Undergraduate / MacCauley Honors Essay Topic See the World [2]

OBJECTIVE: Tell us about a book, artwork, or lab experiment that changed the way you see the world. What was it about the work that affected you? How did your world become different? (500 words or less)

" Will I end up in Jewish purgatory for this?" , I couldn't help but wonder as I meticulously approached the wall, dodging wailing women praying in a language foreign to my ears. I already felt like sore thumb amongst the women in prayer shawls of drab color and similarly somber skirts that brazed the floor. Wearing my bell bottoms ,that were covered in bright paint stains I had managed to obtain while building sets for a school performance, and a green blazer ,to cover my arms, I clearly wasn't dressed to impress during my first trip to Jerusalem. However my lack of propriety did not take away from my purpose to build a sense of identity in relation to Israel and the world. I was sent to Israel by my Jewish Community Center on a Youth Leadership program, but I had my own agenda to fulfill. Armed with several rolls of film and my camera, I was ready to capture every second of my time spent in a foreign country.

When I came close enough to the wall, I poised myself for a shot aimed above the head of the woman in front of me. It took one glance through the lens to lull my past anxieties. My thoughts escaped me as my focus went from the hands on the wall, then towards the notes that lined the cracks of the Kotel.

Each note was a tiny piece of paper folded in half until one was less than the size of a person's pinky nail. The minuscule paper carried even smaller text, but between the lines something greater than the human physical manifestation was hinted at. (shortern this into one?) Each author's soul left it's trace on the miniature letters. (include this sentence in there)

Their greatest fears, aspirations, and sentiments were all confided in the cracks that had slowly developed in the single remaining wall that stood centuries older than all the solicitors, and for that reason wiser.

The lens cast the wall for me in a whole new light , allowing me to see it without the obstruction of the plain eye(enhanced). Henri Cartier-Bresson once said, " To me, photography is the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of a significance of an event." In that fraction of a second that it had taken my eye to register what stood before the lens, I unwittingly took the photograph that would make me re-evaluate my role in the world.

It wasn't till a year later, when I was standing in the darkroom developing my film, that I came to the full realization my photograph was a testimony to the survival of a people. The shot taken of Kim Phúc running down a road after a South Vietnamese Air Force napalm attack makes it impossible for governments to conceal the Vietnam War atrocities. Likewise, my photo is proof that the will of a people can persevere.

If a tree falls, it is said that it makes a sound only if there are witnesses. Can a photograph make noise? My vision, that which is distinct to me, in terms of my subject of choice, angle and light I chose to frame it with, is the sound. The photographic paper as my medium, or the tree - no pun intended-, and the world as my witness. A concept that I hold as truth is nothing without physical evidence of my claim. However ,with a photograph, I can produce a definite calculable item out of the abstract, allowing other's to hold in their hands and see with their own eyes that which indirectly makes up my being. Through a photograph I am able to convey to the world that which stirs emotions deep inside my chest cavity, captivates and inspires me.