Hong-Ngoc Thi Nguyen

Instructor: Jakubowski

English 103, section PG01

16 October 2005

Black and White Imagery

First of all, I have to admit that I have no idea about art. After visiting the NIU Art Gallery, I finally chose a work that made me feel interested the most. It is one of the two untitled vintage prints: “Black and White Imagery”.

It is a printed image showed in black and white color in a large size paper. It was put into a frame and was taken from 1979 to 1983 by Helene Smith Romer. That is a portrait of a woman, I guess, but in a strange way. It shows just a part of her body, from the under shoulder to the belt. In the middle, she brings a mirror in which her face is reflected upside down. Or in the other way, she brings a printed portrait of herself, or someone else’s. Usually, to take a portrait, the photographer will take the image from at least the top of the head’s person. It is really unusual because the face of the woman is showed through a mirror, not directed, looks like the person bring her face by herself.

When looking at this photo, I hardly imagine how she looks like. It made me feel interested and embarrassed to draw the details of the face quickly. It is one person or maybe two different people? It drives me think about life. In reality, we never know exactly how and what people’s characteristics are. What we can see is often their reflected portrait or their printed photo, or someone differs from them. It is hard to look into their soul. 

“What did the author want to say out from this work of art?”, I wondered. I just felt this piece of art as I could. Anyway, I really paid attention to it and had to think of it for a while.