As I prepared to start the framing assignment, I made a plan. I would walk from the College’s library on Chew Street, pass the cemetery, and turn right on N 17th Street toward the Allentown Fair, and then once the 30 minutes finished, I would take the same path back to my dorm. I soon abandoned the plan and instead turned on to North St George Street because the smell of the Fair’s animals was too distracting. Sight wasn’t the only factor in how I was framing the world, and when I came to this conclusion, I was more willing to go with the flow and actually explore my surroundings. I saw couples walking together, kids playing on sidewalks and people sitting on their porches watching me watch them through a tiny frame. I saw lights: dim and flickering street lights, gold christmas lights, lights shining from TVs, neon lights from the fair’s amusement rides, and more. I thought of how I could use the light (for example, looking at the moon) or the artificial lights I saw to help establish what belonged in the frame. This led to the idea of being critical about how I decided to frame my sights. During the 30 minutes, I was hyper-aware of everything around me, but I had to question why I was framing the alley, for example, the way I was. Did it just look aesthetically pleasing, or was I making an analytical decision to frame my surroundings in whichever way? As Robert Coles mentions in his book Doing Documentary Work, our ‘location’, or who we are, informs what we see as worth noticing, documenting and ultimately sharing alongside other images. I also thought a lot abut how creating a frame is essentially setting boundaries on what we see, and that the boundaries we decide to set may and will be different from what someone else’s. Lastly, I considered how moving my frame even just an inch would shift the image inside of it and the relationship between details and the larger picture.
