, the Chinese government restored a village to what it would have looked liked several hundred years ago. I have done my part, editing for age.

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French Quarter Lamp

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The third image is the shadow of a European-styled lamp taken in the French Concession in Shanghai on the tail end of a sunny day. Shanghai was one of the few places in China (Hong Kong aside of course), that saw colonial powers bring trade and cultural influence to its doorstep. The street names in the concession, once in French, have all been reverted to Mandarin, but shadows of the neighborhood’s past remain.

Development Blur

“Development Blur” was taken on a high-speed rail while traveling at 190 mph through the Chinese “country-side”. The train stands as an example of China’s achievements, but also provides insight into the level of over-development China has seen in the last decade. Sadly, in a 5 hour train ride from Beijing to Shanghai, this industrial landscape was 80% of the view.

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Lost of Translation

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My fifth image, titled Lost of Translation, was taken through a revolving door leading out of a bank in Shanghai. English or any other language other than Mandarin for that matter, is rarely spoken in China, and so communicating with others can be particularly difficult or frustrating. This warning sign shows how difficult it can be to understand even images across cultures. I had no idea what was being conveyed here. More importantly, in this shot I show what Shanghai is to China – the future, modern and new, but relegated to look like every other modern first-world city I’ve been to. This could very well have been taken in Paris, Cape Town, Tokyo, New York, or Buenos Aires.

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They say everything comes at a price, and in the case of China’s rapid rise to industrialization, that price has been paid dearly by the environment. Perhaps it is because I am from Costa Rica, a country that inches along the development scale but which defends its environment vehemently, that I found the ecological impact of this rapid development so troublesome.

About The Author: Karl Gerchow is enrolled in the MBA program: Wharton School of Business, University of Pennsylvania.

Jennie

Posted on April 19, 2012 by Jennie Shapira

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MISPLACEMENT

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……….For me, eroticism tickles the uncomfortable; it’s the delicate play of contrasting themes, acting perversely to make the viewer experience the combative feelings of ease and unease. It’s the product of a dichotomy between overt sexuality and something that both pushes you back and draws you in. What defines erotic as erotic is precisely this interaction. The concept of seeing only enough to force you to fill in the rest plays strongly with my views of eroticism, allowing a not-fully nude image to sometimes be more sexually driven than one where everything is purely raw.

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Jennie

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As a deeper conversation with the viewer, the creation of a scene which beckons for an accompanying narrative causes the interaction to deepen. In the end, it doesn’t matter if the story is the same as the stories imagined by all the others, nor the story imagined by the subject at the time of creation, as long as it is one that spawns a desire to know the character and know how the depicted situation managed to occur.

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Jennie

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In order to embody these themes and appropriately have them relate to the ‘philo’ environment located at UPenn’s College Hall, I imagined one half of the dynamic play to involve the concept of purity and intellectual soundness. The Philomathean Halls are gilded with knowledge, so a fair counter would be one that’s slightly disturbing and somewhat scandalous, which would eject itself from the ‘ivy-bubble’ as much as possible. To show eroticism, I plan to pose myself in an uncomfortable, tied-up fashion, as if just left in this building, for non-specific torture to ensue. Such would invoke much internal conversation, a discomfort with the image, and a great contrast with the neat, orderly, olden feel of the library.

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Jennie

To Be Continued………..

Desert Beauty

Posted on April 16, 2012 by Madeleine Shiff

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……….Why is a distorted lone tree in the desert beautiful? Why are the simplest things often the most beautiful? With this assignment I chose to explore the complexities and contradictions of the Arizona landscape. I became particularly interested in the juxtaposition of twisted, grotesque trees, and the majestic Catalina mountains. The exploration of the concept of ‘what is a photograph’ is particularly interesting to me. As Susan Sontag states in On Photography, “ although there is a sense in which the camera does indeed capture reality, not just interpret it, photographs are as much an interpretation of the world as painting and drawings are”. What do we really see when we view a photograph? To me, a photograph is compelling when it does not just depict reality. A photograph is compelling because its composition evokes a deep visceral reaction in the viewer.

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Catalina Mountains

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The Arizona landscape is harsh and savage. Few plants or animals can survive in this landscape. From far away the spikes of a cactus appear vicious and hostile, yet up close the spikes appear delicate and beautiful. This photograph lends itself to the idea that objects in a photograph can appear completely different than they do in reality. Furthermore, objects can appear ‘ugly’ in reality yet beautiful in a photograph because of its composition.

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Cactus

Sontag also examines the tension between beauty and ‘ugliness’. I believe that remarkable photographic opportunities lie within this tension between beauty and ugliness. This is a concept that I examined with my photographs in Arizona. A bare tree without leaves can appear lonely in the desert landscape; however, it can also appear proud and dignified in its bareness. Photographs do not merely capture reality; they capture the desires and motivations of the photographer as well. Through this series of pictures, I sought to capture both traditional objects of beauty such as the Catalina Mountains, as well as unorthodox objects of beauty such as an old, lifeless tree.

About The Author: Madeleine Shiff is enrolled in the College of the University of Pennsylvania, Class of 2013.

Photo: Errol Christian

Posted on April 14, 2012 by Errol Christian

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Many times, the most popular photos in sports are the photos taken directly after winning “the big game.” For example, one of the most popular photos in basketball is the shot of Michael Jordan laying on the floor and hugging his newly won championship trophy, while crying as he mourns the recent death of his father. In the Olympics, U.S. citizens will never forget the photo of Michael Phelps sporting around his neck the eight gold medals he won in the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

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Photo: Errol Christian

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These photos of achievement are what capture the eyes of the masses. However, what often gets overlooked is the hard work and dedication these glorified athletes endured in order to get to the ultimate stage. In his book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell states that true success requires at least 10,000 hours of practice. How many shots do you think Michael Jordan had put up in an empty gym before he became the greatest player of all-time? How many laps do you think Michael Phelps has swum by himself before he became one of the greatest Olympians in history?

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Photo: Errol Christian

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Susan Sontag states “The history of photography could be recapitulated as the struggle between two different imperatives: beautification, which comes from the fine arts, and truth-telling…” Through photography, audiences are able to appreciate the beauty of Michael Jordan’s celebration and Michael Phelp’s eight gold medals. However, also through photography, it was my aim to capture the truth. The truth through repetitious practice in isolation – with no cheering fans, with no cameras, with no glory.

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Errol Christian: Self-Portrait 2012

About The Author: Errol Christian is enrolled in the MBA program: Wharton School of Business, University of Pennsylvania.

Adachi: March for Trayvon Martin

Posted on April 12, 2012 by Ryun Hobbs

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……….On March 26, The 1,000,000 Hoodie March was held in honor of Trayvon Martin, the 17-year old boy shot and killed a month prior on February 26, 2012. There is still much confusion and accusation surrounding his case – such as whether the shooter, George Zimmerman, was chasing after Trayvon, or if there was an altercation. However, some facts are undeniable. There is a 17-year old who is dead and a big reason is because his hoodie made him look “suspicious. Communities of all racial and social groups throughout the nation became enraged at this unjustified murder, demanding that justice be served. This is a series of photos taken before the arrest of George Zimmerman, at the University of Pennsylvania’s Trayvon march.

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I first saw this woman pushing a baby stroller while holding the march poster in the early stages of the procession. Adachi (Adachi.photography@gmail.com) is no stranger to protests, having photographed many of them herself. Her passion for capturing the essence of justice, however, does not stop her from being a caring mother. Both of her children accompanied her as they made a stand together.

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Skittes and Juice

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Some people never are content with sitting back and staying silent. This woman is such a person – she is “armed” with the Skittles and iced tea that Trayvon also possessed at his death, but she is also armed with her voice. Her numerous badges, like military ribbons, flash ceremoniously in the sunlight, making statements about the different inequalities in the world.

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March for Trayvon

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Despite his tough exterior, this man is a peaceful giant. Holding up his sign with extreme ease, he calls for the end of violence and the beginning of peace. “Children are our future,” the sign says, and the image of the shaking hands between cannot help but evoke memories of the late Doctor M. L. King, who had dreamed long ago of a community that rose above racial tension.

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March for Trayvon

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Protesting is almost never a solitary thing. Here, a family expresses their dissatisfaction together, bound to each other not only by their blood but by their mission. It is often easy to forget about murder victims’ families when first learning of the case, but seeing this family and their signs made me wonder how the Martin family Is faring. Condolences go out to them for their loss.

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Love

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As seen in the pictures above, advocates for justice and equality come in all shapes and sizes – spanning multiple ethnic and age differences. After all, we are all a community that must stick together when it is necessary. What keeps everyone together is a bit of anger, a bit of dissatisfaction, and a lot of love – for each other, for the victims, and for what is right.

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R.I.P. Trayvon Martin

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Not everyone’s voice is always heard, but many want to try whatever they can to make their stand as strong as possible. Here, two people sign large canvases of the late Trayvon Martin, which were delivered to his family after the march. Although it may not be a protest sign, it is still a testament to the expectation of receiving equal rights, instead of stereotyped caricatures.

About The Author: Ryun H. Hobbs is a senior enrolled in the Wharton School of Business, University of Pennsylvania. Class of 2012

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Editor’s Note: To read more articles by Ryun Hobbs, go to the search bar at the top of the page: enter name and click green icon.

Ryan Feit: Cuba

Posted on April 9, 2012 by Ryan Feit

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……….Make no mistake, times are hard in Cuba. Cuba has been frozen in time for the last 50 years. As a result, Cubans have struggled through countless bouts of famine, rations, and crises. The economy collapsed with the fall of the Soviet Union and has been in a downward spiral ever since.

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The older Cubans believe the Socialist propaganda they read in the papers. They seem completely unaware that the world has evolved since 1960. They argue about world events from decades ago and assume that mobile phones and the Internet are simply science fiction.

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Ryan Feit: Cuba

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The architecture is timelessly breathtaking and is evidence of its storied history. However, the houses and apartments have been washed away by time, exposing the real Cuba.

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Yet despite the relentless challenges, the people endure. Music carries the Cuban people just as it has for decades. Havana moves to a collective Salsa beat which puts a smile on the face of even the poorest Cuban.

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Cuba: Ryan Feit

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And they work with what they have. You won’t hear a single complaint that once again it’s a pulled pork sandwich for lunch and rice and beans for dinner.

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Ryan Feit: Cuba

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But the younger generation is excited for the future. They stand up tall, realizing they posses something special. They know that the time is getting close now and they are ready to reveal themselves to the world.

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Ryan Feit: Cuba

Photos by Ryan Feit: Copyright 2012

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About The Author: Ryan Feit is enrolled in the MBA program: Wharton School of Business, University of Pennsylvania.

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Editor’s Note: To read more articles by Ryan Feit, go to the search bar at the top of the page: enter name and click green icon.