Culture in Bloomington, IN

Over the weekend, we took in some culture. One thing I love about Bloomington is, being a college town, there are always a lot of cultural events going on, especially for a relatively small town.

The Last Folio (Photography Exhibit)

Friday night, we went to the Grunwald Gallery of Art to experience a photography exhibition called The Last Folio, featuring photographs taken by Yuri Dojc. The Grunwald site explains better than I could:

Dojc, a successful commercial photographer, encountered a Holocaust survivor at his father’s funeral in 1997. Their meeting resulted in his decision to take photographs of the Slovak survivors, before it was too late. In his journey across the country he took more than one hundred and fifty portraits recording their stories and their faces. On his travels he also happened upon objects and buildings that once belonged to the Jewish community. Moved by their beauty despite their state of ruin, he decided to find and photograph additional evidence of the lost community. He followed in the path detailed in his father’s book on the country’s Jewish heritage and began the project that would become Last Folio.

We got there too late for the lecture and Q&A, but we did get to see his work and it was quite impressive. A fascinating mix of people, objects, and buildings, all with incredible stories behind them. The presentation of the work was amazing, too. Huge photos loomed in the background with smaller prints in front of them gave a great sense of depth and allowed the viewer to explore the photos in an interesting way. Another part involved a hallway with portraits lining it, giving the sense of walking down the hall in a home and seeing photos of their loved ones on the walls. At least, that’s how I experienced it.

I also talked to my photography professor from summer semester, and spotted a couple other people there who I knew. Oh, and it was free. You can’t beat that.

Tabloid (Documentary Film)

After visiting the art gallery, we went to the IU Cinema, which hosts an Interational Arthouse Series, to see Tabloid, a new(ish) documentary by Errol Morris. We been impressed by a couple of his other films before, namely Standard Operating Procedure (about Abu Grhaib) and The Thin Blue Line, a crime documentary. We weren’t really sure what to expect from this one. Those other films were quite serious but this was very odd, hilarious, and a bit rauchy at times.

I’ve never seen such an amusing documentary before, even if a lot of the story seemed to be of questionable truthfulness. Morris has a way of interviewing people and letting them speak their mind. He mostly just presents their words, sometimes embellished but without directly questioning their statements. He just lets them talk and weaves together a tale that isn’t without commentary from him, but most of it is very subtle, and allows viewers to draw their own conclusions about whether the subjects are being truthful.

I won’t try to explain the story, but if you’re open-minded, and want a great story, and aren’t easily offended, you might enjoy it.

Fourth Street Festival of the Arts & Crafts

Saturday we went to the Fourth Street Festival, which is an annual event in downtown Bloomington. Artists set up booths to display and/or sell their work, and there is music and other live entertainment.

Despite the heat (nearly 100 degrees) we had a great time wandering through the booths, looking at the artwork, and inspiring to me, speaking with some of the artists. There were too many to talk to all of them in depth, but I was inspired by the Astrophotography by Scott Johnson, abstract, textural photographs by Jay Canterbury, and perhaps my favorite, amazing cloudscape/landscape/seascape acrylic paintings by S.I. Walker. All three provided some wonderful insights into their work and their thoughts when they are creating it.

Among other things, S.I. Walker talked about our love of clouds, fog, etc. She turned me onto the Cloud Appreciation Society, whose manifesto reads, among other things, “Look up, marvel at the ephemeral beauty, and live life with your head in the clouds!” Maybe I will.

 

As a photographer, I had to ask if her scenes were intended to depict a certain location. She said it’s all in her head, inspired by things she sees, but she creates each location in her mind. This is amazing for me to think about, since photography is more limited to things you can actually see, and photograph.

Some other artists had impressive works as well. The main other inspiration I walked away with was from viewing some photographers using panoramic aspect ratios. When I’m shooting, I usually just use the aspect ratio my camera shoots in on its own, but seeing some of this work made me want to experiment with aspect ratios more.