JN-134: Photo Essay, Science Week

Science week at LBCC allowed the college's science departments to share highlights of their offered courses and programs with students. The week began with presentations from the biology department, and followed with physics, geology, the ROV team and chemistry.

 

 Multiple skull models and fragments are displayed at LBCC's biology presentation for science week. Other exhibits included insects and other models highlighting the science of life.

 

LBCC chemistry instructor Brian Reed highlighted the chemistry presentation of science week. At one point an onlooker offered her Nintendo DS console as a "sacrifice" in the name of science. The handheld was dipped into liquid nitrogen for several minutes before being recovered and shattered.

Highlights of the chemistry presentation at science week also featured highly combustible materials, including both cotton and balloons filled with hydrogen.

Reed finishes his presentation by igniting materials in the palm of his hand. The item burns quickly without causing any burns or damage.

JN-134, Photographer of the Week: Bruce Davidson

Bruce Davidson is a documentary photographer who was born in 1933 and has been a staff photographer for Magnum Photography since 1959. He initially started contributing to them in 1956.

Davidson attended college at the Rochester institute of Technology and Yale. Davidson owes much of his technique to early instruction from the painter Josef Albers, who Davidson told the New York Times instructed him on how colors could capture the “movement” and “life” of a photograph. During his time at Yale, he had a photo of the school’s football team published in LIFE magazine. Davidson served time in the army after college and shot many photos of his surroundings for the newspaper at his post.

Bruce Davidson, Magnum Photos (Via TIME)

Following his work with the military, Davidson joined Magnum and documented a little bit of everything, including a photo which later became a Beastie Boys album cover. Davidson’s greatest claim to fame consists of many photographs he shot during the civil rights movement between 1961 and 1965.

According to the New York Times, although many consider him a "documentary photographer," Davidson himself disagrees. He believes as a photographer that he's a legitimate part of the photo, even though he's not literally in it.

"Documentary photographer suggests you just stand back, that you're not in the picture, you're just recording. I am in the picture, believe me. I am in the picture but I am not the picture," he said during his interview.

Among Davidson's mentors are Robert Frank, Eugene Smith, and Henri Cartier-Bresson, the man who recruited him to the Magnum photo agency.

Sources:

New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/28/arts/28iht-blume.4748533.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all
 
TIME Magazine Online, Bruce Davidson Photo Essay:
http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1975355,00.html
 
Bruce Davidson: Magnum Photos
http://www.magnumphotos.com/C.aspx?VP=XSpecific_MAG.PhotographerDetail_VPage&pid=2K7O3R14QG6O&nm=Bruce%20Davidson