Saturday, March 2, 2024

Weekly Selfie 6 | Navdeep Sanghera


This photo was taken at the Mana Contemporary Light Installation exhibition during the Jersey City Art Week. My friends and I each took turns taking a photograph with different lights to give a colorful cinematic effect similar to the director of Blade Runner 2049, Denis Villeneuve. With a Cyberpunk-inspired color palette. We imagined ourselves as part of a cyberpunk futuristic film, each shot consisted of medium and close-up shots to show details of the character. 


How to See the World Chapter 1

Fanon felt forced to " cast an objective gaze over myself, [I] discovered my blackness." He finds himself seeing himself as the white other sees him — a "shade." He feels fixed, as if photographed by what he calls " the white gaze." 

By the same token, the rich color and depth of field of the current Canon G series has set the visual terms for "prosumer" photography. 

Immediately after reading the quote on Frantz Fanon's experience of feeling different from the rest of the white French people on his train ride, it reminded me of my experience of growing up in the United States as an Indian-American. A loss of identity and culture, two very contrasting cultures were clashing up against each other. At the time of the early and late 2000's being white was far more better. I knew deep down- that white Americans viewed me as the most stereotypical Indian religious girl. For that reason, I hated my culture and isolated myself from it. My whole childhood I was concerned with the white gaze, and how they perceived me, exactly similar to Fanon, my Punjabi cultural dress and braided hair made me feel I was another stereotypical Indian girl living in the U.S. Every person of color and race living in the U.S. in the early 2000s had to always view themselves and have their perspective asserted through the white gaze. We knew being white was better as kids, the dominant race. 

Prosumer is the terminology I have been looking for assuming the term was nonexistent till now. In describing amateur people's use of industry-standard equipment/supplies in application to creating new content through the use of a product that aids the user to be facile in the process of content creation. Prosumerism coexists with poster-modernism in the belief that everyone can create art. The audiences that once consumed now actively participate in the production process. 


Instruction Pieces:

The cat's bitch

Imagine your friend has a cat, touch the cat's paws and stomach, and let yourself get clawed and attacked by the cat... you are now marked as the cat's property. 


The perspective of a student

Don't sleep until 5 am, set your alarm for 8 am. Skip breakfast because now you will be late for class. You can eat after 6 p.m. how do you feel now? You are not the same person as you were yesterday. Hunger and sleepiness consume you now. 







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