Idea
I interpret loud and silent to mean many different things; I see them beyond just representing a decibel unit of measure, and as words that can encapsulate a range of emotions. I associate ‘loud’ with things that are explicit, ambitious, critical, powerful, and strong. I associate ‘silent’ with things that are implicit, passive, sensitive, and understated. Given these meanings, I understand the phrase ‘loud but silent’ moment to refer to not volume, but rather a juxtaposition or paradoxical relationship between two ideas. Further, I see a loud but silent moment to reflect a scene or idea that might seem one dimensional, simple, or straight forward on the surface, but actually has an underlying meaning that is much more ambitious than what the visuals alone can communicate to the naked eye. In other words, an image, object, or environment can be understated, and yet the message, theme, or tone can still be extremely powerful.
To realize my interpretation, I chose to visit the hidden neighborhoods just outside of Shanghai’s most popular tourist site: Yu Garden. It is in these neighborhoods that you will most often find the most underdeveloped, poor, and run down places of the city. It seems ironic, that areas that have such prosperous development, such as Yu Garden, Lujiazui, and Tianzifang, are also also within the same radius as the most impoverished communities of the city. In reality, the contrast of the foreground, scattered with trash, leftover construction materials, and migrant worker dorms, against the backdrop of the perfectly lit, refined architecture of Yu Garden and the infamous Ritz Carleton hotel, reflects the dangerous, yet overlooked, inequality present in Shanghai. Visitors and locals, can be enamoured by how ambitious and powerful the city’s development has proven, all while ignoring and disregarden the hidden voices of exploited workers that produced such a scene.
I think even the name of my photograph, ‘Shanghai Slums,’ presents its own type of oxymoron congruent with the theme. When we think of Shanghai (the ‘loud’ element), we would never assume that it was capable of producing such a scene. And yet, slum areas like the photo captures are common, even though they are hidden from public view and recognition (the ‘silent’ element).
Shooting
Because of difficulties coordinating with group members and transporting issues, I ended up shooting on an Olympus digital camera. Interestingly, it was easier to get photos at the right angle because the camera was smaller, meaning that the lenses could be closer together. However, the weather proved a significant challenge, as it was raining this entire past week. When I was shooting it was also quite rainy, and some photos had water drop marks that were out of my control, while others did not.
Post production
I found the tutorial provided by the slides was east to follow. Extracting the red and cyan values from the left and right images was straight forward, and I spent most of my time readjusting and cropping the photos. I noticed that even with a smaller camera, the perspective of each image was too far apart from one another for the 3D effect to work. Moving the images closer together, and then cropping the excess on the right and left sides, yielded a much better result.