From the political cartoons in Punch magazine depicting Irish resistance to British colonial power, a few things are extremely clear: an inclination to portray the Irish as savage, violent, and pretty much exclusively male, and to show the nations of Britain and Ireland as female entities, separate from the people who inhabit them, create the sense of a sternly powerful Britain protecting the innocent Ireland from the “less evolved” men who need to accept British wisdom and control. There are obviously interesting dynamics at play here with the use of imagery of gender and strength, but what i ..read more

Charles Robinson, 1907. While there were many illustrations throughout The Annotated Alice, one that caught my attention in particular was Charles Robinson’s drawing on page 24, depicting Alice and her pool of tears. The image is in stark contrast to Tenniel’s illustration on the next page, mainly due to Robinson’s choice to embrace Alice’s pre-adolescence with a shapeless, high-collared dress while Tenniel stays consistent with his choice of a cinched waist and a crinoline. More than that, what drew me to this image is Alice’s overt unhappiness. Of course, she is unhappy, as she is frustrate ..read more

Artist Lenka Clayton was featured in the 2021 Patricia and Edward Falkenberg Lecture, which is featured as a virtual event on the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum website. In her section of the lecture, she explained pieces from her exhibit “Comedy Plus Tragedy” and the inspiration behind the pieces. The exhibit was in celebration of the 75th anniversary of the Joseph Allen Skinner Museum, and featured items from the collection. She spoke alongside a slideshow of pictures of her pieces and items not directly featured in the exhibit from the Skinner Museum that inspired her. In the exhibit, the ..read more

In the time since COVID-19 shutdowns and isolation, I feel I’ve forgotten to reflect on lost time and tend to conceptualize that period as a big blank space, void of color and meaning. Mount Holyoke College Art Museum’s exhibit “Long Distance Relationship,” details the defiance of color and artistic connection in isolation. The virtual exhibition was offered by students involved in “Senior Studio,” Class of 2020 and 2021. These students describe how though isolation stifled artistic discourse, which is the backbone of most considerable works in visual culture, “new territories” emerged to main ..read more

As a ballet dancer, it wasn’t long before I discovered Christopher Wheeldon’s production of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland for the Royal Ballet. I’ve loved the choreography and the score since I watched it the first time, but it wasn’t until our discussion of Victorian women’s photocollage that I really payed attention to Bob Crowley’s set design. Much of the backdrop of the ballet is characterized by falling letters – Alice falls into the book as she falls down the rabbit hole. These letters seem random and vary in fonts and orientation. Overlaying the projection of these letters are design ..read more

I was inspired by our class discussion on the use of standardized photography of convicts, so I wanted to take a look at the use of mugshots today and those captured in the Victorian Era. The practice could be said to have forever changed the use of criminal records and the interference of the state with their community. The use of photography as a means of an archive was not new even when normalized for the use of prisons. However, the choice of using prisoners as a means to archive society in a way that was not seen with other communities or events, such as workplaces or births, is a stateme ..read more

Over Thanksgiving break, I had the pleasure of spending an afternoon at Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. In spite of my being a Massachusetts resident and an art museum enthusiast, I had somehow never visited the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum before! I can now firmly attest to the museum’s esteemed reputation; with a breathtakingly elegant garden courtyard and an extensive collection of multinational artifacts, this place feels downright magical to explore. The cherry on top to my visit was the all-new exhibit that had just made its debut only a month prior in October. This exhibit ..read more

“You know how there’s that one pretty important rule in filmmaking, don’t show the camera in the shot? Know what doesn’t give a damn about that rule? Mirrors.” This quote is from a fascinating video essay I recently watched on YouTube (cited below) that explains the plethora of techniques filmmakers use to execute the “impossible”; that is, to record mirror shots without showing the camera’s reflection. Some of these innovative techniques include superimposing and/or splicing shots in post, filming with blue and/or green screens (as utilized in CGI and VFX), and even using duplicated sets and ..read more

While I took this trip during the summer, and therefore before the start of this class, I’ve been able to link some of what I saw and noticed to ideas discussed in class. Over the summer, my family and I took a trip to England, beginning in London and making our way around the countryside, as well as some of the other cities. While we were there, I learned a lot about the royal family (my mom is a huge nerd for them, and so she also knew a lot of facts). I knew that Prince Harry and Megan Markle moved away from London to the States, but I didn’t know the extent of the drama in the family. Firs ..read more

The Gothic, as a genre, thrives on ideas and images of power, ownership, wealth, body-doubles, death, life, etc., which all changed in the advent of photography’s invention. Notably, changing concepts of image-possession and power over one’s image have turned photography into a force of power, as we’ve discussed in our recent conversations about photojournalism. The power to capture the truth of something in its entirety exposes that subject to exceptional vulnerability at the production and dispersion of the image. The power to bias an image and place it out of context, and yet still portray ..read more