PROJECT ROOM B

ALLEN FRAME’s THESIS CLASS

FEATURING WORK BY:

Sambit Biswas, Honglin Cai, Xiao Chai, Sara Falco, Jessica Fappiano, Amina Gingold, Emmanuelle Glazier, Jane Grogan, Hoyt Gyuricsek, Lily Holcombe, Adam Kasali, Seth Kenji, Iain McDonald, Jumi Park, Seung Ho Park, Enze Wang

STUDENT CURATORS:

Amina Gingold and Seth Kenji Grossman

A Few Thoughts

The big question that people ask me as a photographer is how social media now diminishes the value of my photographs. If everyone can take a picture on their phone and post it at the drop of a hat, what value do my photographs have for anyone anymore? I love this question because I then get to explain that what I do is a sustained practice in which one after another of my photographs add up to say something. Anyone can take a good single photo, yes; that is clear from all the images we see on social media, but who has developed a body of work? And why do we need one? 

If you were buying a book, would you pick up a novel with a single page, or do you expect to see an idea elaborated? This is what we do in Thesis, create that body of work that speaks for us now, talks about where we are, what we think of our past, our position in the present, our identities in relation to the society around us. Image by image, piece by piece, we build towards a communication that finds a language and a voice that are our own— no easy matter.  It’s an effort that can be confounding, frustrating, and sometimes, happily, a thrill, and deeply satisfying.

The benefit of doing it together is that feedback takes an effort, too. We expect comments to be more than “beautiful,” interesting,” or “wow.” In a classroom that effort is shared.  We build on everyone’s best observation or suggestion, and run with it.  

When I was a college senior, I decided at the end of the fall semester that things weren’t ending the way I wanted them to so I took the spring semester off, unnerving my parents who nevertheless supported me and let me come back home. When I went back to school the next fall, it was obvious how the time off had served me. I had come to grips with aspects of my identity and now had so much more to say.  For the students of the class of 2020, being in quarantine was not a choice, and there was little warning. The academic program didn’t end; it continued with radical revision. 

And here we are, living through this profound experience of sequester, alone and together, making work or thinking, feeling, researching.

—Allen Frame