The Crash Years: Photographs

I signed up for Photography as an arts elective (Photographie Avancé, bitch pleaaase). It's great. At the beginning I felt extremely intimidated because the class is completely in French, so the only time I opened my mouth was when we had to introduce ourselves. I had been freaking out about that moment for my 4 hour break and practiced what I was going to say 40 times in my mind. Then when it was my turn I just said it very casually with my best accent on, trying to pass unnoticed ("pasar desapercibida", I just realized I don't know the equivalent of that awesome little phrase in English... Sweet, the fact that I went for this phrase means I'm still thinking in Spanish).

Bad thing about doing that is that then people will think you actually speak French and then talk to you and all you hear is KSADHFJDKBGGGGHHHHHGHHHHHERFSRGFJJJJ and then I just stand there with my eyes about to pop out and smile and say, "Pardon?". Then they go for it again, I smile again, and then my mask is out, I just have to go for Enlgish again. But honestly, I'm trying, I even called this girl who put up an ad on a notice board saying she needed help with Spanish. Now we're meeting twice a week and we talk in Spanish and then she helps me with French. How proactive of me!

Ok so, aside from the language barriers, the class is great. I'm glad I signed up for advanced and not "debutants" because begginners is extremely technical, stuff I did with Barry (again, Iri and Chris, BARRY LOVE!). And this "avancé" is more analytical, we have a presentation of a different contemporary photographer each class, done by a student, and then the prof who is also a photographer talks about this person's work and how it is relevant to the discipline nowadays. I stopped feeling intimidated with the class when I realized I was familiar with lots of the artists we would study, and plus the first class was on Jeff Wall, a very well known Vancouver photographer! I raised my hand and proudly said he was a Vancouverite, did his Bachelor's in UBC and was a friend of none other than our beloved Barry (once more, BARRY LOVE!). The prof was impressed, now I am the teacher's pet, hellzyea.

The prof is really cool too. I went and talked to him after class and explained that if I wasn't participating enough in the discussions it wasn't because I was not interest, but because I had difficulty expressing myself in French. He was very nice and understanding, and let me choose the date I wanted for my presentation so I could have enough time to prepare it in French. He also told me had grew up in Guatemala! So we talked in Spanish and now we're BFF's basically. i decided to do my presentation on Cindy Sherman (click me), I'll write some more about her later, I'm on my research period right now, on the few spare time I have between freaking out about readings I haven't done for classes and looking for an apartment.

So the point being, photography is not intimidating anymore, it's awesome! Classes are keeping me sane in this city. I've only had two classes of each subject (= two weeks of school) but there are a couple which are just amazing: Photo, The Age of the Avant Garde in Paris and the one on the Chilean Dictatorship (we're gonna have a major Chilean singer, Angel Parra, in class next week). The others, IR Theory and International Development are a little meh.

Now wrapping this thing up and going back to what I ended to write here in the first place (got a little carried on, as usual), I have to bring some pictures I've taken to the class next week. I spent hours checking all the pictures I had on my computer, selecting a few, editing others, etc. and I realized I had such beautiful memories in my pictures. I also browsed through lots of black and white prints I had developed last year and chose a few I'm going to take to the class. I think my choices reflect a little bias towards the content of the photos rather than the actual quality of the prints, because I chose mostly portraits of my friends. Oh how I miss you! I'm os happy this pictures exist, and that I brought them here with me. Just wantd to share a few of my favorite portraits:

COLOR DIGITALS

Chris Angel Mindfreak