For this street photography unit, we went to have a large photo shoot at 后海, and I am very proud of myself because I was able to take lots of photos that fit the theme of Lee Friedlander. However, my camera settings that change the filter to black and white was extremely difficult to change, so I guess the black and white photos would have to be edited from the color photos.

A variety of sections in these photos are taken by my camera-sharing partner Yechan, so I won’t be choosing the photos that he took for the yellow, green, or red photos.

Contact sheet for all the photos:

Yellow photos: These photos are the ones that were selected from blurry, duplicate, or useless photos.

Green Photos: These are the real candidates for the final photos, the red photos. These are required to be in focus, and represent at least one of the concepts of street photography.

Red photos: the final photos

The reflection of spirits

The message of my triptych will to be reflect life through photos. I want to make them so that it looks like spirits can be seen through the photos as if the photo is alive. The audience should acknowledge the freedom of life and feel a sense of harmony when my works are viewed. I will try to find a photographer to be inspired by that appreciates the natural cycle of life, one who explores color and tone in their photos. In my perspective, nothing is and should not be perfect, because everything has life in them, and there is no way that can be changed.

Problems surrounding the extremes of inequality are widening around the planet just like peanut butter spread across a slice of bread. It is something that is continuous, growing every month, every day, every minute. Vaster than racism, greater than politics. How has this escalated? The United Nations has covered these questions through two solutions. 

1. Social Cohesion for the inequalities around the world 

SDG Goal #10 Reduced Inequalities is a goal set by the United Nations to let countries reduce inequalities around the world by the year 2030. The social cohesion led by the United Nations hopes for social norms and peace in “Mob Mentality”, needing everyone around the planet to work together to achieve goal #10, and the 16 other goals altogether (Cloud).  

2. Sustainable Poverty Reduction 

The United Nations wants to make sure that no one is left behind on the verge of human society, providing a lot of ideas for sustainable poverty reduction globally. According to Elizabeth Barber in her article Income Inequality: Among US Cities, Bigger Ones Are More Unequal, Inequalities based on income, class, and opportunity are some of the biggest categories coming up through the last decade, with countries like the United States having an unequal distribution of inequality between different areas (Barber). 

The Vertical and Horizontal inequalities 

In the humongous cosmos of inequality, two diverse types of inequality are separated from the typical “racism” and “poverty”. They are Vertical and Horizontal inequalities, which are much broader than the rest.  

Vertical inequalities are based on diversities between individual people or families. It could range from a kids’ fight in the neighborhood to dealing with someone that has affected society negatively. 

Horizontal inequalities, however, deal with something much more sizable, differentiating diverse cultures and groups of people within a type of society. Most of the time conflict occurs between rural and urban areas and more commonly different ethnicities. Data regarding horizontal inequalities collected from countries part of the United Nations have shown to increase violence during conflict. Contradictions revolving around brutality then will come back as an addition to horizontal inequality, increasing the bulk of inequality each year as evidence and data for hostilities among various large groups and cultures shoot up over months, weeks, and even days (European Union). 

Covid-19’s Controversial Effects on Inequality Around the World

Since the uprise of the Covid-19 virus in 2020, discrimination based on race and ethnicity has been rising ever since until now. According to the National Library of Medicine, “Matteo Salvini, former Deputy Prime Minister of Italy, wrongly linked COVID-19 to African asylum seekers, calling for border closures.” Afterward, many cases like this also happened, like when Donald Trump, former president of the United States happened to refer to Covid-19 as “The Chinese Virus”, which sparked a lot of controversy on the planet (National Library of Medicine). News reports regarding Asian Americans living in the United States have been attacked. “Take, for instance, a January attack in Seattle where a man slugged an Asian-American woman after yelling that ‘Asians need to be put in their place.'”(Berkley) In the time from the years 2020 to 2021, these purposefully taken out attacks have been happening one after another after the falsely leaked rumor about how the Covid-19 virus came from China and other Asian countries around the world.

Why there are no Proven Solutions for some Inequalities

Across the decades to centuries of years with inequality shot like a virus spreading around the world, no proper solution has been given by anyone. Reasons for this include unequal finance in the world and even Gender equality problems faced in the world of unequal pay between males and females upon the same position in a job. “But aside from all the talk, going on for years now, little has happened. That should be no surprise. As Paul Theroux pointed out in the New York Times, most of the discussion has been just that: words. The problem is that the income for the most well-off has been bolstered by financial distribution from those who had far less. “(Forbes) As Forbes has described, a very small amount of positive change facing inequality has happened. Even now, rich people are getting paid more, but poor people are still getting paid less. None of these are solutions for a better off discrimination-free world, they only stir up more problems for the topic of inequality.

In Conclusion

Inequality has plagued society for centuries, yet solutions haven’t been stamped down to claim “This is how we do it.” Inequality is still a very controversial topic, as it covers discrimination based on race, class, ethnicity, and even religion. Is the world even in such a bad state? Many may ask. Earth has been brought upon the edge of equality around the people, and it soon will become a planet of discrimination if solutions are not brought up soon.