Tracy Schmid Artist Post #2

Dina Litovsky   Meat packing district Manhattan NY

1. Dina Litovsky was born in Ukraine but is now a New York based photographer. She photographed the nightlife in the Meat Packing district for three summers observing the rituals of female self presentation and male observers in the area. The project began the summer of 2012. Dina returned again the summer of 2014 and 2015.  This interested her because she was interested in studying the relationship between voyeurism and exhibitionism this was possibly an idea derived by her interest in psychology.
2. Her pictures were not staged as she did not want to alter the scene or the stories unfolding in front of her.  She wanted capture persons in their natural habitat. Sometimes she would fake being on the phone so persons would not realize she was taking their pictures. She did find that most of the club goers did not mind their picture taken. Though the reason for the fake out during some of her shoots she found persons wanting the attention, seeing the camera and posing, distracting from her desire to record them naturally.
3. Her photographs draw me in. They remind me so much of scenes I have experienced in larger towns and especially in Europe though not to the extreme. The cat calls and grabbing of persons would have never been acceptable in Europe, Ukraine, or Bulgaria. The ambient lighting is perfect for showing the scenes depicted especially during the evening hours. I do not believe these scenes would have the same feeling or meaning if they were pictures taken during the day. I do believe the faking phone calls to get pictures allowed her to go undetected and capture the most natural activities. I really like here work and the fact that she uses her psychology background to help her decide what she wants to take photographs of and why. I could see the two fold affect of psychology and photography being intertwined. I do believe that this series of photos definitely depicted the fact that unacceptable behavior is allowed in this area of town without a lot of recourse. By filming or making photos from early evening into the night she was able to make or show the relationship between voyeurism and exhibitionism as the early evening there was communication and maybe even a few numbers passed but as the evening rolled on, introduction of alcohol, persons sexual inhibitions deteriorated, and the pictures became more risqué.