Jonathan Prado
Essay 2 Final Draft
English 1101 (Prof.Scanlan)
Fall 2017
A BUDDING FRIENDSHIPS DAY OF ADVENTURE
These photos represent the beginning of my friendship with 3 people I consider like brothers, Steven Jose and Nick. When we first meet we were complete strangers who shared a common activity. We decided to start hanging out as we would frequent the same shops. The photos are from early on in our friendship traveling together to tournaments, and just hanging together having fun. I consider these guys like brothers since I do not have one. In “Understanding a Photograph” by John Berger, he stated, “A photograph is already a message about the event it records.” (Berger, 292) the photos taken tell a story of how a friendship blossomed from random meetings.
The first photo is the day I meet Steven who I would later consider like a brother. We meet at a tournament on a Saturday around noon. We had been chatting and realized we hung out at the same stores just on different days he seemed like a cooldude and we had similar views. I asked for his number after the tournament to hang out another day. So, I decided to take a photo to add to his registry on my iPhone, so we could keep in touch. The stadium in the photo is us holding up the peace sign as Steven is attempting to make me laugh by making a serious stern face.
The Second photo is a week after we had meet. We had talked about going to a tournament in Staten island and once we realized how long it would take us to get there we decided to head over together as a group. We meet up at Steven and Jose’s place on Bedford as the apartment building him they lived at is a block away from the D train at 8 am as it would take us three hours to get there. We had originally planned to take a bus in Manhattan to go there but when we attempted to get on three of our metro cards wouldn’t let us on. So, if order for us to get there in time we had to take the 1 train to the boat over to Staten island. While on the way to the boat we were on an escalator while Steven who is a photographer told me to take a photo to remember the long process to get here. While I was taking the photo on this long escalator we ended up lining up with this giant America flag that hangs over them. This is around 11 am and we have already run our time out that we had planned.It was a cold day and being next to the water made it even worse as the wind would bring even more cold when the doors would open for the next boat that would be arriving. Taking this boat was the decisive moment of the trip. The stadium in the photo is the America flag hanging over us as it hangs over us. The punctum is our stern looks as if we are looking down on the view of the photo. The dominant impression is one of a serious tone as we were in an immense hurry to catch the boat over.
The third photo is at the end of the day of adventure at around 4 am on our way back from our time at Staten island as it had taken us 4 hours to get back to Nicks car at Bedford. The thing was we weren’t tired and decided to get food. It was then Nick who I still hadn’t known for more than a day told us of a diner near Scarsdale that is open 24 hours. He told us that he drives by it often but has never gone in to eat. We headed over at 4 am in the middle of the night and we were fighting tiredness and hunger but all-around excitement over the day of unknown mistakes. Berger stated, “A photograph is a result of the photographer’s decision that it is worth recording that this particular event or the particular event has been seen.” (Berger, 292), it this reasoning behind the photo that it was taken as I deemed it a necessary memory to keep.
The photos detail the beginning of a friendship that has begun to take form in brotherhood. The photos start out as awkward to more compassion and understanding as the day unfolded and four people start to learn about each other.In “Susan Sontag: On Photography”, she states “photographs give people an imaginary possession of a past that is unreal.” (Sontag, 533), these photos will always be a reminder of this moment in the future of a time when we were strangers who started to become friends.
Final Word Count
854
Works Cited
Berger, John. "Understanding a Photograph." Classic Essays on Photography, edited by Alan
Trachtenberg, Leete's Island Books,1980, pg 292.
Sontag, Susan “On Photography.” Essays Of The 1960s & 70s, edited by David Rieff, Library
of America, 2013, pg 533