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Day 1: Upper East Side

“I like opera because the women sure can menstruate.”

The 2007 New York trip began with an exciting trip to the Natural History Museum. There’s nothing like traveling to a museum with Steve to go into culturally sensitive areas of the world to see our stereotypical past; the Asian section, the Middle East area (where Aladdin’s lamp was strategically placed right next to the Koran), and the African peoples.

We traversed cross town to see the Goethe Institute where a Magnum photographer, Thomas Dworzak had a series called M*A*S*H. His show consisted of images from the televised 1970s series MASH along side images he took while embedded with medical companies in Iraq.

We then were given a behind the scenes look at the Jewish Museum. Danielle, who Zubair has a crush on, gave us a tour of the most interesting pieces in the museum. We began by looking at Louise Nevelsen, whose massive, overpowering wood sculptures in monochromatic colors (black and white) gave us a feeling that she was larger than life. Dateline Israel was an exhibit of photography and videos, which was fascinating, yet apparently the least visited part of the museum because of the controversy of the conflict. A piece by Barry Frydlender called, “The Blessing” 2005 greeted us by its massiveness. This exhibit pushed us to examine how we interact with photographs.

For the evening event, we attended a book signing/lecture by 4 Magnum photographers: Jonas Bendiksen, Elliott Erwitt, Larry Towell and Alex Webb. They discussed the publishing world, how to publish a book and what it was like to publish a book of photos.