Photo Essay Artist Statement

The photos used in my photo essay were from my first visit to the Johnsons Park area of Milwaukee. Want I wanted to convey through the pictures were my first reactions of the neighborhood and also what I was also feeling at the time. For this trip I was limited to using a disposable camera and my photos rely heavily on the weather.
I took these pictures in the Johnsons park area on a Thursday morning. I took the bus from North Avenue and was surprised at what I found when I finally got to Johnsons park. The park itself is just a big open field with some trees around it and some hills at the north and south ends of it. There is also a playground at the south end. For some reason I was expecting more. I thought that it would be more like Gordon Park or Kern Park which are bigger and have more trees and vegetation. I was also surprised at how much garbage was in Alice's Garden. I know that it couldn't be kept up during the winter, but the neighborhood overall had a lot of litter in it. I captured that in one of my pictures for the essay because even though I don't live in one of the cleanest neighborhoods, things like that still leave an impression on me.
Another first reaction that I got from the area were the houses. The degree in difference between the houses in the neighborhood left such an impression on me that I choose to do my photo essay on that topic. First of all, I knew that they were rebuilding houses in the neighborhood but I had no idea that they were going to be that many, and that nice looking. Those houses looked like they would be in a suburb and not an urban neighborhood. I found that very interesting. Also, even though there were so many nice houses, the neighborhood was still what it was, there was still litter in the vacant lots and there were still boarded up businesses. The older houses left an impression on me as well. Because there are so many newer houses in the area, the older houses and buildings really stick out. The older houses are decrepit and are falling apart. Paint is chipping everywhere, there are support beams missing, fences are falling down, boards are broken...etc. I wanted to focus more on these older houses but I didn't want to take too much time in case the inhabitants of the houses caught me being too nosy. I also wanted to capture the change of “out with the old and in the the new.” I found a sign that advertises lots of sell in the neighborhood. I was able to take a picture of some men working on a house which directly represents the change of new life and livelihood added to the neighborhood.
When I took these pictures, I was cold and tired and hungry and hoped that somehow this would be reflected in my pictures. I think the weather played an important part in the feeling that these pictures give off. It wasn't very cold, but it wasn't too warm until I left the neighborhood. The sky is a very pale color, at the time it would go from cloudy to more clear. There are also a lot of pictures of empty lots also reflected what I was feeling at the time. I was there alone and I was tired and hungry.
This project is a visual interpretation of my first reactions to the Johnsons Park area. My ideas and opinions of the area may change over time, but this stands as what I was thinking and feeling at the time that I was introduced to the area. I felt that there were a lot of really nice houses, so I tried to capture them on film. I thought that older, run down houses really stood out so I tried to juxtapose them against the new houses. I thought that there was more trash in the neighborhood than I am used to so I got that on film as well. Also I was alone and hungry and tired and tried to capture that with pictures of barren lots and the pale sky.

Neighborhood Photos

Idea for Final Project

For the final project for this class, I would like to cover the history of the Johnsons Park area. I would like to do some more research involving the area of the park that was involved in the Underground Railroad in the first half of the 19th Century. Also I would like to visually show how the Johnsons Park area has changed over time through out the past hundred years. I'd like to contact someone at JPA to see if they have any images or historical information, and maybe I could interview one of the long time residents and get their perspective on how the area has changed. I would also like to cover how the houses have changed and how the businesses have changed over time.

White People and Manifest Destiny

Ever since the beginnings of colonization of America, Europeans and European Americans have held themselves above all other races. The expansion of America by taking land and resources away from Native peoples was justified by Manifest Destiny. Manifest Destiny was the mentality that God wanted people to travel and urbanize the west so that the United States would stretch from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific. This meant that God wanted White people to travel across North America and take away the land from the Native Americans. Through ethnocentrism the White race is usually shown representing basic humanity while all other races are subject to classification.

In the book, America on Film by Benshoff and Griffin, ethnocentrism is defined as, “regarding one's own ethnic group as better than another.” People can't help but compare people against what they already know, but this can lead to negative actions if these comparisons are used as defining features. Ethnocentrism usually is the result of common ignorance to a group of people that are different and appear strange. This can then lead to racism where the judgments against people are turned into actions. Benshoff and Griffin describe racism as being, “the belief that human beings can be meaningfully categorized into racial groups and designated into superior or inferior based on the basis of those characteristics.”

Directly in line with the idea of ethnocentrism, many European Americans usually equate their race as being humanity. According to Richard Dyer, “This assumption that white people are just people, which is not far off saying that whites are people whereas other colors are something else.” Dyer goes on to say that the White race usually is not defined as a race in the same ways thats Blacks and Asians are described and characterized. Because media, and film in particular, are designed for White audiences, European Americans take for granted that they categorize and characterize other minority races while regarding their own as just the human race. Also because so much is targeted at the White audiences, there is little reflection of how this impacts European communities and other racial communities.

These images provide examples of how the white race, humanity, is bringing technology of the modern world to minority groups.

In the first image, Harbelly's Hogan, a white woman is providing medicine to a group of Native Americans. While at first, the image seems to be showing the introduction of modern medicine to an aboriginal type of people, another message is also evident. The image consists of group of Native Americans, one is sick and is lying down, and a white woman who is presumably a doctor or a nurse. The fact that a white person has to be introduced in order to help the Native American community suggests the idea of Manifest Destiny and the assimilation of Native Americans in America. These people need the help of whites in order to survive in modern times. The fact that these people have been self reliant for thousands of years before Columbus came to the western hemisphere is apparently irrelevant. Another theme is this picture is that a white person is giving a Native American medicine when many Native American populations were killed off from diseases from the first waves of European colonization.

The second image, Refrigerator, a white woman is presenting a refrigerator to a couple of Native Americans. This picture is also showing how white people are coming to modernize Native American groups. The woman in the picture has a huge smile on her face and is showing off an ice tray and wonders of a what a refrigerator can do. Obviously, ice cubs are extremely necessary to a group of people who have lived off the land for thousands of years. The Native Americans in this photo are still wearing their traditional clothes showing that they haven't assimilated that much into western European American culture. The smile on the womans face shows how America made so many promises to Native Americans but it is obvious that they were treated disrespect in countless ways.

These images show how Manifest Destiny and ethnocentrism holds the white race above all others. The white race is hardly ever considered a separate racial category because so much is aimed at the white audience that there is little self reflection. These images show how European Americans feel the need that they need to help the unfortunate, but really they are hurting them in the long run.

Works Cited

Benshoff, Harry and Sean Griffin. “What is Race?” America on Film. ed. Blackwell. 2008. 49- 52.

Dyer, Richard. “On the Matter of Whiteness.”

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