WLIW Arts Beat

WLIW Arts Beat - March 2, 2020
In this edition of WLIW Arts Beat, a photographer reflects on his career; an exhibit features artifacts from the Apollo 11 lunar mission; freelance artists foster community development through media; and a young girl celebrates her Mexican heritage through traditional folklore dances.
TRANSCRIPT
♪♪
♪♪
>> In this edition of
"WLIW Arts Beat"...
>> The three P's of photography.
>> The most important thing
about wanting to become
a photojournalist is you've got
to have total dedication.
>> An exhibit celebrating
man's lunar love affair.
>> We couldn't have hoped to
reach the moon without
Copernicus showing us how the
solar system works, for Newton
explaining the laws of gravity
and planetary orbits, or
Galileo's observations of the
lunar surface through a
telescope for the first time.
>> Creating change through
media...
>> We're exploring workforce
development, housing, food,
access, and health care
and, really, it's just an
opportunity for us to be able to
engage with the community and
take the idea of a content
channel a next step further
to figure out, you know, how can
we take the content that we
create and have it impact people
at a very local level?
>> And sharing cultural
heritage through folklore dance.
>> This is the hat we had to
wear.
It's called a sombrero.
And then a rebozo.
Then, if you wanted, you could
wear bracelets and gold
earrings.
The suit -- I don't know
what it's called, but...
and then the skirt.
>> It's all ahead on this
edition of "WLIW Arts Beat."
Funding for "WLIW Arts Beat" was
made possible by viewers like
you.
Thank you.
>> Welcome to WLIW Arts Beat.
I'm Diane Masciale.
For Ian Wright,
a fantastic photograph is all
about the three P's -- patience,
politeness, and perseverance.
We spent a day with the
Reno, Nevada-based photographer
who has taken pictures of
Johnny Cash, Ella Fitzgerald,
Mick Jagger, and the Beatles,
just to name a few.
♪♪
[ Camera shutter clicks ]
>> My Name is Ian Wright.
I was born in northeast of
England in 1945, and I'm in my
58th year as a photojournalist.
The mentor that I had was
Arthur Soakell, my former
teacher.
He actually put himself forward
with his knowledge of
photography and said, "Is there
anybody in the class that would
like me to teach them
photography?"
And I put my hand up, and I was
the only one.
It was the best decision
I ever made in my whole life,
because he took this young
14-year-old kid and showed him
all the tricks of the trade.
And I started work the last week
of December of 1960,
and they decided at
The Northern Echo
in Darlington that they were
going to have a new editor who
was coming in to revamp the
paper, Sir Harold Evans, who is
voted the greatest editor of the
last century.
He was my second mentor.
♪♪
Harry said to me later in years,
he said to me, you know,
Wrighty..."
Oh, by the way, John Lennon
gave me that nickname.
He said, "You know, Wrighty,
I heard it coming.
I said, "What did you hear?"
He said, "The '60s revolution.
I heard it coming."
The baby boomers had boomed,
And there were 25 million of
them -- 20 million in America,
5 million in Great Britain --
and he realized they had to have
a voice, and his first-ever
supplement was
"The Teenage Special."
He wanted coverage of everything
that was happening in our area.
And so he was the chronicler,
and he asked me to be the
illustrator at 16.
I got the job at that newspaper
as a junior darkroom boy.
My duties were to wash the
floor, make the chemicals,
make the tea, file the
negatives.
Literally, I was a runner.
I'd go with senior photographers
on assignments and run back with
the plates, develop them and
print, and so on and so on.
That's how it all began.
All the other photographers
that Harry had acquired
inherited atThe Northern Echo
were all World War II age.
>> They had no idea who
The Beatles were, and so he
said, "Do you want to do it?"
I always put my hand up,
you know.
I've never put my hand down,
I always said yes.
He said that, "I can't
give you any extra money,
can't give me overtime.
You won't get any time off,
and you can't have any expenses.
Do you still want to do it?"
"Yes."
So that was how I started.
But the thing was,
I was far too young to drive,
so I had to go on my bike.
You know, and I had a huge plate
camera, and inside the bag --
it weighed probably about
35 pounds.
And inside of there
were 14 plate, glass negatives.
That's what I had to carry.
And also inside was a flash
as big as a Bentley headlight,
so I had to strap that all to
the frame of my bike, and I was
out in all weathers
photographing this revolution,
this '60s revolution.
We were there at the beginning.
My first-ever portrait for
"The Teenage Special," I went
and photographed this
Ms. Ella Fitzgerald.
Over the years, I've just been
so lucky with the assignments
I've been given.
I went and photographed every
celebrity.
I've done them all.
I learn never be in awe of any
of them because they are looking
at you as a professional, and
they expect you to be
professional, and if you are,
they will sit down, buy you a
drink, and they'll talk your
hind legs off because they love
it.
But if you go in with an LP
cover and say, "Oh, can I have
your autograph, please?
I think your last LP
was absolutely fantastic."
You've had it. You've lost them.
♪♪
So I met the Beatles for the
first time February 9th, 1963.
There couldn't have been more
than 200 people in that theater
that night.
It was a snowstorm in
Sunderland County,
Durham, England.
I heard this sound. It went --
♪ Wow, wow, wow
♪ Wow, wow, wow, wow
♪ Wow, wow, wow, wow
Boom.
♪ Love, love me do
♪ You know I love you
So I pulled everything off the
bike, ran around the front
into the auditorium, took this
picture, and that was the
beginning of the revolution.
And according to the
National Portrait Gallery in
London, the picture I took of
them onstage is the
earliest-known photograph
of the Beatles live onstage.
♪♪
Many of the Beatles' pictures
I have
never saw the light of day
because they weren't famous,
which is quite remarkable.
I had a whole series of
photographs, portraits of them,
their reactions backstage the
night that JFK was assassinated.
Again, the only photographer
there, November 22nd, 1963.
Not one of those photographs
ever saw the light of day
until they were published in my
book, which came out in 2008.
In all of those assignments, or
whatever you want to call them,
I never went to work.
I never worked a day in my life.
♪♪
For me, it was --
It was just absolute passion.
I look upon the fact that my
still photographs are a
historical record of things
that happened during all of
those decades that I worked.
I never saw it as art.
I saw it as a craft,
I saw it as a profession,
and I realized what you had
to do to beat all the others.
Sometimes there's
20 other photographers there,
and you had to get something
different.
It was all about
decision-making.
It's all about being
imaginative.
I never went out as, say,
a graphic art photographer
would do and go out and create
something like a Picasso would.
I never did that.
I was --
I was a boots-on-the-ground
photographer and always have
been.
And I wouldn't change anything
for a golden cow.
No. Never.
Enjoyed every minute of it,
and I still am.
♪♪
♪♪
>> And now the artist quote
of the week...
In 1969, NASA made history
when it sent the first manned
crew to the moon as part of the
Apollo 11 lunar mission.
50 years later, artifacts from
that expedition are part of an
exhibit titled
"Small Steps, Giant Leaps."
>> That's one small step for
man, one giant leap for mankind.
>> On July 20th, 1969,
Neil Armstrong became the first
man ever to set foot on the
moon.
There seems to be no difficulty
in moving around, as we
suspected.
It's even perhaps easier than
the simulations of 1/6 G that we
performed in the various
simulations on the ground.
>> If you think about what
Apollo 11 achieved, that it
lifted human beings off the
surface of Earth and got them
safely to the moon, hundreds of
thousands of miles away,
that's an amazing achievement.
>> John Overholt is the curator
of this exhibition celebrating
the 50th anniversary of the
Apollo 11 lunar mission,
appropriately titled
"Small Steps, Giant Leaps."
>> I think people are hungry
for an idea of an achievement
that is greater than any one
individual, something that's
meaningful as a society.
>> Yeah.
Reading you loud and clear.
How's it going?
>> Roger.
The EVA is progressing
beautifully.
I believe they are setting up
the flag now.
>> The records, memorabilia, and
even tools of that achievement
are all on view here.
In an age when space technology
was in its infancy, the
astronauts mapped the stars by
literally holding up this chart
on the moon.
>> Unlike any star chart before,
it needs to show the position
of the earth because, for the
first time people were using it,
not standing on the earth.
>> The moon we see here is a
pretty dusty place.
>> There's a Velcro patch on the
back that still has a little bit
of moon dust trapped in it from
when it was used on the lunar
surface.
>> But curiosity surrounding
the moon has existed as long
as humans have longed to fly.
And here at the
Houghton Library, Overholt has
chronicled mankind's lunar
fascinations as far back as the
13th century.
>> We couldn't have hoped to
reach the moon without
Copernicus showing us how the
solar system works, or Newton
explaining the laws of gravity
and planetary orbits, or
Galileo's observations of the
lunar surface through a
telescope for the first time.
>> Alongside the scientific, the
fantastical -- fictional works
from the greats like
Jules Verne, author of
"From the Earth to the Moon,"
and "Cyrano de Bergerac,"
who imagined a lunar society
that sees Earth as its moon.
>> The moon has historically
been a really inspiring site
to spark the imagination, and
many writers have set
alternative worlds on the moon
as a way of commenting on
earthly society.
>> That curiosity would lay the
groundwork for man's first
attempts to leave Earth,
from the Wright brothers to
rocketry, the exhibition
highlights a history of flight
through original and
one-of-a-kind scientific
artifacts.
>> We see a couple of pages from
the flight plan that the
astronauts consulted every step
of the way through the mission,
this checklist that has a
handwritten note,
"Go to descent."
That's the moment they were
ready to land on the moon.
>> Rocket, you're a go.
You're a go to continue power
dissent.
You're a go to continue power
descent.
>> I think, most remarkably of
all is this little sketch that
Neil Armstrong made for his
father to explain the mechanics
of the propulsion system on the
Eagle lunar module.
That's an amazingly intimate
connection to the history of
this mission.
>> In my head, I think about
them sitting in the kitchen,
perhaps at home in Ohio at his
desk, like, "How does that work
again?" and him just, like,
whipping out a piece of paper.
>> Ann Marie Eze is the
Director of Programming
at the Houghton Library.
For her, it's the little details
that make this history come
alive, like this transcript of
communications between
Mission Control and the
astronauts as they landed on the
moon for the first time.
>> Tranquility Base here.
The Eagle has landed.
>> At very bottom of it,
Buzz Aldrin wrote afterwards,
"Well, you know, I spoke the
first words spoken on the moon,"
because, you know,
Neil Armstrong's the one who
goes down in history for first
setting foot on the moon, and
he's like, "Hey, what about me?"
>> Of course, Armstrong was the
one to make headlines,
especially in Ohio, in his
hometown newspaper.
>> And it just says
"Neil Steps on the Moon."
Of course, everyone knew who
Neil was, and it has a
photograph of his parents who
are looking very happy and
extremely relieved, as well.
>> It's an intimate look at the
pioneers throughout history who
helped put mankind among the
stars.
♪♪
>> Now here's a look at this
month's fun fact...
>> In Albany, New York, a group
of freelance artists has joined
together to form a support
system seeking to bridge the gap
between creativity, community
development, and business.
Here's the story.
♪♪
>> The business of
CollectivEffort is community
building, and so what we call
it, it's the place "where is
cool created."
We're artists who also believe
very, very dearly in building
community, and so what we've
been able to do was be able to
work directly with our
community, and that's like
everyone.
That's, like, the business
community, the lower-income
income community.
That's the, you know, fresh out
of college community.
We kind of like intersected all
of them.
And so we were like, "All right,
you know, how do we bridge the
gap between all these things?"
We all think, really, that's,
like, what the world needs,
like, more of, you know,
collaboration blocks, everybody.
CollectivEffort, as a whole,
we do marketing, media
production, and mentoring
through our co-working space,
and we have our own plans for
content channels and stuff
for original content directly
from us, as well as servicing
our marketing clients, as well.
♪♪
Generally, you know, most
companies, when you think of,
like, doing marketing, you know,
you think about doing work with
like Nike, Puma, Under Armour --
all of which, like, we've worked
with in the past, just
producing, you know, video
shorts for, you know, some of
the designers that they hire and
things like that.
But we're trying to figure out,
how do you take corporate-level
content and marketing and apply
it to the community level?
♪♪
Today, we're in
Electric City Barn located in
Schenectady, New York.
We're setting up for a shoot for
a content channel that we're
creating for the capitol region
called Let's Talk About Life.
We're exploring workforce
development, housing, food
access, and health care,
and, really, it's just an
opportunity for us to be able to
engage with the community and
take the idea of a content
channel a next step further
to figure out, you know, how can
we take the content that we
create and have it impact
people, like, it a very local
level?
CollectivEffort, AKA,
"The Collective" --
It really started, like --
I left school and then found out
Jamel Mosely was around.
He was in my same program at
RPI, and it kind of just, like,
happened like, you know,
by the grace of the university.
Someone was like, "Oh, you
should go talk to Jamel," and
then I just, like, literally
just went over his house and sat
and watched him video edit
as he was starting his
entrepreneurial journey.
And that kind of just let me
know, it was like, "Oh, wow.
Okay.
So it is possible, like this
thing that like my dad's telling
me to do all my life, just like
start a business," I was
like, "That's totally possible
here."
Fast-forward a couple of years,
you know, Jamel, myself,
and DeSean Moore Moore, who is
our Director of Marketing,
we all kind of just worked
together.
We all were in the same school
together, same program.
We just started working
together.
We met Jessica Coles and
Berta Singleton, and they're
just like bursts of energy and
life.
They started doing just, like,
group working sessions, you
know, mostly with Jamel, and
then I started coming around.
We'd, you know, just have fun
and do some work together,
post stuff on social media,
and people would just, like,
ask to join and that birthed
Power Breakfast.
♪♪
Power Breakfast Club is a
professional development
community that we built
just about two years --
a little bit over two years now,
and that's solely based off of
us just wanting to work together
and be around people that,
you know, had similar beliefs
and kind of, like, lifestyle,
and where we're trying to go in
life and trying to create a
support system for it.
>> Our mantra and our ethos is
"Do something," and with
"Do something," it's just like
start something.
It's like a lot of people have
these ideas, and they're just
brilliant, but they just don't
have that push to to really
get out there and just take that
first step.
>> We found the opportunity
to work out of the
African-American Cultural Center
from Power Breakfast.
It turned out to be a really
great opportunity for us to,
one, really, like, lay some
roots in an area that really
needs a lot of love, and, you
know, we just know that,
you know, pretty much, like,
you know, areas that are kind of
downtrodden don't get enough
attention because they don't,
you know, contribute to like,
you know, the profitability of
the city.
And so we were like, that's like
our whole game, is, like, you
know, trying to build areas.
So we were just like, you know,
"Let's do it."
♪♪
We walked in here and everything
was brown, it didn't have any
electrical work done.
You know, the roof was all
messed up and kind of sinking
in.
And so, yeah, we were just like,
you know, "Let's make an
investment into, like, making
this thing work."
And it is our pilot, so we're
not going to be here for
forever, but what we do want to
do is make a lasting impression.
The third floor is gonna be our
co-working space.
Again, it's designed
specifically for creatives.
The fourth floor gonna be our
production area.
We've been lucky enough to get
some grant funding.
We're investing in good, like,
intermediate-level video and
audio equipment that's really
easy to use to make available to
our members.
We're here right on the corner
of Madison and South Pearl.
We're an earshot away from
Times Union Center.
We're right off the highway.
We're easily accessible, and we
really want to teach our
community how to speak for
themselves.
>> We're gonna work out of here.
We're gonna figure it out.
We're gonna build some people,
and, hopefully, you know, by the
time we're ready to leave, we've
made enough impact in this area
and telling the stories of this
area's past, plus where we're
trying to go in the future.
>> Do something.
♪♪
To learn more,
visit the website.
♪♪
And here's a look at this week's
art history...
♪♪
♪♪
Dance is a powerful tool that
can help bridge generational
divides and connect young people
to a wealth of cultural
knowledge.
In Columbus, Ohio, a young girl
celebrates her Mexican heritage
through traditional folklore
dances.
Take a look.
>> [ Speaking Spanish ]
♪♪
>> [ Speaking Spanish ]
>> My mom told me stories
that she wanted to dance she was
little, and that she danced the
song, a dance, and she was
happy while she danced.
♪♪
>> When I was younger, it was
very rewarding to be on the
stage and to be in front of
thousands of people, and, like,
I used to get, like, so much
confidence and energy from that.
And, most recently, I find it
rewarding, like transferring all
that to my students.
The sparkle that they have in
their eye before they go on the
stage and, like, the butterflies
they get in their stomach is,
like, what I used to have as a
kid.
And I am just so excited that
I'm able to pass it on to the
next generation of students,
that sort of experience.
It's very unique and not very
common.
♪♪
>> [ Speaking Spanish ]
♪♪
>> This is the hat we have to
wear.
It's called a sombrero.
And then a rebozo.
Then, if you wanted, you could
wear bracelets and gold
earrings.
The suit -- I don't know
what it's called, but...
and then the skirt.
And the shoes.
We're supposed to bring the
braids, like this.
♪♪
♪♪
>> [ Speaking Spanish ]
>> As a second-generation
Mexican-American, you know,
I think it's important to
connect to our cultures, make
sure it doesn't get lost.
So it's one of the greatest ways
to do that and to really educate
the greater community about how
diverse and unique each part of
Latin America is.
♪♪
>> It's just discovering.
We're discovering it.
My mom wants me to keep going,
dancing, and grow up like
Ms. Patino.
♪♪
>> [ Speaking Spanish ]
♪♪
>> That wraps it up for this
edition of "WLIW Arts Beat."
We'd like to hear what you
think.
So like us on Facebook, join the
conversation on Twitter, and
visit our web page for features
and to watch episodes of the
show.
We hope to see you next time.
I'm Diane Masciale.
Thank you for watching
"WLIW Arts Beat."
Funding for "WLIW Arts Beat"
was made possible by viewers
like you.
Thank you.
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