Project 2– “Contrast” In Literature And Photos

con·trast /ˈkänˌtrast/ the state of being strikingly different from something else in juxtaposition or close association. similar to: distinction, conflict with, be at variance with. symbol examples: life and death, light and dark, etc.

The following is a collection of photos with the concept of “contrast” in mind. After reading our texts these past few weeks, I was drawn in by how certain lines or ideas played with contrast. I chose some quotes from various texts that I like and think match that.

Disclaimer: I am not a photographer in any sense of the word. All photos are simple things that were found in my surroundings and everything was taken on my ancient Andriod camera. I apologize for the poor quality. Without further ado, let’s jump right in!

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We have given birth on this table, and have prepared our parents for burial here. At this table, we sing with joy, with sorrow. We pray of suffering and remorse. We give thanks – Perhaps The World Ends Here, Lines 10-11

The infinite sky is motionless overhead and the restless water is boisterous. On the seashore of endless worlds, the children meet with shouts and dances. They build their houses with sand, and they play with empty shells. With withered leaves they weave their boats and smilingly float them on the vast deep. – On The Seashore, Lines 1-5

Praise crazy. Praise sad. Praise the path on which we’re led. Praise the roads on earth and water. Praise the eater and the eaten. Praise beginnings; praise the end. Praise the song and praise the singer. – Praise The Rain, Lines 15-20

Wars have begun and ended at this table. It is a place to hide in the shadow of terror. A place to celebrate the terrible victory. – Perhaps The World Ends Here, Lines 8-9

On the seashore of endless worlds, children meet. Tempest roams in the pathless sky, ships are wrecked in the trackless water, death is abroad and children play. – On The Seashore, Lines 13-14

They know not how to swim, they know not how to cast nets. Pearl-fishers dive for pearls, merchants sail in their ships, while children gather pebbles and scatter them again. They seek not for hidden treasures, they know not how to cast nets. – On The Seashore, Lines 7-9

Invisible fish swim this ghost ocean now described by waves of sand, by water-worn rock. Soon the fish will learn to walk. Then humans will come ashore and paint dreams on the dying stone. Then later, much later, the ocean floor will be punctuated by Chevy trucks, carrying the dreamers’ descendants, who are going to the store. – Invisible Fish, Lines 1-4

I was born and raised in East Flatbush, Brooklyn, and have never even been to my parents’ birthplace. Still, I answer ‘Haiti’. – The Dew Breaker, The Book of the Dead, Pages 1-2

In spite of his huge muscles and oversized tattoos, Claude seemed oddly defenseless, like a refugee lost at sea, or a child looking for his parents in a supermarket aisle. – The Dew Breaker, Night Talkers, Page 118

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My (Unnecessarily Long) Explanation

There is quite a bit to explain about my project and I figure we start with the biggest chunk, the photos. Drinking game idea: take a shot every time I say the word “contrast” (I’m just kidding, don’t actually do that, that would not be a fun way to go). Anyway, the photos. As I mentioned before, I am not a photographer and I apologize if someone in this class is and they are cringing at my attempts as we speak. Even though I have never taken a photography class in my life or know any technical terms, I will attempt to explain why I took these photos and what I tried to highlight in them. As you can see, the first set shows brick and greenery. In the first, it is a very old building with overgrown vines making its way up the side and over the metal of the fire escapes. In the second, it is a brick path that has little bits of grass and plants growing up out of the cracks. I saw both of these things and thought of the contrast between nature and man-made objects, the solid immortality of brick and metal compared to the fragile yet resilient green of the plants. Both completely different things, yet still existing together.

The next set of photos were taken in my backyard. I found this really cool old hand-held mirror with a crack in it and was playing around with it, trying to see if I could get some cool shots with it. The image on the right highlights contrast in that the majority of the frame is filled with piles of dead fallen leaves, while the small face of the mirror gives a window to the sky and the leaves that have yet to fall on the tree branches above. The image on the left is similar but shows more contrast to color and light– a bed of shadowy, wet, dark orange leaves while the mirror lays on top, shining bright light against the background. The next photo is one that stands on its own and is a pretty simple visual of contrast found right in my bedroom. The black and white keys, ivory versus ebony, opposite colors, different yet intertwined to make the keyboard of a piano.

Then there are the following two images. The first is a sunset I saw last week that immediately had me grabbing my phone to take a picture. I think it shows a contrast between the darkness of the trees, telephone wires, and extended street, compared with the cotton candy blue of the sky, and of course, the thick orange stripe of clouds that run along the bottom. The second is the red door. I was walking downtown finding all sorts of neat stuff and this random door in an alleyway caught my eye. It being unlocked and half-open almost seems to split the photo itself in half. On the one side, the deep red of the curved metal. And on the other side, the opening stretching forward to reveal the grey concrete and white sky. The next two photos also play with the distinction of colors. The first was just on the walls of my bedroom. The color blocking with the tan and blue split by white was a simple example of contrast. And the stack of books was just something I thought might be cool. I flipped all of the books around except for one, so the image is all whites and tans of the floor, door, and book pages, with the only color being the pop of red on the spine of one.

Next, there is the visual of the string lights that line part of my room. They are multicolored and at night bright against the blackness of my wall. Even though the picture is terrible quality, I wanted to capture that stark difference of the light versus dark, various colors against a deep black. That image is then followed by two that I took while walking on the nature trail outside of my house. The one on the right shows more trees and leaves. The tree in the forefront is covered in leaves that have turned red, bright on top of the dark trunk of the tree, and in contrast with the still green leaves and grass of the floor and background. Not only is there the difference of color but also of the transfer of seasons, seeing both elements of summer and fall in one place, and the ideas of life versus death that comes with the leaves and plants turning and dying. Then the picture on the right shows a puddle that lay beside the trail. The contrast in this can be several different things, whether it be the green versus blue, the water versus soil, or the way that it is the forest floor yet there is a window to the sky as well.

Then there are the next set of photos. These play with the idea of contrast in light. On the one side is the inside of an empty room, daylight spilling in and cutting across the shadows of the floor. And on the other side is the streets late at night, the colored streetlights shining and reflecting in contrast to the dark sky and pavement. These two visuals side by side are also contrasting in it of themselves, one of the boxed-in inside during the day versus the open outside during the night. And finally, there are the last set of photos. These two I took just yesterday morning in my bedroom. My room is naturally dark and has no overhead lights so when I wake up, the only light there is comes from my window. In the first, I took a picture of my mirror hanging on the opposite wall, showcasing the dark blue of my shadowed room with a little glimpse of the window, the light purple curtains and the light green from outside. In the second, it’s of my bed and my cat Pepper resting on top. Everything is enveloped in shadows as well, except for the strip of sunlight coming in through the window. Both images are simple but highlight the difference between dark and light, between coolness and warmth.

Now, about the quotes. Some of these quotes are self-explanatory and others you could dig really deep into and write a whole essay on, but I have already written way too much so I’ll show restraint and be brief in explaining where I saw contrast presenting itself.  For “On The Seashore”, contrast is everywhere. The entire poem has it and that was what inspired me to do this project. There was a juxtaposition in the setting, the tone, the feelings, and of course, between the children and the adults. Both are in the same place, the seashore, yet have completely different views and ways they take it in. The seashore is almost like two completely different places, the greedy adults and the deadly waves opposite of the care-free children and the happy lense in which they see the shore. Then there are the lines from “Perhaps The World ends Here”. This poem is all about a table and all of the various things that have happened at it. There are contrasts between feelings and what it means to be human, things like life versus death, joy versus sorrow, suffering versus thanks, terror versus victory, etc. The quotes I took from “Praise The Rain” are similar, things that are opposite yet still coexist. Earth and water, the eater and the eaten, the songs and the singers, the beginnings and the endings.

With “The Invisible Fish”, I just took the entire poem because I couldn’t narrow it down to just a few lines without taking away the meaning. The whole poem is depicting a contrast of time and life, starting with the swimming of invisible fish and ending with giant Chevy trucks sunken at the bottom of the sea. Finally, there’s “The Dew Breaker”. It was one text I took that wasn’t a short poem and it was a lot harder for me to pick out something specific. The novel as a whole shows a contrast between people and experiences, between New York City and between Haiti. Because I wanted to grab specific lines, I took one from the beginning that was the first addressing the conflict of New York versus Haiti. For the second quote, it may seem kind of random. As I was reading this for class, I highlighted a lot of lines that I enjoyed. When I was going over them, I re-found one from the “Night Talkers” chapter. It is about Claude and the idea of someone being so big and covered in tattoos, yet looking so small and lost, a contradicting image that really stood out to me.

If anybody is still reading at this point, you are probably wondering “why contrast?” Why did I do my project around this word and spend so much time blabbing on about random things that have contrast? Well, it’s nothing deep or profound, I just really like the idea of contrast. Contrast, differences, juxtaposition, polarity, opposites, all that jazz, and the way they present themselves in things. When I first read “On The Seashore”, I fell in love with the way Tagore used contrast in so many different aspects of the work and decided then and there that I wanted to do my project around that idea. Contrast is a word that has several meanings, a word that can be found in both concrete and abstract things in life and our surroundings. And art imitates life, right? So all types of art, from photography to literature, have contrast in it. Contrast makes up every corner of our world.

It can mean exact opposites, but it can also mean things that are similar yet still different. It can mean things that clash with each other because of their differences, but also things that coexist with each other because of those differences. Life and death, dark and light, the moon and the sun, the earth and the sea, happiness and sadness, noise and silence, movement and stillness– these are all things that are in contrast with one another yet wouldn’t be the same without the other. In literature, you can think about the contrast between characters, between themes, between feelings, between points of views, between storytelling, etc. You can also see contrast in literature reflected in what it means to be human and to be alive, all of the contradictions of life and nature and art and the way of the world. As someone who sees a lot of juxtapositions in my own life and own self, finding contrast present in other places is really cool. It’s a reminder that the world is just one big kaleidoscope of elements in contrast with one another, some against each other and others working together, and seeing it displayed through the written word always gets me even more fascinated and intrigued. 

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All Sources Cited

Danticat, Edwidge. “The Dew Breaker.” Vintage Books, 2005 Edition.

Tagore, Rabindranath. “On the Seashore.” Poetry Foundation, Poetry Foundation, www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45670/on-the-seashore.

Harjo, Joy. “Perhaps the World Ends Here.” Poetry Foundation, Poetry Foundation, www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/49622/perhaps-the-world-ends-here.

Harjo, Joy. “Praise the Rain.” Poetry Foundation, Poetry Foundation, www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/141848/praise-te-rain.

Harjo, Joy. “Invisible Fish.” Poetry Foundation, Poetry Foundation, www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/101674/invisible-fish-swim-this-ghost-ocean.