GreekChat.com Forums - Article:Acclaimed photos lay bare Cal frat life

from yesterdays Oakland Tribune
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Acclaimed photos lay bare Cal frat life
Sections: Local & Regional News
By Kristin Bender, STAFF WRITER
BERKELEY -- Andrew Moisey never pledged a fraternity while an undergrad at the University of California, Berkeley. Fraternities weren't his thing, just a waste of time. -- 3/9/2004

http://www.oaklandtribune.com/Storie...005874,00.html

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Acclaimed photos lay bare Cal frat life
By Kristin Bender, STAFF WRITER

BERKELEY -- Andrew Moisey never pledged a fraternity while an undergrad at the University of California, Berkeley. Fraternities weren't his thing, just a waste of time.

Moisey even tried to dissuade his younger brother, James, from rushing his freshman year at Cal, warning he'd be "driven by his testosterone" and drawn into the so-called "cult of masculinity." But James pledged anyway, and big brother Andrew -- a photographer -- took his camera along for the ride.

And he shot and shot and shot. The frat scene he once disdained turned into a three-year documentary photo project, which recently won him the coveted Dorothea Lange Fellowship.

The $4,000 prize is awarded annually to a UC Berkeley faculty member, graduate student or senior accepted for graduate studies. Andrew Moisey intends to use the money to continue the project or begin others, and he plans to assemble his best work in a book about fraternity life.

Moisey, 24, shot an estimated 6,000 photos but submitted just seven black-and-white pictures to the fellowship committee.

Those include a pledge initiation ceremony; a party; brothers terrorizing the house dog, Jackson; a brother unable to polish off a case of beer in six hours; a bare-chested brother in a fraternity house doorway; and Moisey's own brother guzzling -- straight from the bottle -- chocolate syrup.

But there are others -- frat house cleanup time, courtships, brothers bonding and the mundane day-to-day life.

By winning the award, Moisey has given anyone who is curious a rare glimpse into the often secret life of Greek fraternal organizations.

"He could have taken the easy route and just taken pictures of things that reinforced people's perceptions of fraternities," said James Moisey, now 22 and in culinary school in Cambridge, Mass. "It's always easier to reinforce people's stereotypes than to present an unbiased perspective. He did a great job of taking pictures ... he doesn't necessarily show people in their proudest moments, but it's a depiction of our fraternity life."

Ken Light, curator of the university's Center for Photography and a fellowship judge, agrees.

"It's a largely hidden world unless you are a part of it. (The pictures) will allow others to see that world," Light said.

The fellowship is named after Dorothea Lange, a documentary photographer who took her camera to the streets of San Francisco and Oakland during the Depression, recording the bread lines and the waterfront strikes. Later, with her second husband, labor economist and UC Berkeley professor Paul S. Taylor, she documented farm families migrating west in search of work during the Depression.

She also produced photographic essays on Ireland, Asia, Egypt and the consequences of California's post-war boom, many of which were given to the Oakland Museum of California after her death in 1965.

The "Essence of Brotherhood," which can be seen at www.berkeley.edu/lange, will be on display starting March 18 in the Associated Student's space in Lower Sproul Plaza.

Andrew Moisey, now a Ph.D candidate in film track at the Department of Rhetoric, recalls how he tried to steer his younger brother away from fraternity life.

"I tried to tell him, 'Don't join,'" Moisey said. "'You're just a freshman. If you join a fraternity, you'll just do the same things you did in high school.' James wanted to get his degree, have fun and make sure he didn't leave college without some stories."

Moisey, who lives in Oakland with his girlfriend, feared his brother would be driven by his testosterone.

"It just seemed like a waste of time," he said.

Although there are no pictures of hazing, which both Moisey brothers said doesn't exist in this particular fraternity, the frat brothers asked Moisey not reveal their names when the photos were released.

"They let me take pictures just as long as I protect their privacy, so I have to protect that," he said. For legal reasons, Moisey did not reveal the name of the fraternity.

But the privacy oath didn't stop him from shooting life with the brothers: drunk men vomiting, students dirty dancing, pledges passed out and a guy drinking beer from his own prosthetic leg.

"In order to make really good pictures, you have to get used to these things," Andrew Moisey said. "It's not enough to get a picture of someone vomiting, you have to get the one that shows the characteristics with which fraternity men vomit."

Moisey said none of the fraternity brothers took offense at his presence or his photos.

"It's not cool to be that sensitive," he said. "A few of them said, 'I don't look that good there.' But this is a part of their life, they would look foolish for denying it."

Through the project, he said he gained a better understanding of the friendships, traditions and trust forged between fraternity brothers during good times and bad. Looking back, so did his brother.

"I think some (people's) perceptions of fraternities that they see in the movies will be reinforced in some pictures," said James Moisey. "But on the other hand, people are going to see that there is more going on. The stereotype is just one facet of what people are aware of."