MoMA

Interestingly enough, I found thte piece that really resonated with me in an ad for Color Chart on the MoMA's site, but it was an actual art piece in an exhibition in the museum. The ad I saw was the same photograph of a boy repeated three times, cast in blue, with a different word under each photo. We'll note that the boy is african-american. (I think the reason that this resonated a lot with me is because of the book we just read- they are hugely connected). The first word was "blue", describing the most obvious... which is the color of the picture. The middle was "black", which was the color of the boy's skin, and the third was "boy". There were several other similar ones in the online gallery; such as "magenta colored girl", which could be "magenta colored" or magenta , colored" depending on how you want to interpret it... the girl pictured is african american, which would lead to the interperetation of the "colored" part. There were others as well, but after reading this book, those two struck me the most because it shows how often times color is the first thing that we percieve about another person. Though saying "Girl" or "Boy" certainly isn't going into great depth about their personality as an individual, it identifies them as human, whereas saying "black" or "blue" or "magenta" is just talking about the most obvious attribute that would catch one's eye- the color. I think it really shows how people perceive one another. First impressons are often times everything. Everyone is guilty of this; someone does not appear similar to another person, usually the other person's first impression is that they will not like this person. It's perfectly natural, but I think these photographs really capture that essence.