Senior Column: Memory montage

Photographs are not easy to make. It takes a shred of courage to introduce a camera into an instant, and it takes even more audacity to ask someone to forget the little devil is there and go about his or her life as if you’re not creating a permanent record of it. Above all, though, the exchange between photographer and subject requires letting go of all that is seemingly known and thrusting forward into a momentary lapse of openness with each other. While poses and illustrations can exist without this intimate trust, a truly moving photograph can’t.

Images of all kinds can deceive and detract. But some photographs reveal the story, the character, or both in a single instant in which what one takes one also gives back, from either side of the camera. To be a documentary photographer, one learns how to trust others, even if for just a second. And to give permanence to this art, one has to trust oneself.

I was a very confused kid when I first set foot on campus. A shy, clumsy girl and first-generation immigrant (my official denomination continues to be “non-resident alien”), I had no idea that it is here at Columbia where every year the best men and women who spend their lives entrusted with the stories of others gather to be honored in Journalism Hall. Without being sure why, I had chosen New York over the dry streets of Pasadena, Calif., but I was still convinced I was going to be a biophysicist. I was ready to isolate myself in work and to live split in two, like I had seen many of my Romanian friends do when coming here for college. I brought my mind and ambition to New York, but left everything else back home. I came to Columbia a foreigner and I didn’t know how to fabricate familiarity and find trust, either in others or in myself.

And then Spectator happened. It is no exaggeration to say that when I was not in one piece freshman year, Spectator put me back together, one issue at a time. I could spend a while recounting moments that made my time at the paper the most formative and rewarding in college. There’s poetry to those lonely West Harlem strolls while on assignment. There’s adventure, the childish kind, in chasing CPC protesters down Broadway or in having brushes with the NYPD after breaking into abandoned buildings. There’s masochistic tenacity in staying up until 4 a.m. on a daily basis working with others to make this daily happen every morning. And there’s a thrill (I’d be hard pressed to describe it in words) to standing on a hill at sunset and watching thousands of people rush for a spot near the stage on which Barack Obama was about to speak the evening of November 4, 2008.

But beyond discovering the exhilarating fervor of storytelling, for me Spectator meant finding people to look up to, to learn from, and to trust. I owe many more of you than I can name here thanks for helping me find my way:

Anjali, for trusting a temperamental, arrogant, and absolutely clueless freshman with a deputy editor job.

Joey, Isabelle, Jenny, Linda, Colin, Ian, Lila, Kristina, Mira, Ajit, Daniel, Alanna.

Yipeng, for that time we labored for 20 hours straight over a Year-in-Review supplement.

Haley, for listening to me at all the right times.

Betsy, for dreaming along, on the South Side and elsewhere.

Ben, Thomas, Dino, Raf, Ryan, for that first dinner at Pisticci.

Joy, for convincing me that even in the most difficult moments, one can “compromise and talk and grow.”

Tina, for showing me time and again what good photography looks like.

Embry, for doing a way better job than I ever did.

Maggie, Mel, for being here, now, laughing at dinosaurs.

And last but not least, Dani, for passing me for your Swiss assistant at that Hillary rally and for being the best friend one could imagine ever since.

I don’t know where all that started at 2875 Broadway will take me. I’m not sure I have the courage it takes to continue in journalism. But for giving me some of it, Spectator, I owe you. And I’m darn glad I trusted you.

Now… about those bleachers.

The author is a Columbia College senior majoring in neuroscience and behavior. She is a former Spectator deputy photo news editor, photo editor, current opinion columnist.