Feeling an image...

This picture is China in a nutshell in my opinion. Everything about it brings back very strong sensory-laden memories for me that will never leave my heart or mind. I had the opportunity to live in a city called Hefei for 4 months in 2008, teaching English to students of all ages. As a part of my experience I was given the chance to attend a home-visit with one of my students on a rare extended vacation we all had from school. I was walking with Laura and her mother through their hometown as the girls proudly showed me the best their neighborhood had to offer. Laura's family owns a flour factory so the family resides in a largely-impoverished neighborhood despite their obvious financial stability as business owners; also made obvious by the fact they can afford to send their 2 children to an upscale school across the country as well as bring them home for periodic visits. We were on our way to a Buddhist Temple and passed through a lonely market-street when I decided to capture the moment.

This was the first image that came to mind when parameters for this assignment were detailed, especially with the journalistic emphasis requirement. It strongly boasts strength in contrast, balance and harmony which I will explain in the following paragraphs.

Laura and her mother are stark contrasts to their environment in this photo. Both women are wearing more modern, clean, sophisticated clothing which stands out greatly in the dingy, smoky and run-down market they are passing through. Contrast in texture is very obvious! The street is covered in random spills and stains on the concrete, piles of garbage along the road's edges and a random fire burning among broken-down shacks somehow used as stores. This leaves me with feelings of passiveness, loneliness, filthiness and defeat. However, as the two females walk through their hometown they hold strong to one another, embracing lovingly as they peruse amid the ruin. Their body language shows no concern whatsoever for the shambles that surround them and seem to casually accept the defeat of their environment while maintaining strength and love between one another. Because they are the subjects closest to the lens of my point-and-shoot camera they seem to be in better focus than the rest of the items (Could just be my bad vision, who knows?) which adds to the feeling of separation and contrast between them and their environment as well. The framing and spacing of the photo places the women directly into the action and drama... We're not seeing them in the foreground as through we're experiencing this view with them, we are viewing them in this experience. They seem to be encompassed by their surroundings which compliments the aforementioned feelings of being IN the environment but not OF the environment.

Balance is obtained because the street scene seems to be pretty symmetrical as far as the 'weight' of the photo is concerned. An old set of tables and a fire sit just opposite of one another, and the walking females are on 2 intersections of the rule of thirds. Normally I would've edited this picture to bring the bottom border up so less negative space would've been present but I felt that doing so would've knocked off the sense of imbalance leaving the status-quo actually achieves, complementing the uneasy feeling of the atmosphere and environment as a whole.  The colors both Laura and her mom are wearing match some of the colors on business signs further down the road which makes me feel like the girls still fit into the neighborhood despite the great contrast that exists between them and their surroundings, as detailed previously.

This image was captured with a cheap camera by an amateur photographer in a moment's notice. Harmony wasn't achieved with a stylistic eye as much as it was through the contexts of the story, people, and culture. My psychological contextual understanding and social contextual experiences with this country, family and their lives make this much more meaningful to me, but obviously a random viewer would have few personal experiences to draw upon to gain meaning or emotion. This image shows the ruin that China tries so hard to hide, the happiness and comfort people have in such uncomfortable circumstances, the love between mother and daughter that exists despite many cultural difficulties as well as the optimism they have for moving forward despite present circumstances. It screams hope and improvement and serves as a source of inspiration for me as I experience hardships in my life. Their interaction somehow establishes a feeling of harmony because it typifies the struggles of life we each experience and how to move forward despite opposition, holding onto the things you hold most dear.