Greenfield-Sanders turned to a beautiful wooden 8” x 10” Deardorff view camera from the 1930s, fitted with a modern lens, which he used to shoot The Latino List.

In 1978, Greenfield-Sanders started shooting with an antique 11” x 14” view camera. Film for that format was discontinued around 2000 and Greenfield-Sanders turned to a beautiful wooden 8” x 10” Deardorff view camera from the 1930s, fitted with a modern lens, which he used to shoot The Latino List. The technical procedure, which weds vintage apparatus to modern technology, is relatively straightforward: first, he loads the camera with 8” x 10” color negative film—one plate at a time—and, from the only six or so shots captured in the sitting, he selects the negative he wants to print. Using a drum scanner, he generates a 600 MB scan file from the negative, which is digitally cleaned up only for dirt and spots. The scan is then printed on 44 inch wide Epson UltraSmooth paper, retaining the characteristic black borders and notches on the upper left edge that denote the 8” x 10” format.

Greenfield-Sanders on the Latino List set with Pitbull.

Greenfield-Sanders loves the look and feel of large-format photography, particularly how the technique’s typically shallow depth of field focuses attention on the sitter’s face, fostering a sense of stillness, as well as the directness and intimacy that he seeks to capture in his portraits. Apart from its technical capabilities, the physical camera itself plays an important role in Greenfield-Sanders’s work as a portraitist. Sitters are intrigued or amused by the imposing antique camera—some have asked if it belonged to (19th-century photographer) Matthew Brady! Greenfield-Sanders finds that this curiosity about the object, with its rich historical presence, goes a long way toward dissipating any tension even celebrities might feel while having their portrait taken.  So too does the fact that, unlike other photographers whose faces remain semi-hidden behind the camera, Greenfield-Sanders stands next to his.  Once the shot is framed, photographer and subject can talk face to face and develop a relaxed and personal connection, creating the mood for the right picture to happen.

A future blog post will take a more detailed look at the different projects and a behind-the-scenes look at their installations, but first we want to reach out to our online community on behalf of one of the participating artists, Mary Lucier. She is descended from a Dutch family from the same 17^th century colonial period as the original occupants of the Brooklyn Museum’s Schenck Houses, where her works will be installed. For part of her project, Lucier wants to add a few new branches to her family tree.  If you are a Brooklynite from WAY back, Mary Lucier wants to hear from you:

Joris Jansen de Rapalje and Catalyntje Trico and…you?

During the 1600s and 1700s, severe persecution and even massacres by Catholics, forced many Huguenots (French Protestants) to leave Europe for what was then “New Netherland,” an area including Manhattan, Brooklyn, and land farther up the Hudson River.  Included in this migration were numerous Dutch families as well, and as they established life in various colonies, they began to intermarry.

The Terpenning family, Dryden, New York area, c. 1895. Sarah Rapalje's 6th and 7th great grandchildren. Photograph courtesy of Drew Campbell.

In 1624, a young refugee couple, both around 19 years old, left Amsterdam aboard the Eendracht, bound for New York harbor.  Their names were Joris Jansen de Rapalje and Catalyntje Trico.  Upon arriving in New York, they sailed up river to found a new colony, which would eventually become Albany.  After hardships and skirmishes with the Mohawks, the Rapaljes decided to return to New York two years later, settling in Wallabout, an area in what is now Brooklyn. They brought with them an infant girl named Sarah, reputed to be the first European child born in New Netherland (1625).

Sarah married twice (once to Hans Hansen Bergen, who died at age 27, and then to Teunis Bogeart) and had a total of 15 children, setting in motion a vast lineage of descendants that includes Humphrey Bogart, Tom Brokaw, Gov. Howard Dean, myself, and possibly you!  By now there are estimated to be at least a million descendants of these lines, many of whom may know little about their Dutch/Huguenot ancestry and nothing about the people to which they are purportedly related.

For my “activation” in the Schenck Houses of the Museum’s Period Rooms, I will create a mixed-media video and sound environment that will investigate the subject of cultural identity through a personal exploration of my own ancestry, using recorded performances in situ, references to literature and other historic texts (including various family trees such as the Schencks), and audience participation.

To that end, I am appealing to all Rapaljes, Rapeljes, Raplees, and all descendants (regardless of the name) to send me information that I may use in my museum installation.  Please let me know your particular connection or line of descent and please send a high-quality photograph (tiffs or jpegs only please; I can’t use or return original prints) of yourself, your grandparents, family groups, whoever you like, for me to display on the mantel in one of the Museum’s period rooms.  Please also indicate that you give me, Mary Lucier, and the Brooklyn Museum, permission to use these photos for this purpose.

Please send all material to marluc@aol.com.

iMac kiosks in The Latino List that record video reaction from visitors.

We are also super excited to see how visitors to The Latino List create their own “speaking portraits” at the exhibition’s community voice kiosk, an interactive that was such a successful part of The Black List exhibition that we knew we had to offer it again.  During The Black List visitors were invited to record on-the-spot videos of their response to the question: “How has race made an impact on your life and accomplishments?”  Videos were published to the museum’s YouTube channel and the best of them could also be viewed in the gallery during the course of the exhibition.  I was blown away by the candor, humor, pride, anger, and power in these videos.  One of the most fascinating things about the responses was their diversity and range.  Not only did each individual naturally have their own personal take on the question, but people reflected on how their own race is perceived and experienced as well as how they perceive and experience people of other races.

For The Latino List we wanted to elicit similarly inclusive and reciprocal responses, so the question we pose to visitors this time—in English and Spanish—is: “How has your culture shaped your life and accomplishments? (¿Qué impacto ha tenido su cultura en su vida y en sus logros?). The word “culture” conjures family and community traditions, and certainly one of the things that unite the stories shared by the Latino List participants is the impact and influences that family and tradition have had on their lives and identities.  The word evokes a range of concepts, from race to religion to heritage, without being  limiting or exclusionary: everyone comes from a culture of some kind, whether they abandon it or embrace it, and it shapes the way they experience the world and, to some extent, for better or worse, the way the world experiences them.

This time, we’re expanding the interactive to include not just visitors to the gallery, but anyone, anywhere, through a bilingual iPhone app.  You can record your video response directly on your iPhone, upload it to The Latino List YouTube channel, learn about the exhibition, and watch videos made by other people.

As always, we want to hear from you:  download the app, come to The Latino List, and make a video to share your thoughts about your culture and experiences.