Photos LOUD enough to speak for themselves

Photos hang on the wall of the Obscura Gallery in the Photography Department. Photo by Corey Holt/Special to The Guardsman.

By Corey Holt

coreychold3@mail.ccsf.edu

 

CCSF Photo Club presents their 2018 Spring Semester group show ‘LOUD’ with goals to inspire their viewers’ definition.

 

The club chooses a theme each semester to capture images using the visual language of photography.

 

“Last year, they chose the theme ‘quiet’ and that was kind of just by group decision,” Harry Ciabattini said, co-president of the Photography club and 2nd-year photography student.

 

“Everyone just kind of threw some ideas out there. A few of the ideas were like colors and other things, in the end, we voted and chose quiet,” he said. “It’s an easy theme to go for in photography, and it’s nice to get a nice quiet scene going,” he said.

 

“This year, they asked me ‘hey, do you wanna do the group show this semester?’ and I was like sure, why don’t we just go with ‘Loud,’ the opposite from last semester, and they were like sure, so that’s what we went with,” he said.

 

The exhibit includes a variety of images intended to speak for the viewers’ definitions of the word ‘loud.’ The photographs were composed by 11 different artists who each have a unique and personal perspective as to what artistic devices create an image that speaks loudly to its viewers.

 

“People were like ‘it’s kind of hard to do loud, you know it’s not my thing,’” Ciabattini said.

 

“We kinda kept the guidelines loose. We just told them it can be whatever you feel, it doesn’t have to be someone actually yelling in your photo to communicate loud you know,” he said.

 

One of the images on display entitled “Mission Street Fire,” shot by photo club member Joseph Johnston, is the perfect example of the theme the club was aiming to capture, and one of the loudest images on display.

 

The image displays a large cloud of smoke which appears in the background on Mission street while observers watch as the SFFD contains the fire.

 

“What an event you know?” Ciabattini said, “there’s still a hole in the ground from that day. It was a lot going on and it was just a beautiful shot,” he said.

 

The objective of the club was to communicate a loud statement to viewers in order to draw some type of emotional response.

 

“As long as someone can walk in there and match their definition of what loud is, then we did a good job,”Ciabattini said.

 

“I feel like that’s the beauty of photography. You can just kinda go out there and shoot blind then come back and think more critically, and sometimes it makes you feel just a really loud emotional response, which is what I think we accomplished,” he said

 

The exhibit will be open from March 2nd to March 26th, and the photos will be on display in the photography department in the Visual Arts building.

 

Photos hang on the wall of the Obscura Gallery in the Photography Department. Photo by Corey Holt/Special to The Guardsman.
Photos hang on the wall of the Obscura Gallery in the Photography Department. Photo by Corey Holt/Special to The Guardsman.

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