tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26528328069222013912024-03-05T02:43:32.718-08:00Contemporary Thought In PhotographyClass Blogshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06361471714844186037noreply@blogger.comBlogger12125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2652832806922201391.post-74555162755128749292010-12-06T08:30:00.000-08:002010-12-06T13:08:34.329-08:00SFMOMA's Symposium: "Is Photography Over?"<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBCYCMQnpYggIkeMgxa3rQOT3tXLBDFN_frvNpxfP9WZBiLA-ppLB3KrV8hNzcaRKUo0qIsRc3X45Kzm8NuJdhgKBT4pY5CCCRtRI1oYm9mtNAMbJSxYmPlNk1Corc5msykFjyI0SbW3o/s1600/Blog12.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBCYCMQnpYggIkeMgxa3rQOT3tXLBDFN_frvNpxfP9WZBiLA-ppLB3KrV8hNzcaRKUo0qIsRc3X45Kzm8NuJdhgKBT4pY5CCCRtRI1oYm9mtNAMbJSxYmPlNk1Corc5msykFjyI0SbW3o/s320/Blog12.jpg" width="247" /></a></div><br />
As I read through the 13 responses (Vince Aletti, George Baker, Walead Beshty, Jennifer Blessing, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Geoff Dyer, Peter Galassi, Trevor Pglen, Blake Stimson, Charlotte Cotton, Corey Keller, Douglas Nickel, and Joel Snyder) for this symposium, I noticed a few things overall.<br />
<ol><li>The need to define exactly what "photography" is and exactly what "over" means was a prominent concern.</li>
<li>This discussion seemed for some people to be a catalyst into topics that they have wanted to verbally express, but have not yet found the time and/or place to do so. These responses seemed to sort of maybe start out relating to the question, then veered off course and never really returned to the question, nor did they ever give an answer one way or the other.</li>
<li>There is no actual answer to this question.</li>
</ol>I felt that my views on this matter were sort of a mesh of three different responses, none overcoming any of the others, but equal parts of each. These three people are Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Geoff Dyer, and Joel Snyder.<br />
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DiCorcia draws up a standpoint that photography isn't quite over, but that's not the right question. He agrees, like most, that photography's form is rapidly changing (and how can it not in this digital age?), but he also adds that the content has stayed the same. Altered form, same old content. Photography has lost its grip on reality, and is not now measured by how true the picture is, but how much of a lie it is not. DiCorcia also relates photography's "overness" in terms of its stance in the art world. He states that art has been irrelevant in the world, but that photography has been quite relevant (even though photography has tried so hard to be an art and is now widely accepted as art...sort of), and now that photography is "tired-out", maybe it is either bringing the art world with it, or being liberated from it.<br />
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What I found I connected to in diCorcia's response was his statement on the change of form but not content. Maybe that's what defines a medium though? The form? But photography's content is in a way its form because no other medium can capture its content in the same way. Photography's form is a view of reality in the most documentary sense of the word, and its content is just what we choose to frame as reality. So the tools that we are using to form its, well, form, and content also, has gone from chemicals to electronic transmission through a screen. I can still photograph a tree with both digital and analog means and you will still see both as accurate representations of that tree (unless of course I change the digital image to have tentacles protruding from said tree, but that's a different topic).<br />
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Geoff Dyer started out by describing both jazz and painting and the ways in which they have risen, climaxed, and subsequently changed (but thrived). He also mentions elegies being written for these different art forms after the climax, but says that he has not been able to find these elegies in photography regardless of its many climaxes and falls. Photographic movements (and here I am referring to movements as the people who started them as well as the actual movement in the medium) have exploded and then sort of quietly slipped away. There is no mourning, we just keep moving forward. We'll study these people and these movements, but they will become nothing more to us than an inspiration, perhaps, or maybe just a useful bit of information tucked away until we need it someday.<br />
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Dyer's point on multiple climaxes in a movement or medium is what I connected to. There will be phases in a medium that will move through time like a wave frequency, rising and falling, each with a crest and a trough, followed by another crest and trough, but the medium will remain widely unchanged. Photography will still be photography at the end of the day, whether Eggleston made his godawful (yet somehow revered) photographs or not.<br />
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Joel Snyder's response to this question seemed the most unique of them all. Whereas most people toyed with the idea that 'well, photography isn't necessarily <i>over</i>, but it's not quite <i>the same</i>, but it's sort of on its way to being over...', Snyder started his essay out with saying that "Photography...is more vital than it has ever been." He agrees that it is ever changing and that some of the chemical/analog processes are slowly shrinking, but says that they will never disappear, just as all the old photographic processes are still used to some extent today. He also points out that digital photography is growing exponentially every day. With more and more people gaining access to photographic equipment of some kind (cell phones, point and shoots, disposable cameras, etc), there is no end in sight for the viral medium. However. Snyder does make it clear that although the use of photography is growing, the interest in it is shrinking. It is not so much used as an art form any more as it is more so used now as the growth of our third arm.We photograph our food at restaurants, we photograph our kids blowing out candles and opening presents, we photograph college students playing beer pong, we photograph sexual acts, we photograph sweet bruises we get and post them online so we can tell people what happened. We aren't usually consciously thinking "Wow I'm using photography right now" when we snap the shutter, we just want to document the moment and this is how we do it. The difference with photography vs. other art forms, is that photography has become part of our daily lives. We wouldn't sit at the table and say "Okay, son, now I need you to start opening that present, yup, just like that, okay....STOP. Freeze, just like that. Don't move" and then paint the scene. Nobody does that. But if they did, they would be thinking about painting as they painted. John Doe is not thinking about photography as he's photographing his kid open the present that he's wanted for months. He's just not.<br />
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So according to Snyder, photography as an art form has become the minority. Photography as photography, however, has become a practicality. In this way, photography is surely thriving.<br />
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To sum it up, I would say that my ultimate answer to this question, sort of in combination of these three responses would be as follows:<br />
<blockquote>Photography is not dead, photography is changed. Some aspects of photography in relation to its use in the art world may be over (or close to over), but in the form of he digital, photography has become a definition in all of our lives. We use it daily, we communicate with it, we share it. This digital age of photography is still rising, but eventually it will climax, just as analog did. At that point, it will fall, and a new rise in the medium will begin. With photography being used so widely, it has branched from the art world. The public probably does not see it as art so much, because it already proved itself to be that. It wasn't art, then it was, and now it has morphed into something that is accessible to everyone (people go to museums to see the paintings of the masters. They cannot ever do that. Photography seems a bit...easier, regardless of how easy it actually is. People would consider themselves photographers long before they would consider themselves artists.) Photography as we knew it yesterday is over, and photography as we know it today is in the process of becoming over, and photography as we will know it tomorrow is about to be over. It is always changing and always reforming. As things (ideas, movements) are put into action in photography, they are constantly becoming part of photography's history. Ansel Adam's f64 movement is over. Street photography as it was in the middle of the 20th century is over. Black and white photography is over. Color photography is over. Parts of these larger ideas are still used in the everyday photograph, but they are no longer part of a larger movement. They stand alone.</blockquote><br />
P.S. I've thought all morning about this idea of photography being art (because a lot of these responses dealt with photography either breaking from art or having been art, or how the art side of photography is dead, etc) and I actually am now wondering if photography ever could have been art. It seems as if taking something that existed in life (maybe even a piece of art itself) and putting it into the spacial frame of a photographic lens, then transferring something palpable into a 2D representation on a piece of un-unique paper that has mass produced thousands of other once real life things, is nothing more than creating relationships. I photograph food. The art of this process for me is in the creation of the food, the styling of the food, and how to make it look good in "real life" before the camera is even set up. I know how to frame it to make it look aesthetically pleasing, but is that part of the art of photography? Or is that simply part of knowing what aesthetic beauty looks like when put into a geometric frame. Photography would change drastically if photographs were circular. Or triangular. I guess it's a set of skills that need to be learned to understand what a good image would look like in a photographic frame, and actually using the camera to change exposure and focus and all of the technical aspects would be part of a skillset of the medium, but I'm still not convinced that this can be considered art. It seems to become more artistic when it is manipulated, and people argue in this case that at this point, it may not be photography anymore because it has lost its realistic representation. But what am I creating besides a frame? This doesn't really have to do with this blog post, but it's been on my mind this morning.Class Blogshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06361471714844186037noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2652832806922201391.post-49889747392087923402010-11-29T09:14:00.000-08:002010-11-29T09:39:12.552-08:00Relational Art<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6Xtyx-mSbY2BV6KP2H0UmDokNHr_Jx8OmToW0LJbxZ1BDtAadnYj3C4Lp3Q5TuWcXFbsb7YLfpNwuZgt-5_ScKQ6vfX0KAWhMqxoz_qFSxA0RtqSoFY7H235SiWDeW9M8R9hWRoAvZ38/s1600/Blog11.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="247" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6Xtyx-mSbY2BV6KP2H0UmDokNHr_Jx8OmToW0LJbxZ1BDtAadnYj3C4Lp3Q5TuWcXFbsb7YLfpNwuZgt-5_ScKQ6vfX0KAWhMqxoz_qFSxA0RtqSoFY7H235SiWDeW9M8R9hWRoAvZ38/s320/Blog11.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
This week, the discussion is based off of a <a href="http://theexposureproject.blogspot.com/2009/07/relational-art-is-it-ism.html">video by Ben Lewis for BBC entitled "<i>Relational Art: Is It An Ism?</i>"</a><br />
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Lewis travels to different artists that are listed in Nicolas Bourriaud's book <i>Relational Aesthetics</i> as "relational artists". He poses this quote from Bourriaud's book to a few of them:<br />
<blockquote>"The possibility of a relational art (an art taking as its theoretical horizon the realm of human interactions and its social context, rather than the assertion of an independent and private symbolic space), points to a radical upheaval of the aesthetic, cultural and political goals introduced by modern art."</blockquote>To break this down a bit, it is saying that there is a possibility that there is a new art movement (relational art) and that we can see this in the disruption of modern art's key points (aesthetic, cultural and political goals). What this relational art is, is an art that deals with human interaction, removing the line between a gallery-goer/viewer, to a participant and incorporation in the art itself. This art does not focus on individual artists creating work that only they can fully relate to but attempt to show it with some meaning to an outside audience. Relational art uses "minimal forms to create political statements, doesn't like global capitalism, relates to its exhibition space, and can sometimes be useful". It is open, it is malleable, and it is new. But is it an "-ism"? Well, Ben Lewis hopes so. Throughout the video, he puts together a list of 8 rules that deal with "-isms".<br />
<ol><li>A new ism must develop from an old ism.</li>
<li>A new ism is a new way of thinking about art.</li>
<li>Artists of an ism must hang out together.</li>
<li>A new ism is invented by an art critic.</li>
<li>A new ism always has a slightly different British sub-species.</li>
<li>At first, people think that a new ism is not art.</li>
<li>A new era leads to a new ism.</li>
<li>A new ism must have a landmark exhibition.</li>
</ol>With these 8 "guidelines" in mind, Lewis attempts to prove to us that relational art can certainly become the next ism.<br />
<ol><li> Based on Bourriaud's quote above, it would seem that this relational art grew from modern art, attempting to bypass the standards set for this -ism.</li>
<li>With the "audience" becoming the art and interacting with it, this relational art would rid galleries of their "Do Not Touch" signs. The art is no longer a deity, but something to experience first-hand. It doesn't have to mean anything and it can be useful.</li>
<li>Liam Gillick, Douglas Gordon, Carsten Höller, Pierre Huyghe, Philippe Parreno, and Rirkrit Tiravanija all came together to collaborate on a film entitled "Vicinato II". These artists would all be considered relational artists.</li>
<li>This idea is being presented by Nicolas Bourriaud, a French art critic and curator.</li>
<li>The British version of this art movement is "Art For Networks", which is basically the same thing with the interaction of real people in the gallery art, but it remains separate from the relational art movement in Europe.</li>
<li>Jorge Pardo and Philippe Parreno created 3 lamps with holes punched into their outer casings, one lamp in each room, with wires attached to all three. Parreno said that this Untitled project meant nothing beyond "three lamps, three spaces". With no meaning beyond this, it is easy to see how many would not see this as any form of art.</li>
<li>We have entered into the 21st century, into the digital age. The way we go about our daily lives has dramatically changed since as recent as 1990. We now heavily rely on our cell phones and computers for information, contact, and entertainment. There are new wars being waged and the environment is encountering more problems than ever. We are certainly in a new era.</li>
<li>Tiravanija held a relational art exhibition in Venice, pulling in artists from all over the world, and giving out free bags. The location, scale, and extent of this exhibition made it landmark.</li>
</ol>As far as photography goes, I do not currently see it as being a form of relational art. I think it may be possible in that people could come to a gallery, take a polaroid camera laying out on a pedestal, snap a photo of their friend, and place it on the gallery wall, but beyond the audience interaction of simply "the audience took the photos and placed them on the wall", I do not see how photography could branch any further into this type of art. I'm sure I'm wrong and that we'll see people attempting this "relational photography", but as of now, I have not seen it and don't have too good of an idea how much further photography can be pushed "relationally." I wouldn't say that it's completely unrelated, but it has not yet been added to this new art movement. (Well, maybe as a documentation of a relational action, such as Bourriaud's photographs of S&M and the holes dug by African Immigrants. But the photograph is not what makes the art relational, it is the actions that were done, being shown in the photograph because they could not be performed live or shown in any other way in a gallery. I could take 30 photographs of relational art, then post them in a gallery, each photograph 2 feet away from each other, and 57" to the center from the ground. The subsequent viewing of these photographs would then basically be no different than the viewing of any photographic exhibition in the 20th century, regardless of subject matter. I know that my thought process in these parenthesis does not flow nicely, but bear with me).<br />
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I did find an artist who, although not a photographer, fits into this relational art movement. Marina Abramovic, a Serbian artist who usually uses herself in the art exhibitions. The one piece that most struck me was her project entitled "Rhythm 0", where she stood on a small pedestal in an art gallery for 6 hours, with a table of 72 items before her and a sign that told people to do what they wish with these items upon her. There were things such as a feather, chains, roses, honey, a whip, a saw, a knife, grapes, a gun, and a bullet. As she stood impassively, people came up and cut her clothes off, cut her skin and drank her blood, sucked her breast, and put the gun in her hand, putting pressure on the trigger to see if she would resist. She says that most men were aggressive, with some women egging them on, and some women wiping her tears. After 6 hours, she started walking toward the audience, and everybody scattered for fear of confrontation. This to me seems the epitome of relational art, where not only is the public interacting with the piece, but the piece then attempts to later interact with the public (in which this confrontation didn't go over so well). Though this was performed in 1974, it does seem to fit into the relational art of today.<br />
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Here are some links to more information about <i>Rhythm 0</i>:<br />
<a href="http://www.moma.org/explore/multimedia/audios/190/1983">MoMA</a> (Click the 6th video in the playlist)<br />
<a href="http://www.newyorker.com/online/multimedia/2010/03/08/100308_audioslideshow_abramovic">New Yorker</a><br />
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After viewing the BBC video, I was left with a few question. When Lewis tries to show how the automatic blinds are relational art, he is shut down. Why would this not be relational art? If it is just "blinds being closed over a window", how are the "just 3 lights in 3 rooms" any different and any more validated as art? And around the 26 minute mark in the video, there was mention of this relational art being an uncut slice of time with real people in real life. Does this art have to take place in a gallery to be art? That seems too formalistic for these artists. Couldn't my cooking in my kitchen with a few people be the same thing as some of these artists cooking in a gallery with a few people? I think that there is something in the new relational art, but it is not fully <i>there</i> yet and some of these artists seem to me to be a bit confused about their own art and how it would fit into a cohesive movement (not that they're specifically trying to fit it into a movement, per se, but because they are all working together and know of each other, they definitely are aware of this new art form).Class Blogshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06361471714844186037noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2652832806922201391.post-78408042370319875582010-11-22T09:04:00.000-08:002010-11-22T09:04:04.084-08:00NarrativityThe question as to whether or not photographs can work as narratives is explored in John Szarkowski's "The Photographer's Eye", Clement Greenberg's "Four Photographers", and Charlotte Cotton's "The Photograph as Contemporary Art: Chapter 2, <i>Once Upon A Time"</i>.<br />
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Szarkowski begins by describing photography as a new art, something completely separate from painting, and therefore needing to find a different way to express its meaning. The field of this new art, from the beginning, was chock-full of experimenters, amateurs, and hobbyists. As time went on, the medium became increasingly cheaper and easier to use. This opened the door for even more people to get their hands on; people from all parts of society and all ages. Where painting was done for specific purposes and was thought out and planned well ahead of time so as to make the most of the expensive resources required to create the painted work of art, photography was taken on the fly. People would photograph store fronts, people, objects, window views, etc, without concern for reason or composition.In fact, the only thing that really tied all of these photographs together was the pure fact that they were <i>photographs</i>. Each image was photographic and that is all they had in common.<br />
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Szarkowski brings up five points of discussion, dealing mostly with early photography but still relevant today: The Thing Itself, The Detail, The Frame, Time, and Vantage Point. As a "thing", photography was seen to be "the real". Everything caught through the lens of a camera was 100% real because it could not be created by hand. However, there was a slight misunderstanding when it came to using the word "real" (or actual). Reality is real life. It certainly is what sits in front of the camera lens, but once the image of what is in front of the lens is captured onto film, there is no reality in that image. It is a static documentation of the real, definitely, but it is simply an image. Szarkowski's strongest point in arguing that photography cannot be a narrative, comes in his section about detail. Photography became about small, fragmented pieces of a story, found and maybe attempted to be pieced together, but not a story in and of itself. Photographs therefore become symbols, pieces of information we can create relations to based upon our knowledge of the world in relation to each specific photograph. As for the frame, the photographer can choose to create relationships between shapes, people, and events within a single frame of an image that were never there in real life. Szarkowski uses the example of two people walking in a crowd, but the photographer framing the picture so only the two people can be seen. The viewer then sees a relationship between these two people who probably didn't even notice each other on the sidewalk. I found it slightly curious, that through the argument of photography as not-narrative, Szarkowski throws in this quote, "The photographer looked at the world as though it were a scroll painting, unrolled from hand to hand exhibiting an infinite number of croppings - of compositions - as the frame moved onwards." I am still very torn as to whether this would suggest narrative or not. If one was to take a scroll painting, and read it from end to end, it would either be of a large scene with many doing their own things (such as Rejlander's attempt at negative piecing)<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvKOO-JtFeMRXr3lhjfj76Y7Ae8v00OLfPLHu7KaVZIqw5oeaQDY0wFkC_0m6b0GVYqEyReGibyxqts-jy-H6LnhWOdaPeQXzrQ-SBSeg4S-7UtdMm6pMfXtMsL8Rg6TdsuSH6f7j50GU/s1600/Oscar-gustave-rejlander_two_ways_of_life.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="168" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvKOO-JtFeMRXr3lhjfj76Y7Ae8v00OLfPLHu7KaVZIqw5oeaQDY0wFkC_0m6b0GVYqEyReGibyxqts-jy-H6LnhWOdaPeQXzrQ-SBSeg4S-7UtdMm6pMfXtMsL8Rg6TdsuSH6f7j50GU/s320/Oscar-gustave-rejlander_two_ways_of_life.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>or the same people progressing in an action throughout the scroll (similar to some Egyptian wall art which I cannot find a photo for, where the same few people/gods are shown on their way to see a pharaoh, maybe walking, then crossing a river, etc). At first I saw this as a narrative, pictures depicting a story (a very slow framed movie, perhaps). However, because it would be viewed from end to end slowly and with attention to details in between, I guess it would be non-narrative in that the actions of these people are merely represented by their frozen forms. Though we can deduce that they may move from one place to the next, we don't actually see this movement. Time is the next "issue". All photographs are in the present. Whatever was captured by the camera at the time of the shutter being released was what was happening for that split/multiple second exposure. It does not show what had happened 5 minutes ago, nor does it have the capability to show what happens 5 minutes after. Photographs can alluded to the past or present, however, but they are simply the immobilization of time. The last point was vantage point, but I didn't see this really relating much to the discussion about narrativity.<br />
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Clement Greenberg starts off his writing with "The photograph has to tell a story if it is to work as art". Wow. Very strong statement. However, he does not seem to back up such statements with much evidence. He gives an example of a photograph (which I also cannot find) that he would considered narrative. The photograph is Edward Steichen's at the Acropolis. A woman's arms extend above a stone parapet in the foreground, and in the background is the Porch of Erechthyum, created with columns shaped as women. This contrast between actual flesh and stone carved flesh, Greenberg believes, is what makes this story of "life versus trimmed and carved stone" and that this has force and a message. Personally, I would say that a story does not exist here, but that the symbol of this message does. Of course it is a direct comparison, whether intentional or not (part of the joys of photography), of stone versus life, but that is all the photograph does for us.<br />
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Charlotte Cotton also believes in the narrativity in photographs. One of her first examples is Jeff Wall's piece <i>Insomnia</i>.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigE6Q_IWOAHqXaAhjJPMPCoHy1O2AjciSbZV2L4iGqbAv0Hc5ffb9XvolfOuwj6ONhutHYfsTBA_TVjwHNvHfbgHGqw_FYNTJ7rYqaUTi0c6b1-3RuW35SOCJdBjAqMtrZ6pJivlXVei4/s1600/rm6_insomnia_lrg.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="263" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigE6Q_IWOAHqXaAhjJPMPCoHy1O2AjciSbZV2L4iGqbAv0Hc5ffb9XvolfOuwj6ONhutHYfsTBA_TVjwHNvHfbgHGqw_FYNTJ7rYqaUTi0c6b1-3RuW35SOCJdBjAqMtrZ6pJivlXVei4/s320/rm6_insomnia_lrg.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>Cotton believes that this photograph is narrative in style because "The layout of the interior acts as a set of clues to the events that could have led up to this moment..." in which she counteracts her statement of the photograph as a narrative. She points out that the open cabinets, moved about chairs and table, and the man laying on the floor "act as a set of clues" (not "show the man doing these things") "to the events that could have led up to <b><i>this moment</i></b>". She is admitting that this photograph is simply a <i>moment</i>, not a series of moments. Sure, the room is messed up and we can imagine that this man did those things, but nothing is directly telling us that. Somebody else may have come through and done these things and the man is now laying terrified on the floor. Maybe there was a storm and things got banged around and he is now taking some sort of refuge under the table. Granted, the title of the pieces is "Insomnia", but this gives context only to the fact that this man is not asleep. All we know for fact, is that the cabinets are open, the furniture is moved around, and the man is on the ground. This photograph does not actually show anything more than that, we simply imagine more. Cotton even says this: "These pictures encourage a kind of storytelling in the viewer's mind." The pictures encourage this storytelling out of the image, not within its frame.<br />
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When I first started these readings, I had the mindset that photographs could for sure tell a story. Of course I had heard some arguments that photographs could not be narrative, but it didn't seem to make much sense to me until these readings. First off, I'd like to define narrative. According to the OED, narrative is "the practice or art of narration or story-telling". The definition of "tell" is "To make known by speech or writing; to utter words; to say; to speak; to express in words". This would all lead toward photography not being capable of being a narrative. There are no words in photography unless placed alongside an image, and in that case, the words are narrative, the pictures are not. They would simply be a representation of those words, without which, the meaning would not be fully clear and would be open to interpretation. However, the OED does also define narrative as "<i>Art</i>. Representing a story through the medium of painting or similar art forms." I am curious as to when this definition of narrative arose. I don't even know where to begin looking for that, but I really hope it did not become part of the discussion of art after photography was invented. Anyway, I know I spewed much of my argument for photography as non-narrative in the above paragraphs, but I'll quickly recap. Photographs are representations of the real. All we know when looking at a single photograph is that when this photograph was taken, that is what was happening within the frame. Sarah Dobai's photograph <i>Red Room</i><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4Ls9BEBH9yOQNyREmCDCU53EFwye8FpjqV2MLNVwRvqIYq4iBaco_EENJc1S9zE9Qtbwx7bXwL5skEb7fQRvXjy5vhXmdK1WD1LT8KhaTAzghj2PRcTBMobErSBGJysgjGvKgElzmp2U/s1600/redroom_sml.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4Ls9BEBH9yOQNyREmCDCU53EFwye8FpjqV2MLNVwRvqIYq4iBaco_EENJc1S9zE9Qtbwx7bXwL5skEb7fQRvXjy5vhXmdK1WD1LT8KhaTAzghj2PRcTBMobErSBGJysgjGvKgElzmp2U/s1600/redroom_sml.jpg" /></a></div>shows us that this woman is laying on top of this man and that her hair is covering part of their faces and she is wearing a shirt and the man is naked and they are on a blanket covered loveseat in a red room. Sure, I can infer that before this maybe they had dinner at a restaurant and then came home and were involved in sexual activity, resulting in the stripping down of clothing, up to the point where this photograph is taken, and that afterward they may go brush their teeth and read a book before falling asleep in bed together. However, everything I just said after "red room." is purely made up. Maybe it's inference, but maybe I am 100% completely off and maybe she's a stripper, or this is adultery, or these two people have snuck off on a school trip somewhere to be together. Your guess is as good as mine and the photograph tells us nothing except they are, at this moment, right now, in that position on that couch in that red room. Even photographs as a series, one after the other, potentially showing somebody in their car, then in their driveway, then in their front entryway, then in their kitchen, tells me nothing except the fact that these photographs were chosen to be placed in this order of car, driveway, doorway, kitchen, and these photographs may have been taken each a year apart from each other. Maybe they were taken days apart, and the woman one day was in her car, and the next day took the bus home and is walking up her driveway, and the next day walked through the front door and right upstairs, and the next day, came through the back door and into the kitchen. Maybe she chose to wear the same clothes for each of these photographs. Each photo stands alone. It shows is small piece of time and that is all it is capable of doing. It cannot show us what happened before or after, though it can lead us on to imagining what had happened, and even then, we may only know this because of context we picked up in Sunday School when we were 8, or through some classic literary piece we had to read when we were 15. Without written narrative, or spoken, photographs would fail as story-tellers because of their ambiguity and lack of being able to show more than just one, very, very small piece of time or event.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOGQ5ovAESJZpXYSsbtgpkcggjt0jlXhGjNd_UuAK9coWD_fFIGgGngREPa9votgvQMXaBCMCrBqiEfBW8hMATTqee4vI3UJLajWU0bSNvSqiCp_37bWe6YncJyaQWZ1-tXZQv-uTgq4s/s1600/Blog10.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="247" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOGQ5ovAESJZpXYSsbtgpkcggjt0jlXhGjNd_UuAK9coWD_fFIGgGngREPa9votgvQMXaBCMCrBqiEfBW8hMATTqee4vI3UJLajWU0bSNvSqiCp_37bWe6YncJyaQWZ1-tXZQv-uTgq4s/s320/Blog10.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>Class Blogshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06361471714844186037noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2652832806922201391.post-17733585681632808482010-11-15T08:50:00.000-08:002010-11-15T08:50:12.940-08:00New Topographics: Man-Altered Landscapes, Systems Method, and Serial ImagesIn Greg Foster-Rice's "Systems Everywhere", the exhibition <i>New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape</i> was broken down and analyzed. In the 1960's and 1970's, photographs (and art in general) took a turn from the "aesthetic formalism" and became more about the experience one encounters in the production and viewing of the art pieces. The art as an object lost its basis, as the method for the creation of the images became more noteworthy. This method of creation was based of of a biologist's definition of what systems theory is: a "complex phenomena cannot be reduced to the discrete properties of their various parts, but must be understood according to the arrangement of and relations between the parts that create a whole." This is the underlying theme to the three defining factors (serial, visual arrangement, and emblematic of system as a whole) of the New Topographic artists, which I will discuss later on.<br />
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The New Topographics displayed photographs of Robert Adams, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Stephen Shore, and five others, with each artists displaying work that relayed a similar message: we are destroying our environment. In contrast to these exhibition prints, photographs from the 19th century began to show the industrial strength of man in coordination with nature. As Foster-Rice points out, photographs then were taken of railroads from above, displaying their visual similarities to river bends, and the organic nature surrounding it. Any inkling to destruction was reduced to the frame in which the photograph was taken. There were no reverberating, widespread affects to be shown in these photographs. It was all about publicity for the good that man was doing and how it was to better the lives of America's citizens. People bought it. However, this expansion and increased production of roads, towns, interstates, etc., started to catch people's attention after awhile. This is where the New Topographics exhibition comes in. In the '60s and '70s, post WWII America, subdivisions began to go up off interstates, meaning mass amounts of repeating blueprint houses/trailers/nuketown-looking homes and a complete dependency on cars for any sort of transportation. This expansion drastically changed how some businesses functioned. Places along these interstates that relied heavily on passersby now became closed because everybody lived "just down the road" and the need to stop at the motel for the night was lost. These new buildings were build cheaply and were not constructed for archival purposes. Some developments were never finished, with buildings left in a half built, ruined state. As Foster-Rice put it, we were creating structures that were to rise into ruin before they were built, versus having fallen to ruin after their use. We were creating for the sake of creation, pocketing the profits, and moving on to the next subdivision blueprints. This is where the New Topographic artists come in.<br />
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Photographers such as Joe Deal and Robert Adams saw this expansion as that of a destructive nature (which it was), and began photographing these building sites. In general, they created photographs that incorporated all three parts of the systems method of these artists: serial images, a visual arrangement (versus aesthetic composition), and photographs emblematic of the system as a whole. The serial, which is <i>not</i> a series, is the creation of images where there is no visual hierarchy. One photograph is not more important than another, and no photograph stands out visually more than another. They are simply a set with common denominators (whereas a series would be a continuation of an idea, event, emotion, etc). In focusing on a visual arrangement instead of an aesthetic composition, photography actually played on its strongest point: becoming a true visual record of what was in front of the lens. Though the photographer was still selecting what to be cropped and the angle of view and where they photographed and how to expose, because of its seriality, this all stayed relatively neutral. For instance, Deal photographed downward, eliminating the horizon line and flattening out his images. His prints were all low contrast were well within the serial method. Without an aesthetic influence to create the work, the photographs became very accurate depictions of what they represented. They became, to an extent, what Hal Foster would consider "archival", in his piece "The Archive". The photographs were more similar to the legislative and institutive qualities that Foster named as archival standards in opposition to having destructive and transgressive qualities. I may be incorrect, but I understood the latter qualities to be more of an aesthetic nature, versus the former qualities of a more serial nature. In this inference, the New Topographic would come across as an archival exhibition.<br />
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The last part of the three categories is the photographs' incorporation of the system as a whole. Each part of the each photograph does not stand alone, but rather, is influenced and given meaning by its surrounding parts and subsequently, its surrounding photographs. They all link to each other and as a whole, create a strong, meaningful body of work. This would be the epitome of the systematic or procedural method of creating something (as biologist Ludwig von Bertalanffy had described it), with these photographs creating each other, and having been created not with aesthetics, but with thought and purpose for visual communication.<br />
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One part I found a bit controversial in "Systems Everywhere" was the statement of how photography was a master at this new "systems method" and was seen as the way to accurately and fully convey this landscape, not as sublime painters did with a dramatized framed scene, but with open ended borders on the photographs, and a straightforward view. Its almost as if photography visualizes driving down the unfinished Jersey Turnpike, as Tony Smith had said, where it cannot be fully considered art, but the experience of moving through its environment becomes something more powerful than any art piece. This all made sense to me, and maybe it was just a comparison between two different types of photography, but before this statement of affirmation of photography in this usage, Ansel Adams's f/64 club was brought up. These prints were compared directly to the sublime painting, being all about the perfection of the landscape within the frame, and the posterchildren of what America looks like. Adams' prints do not have the "move through the environment and past the photographic frame" feel, so this just seemed a contrast to the statement of photography being able to best fit the systems method of creating these "unbiased" pieces of information.<br />
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Somebody who has created a similar style of work to those of the New Topographics, would be Roni Horn. In three of her projects, Cabinet Of (2001), This Is Me, This Is You (1999-2000), and You Are The Weather (1994-1995), the styles and methods of the New Topographics artists is almost directly emulated, albeit a different subject matter is used. All three works are of faces, and heavily use the three parts: serial method, visual arrangement, and emblematic of a system as a whole. She either grids her photographs, or lines them up, each image playing simultaneously off of the previous and the next. There is no visual hierarchy, (though in You Are The Weather, there is change in saturation and contrast, but it happens in such a pattern, that the pattern is what creates the seriality) and each project is generally printed in the same style and with the same contrast/color saturation/framing. Her works are a study of the body of images as a whole, how they all play off of one another to create a larger meaning and interpretation of the body of work.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_o7YZ8ziQIF-L8Qv2MP_6mrdVZkjgpEZ4zTQ-5etmHrPXXB_oHHarYJC7G5LqhREHd5DuT-xe-qTis74yiUv7lR1oa6I_o4K3LhrtHCD-3FQA8QZldTGljiWXgR7rIi9_z-zfh-rCAa0/s1600/roni_horn_cabinet.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_o7YZ8ziQIF-L8Qv2MP_6mrdVZkjgpEZ4zTQ-5etmHrPXXB_oHHarYJC7G5LqhREHd5DuT-xe-qTis74yiUv7lR1oa6I_o4K3LhrtHCD-3FQA8QZldTGljiWXgR7rIi9_z-zfh-rCAa0/s320/roni_horn_cabinet.jpg" width="233" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"> Cabinet Of (2001)</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgS1SjiWJhEDUpGkqgBdnTGllDfqCjyp9vKTSo3uo_1QiTQKDMomsqjYb17ac1glWN-pFpebuA0n6HHVsgudER4EYeK_fQGH7wc0GdMoQxmPpi2dm_t0HF38Tgm_-lSnF2E-fHtnmN_2BA/s1600/Roni_Horn_Cabinet2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="256" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgS1SjiWJhEDUpGkqgBdnTGllDfqCjyp9vKTSo3uo_1QiTQKDMomsqjYb17ac1glWN-pFpebuA0n6HHVsgudER4EYeK_fQGH7wc0GdMoQxmPpi2dm_t0HF38Tgm_-lSnF2E-fHtnmN_2BA/s320/Roni_Horn_Cabinet2.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"> Cabinet Of (2001)</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEig2Bc_N7UFybn0m4UqQUEUIcUjvAQSZeRw8HMN3A-lL01byoWnyQH6KfgbyOa3UMXElzGh8e6AkxfNhfXxurhqmkWunnAFstJc30Xi5Dr8fvzcEYowFcNvVgFX7NWOU29Go2Hs94HK-ek/s1600/roni_horn_this_is_me_this_is_you_panel_1_754.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="254" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEig2Bc_N7UFybn0m4UqQUEUIcUjvAQSZeRw8HMN3A-lL01byoWnyQH6KfgbyOa3UMXElzGh8e6AkxfNhfXxurhqmkWunnAFstJc30Xi5Dr8fvzcEYowFcNvVgFX7NWOU29Go2Hs94HK-ek/s320/roni_horn_this_is_me_this_is_you_panel_1_754.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div style="text-align: center;"> This Is Me, This Is You (1999-2000)</div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7qk2GwLmPMhs6NY5PxDBPHwktpU2MzZd9OveMoDMm7LQ33JpK3SnBNucnzoNKa0qThRXf8SE0ExHzEPmhfxej_-EnYfpr6YBi9kUW50TWsafxN1-MAkQ0dhdBx3saRPF-7oRdJ_TVxZg/s1600/12140w_masterc_youareweather.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="167" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7qk2GwLmPMhs6NY5PxDBPHwktpU2MzZd9OveMoDMm7LQ33JpK3SnBNucnzoNKa0qThRXf8SE0ExHzEPmhfxej_-EnYfpr6YBi9kUW50TWsafxN1-MAkQ0dhdBx3saRPF-7oRdJ_TVxZg/s320/12140w_masterc_youareweather.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;">You Are The Weather (1994-1995)</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPuI6mM7SWi4ulWJ1W9Mys4L3mUvGSzIJsddVOg15fU33CnGw0wWppYCzf5_sL-wk62KzbcW9cPpgKxeBKntmVLfL4cTtCkx1HWbaFbtaJ8_pqo_z-kPhbJbrx_cSh_4ieyr5mffEgaJM/s1600/6d90e2ce7113fa923401a39c4d938bc0-l.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="245" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPuI6mM7SWi4ulWJ1W9Mys4L3mUvGSzIJsddVOg15fU33CnGw0wWppYCzf5_sL-wk62KzbcW9cPpgKxeBKntmVLfL4cTtCkx1HWbaFbtaJ8_pqo_z-kPhbJbrx_cSh_4ieyr5mffEgaJM/s320/6d90e2ce7113fa923401a39c4d938bc0-l.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;">You Are The Weather (1994-1995)</div>Class Blogshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06361471714844186037noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2652832806922201391.post-7500875546850242692010-11-08T08:52:00.000-08:002010-11-08T08:52:47.678-08:00George Baker on The Expanded Field of PhotographyIn "Photography's Expanded Field", George Baker argues that over time (mainly since the 1970's and the postmodern era), photography has changed into, well, <i>something</i> else which we cannot truthfully still label "photography". It seems that photography today has become something of a halfway house into other mediums, that photography is no longer the be all and end all, but is "an insufficient bridge to other, more compelling forms." Thought I would think that photography could lead basically into any other form or medium, Baker does mainly focus on the cinematic (and as of right now, it seems that every photographer, whether they include actual cinema into their work or not, will eventually be considered both a photographer and cinematographer within this digital age).<br />
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In explaining how photography is changing/has changed, and more importantly, its expansion, Baker creates a sort of map on which he would seemingly be able to place most any photographer in order to better understand how each individual's work is grounded within this new photography. The map looks like this:<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-kjGyjGn1oWzAlfJV7WWxeYL7r30w09V_dy94F7QIJJeGZ8vNGUi0iOU_35edCfiGwOyAmzbzraTfY3BbyImuYU13ABg7Q0oaoIJRMrV8JWA6pFusUtm_1jB-fRzGHlJzJEK4peA1hBY/s1600/master.img-006.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="189" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-kjGyjGn1oWzAlfJV7WWxeYL7r30w09V_dy94F7QIJJeGZ8vNGUi0iOU_35edCfiGwOyAmzbzraTfY3BbyImuYU13ABg7Q0oaoIJRMrV8JWA6pFusUtm_1jB-fRzGHlJzJEK4peA1hBY/s320/master.img-006.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>He also creates one where the question marks are replaced with 3 chosen artists that would fill their specific locations within this map, and another that looks like this:<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEja7Ue9anXxIBkXgk2stAtAR_FUbkLHT-KzW3Ptnqc9ze3JvJJBjESW0mmIJmhbCD3Rvmsm1XYGSedApCRh6VwmXHZoxRjItF3ViZTvEQ3Vb5KAvnAzbaPjCraIbi4vpq38gYKp2kPbZNQ/s1600/master.img-012.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="215" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEja7Ue9anXxIBkXgk2stAtAR_FUbkLHT-KzW3Ptnqc9ze3JvJJBjESW0mmIJmhbCD3Rvmsm1XYGSedApCRh6VwmXHZoxRjItF3ViZTvEQ3Vb5KAvnAzbaPjCraIbi4vpq38gYKp2kPbZNQ/s320/master.img-012.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>With this third map here, it was a little unclear to me whether these "topics" placed in the map ("still film" projected images, digital montage "talking picture", and "film still" cinematic photograph) represent the last stage of the map and are therefore the categories that work should fit into in his map? Or if they were each simply small explanations of the artists he had placed in there as example in the second (not pictured) map. Seeing as these labels fit the artists to a T, I am going to go with the latter and regard these labels as permanent titles of each section of the map. Regardless, this is what Baker's map looks like, and the four points at the tip of the center X are the more important, unchanging points anyhow.<br />
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These points are: narrative, stasis, not-narrative, and not-stasis. A narrative has referentiality and is culturally relatable, or more so, is the cultural dimension of the photograph (its build). Stasis is is the unthinking nature regarding photographs. Not-narrative, therefore would be stasis, and not-stasis would be narrative. Baker also points out that no photographer has successfully created a purely stasis image. The other part of that must then be that it is impossible for a photographic image to completely be a narrative, as a "photograph" will always be simply a single frame and therefore will always have some level of stasis (I am not including other incorporated mediums such as cinema into this argument, just photography).<br />
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As Baker continues, he stresses that we must not revert to the traditional forms of photography, that those forms are basically deceased in its medium, and what has awakened in its void is this metaphorical universe of a constantly expanding field of photography. This field, I imagine, would look something like this:<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLV-yo_Q4zC5q0rQ6I3Egi-o2fZDFU2JvfSxIkjWYDn32dwLBYoVLEeBam6t-y_-xD3qYJSPMQUl_PMrmmo7u8rpEFH6kDsZZ9qgZMIZjrWFvq3JqD97lH53NwfmaytyIyh-Vh7mW0ItA/s1600/Blog8.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="247" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLV-yo_Q4zC5q0rQ6I3Egi-o2fZDFU2JvfSxIkjWYDn32dwLBYoVLEeBam6t-y_-xD3qYJSPMQUl_PMrmmo7u8rpEFH6kDsZZ9qgZMIZjrWFvq3JqD97lH53NwfmaytyIyh-Vh7mW0ItA/s320/Blog8.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
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However, even if stasis and narrative were not key talking points in traditional photography, it seems that we would still be able to go back to it now and place it within its rightful category on Baker's map. Regardless, traditional photography is what it is and contemporary photography certainly is no longer traditional. It seems as though part of the dangers of going back to traditional photographic forms would be losing all that has grown with the medium over time (the points on my above map). Its essentially "pure" original state would be greatly lacking and have no weight accompanying it.<br />
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Baker concludes his discussion with the somewhat discomforting point that truly, photography does not have a clear, thought out map. The medium is in limbo, and though we are aware of specific points in its ever expanding field, we do not know where it will take us or where it will end up.<br />
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As for two photographers that I would like to analyze into Baker's views here, I have chosen <a href="http://www.wallpaper.com/gallery/art/beate-gutschow/17050186/1#14679">Beate Gutschow</a> and <a href="http://www.davidhilliard.com/index.html">David Hilliard</a>. Gutschow is a large format photographer who started creating landscapes that never existed, by splicing together different negatives (digitally) and presenting each image as though it (almost) flawlessly one appeared at the same time in front of the same lens. These montages eventually broke from nature and she began shooting in cities all over the world, using the same techniques, but creating cityscapes of a very almost futuristic feel. Though her work sometimes includes people, they are represented in the frame similar to some of the paintings from the picturesque movement, as objects to confirm a sense of reality, but not to take away from the scene around them. They blend into the background. To me, it feels as if Gutschow's work would fit on the right side of Baker's map, between stasis and not-stasis. Though she creates large-scale montages like Wall, I believe that the difference does come in the representation of people, which makes Wall's work more narrative and therefore fitting at the top of the map between narrative and stasis, and places Gutschow's nicely between the stasis and not-stasis on the right. Her images do seem more reminiscent of "traditional" art forms (painting) and this picturesque movement of painting was to make beautiful, breathtaking scenes. There was no royalty depicted in these pieces, no hierarchy of social class, no hints as to global location. It is quite a stasis movement. Gutschow's emulation of this movement similarly creates very stasis images, although I believe that with her cityscapes series, more of a narrative can be drawn because of the types of buildings she displays. In fact, by just displaying buildings of any kind, it creates a time frame for the image. They appear futuristic and a bit bleak, almost on the verge of an apocalypse. However, they do seem almost lifeless, which would therefore categorize them, at least to me, as being not quite narrative, but more so "not-stasis".<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSzsveFC-GbSkWf8EQbWiWvT7EGxfXz_PwHdHt92NtIWGrPiawUwLNW0ws0Dl3QaRXnNcW2JZowaILfn2rM7TAw0K9Z4XUoaufEz45FHIin-CK0rIzXEEYRcsXjBvRlQhT76kY29I7IW4/s1600/testuser5_nov2007_beate_gutschow_ls3_g_ahaGWI_NVaiPM.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="196" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSzsveFC-GbSkWf8EQbWiWvT7EGxfXz_PwHdHt92NtIWGrPiawUwLNW0ws0Dl3QaRXnNcW2JZowaILfn2rM7TAw0K9Z4XUoaufEz45FHIin-CK0rIzXEEYRcsXjBvRlQhT76kY29I7IW4/s320/testuser5_nov2007_beate_gutschow_ls3_g_ahaGWI_NVaiPM.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLzrbR3JcH1-0EogzOnKeNmun670ptQZuFA1VLYc2t9I3AOM6WT6W4WoHMRnGeWtPFPFnY1IchhCBHNKvQXsifXAt_kmclkYogKttQFEpqVXu4uXtk9uv9y4fURDGyKdkSUDjkivTDY0k/s1600/testuser5_nov2007_beate_gutschow_s13_g_3XaqKs_RjaOdJ.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="196" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLzrbR3JcH1-0EogzOnKeNmun670ptQZuFA1VLYc2t9I3AOM6WT6W4WoHMRnGeWtPFPFnY1IchhCBHNKvQXsifXAt_kmclkYogKttQFEpqVXu4uXtk9uv9y4fURDGyKdkSUDjkivTDY0k/s320/testuser5_nov2007_beate_gutschow_s13_g_3XaqKs_RjaOdJ.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
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David Hilliard creates work based upon people that he knows. He even <a href="http://www.davidhilliard.com/about.html">describes it</a> as being autobiographic and fictional at the same time, trying to recreate events or moments within our chaotic lives. All but maybe three images he shows on his website would be classified as portraiture, but all his images are very narrative. His format of a three image panoramic creates this movement throughout the frame that not only addresses a passing of time, but a movement through space. We as viewers experience part of his subjects' lives, many times very intimately, and receive just a taste of their being. A few of them to me feel a bit cinematic, although not on a large scale. They mostly seem to resemble home videos. As such, I would place Hilliard on the left, between narrative and not-narrative. The images seem to "home video" for me to be able to place them as completely stasis, but again, they <i>are</i> unmoving, still photographs.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCkUazbXwGWgDXkHVTsDzgoh38dgZfaEyv5F1_rLwmpSdzUbuZx57te7XL5TxUjIkQwxGMrOJDeVFHaPyrwNz-fi3_gKzQ_B_h1IzwXw9Tgv_mRtbYsOZMAg9jpy14xeJiB0z0u4_Bf_E/s1600/08_16.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCkUazbXwGWgDXkHVTsDzgoh38dgZfaEyv5F1_rLwmpSdzUbuZx57te7XL5TxUjIkQwxGMrOJDeVFHaPyrwNz-fi3_gKzQ_B_h1IzwXw9Tgv_mRtbYsOZMAg9jpy14xeJiB0z0u4_Bf_E/s320/08_16.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i>Bluebird</i> by David Hilliard, 2009.</div>Class Blogshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06361471714844186037noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2652832806922201391.post-31686228346871144542010-11-01T10:02:00.000-07:002010-11-01T10:13:27.704-07:00The Digital Age and Photography<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghOYSatIzgIZ94dMJuGQ_ala1yhifUUN3dtEcuRjNH-vTgs76P2HXfgkPDdLiWeuwx5uu5yfOBoc0jg_g_zskKf6vlioVYVr8CL6uxWu_P-vBVJ0dmVCpsp55BkP2OUJwq5yBuLJPE2G0/s1600/Blog7.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="247" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghOYSatIzgIZ94dMJuGQ_ala1yhifUUN3dtEcuRjNH-vTgs76P2HXfgkPDdLiWeuwx5uu5yfOBoc0jg_g_zskKf6vlioVYVr8CL6uxWu_P-vBVJ0dmVCpsp55BkP2OUJwq5yBuLJPE2G0/s320/Blog7.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
The three readings this week, Jason Evans's "Online Photographic Thinking", Susan Murray's "Journal of Visual Culture", and Lev Manovich's "Everyday Media Life", all posed different viewpoints on society's switch from the analog into the digital realm.<br />
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In his essay, Jason Evans did not take a side in the digital vs. analog "debate", but rather listed some pros and cons for each method of photography. Digital photography, he says, encourages the photographer "to deliberate less about whether or not to actually take a picture." It has a tendency toward flippancy, where the art of the photographic practice is lost in the quick shoot, review, delete, and reshoot, review, delete, etc. that is the norm in digital photography. There is no limited shots, no end to the roll of film, no monetary value associated with every shot as there is with analog. The delicate practice of photography has ended with digital. Evans makes an interesting comment on page 43, stating "We are not having our choices taken away from us by the usurping of analog by digital; we just have to expand what photography can be." To a point, I can see where he is going with this. That if the type of film you are using is discontinued, you need to overcome that obstacle and figure out a way to continue your photography; you need to broaden what your photographic practice may encompass. However, there is definitely a different look, or a different aesthetic, to each type of film. If Kodak discontinues their film, maybe Fuji does not hold up for the style of work that the Kodak user is creating. And Kodak more than likely would not have discontinued the film if digital had not been around to encourage people to stop using the film. So I would tend to disagree with Evans in his above statement. Yes, there will always be a way to get film and continue analog projects, but as time goes on and there digital advancements continue, choices will become more limited, scarce, and expensive. Digital <i>is</i> usurping analog.<br />
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As for the internet's "contribution" to this digital age, Evans compares its use to that of galleries and museums. He talks about how the internet can reach audiences to the extent that galleries and museums cannot, without a sacrifice of content or style. On the internet, it is free to post as many photos as you'd like, and it's a <b>safe</b> way in going about showing your work. In galleries, it's a little different. They don't get the range or size of audience that the internet gets. However, what they <i>do</i> get, is viewers who are genuinely interested in the artist and their work. These viewers went out of their way to physically get themselves into this gallery to view this specific work. For the internet, all you have to do is minimize the movie you're watching, click "stumbleupon", browse through the page a little without really taking in who the artist is (although maybe you thought that the work was alright), and clicking "Stumble!" again, and *poof*, now you're watching the world's funniest cat video. Not much of a gripping viewing experience in relation to photography. With galleries, there is also a certain standard that your work needs to have achieved before it can be shown. There are critics and curators that will analyze the work and break it down, maybe declining the artist 3 or 4 times before their work has reached the standard of that particular gallery. It's a risky way of trying to get your work out there, but it pays off. You become part of a community of curators and critics, of viewers and collectors. Your name is remembered and has weight. Your work has a backbone; other people like it too and wanted to show it publicly. It's not just the artist liking it and posting it to their website. Galleries give artists credibility where the internet, at this point, cannot.<br />
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I don't recall whether it was Evans or one of the response essays, but there was a question posed regarding the types of photos that are posted on the internet, and how internet photos are not serious, whereas gallery and museum photos still are. There is not space in the gallery world for snapshot photography, family portraits, wedding photography, and some of the new (godawful) aesthetics that the internet is glorious at holding onto and showing. The gallery-type photography is still that of a more straightforward, serious nature, connecting more directly to the roots of photography. I think the question posed was something along the lines of "Will there ever be a time where these serious photos make it to the internet?" and I believe that there definitely will be. Considering that the average museum and gallery audience is mainly senior citizens and some student artists, and that kids growing up currently have not experienced the analog age and have no real connection to the photographic print, that eventually the need for printing out a photograph and displaying it in a gallery or museum setting will phase out. I believe that there will be an equivalent of this gallery credibility online when this happens, but I do believe it will happen. As for now though, we are still in the middle ground, stuck between the internet and galleries.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">Gallery type print: Julie Blackmon's <i>Green Velvet</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEfeq9fIPtYKd-EMy5aoGYowqHEM_BE5Og6KCbTcLUwG2yAzYCCzDDSDEq5mFgripeKwcucJfeg1hl345QsC2Mst5AhGc1pgjz3okTkF2Len0d50X-mMnK2ealXPu5soN-lqfQRmCAMH4/s1600/blackmon-green-velvet.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEfeq9fIPtYKd-EMy5aoGYowqHEM_BE5Og6KCbTcLUwG2yAzYCCzDDSDEq5mFgripeKwcucJfeg1hl345QsC2Mst5AhGc1pgjz3okTkF2Len0d50X-mMnK2ealXPu5soN-lqfQRmCAMH4/s320/blackmon-green-velvet.jpg" width="319" /></a></div>Blackmon, although works with digital processes to collage and manipulate scenes, does shoot in film (if I'm not mistaken) and creates work that would not be just fleetingly taken and posted to her website (though she does have a website). To me, her work seems more to fit the gallery scene/collector's world.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">Weird, godawful, internet aesthetic of "vintage photography" (or so the blog is named). Unknown photographer. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnF1WGg62TOR58V0wfhWb3Idj7K86rd-4OoPjBldXQagRouR6Gnon_VzNU2wAA0U4XomnQR3FuxEYm3z7Xtgbf1WZV__A2cztDh0Y6fAtx9U-SJ-CsP0WalKqF44LcSA757EqjpEMalTo/s1600/tumblr_lawr1dELdv1qe11ryo1_400.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="216" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnF1WGg62TOR58V0wfhWb3Idj7K86rd-4OoPjBldXQagRouR6Gnon_VzNU2wAA0U4XomnQR3FuxEYm3z7Xtgbf1WZV__A2cztDh0Y6fAtx9U-SJ-CsP0WalKqF44LcSA757EqjpEMalTo/s320/tumblr_lawr1dELdv1qe11ryo1_400.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>This is what I picture when the words "aesthetic internet photography" are spoken. I cringe. They are horrible. I have come across photographer's websites that are full of photos like this. Straight on, point and shoot camera mounted flash of girls' legs with ripped stockings, usually outside or at a party. I get queasy just thinking about these photographs. Maybe it's because I've never been a Nan Goldin fan...? Anyway, I'd agree that right now, galleries give nice credibility to artists when their work is shown versus an artist's personal website with work that is cringeable.<br />
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Susan Murray approaches the analog vs. digital slightly differently. She talks mainly about how social photographic networking sites, mainly Flickr, create this digital "community" similar to the analog community. With digital photos, there is this development of a communal aesthetic, brought about by what Lev Manovich would call "tokens", which include comments, replies, tags, and messages all used to discuss individual photographs, groups/pools of photographs, etc. This digital community does not respect traditional amateur/professional hierarchies. On Flickr, there is no distinction between the amateur, the professional amateur, and the professional. You can make your best guess, but sometimes it is very difficult to distinguish between the three. All three types of photographers have their work in the same pools, with the same tags, gridded next to each other on the same page. Flickr is a celebration of photography, not a popularity contest, and not a place for ego. If the photographer likes the photoraph, maybe the comments will solidify this enjoyable aesthetic. Manovich points out that when we comment or reply to messages or other comments, we are creating discussions that are immediate. We are exchanging ideas that are constantly changing the art world and how we view it and how it develops. Time is not an obstacle anymore. It does not take weeks for one art critic to contact another art critic about a certain artist's work. It is happening <i>now.</i> All of these pieces work to create this communal aesthetic that Flickr has most definitely achieved.<br />
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Murray also mentions the more prominent differences between how digital and analog photography are viewed. Analog photography, or indexical and <i>photography</i>, was mainly used as means for more accurate documentation. Amateurs photographed their families, events, and used the medium to create memories. Professionals photographed in a way that was more artistic and reminiscent of painting. As Barthes said, photography is "a contract with death." Analog photographs were and are viewed as moments in the past, historical, and melancholy. This <i>photography</i> is emulsion on paper and silver on plastic. It is physical. Digital photography, or nonindexical and <i>photographic</i>, is mainly used as an a visual aesthetic, or content aesthetic. Of course it is still used to document families, children, holidays, events, weddings, etc., and photographers still use it as an art form in ways very similar to previous professionals of the analog age, it is not viewed as looking upon death. These new digital photographs are very transient, continual, and full of life. This <i>photographic</i> is what is mentioned above: content aesthetic. It is not so much about "This is the only documented photograph of William S. Johnson, lieutenant in the Civil War. He had 3 children and a wife and he never made it back home to them." Digital photography is about "Look how this light caught the pages of the book I was reading this morning, and how the wood grain is accentuated beneath the smooth texture of the book's edges." I'm not saying that analog photography cannot capture this exquisite light (it may even capture it better than digital can), but that traditionally, analog was not used for images such as these, whereas the digital bank of photography is overflowing with the small, beautiful things in everyday life. The same idea can be flipped, where digital photography can be used in the melancholy way that film was, although I have not yet seen something quite as successful at doing this as old tintypes or daguerreotypes.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">Unknown photographer. Civil War Soldier. Daguerreotype.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2UsGBo3X73O8rAX5VLHHvhXH16FM_F2R9Ooh1Snc3n-zfkM0T9hjwbI9cXTh97OwP6naviYofXnEo2b_cy0pUoLoMBStCkgQFMrBtFlYeVRVzn2REw9M-NqRrNWJjEKx19dISFWF5d7E/s1600/46062t.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2UsGBo3X73O8rAX5VLHHvhXH16FM_F2R9Ooh1Snc3n-zfkM0T9hjwbI9cXTh97OwP6naviYofXnEo2b_cy0pUoLoMBStCkgQFMrBtFlYeVRVzn2REw9M-NqRrNWJjEKx19dISFWF5d7E/s320/46062t.jpg" width="271" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;">This image screams melancholy.</div><br />
<div style="text-align: center;">This is one of my photographs that I would place neatly into the digital category.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6zK5R_ndCqz77Xe3cQD-Q_0N06FChWG5Ncl-BlX69syjYGThoqWpSyoHiyk-a2G6KeBt0b7SR5GbHYqSPmGhXIxZh4lMcyCxEQ9dAHPvOBYVHSb_nyn-DDExmTFDjpnEuBsiYlvsr4As/s1600/persimmons.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6zK5R_ndCqz77Xe3cQD-Q_0N06FChWG5Ncl-BlX69syjYGThoqWpSyoHiyk-a2G6KeBt0b7SR5GbHYqSPmGhXIxZh4lMcyCxEQ9dAHPvOBYVHSb_nyn-DDExmTFDjpnEuBsiYlvsr4As/s320/persimmons.jpg" width="213" /></a></div></div><div style="text-align: left;">I don't know if it is going too far to classify digital as "delicate" but I do get that feeling when looking at many digital photographs (Maybe I should be more specific here. The word that more properly fits that sentence would be digital <i>images</i>. As Evans stated, it sometimes does us good to not look at the analog physicality of photographs, but the digital <i>image</i> itself.) To me, there is something lighter about digital photographs in comparison to the heaviness of analog, and maybe this stems from digital's transience and movement. Analog is very solid, and digital feels a bit more pliable and flowing.</div><div style="text-align: center;"><span id="goog_1030611323"></span><span id="goog_1030611324"></span></div>Class Blogshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06361471714844186037noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2652832806922201391.post-17281344490528313932010-10-18T10:05:00.000-07:002010-10-18T10:08:17.349-07:00Ritchin, Ribalta, and Dzenko on Analog to Digital Photography<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmRYue0cFXQLUaUari3EOP2nxUBrj3akbR-KO1qZXXMWRDn6hNh_47KltY91nkliSGFztBwTxH_em8XQORRounrXijt_7nXwuA2EhOLYAYcWZq6kuJImq5OR_APXGNOQnFg38FhyphenhyphendF5cM/s1600/Blog6.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="308" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmRYue0cFXQLUaUari3EOP2nxUBrj3akbR-KO1qZXXMWRDn6hNh_47KltY91nkliSGFztBwTxH_em8XQORRounrXijt_7nXwuA2EhOLYAYcWZq6kuJImq5OR_APXGNOQnFg38FhyphenhyphendF5cM/s400/Blog6.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />
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Fred Ritchin in "Into The Digital" from <i>After Photography</i>, Jorge Ribalta in "Molecular Documents" from <i>The Meaning of Photography</i>, and Corey Dzenko in "Analog to Digital" from <i>Afterimage </i>all pose different view points on the shift from analog photography in to the realm of digital photography.<br />
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Fred Ritchin, I feel, gave the most straightforward breakdown of the analog to digital transition. He ultimately does not quite take a personal stance on which he feels is "better" or more relatable to photography's original indexicality (realism), but rather he lists what has changed in the movement from film to digital. What he focuses on is the fact that photography, and the way in which we view photography, has changed dramatically. As you can see in the above diagram, Ritchin broke down the distinguishable characteristics between analog and digital photography. Here is what he came up with:<br />
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<div style="text-align: left;"> <b>Analog: </b> <b> Digital:</b></div><div style="text-align: left;"> <b>- </b>Substance <b>- </b>Code and bytes</div><div style="text-align: left;"> <b>-</b> Organic <b>-</b> Geometric</div><div style="text-align: left;"> <b>- </b>Rottable <b>-</b> Infinite</div><div style="text-align: left;"> <b>- </b>Original <b>- </b>Non-original</div><div style="text-align: left;"> <b>- </b>Nature-based (real) <b>-</b> Representation of the real (nature)</div><div style="text-align: left;"> <b>- </b>Linear (time) <b>-</b> Non-linear</div><div style="text-align: left;"> <b>-</b> Tone imprint<b> </b> <b>-</b> Changeable pixels</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">As you can see, some of these are pros, some are cons, but some points are just fact, and seem to present no argument for or against either analog or digital practices of photography. The way in which Ritchin addresses the digital real is almost a mix between how Dzenko sees the digital real (representational) and how Ribalta sees the digital real (different from analogous real, but still a level of reality). Ritchin states that we have compressed the real world into a 2D rendering of reality in a confined box (camera screen, photograph, computer screen, etc.) This "rendering of reality" is created because we still can see trees and people and objects in the digital photographs, but the linearity is removed (this may be a digital composite of objects that never existed in the same frame at the same time) and the light that was reflected off of these objects through the camera lens was not burned away on silver, but rather imprinted and changed into code and bytes to be read as an electronic rendering of "this is a tree" and "this is a human" and "this is a car". Though we still see the photograph as reality, it is quite a different reality than when we view an analog print. With the digital, we are looking at a compilation of thousands upon thousands of small, colored squares, whereas with the analog, we are looking at pieces of organic, randomly shaped grain that create the "tone imprint" Richtin previously mentioned. Ultimately, Richtin leaves it up to the reader whether they want to view this changed photography as a step up from analog, a step down, or just a change.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Jorge Ribalta is a little more opinionated in his discussion of the analog and digital, but he bases his ideas of this changed medium on the same points that Richtin makes when talking about photography's transition. Ribalta seems to be more biased toward the solidity of the analog, but won't deny the fact that photography is no longer analog and needs to then be rendered accordingly because we cannot keep looking at the digital in the same way in which we viewed the analog. One of his main arguments for the analog is that there is a direct relationship between the object and the photo and the viewer, that a viewer looks at this analogous photograph and sees that this tree exists in this spot at the exact point in time the shutter opened and closed, and now here it is, shown before them on paper in a realistic duplication of that instance in nature. However with these digital ideas, they become disposable: the photographer can take a picture of the tree, delete it, take another, delete it, take another, merge it with another photo, and present it as a realistic moment in time. In doing so, the relationship with the photo has been distanced and the linearity has been broken. This is the reality of the digital. Okay, says Ribalta, since "Documentary realism is the status power of photography" then we need to come up with a separate realism to pair with digital photography. With photoshop and the ability to edit photographs from their original form, the analogous reality disappears, and photography dies. This is where the photographic (the immortal aura of photography in its cultural and social effects of on people; photography's ghost, still floating among society) is born, in that we need realism, and we will always view photography as realistic (well, maybe we won't always view it as realistic, but as of now, we still heavily do), then we must reinvent this realism. Ribalta's idea is for a molecular realism. This molecular realism is based off of Felix Guattari's view of the changes in political revolution, going from a unified, homogeneous group, to a "molecular revolution" where these political view points scatter and each take up a separate stance. Ribalta states "A molecular realism involves overcoming the opposition between documentary and fiction and <b>reinventing documentary</b> methods based on the negotiation of the relationship between author [photographer] and spectator." As an example of this molecular realism in practice, Ribalta uses Jo Spence, who made the statement "If we truly want to democratize how meanings are produced in images, we need to realize that all those practices available to the professional, from the high street photographer, through to advertising photography, to avant-garde image/text art photography can all be appropriated right into the living room." Basically, Spence is saying that photographs can be created with a meaning that embodies the way the average person may see the image. In doing so, this molecular realism is put into play and the way people view the realism in photographs can be controlled in the way the photographs are taken. Again, Ribalta sees this analog-to-digital in relation to reality as a call for changing the way in which we view these photographs and their reality.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Also touching on photography's indexical role, is Corey Dzenko. His main argument is that yes, although photography has gone from a film base to a digital base, and although the tools for its creation have changed, the act of viewing the photographs has not. He says that digital photographs are still read as reality; that people don't look at a digital photograph and immediately question its legitimacy based solely on the fact that it was captured or rendered digitally. Dzenko does admit that whereas the analog is straight documentary, and it is physical and carries with it the weight of substance, that digital is merely representational, symbolic, and iconic. However, he goes on to discuss the ways in which we have moved from the analog to the digital, and that it has not been a jump, but a slow, somewhat smooth integration of the two processes into each other. He gives the example of the newspapers (ones that have no print versions now but are solely online), where people read the same stories and see the same photographs set up in the same style and the same places on their screen as they would see on the physical paper. The title is still at the top, with the date below it, and below that, columns of text with photographic integration. The process of reading the article is the exact same, albeit the fact that one is now looking at a lit screen instead of physical newsprint. Dzenko says that because we have smoothly integrated ourselves into this digital realm, we still view analog and digital photographs the same, and take each of their realities as, well, reality. His views do differ greatly from those of Ritchin and Ribalta in saying that there really is not much of a change, but he does also admit that sometimes people do not take digital as reality and that there is the potential for people to not believe digital in the future, although at this point, this has not yet widely happened (and he references the fact that even analog photography has not always been completely truthful in its representation of "reality).</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;"> I have had somewhat similar views to all three writers here, differing at some points but agreeing in others. As for the index of photography being that it is perceived as real, I have always had a problem with this. Even in the late 19th century, photographs were being staged (people were dressed in indian costumes and told to pose with a gun behind a rock wall, or dressed as a "poor Egyptian" and posed amongst massive Egyptian sculptures, etc) and these photographs were told off as reality, that this is what the world is like because how can it not be? We have photos!! So even if the photograph shows exactly what was in front of the camera when the shutter opened and closed, I don't believe that this should be taken for a different type of reality. I am not yet sure what type of reality that would be, but I believe that there is a <i>photographic</i> reality (this unaltered image of what was burned into the film) and an <i>actual</i> reality (what is real outside of the frame; the reality that comes with the linearity of time). Because there is not just one umbrella of reality, nothing can then be taken as a perfect reproduction of an event in time (this also includes the fact that somebody is taking the photograph, and therefore chooses what to frame, what to crop out, the angle the photograph is taken at, the focal point, and later, whether it should be color or black and white). Not only can photography not be taken as a perfection of a representation of reality, but even things seen with our own eyes, without the barrier of a lens or ground glass, can be a warped sense of reality (magicians have been playing with this concept since, well, whenever perception of the eye was discovered. Maybe this is how Jesus performed "miracles"?) Anyway, in the discussion of analog versus digital <i>not</i> dealing with reality, I have mixed feelings. The pros and cons have been long talked about, with convenience, cost, tonality, crispness, quality, etc, but with these points, at least at the point we are at in the digital realm, it is all subjective and opinions. I do believe, however, that film will never be completely obsolete, albeit harder and harder and more expensive to find/use.</div>Class Blogshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06361471714844186037noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2652832806922201391.post-29741078443093905032010-10-11T09:57:00.000-07:002010-10-12T08:43:41.931-07:00Reinhardt and AzoulayThe two readings <i>Isn't This The Most Civil of Claims? </i>by Ariella Azoulay, as an essay for Gillian Laub's photographs entitled "Testimony", and Mark Reinhardt's <i>Picturing violence: Aesthetics and The Anxiety of Critique</i> both break down how one sees a/o should see photographs that were taken to relay a message to the viewer. Though both quite different in claims, and both bringing different issues to the plate, the two readings do overlap slightly.<br />
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Reinhardt's focus is on the aesthetic of the images. Right off, he brings about questions of the possibility for the overpowering of aestheticism and what aesthetics really means. Because there was not a specific definition of "aesthetic" brought to the reading (Reinhardt states that it can be as narrow as beautification for pleasure and as open as sensory perception) and because the definition can encompass almost two complete opposite ideas, it seemed to me that the rest of his argument here seemed sort of arbitrary.<br />
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Since I have strong opinions that contradict Reinhardt's, I'll start with laying out some of what he said. He posed the problem that it is possible that a photograph's aestheticism may lessen the response of the viewer to the actual event within the image (and these images he is talking about are images of suffering). He uses the photographs from the prisoner abuse at Abu Graib as his first example of people's reactions to what photographs may show (not so much talking about aestheticism here, but more so how people respond to images of suffering alone). When these photos of torture were taken, they were not exactly to give people an update and documentary evidence of what is going on in the war and how it's happening, but they were being used as a secondary torture device: to exploit these people being tortured by showing the world their naked bodies being dragged, tied, or electrocuted, and sometimes even showing their faces to verify their identities to the world. These are not documentary, photojournalistic wartime photographs; they are methods of torture and bring up the questions 'Does our viewing of these photographs tell us anything or make us feel anything? Or do they just prolong the suffering of the individuals in the images? Are we making ourselves more knowledgeable of their situation, or are we simply adding to their humiliation?' For me, it was more of a moral debate about if I should view them to be informed (because they are events that, no matter how horrible, did happen), even if it prolongs the suffering of those pictured. I still do not have an answer to this, but I'm not sure there <i>is</i> a straightforward, no strings attached way to come to a conclusion about it. What I found interesting about others' views on the matter was the media's decisions of whether to show it or not, and their reasons for doing so. Some journals and newspapers said that the photographs were indecent for public eye because of nudity, and some showed the photographs but blurred the nudity, appearing to make these images more "socially acceptable". However, the faces of those in the images were not blurred. Is it not indecent to show the faces of those tortured and to reveal their identities to the world? And is the focus on respect more heavily weighed toward the viewers' emotions and sensitivity than to the subjects' sufferings?<br />
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Another part of this discussion that caught my attention was that there have been no photographs shown of dead or dying American soldiers. Based off of what Reinhardt stated about the "exotic" status of some of the dead Iraqis, it would seem that there is a social hierarchy in media, showing viewers that the most respect is granted to those nearest to us (Americans, and probably westerner's in general), and that as we get further away from our home, and into this "exotic" land, the people there are not as important and do not deserve our respect, so we will therefore have no qualms about showing straight photographs of Middle Easterners lying dead in a ditch (at this point, it seems that it would not matter the side that the dead were fighting for, but the fact that they are part of this misunderstood, exotic place, that they can be exploited openly). In this argument, it seems that the photographs sort of become unimportant. If the media is already determining what we as the public will find horrifying or gruesome and unacceptable to show on the nightly news, then does it matter what the images show? The photographs are not the ones giving us our emotional reactions at this point, it is the stories that we are told, the words that we hear, and the mental images we concoct.<br />
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So what happens when we <i>do</i> focus on the photographs and specifically what they show to us? Benjamin says that aesthetics show even the worst poverty as an object of enjoyment and spectacle. I completely disagree. Maybe it's because I'm a photographer and understand the formal qualities of an image and how they work into the aesthetic (that if the formality of an image is terrible, there will be hardly any aesthetic because the two go hand in hand), but I feel that if an image is aesthetically pleasing, I will be even more focused on the subject and the action taking place within the photograph. I will not be busy worrying about how I cannot see what his happening in the shadows because of poorly thought out lighting and I will not be anxious over the fingers and toes cut off on the framing. If it is aesthetically pleasing, my senses will be at a happy subconscious equilibrium, leaving the rest of my conscious thought to analyze and break down the subject's predicament/suffering. Again, maybe this is because I am a photographer and know of these formal qualities, but this was difficult for me to read because it seems that if people can look at a photograph of a starved, dying, skeletal man crawling across a dirt ground and only think "Look at how the framing lets you see into the distance and how the diffused lighting really softens up the look of the image, and how the man's limbs create great leading lines, etc", then we have lost faith in humanity. I guess I am slightly lost in how this debate can even arise, that aesthetics can diffuse how somebody views suffering. But, this is just how I have responded to reading this article of Reinhardt's, and we'll now move forward.<br />
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Reinhardt does bring up a few more examples of images by James Nachtwey and Sebastiao Salgado, as well as a few other photographers, and begins to sort of counteract what he had been talking about in relation to Benjamin's claim of the aesthetic. Reinhardt poses the fact that there can be an acknowledgment of the aesthetic qualities, but that they don't rid the image of its meaning. That with aestheticism in an image, the technical aspect is removed and the viewer is then focused on their sensibility toward the image. Or maybe that it's not dealing with the aesthetic at all, but the fact that it is a photograph. That it is a document of something that really happened (or according to Azoulay, is currently happening). Reinhardt then mentions Sontag's views in "On Photography" and how there may come to be a monotony in viewing so many images of pain and suffering. To this, Allan Sekula suggests that we use text to break this routine way of viewing a photograph and moving onward with our lives. Sekula believes that by adding text, we may be able to view these photographs more so as a documentation and be taken a step back from the absorption of the images, read the text, and then create a relation to what we have read with what we see. Alfredo Jaar attempts to do just that with his "The Eyes of Gutete Emerita" where he displays a minute and a half of text, and then just a flash of an image. His intentions are to get people to stand in front of the piece longer, to really let it sink in, and to be intrigued by the quick flash of the image. Potentially, this may be a way to break that "pornography" of viewing images, but this almost seems to me to be less about the image and less about photography as it is about the creation of mental imagery and a connection to a story (i.e. journalism, not photography). However, having not seen the exhibition of this piece in person, I cannot make a claim to how this piece verifies itself.<br />
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The next part that Reinhardt delves into is the aesthetic in relation to two photographs about September 11, 2001. The first photograph is from Joel Meyerowitz, depicting the clean up efforts at Ground Zero (though showing no people) and showing it in such a way with the dust and smoke rising up into the bright sky with almost a painterly effect. The second photograph is one by Thomas Ruff, who, although he did not take the photograph, appropriated an image of the burning twin towers, then blew the image up to quite a large size and increased the size of the pixels as well. Reinhardt's argument dealing with the aesthetic here is that because of the pleasing aesthetic in Meyerowitz's image, it doesn't make the viewer think. It doesn't bring about this revelation of pain and suffering that he believes one would get out of viewing Ruff's image. Here, he believes that the image demands attention and illudes to people being in the buildings currently, suffering and burning, and that as a viewer we would have a stronger response to this image that would not be considered aesthetic, with its elephant sized pixels. Though I can see where he's coming from, I would have to disagree yet again. Maybe if one is looking at these images without any prior knowledge of 9/11, they may see the images this way, unaware that Meyerowitz's photograph shows hundreds of uncovered bodies, some dead, some alive, and that Ruff's image would appear as a real-time photograph of people being burned in these smoking buildings. But in a comparison of the two photographs and with prior knowledge taken into account, I feel that Meyerowitz's photograph of the smoking Ground Zero may bring about the same, if not more, response in relation to the suffering of those people knowing that thousands of tons of metal and concrete (being shown hosed down) are burying 2500 people.<br />
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The last part of viewing photographs that Reinhardt talks about is the acknowledgment. He says that when viewing images of people, there needs to be a call for acknowledgment. This would mean that there doesn't have to be an explanation of the image and what is going on, but that the subject is showing the viewer what his happening, and through this connection between the subject and viewer, there is acknowledgment. Without this acknowledgment, without this call for relation between the subject and audience, the image has failed. If there is no connection reaching out to the viewer, there is a lack of the meaning of the image coming through in the understanding of the photograph by the viewer. This, in essence, is what Azoulay looks for in photographs.<br />
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This essay by Azoulay is a prerequisite to last week's reading on <i>The Civil Contract of Photography</i>, and is a more upfront, simplified "starter" to what she delves into in <i>The Civil Contract</i>. Azoulay starts out by saying that when a photograph is taken (and here she is talking mostly of Gillian Laub's photographs), the attention to detail and objects and framing within the image create this acknowledgment between the subject and viewer. That with these little clues of the subject's life, we can relate in some way or another, and we can get to know the subject through the interaction between these details, and through the interaction between the subject and the photographer (how the picture was taken. This can be seen in a lot of Zwelethu Mthethwa's work and Fazal Sheikh's work, shown below). With this understanding that we are all a part of the human condition, and that we all suffer and want to reach out to somebody and share with them what we are feeling, we begin to realize and relate to each other in ways different than those bounded by our social/geographical/religious rulings. When we break "sides" and show that we are all human, this connection is made even stronger and the borders of the photographs seem to dissolve until we are standing next to this person and understanding their pain. This is acknowledgment that Reinhardt was talking about, but Azoulay takes it that step further to look past the photograph as an object and to view the people just as that: people.<br />
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I really enjoy Azoulay's understanding of the human condition and the way we should look at photographs to acknowledge and watch the people within them in a neutral ground, especially in comparison to the way Reinhardt views acknowledgment in the more simple terms of a recognition, or a fleeting response. In the diagram below, I have attempted to visualize how these two analyze the ways in which viewers come to acknowledge the subject of a photograph.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvMeKk1CfVAWGuBHQbUh9QvfIMVfpQGgQwACf8ICyDAfZ0siXtIqgjQj55ZSoe_lrKiSyb97Kt1y85XPi16YMQvTbK8xSd6rkXeSzpswlB1d8pzdPA6hr1sGBHeSaDjVgKAReVchH0wbQ/s1600/Blog5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="307" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvMeKk1CfVAWGuBHQbUh9QvfIMVfpQGgQwACf8ICyDAfZ0siXtIqgjQj55ZSoe_lrKiSyb97Kt1y85XPi16YMQvTbK8xSd6rkXeSzpswlB1d8pzdPA6hr1sGBHeSaDjVgKAReVchH0wbQ/s400/Blog5.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />
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Zwelethu Mthethwa:<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiocK_0gfp5K62WDfisv7chAOeew_NrttqOmRS57ndLkS-RUFIy82F2DeMpvW0ioKApc4ADcnZkq27NXA8cVYzU8pHiT1O5EZJJeGhp6n2aqCRKTdYWbPpb6mLDqtMW38ijPdUBSA-Tt_E/s1600/Zwelethu_Mthethwa_4-e1268452681469.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="237" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiocK_0gfp5K62WDfisv7chAOeew_NrttqOmRS57ndLkS-RUFIy82F2DeMpvW0ioKApc4ADcnZkq27NXA8cVYzU8pHiT1O5EZJJeGhp6n2aqCRKTdYWbPpb6mLDqtMW38ijPdUBSA-Tt_E/s320/Zwelethu_Mthethwa_4-e1268452681469.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRkEUc03uxDdax_c1CDPw02rjlrzrHL_e2EiLgaFCVH2xa9KiM5JvWxPtNwYzz_Uee_Ks3srz86Z977TktgGkIsl5o1e33zQRw6xdZR6cBVeA5NuvY1wwbsrIdJ5zd9c7Q8HoOeXQasxw/s1600/2765677688_9f00430eec_b.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="239" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRkEUc03uxDdax_c1CDPw02rjlrzrHL_e2EiLgaFCVH2xa9KiM5JvWxPtNwYzz_Uee_Ks3srz86Z977TktgGkIsl5o1e33zQRw6xdZR6cBVeA5NuvY1wwbsrIdJ5zd9c7Q8HoOeXQasxw/s320/2765677688_9f00430eec_b.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
Fazal Sheikh:<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQL-yvNv11heb4PvzyPpWp1RyJUTkjJhbwPNF3CwAZgZnaSbllLzbbyCqm9v3GuRuzwC-HV8FVkF03PrfJCu48lDU7ZeP5UI5OwE4mM__44a05AUcm6twuk6SMaYvDZXpmVtBvA6pnDL4/s1600/004.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="217" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQL-yvNv11heb4PvzyPpWp1RyJUTkjJhbwPNF3CwAZgZnaSbllLzbbyCqm9v3GuRuzwC-HV8FVkF03PrfJCu48lDU7ZeP5UI5OwE4mM__44a05AUcm6twuk6SMaYvDZXpmVtBvA6pnDL4/s320/004.jpg" width="320" /></a></div> ...with...<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJT0_saB73SWHuuqx3mH2i1ug0Pt_GxMBT6uOlbpi7SMX0Hy_2g4aM-IwIiYKeyklcfKMt3v6vCXQz8nWqhWnc2V3pqF2bTc3GqByfpXhg_RmLpUVdL3nG_22fQOL2B9qpPxNdNsowbog/s1600/028.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJT0_saB73SWHuuqx3mH2i1ug0Pt_GxMBT6uOlbpi7SMX0Hy_2g4aM-IwIiYKeyklcfKMt3v6vCXQz8nWqhWnc2V3pqF2bTc3GqByfpXhg_RmLpUVdL3nG_22fQOL2B9qpPxNdNsowbog/s320/028.jpg" width="234" /></a></div><br />
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*I'd like to apologize for 1) how opinionated I feel this blog post was. The Reinhardt article made me quite frustrated. and 2) some of my ideas where not fully expressed. I took notes as I read and then went back to search the document for some of the key words, but the Reinhardt document didn't recognize the pdf as having text and I was not able to find some of the points in the article to help articulate my discussion. Sorry guys!Class Blogshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06361471714844186037noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2652832806922201391.post-438350722438395092010-10-04T09:48:00.000-07:002010-10-04T09:48:37.949-07:00Sontag and Azoulay<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeturnlCbn-0ocuGWgup5Se24oqb2F1iMlnFtGy1tNxaO8CLmKOj4T52wIfCS9LmeHHwpRjj62G2kN6TRnTNOiCyF_bD_Wv1npoSb5oTgiHU83X8pjgSudPck6pXOQA2t-gUXiaocVUJ8/s1600/Blog4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="247" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeturnlCbn-0ocuGWgup5Se24oqb2F1iMlnFtGy1tNxaO8CLmKOj4T52wIfCS9LmeHHwpRjj62G2kN6TRnTNOiCyF_bD_Wv1npoSb5oTgiHU83X8pjgSudPck6pXOQA2t-gUXiaocVUJ8/s320/Blog4.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
The excerpts of Susan Sontag in <i>Regarding The Pain of Others</i> and Ariella Azoulay in <i>The Civil Contract of Photography</i> both take on drastically different views that what we have just read about in regard to Fried and his views on photography. Briefly, both of these women are more focused on what Fried would call the "theatrical" quality of the images, or what the viewer is supposed to take away from the photographs. To both Sontag and Azoulay, these responses are part of what make the photographs <i>real</i> which shows a harsh contrast to Fried's desire for anti-theatrical, aesthetic images.<br />
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Susan Sontag had previously written a series of essays entitled <i>On Photography</i> which she wrote in 1977 and came forward with the issue of photography showing traumatic events and gruesome happenings. Sontag believed then that photographs such as these, that we see constantly streaming through the news, ultimately numb us to their horrors and we are unable to look at them with the same emotions and disbelief as we originally had. However, 25 years later, she publishes a book entitled <i>Regarding The Pain of Others</i> where she basically discredits her previous views. In the excerpt that we read, Sontag revisits how we see photographs and why we have the reactions we do.<br />
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Though she says we cannot group the entirety of humankind based on one social group, she does find that there is a problem with the way those in "cushy" lifestyles view news photographs. Here she says that these people live in a "society of spectacle [where] each situation has to be turned into a spectacle to be real (interesting) to us." The example she uses are celebrities, and how they work for an image (not reality) and that the media then represents these images <i>as reality</i>. Basically, Sontag tries to show us how skewed our perceptions of reality are...at least for those of us who are not worried about our houses being blown up everyday and shell casings landing in our front yards. Now that more people have more access than ever to images that show traumatic events, it may seem that this super saturation of images <i>would</i> (like she previously wrote) callous us to their impact. However, to this point, Sontag says now that it's not that people are responding less, but that they just don't like the feelings that are brought up when viewing the images, and choose to look away or change the channel, or put down the paper/magazine. They choose to view the created realities of where Britney Spears went shopping yesterday and what she bought at the grocery store and what her children are wearing and if she put on makeup or not. Images like this don't make people feel uncomfortable. They don't invoke thought or response; they allow people to see <i>this</i> as "reality" and accept it, and move on with their day.<br />
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I believe, as does Sontag, that viewing images that show actual reality (events that I don't even have the ability to fully understand or conceptualize) are so important for everybody, especially the comfortable, cushy social classes, to view and experience. Images like this show us what human beings are capable of. They show us what we may not want to see, but what we must see. They are not there to make us feel more or to take on the suffering (although the victims will sometimes want this), they are to inform us, to make us question, to make us think, to make is realize, to make us respond (very much what Fried would consider theatricality). Once we realize the full scope of what human beings are capable of doing, we will have reached what Sontag refers to as full moral and psychological adulthood. At this point, we can no longer claim naiveness, or innocence. We are aware, and even if we choose to turn off our televisions, we still know.<br />
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One quote that caught my attention in Sontag's writing, was where she said "If we could do something about what the images show, we might not care as much about these issues." My first reaction was to wholeheartedly disagree, because I felt that by being able to help, we'd invest part of our conscience into helping and in doing so, become even more attached to the issue at hand. However, when I stopped to think about it, I realized that if they were problems that we could simply view, help, and be done with, they would be out of our mind as a situation that was once not okay, but now it's okay and we don't have to think about it anymore. It was a simple bump in life and now everything is good. Because these horrendous issues are 9 times out of 10 things that we cannot do anything about, we must then live knowing that these atrocities will continue as we eat our warm meals at night, take our hot showers, and climb under our soft, down comforters, able to sleep soundly without machine guns ringing outside our doorsteps. With these issues always at hand, we are not calloused by them, but even more so affected by their presence and semi-conscious nagging throughout the day. These are things that we cannot do anything about, and that we don't understand; things that we don't get; things that we will never know. These horrors that come to us through photographs are not part of our experience, but they do stick with us in memories. They are what is real.<br />
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One problem that Sontag brought up in dealing with the viewing of the images, is just that: how and where they are viewed. In an art gallery, where it is the norm for photographs to be shown, there is an air of a social event. People come with their families, look at the photographs, then go out to lunch and a movie, and maybe some ice cream. Sure, maybe they were struck by some of the images, maybe they were upset by some of them, maybe they questioned the events a little bit, but it was not an individual, reflective experience. They came with their children. It was an afternoon activity. They didn't sit down in front of each photograph and really let themselves get lost in the questions that it may arise. These photographs were hung in a gallery. They are art. And they will be viewed as art. Sontag offers that magazines and books may be more proper ways to view photographs, as one can sit in the privacy of their own home and spend as much time as they'd like looking at each photograph. However, there are a few problems which you would run into here:<br />
<ol><li>There are advertisements in most every magazine, and these advertisements are sometimes using a photograph and paired up right next to one of the traumatic photographs, so as we're looking at dying children suffering from malnutrition in Africa, we also are seeing how beautiful and soft Jergens can make our skin. The photograph sort of loses its impact.</li>
<li>One always ends up closing the book/magazine. No matter how long they spend looking at the images, the book gets closed up and put away. That's not to say that the impact of viewing the events isn't still with us, but it will fade as we go back to our daily routine in which we do not experience anything even mildly close to what the people in the photographs are going through simultaneously.</li>
<li>By viewing the images, we are simply just viewing them. We are not really experiencing the events. We cannot understand what is truly going on. However, the point is also made that even if we were in the war zone, we would still be just a spectator, viewing bombs go off in front of us and people dying beside us. Though it would have greater of an impact upon us, we are always just viewing unless we are directly involved in the conflict, and at that point, photographs of the event in which we are involved become arbitrary because they cannot show fully the extent of what has been experienced.</li>
</ol>There will always be these slight discrepancies. Regardless, Ariella Azoulay believes that we can still draw plenty of understanding from these photographs.<br />
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Azoulay does mention Sontag a few times in this excerpt, and starts out by referencing Sontag's <i>On Photography</i>, saying that photographs cannot become exhaustive because there will always be somewhat of a mystery between the subject and the photographer (I will go into more detail about this in a minute). Azoulay begins by telling us about her childhood and how she experienced a bombing when she was young, and how a lot of the images she has in her head are not from actual photographs, but from events which she experienced and then created these mental images, or from things that her mother would say (usually regarding Arabs), which she would create images for in her mind. She believes that there are two types of these mental images:<br />
<ol><li>The mental image was ingrained because of an obvious traumatic event.</li>
<li>The mental image was ingrained without the person even realizing it at the time, but will later be discovered in some corner of the mind, complete with its trauma and impact.</li>
</ol>In these ways, memories (or mental images) are the strongest form of imagery. In looking at a photograph, one is forced to see exactly what the photographer framed, and the vantage point at which they framed it. One is forced to watch (I will also explain watch vs. see further on) this person at this specific moment the photograph was snapped, and all of these factors may bias the photograph and cause it to be seen one way or another. However, with mental imagery, the images were impacted without a third party in between the event and the viewer (the one whose mind the images are impacted in). There is no dictation of framing or vantage point or lighting, etc. There is the event how it happened and that is that.<br />
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Briefly, Azoulay touches on advertisement in slight contrast to Sontag. Where Sontag says that advertisements show a comparison of both the image of the advertisement and the images showing reality, Azoulay says that there is not even a comparison. That the advertisement photograph is nothing but a picture. It does not invite the viewer to think about it or study it. It is not even close to the same "medium" as an actual photograph. Azoulay's view of photographs is that one needs to view the image and understand what it is, to question its details and to become immersed in its mystery. She sees no point in looking at a photograph's aesthetic. In this point, I am almost tempted to agree, which came as quite a surprise for me. Previously, I had the idea that if you were to take two photographs of the same object/person, one photograph being aesthetically pleasing and the other more of the snapshot variety, that I would lose complete interest in the non aesthetic image because there would be small missing pieces of the aesthetic qualities that have been pushed on me for 2 years now going to school as a photographer. I felt that maybe the inattention to cropping and framing would keep catching my eye more so than the actual subject matter of the image. Azoulay has called on me to rethink this. Although I still think that photographs need to be taken with some sort of knowledge of what is aesthetically pleasing, I feel that now I will look at photographs more in the realm of "what is actually going on in this image" versus how good of a photographer the person was who took the image. This changed way of viewing photographs will obviously be determinate on the subject matter of the image. If it is an image of flowers or food or some unimportant moment in time, like a fountain going off, I will still be looking for the aesthetics first because I know that in taking photographs like this, the aesthetic is really all there is. If the image is of some sort of important event or a portrait or something not so flat (like flowers), I will probably now look at it with different eyes. And these eyes, Azoulay believes, need to look at these photographs (she talks of photographs of people only from this point on) and not just see the people in them, but watch these people.<br />
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One should not see these photographs as documentation of the person having been there, but watching them as they are still standing there. In seeing the photographs in the latter way, there is less of a chance of immoral views. We cannot then break down the photograph as a historical documentation, but as a real time happening, and therefore must apply our immediate morals to the image because it is, in a way, happening right now.<br />
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Azoulay calls on the viewer to look at the issues in the photographs through the looks, gazes, and actions of those in the photographs, and to see the subjects as people, as human beings, not as a designated "enemy" or race, class, gender, or religion. She states that we are all citizens of the world of photography, and deems this "The Civil Contract of Photography." The Civil Contract of Photography is meant to break nations' boundaries which threaten to break apart the citizens, and to place all the aspects of photography and the creation of the photograph (the camera, the photographer, the subject, and the viewer) into a neutrally "governed" area: photography. When viewing a photograph, we become part of this community. It is common knowledge that nothing here is written in stone, and that we all know what to expect and what we need to do in viewing the photographs. It is not a place of prejudices and separating subjects into what is right and wrong, good and bad, but to view them as people and to try to better understand their situations. We need to approach the photograph and its meaning as an unintentional effect of the encounter between the camera, photographer, subject, and viewer. In doing so, one will be able to continuously break apart a photograph, finding new things that add meaning and depth to the image and the humanity of the person in the image (this goes back to how Azoulay said there is no way a photograph can become exhaustive because there is always more to discover).<br />
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Focusing greatly on the actual subject of the images, Azoulay sets up a discussion of the intentions of the photographed. The subject has agreed to be photographed as they were, and in doing so, they are sending a message to all viewers about their situation. This brings up a slur of questions. Is the subject looking through the photograph to <i>me</i>? Is the subject looking through the photograph to anybody willing to view it? Is the subject aware that anybody will even see this photograph? Does the subject want me to understand their situation, or just experience it through the watching of the photograph? Is the subject calling on me/the viewer to respond and take action? Though the answers may never be quite clear, there are some images that are more straightforward. Azoulay describes the image of the rioter holding the broken lock of his store after paratroopers broke in to stop the protesting (Photo 1). He has chosen to be photographed. He is "posing" for the photograph in holding out the broken lock. In his choosing to be photographed, he has taken control of the situation. He is voicing his situation and not just accepting defeat of what happened. The immediacy of this man's gaze is calling on the viewer to take action and to respond, which contrasts Sontag's idea that we cannot do anything to help this situation. However, maybe it is not that we are called on to help, but that we are called on to understand that this has happened, that this is happening, and that this will happen again. In The Civil Contract of Photography, its citizens call forth the viewers to see them as they are and to gain some understanding of what they are going through. These photographic citizens are governed only by the viewer and the photographic community (not their native government), and they do not bring with them status, ownership, practices, or their institutions. They come as equals and call out to be seen as the individuals that they are.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://simonsteachingblog.wordpress.com/2009/12/07/photography-citizenship-and-the-israeli-occupation/">Photo 1 - Anat Saragusti, Hebron 1982</a></div>Class Blogshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06361471714844186037noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2652832806922201391.post-33712263028490391202010-09-27T10:01:00.000-07:002010-09-27T10:07:08.585-07:00Ch. 3: Jeff Wall, Wittgenstein, and The EverydayThe main focus of this section of Fried's <i>Why Photoraphy Matters As Art As Never Before</i> focuses mainly on some of Jeff Wall's photographs, what Jeff Wall has to say about these photographs, and how these "everyday" images mirror the concepts of Wittgenstein's thought experiment and that of the absorptivity.<br />
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Wall, Fried feels, has moved from what he would call "obviously staged images" into images that Wall refers to as "neo-realist" or "near documentary" (he describes near documentary as scenes that once existed but were not photographed at the time, so he recreates them as they seemed to be and shoots them as if they were happening in real time.) Though he does shoot some actual documentary images, Wall is sure to label them as such and keep them separate from his other forms of photography. The neo-realist title that Wall gives his photographs comes from the lack of their obvious stagedness that his previous photos, like <i>Dead Troops Talk </i>(Photo 1)<i> </i>and <i>Picture For Women </i>(Photo 2)<i>,</i> readily show to the viewer. (Though he does say that art should show somewhat how it came to be, which for him, would be to let in on some of the stagedness in his photographs.) However, if one was not told that Wall's neo-realist images were not straight photography, the photographs might be mistaken for his actual documentary photographs. The reason for this, and the way Wall creates this sense of realism, is by using everyday scenes/actions/ideas and weaving through, almost seamlessly, the concept of absorptivity.<br />
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The absorptive, as Fried talked about in chapter one in some detail, relates to the theatrical/anti-theatrical aspects of the actions within the image. Does the subject know we're viewing him/her? If they are aware of our viewing presence, are they pretending to ignore that we even exist in this viewing, or are they acting in the absorptive for our entertainment, purely as an act? All of these questions were brought up in Fried's third beginning toward the end of his chapter 1, but are still valid questions when dealing with the absorptive in imagery (and Wittgenstein brings up a thought activity relating to the extraordinary experience of viewing the absorptive activity of another, which I will talk about further ahead.) As for Wall, he decides that these activities will be absorptive activities, but that the viewer will play a role in the images as well (in other words, the subject/s are basically aware that they are being viewed, but act as if they are not seen.) In doing so, Wall is able to create these images, over the course of 2 weeks per image, that appear to be almost candid shots of somebody who (to the audience's point of view) may not be fully aware that they are being photographed and seem to be fully absorbed in their everyday activity (photo 3 <i>Morning Cleaner</i>, photo 4 <i>Housekeeping</i>, photo 5 <i>Woman with a Covered Tray</i>).<br />
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The "everyday" that Wall portrays in his images is not without reasons that relate directly back to the miracle of art and how it can be viewed and looked upon in different ways by different viewers. Wittgenstein here says that it is remarkable to look upon something and see it as art versus looking upon the same thing without thinking of art at all. In the former, one may see that the "everyday" actions are a miracle to look upon when seen with artist's eyes, but in the latter, the appearance of the image or object becomes just that: an object. It is not meaningful, it is not mind opening, it is not a miracle, it is simply <i>an object</i>. Because Wall's images are meant to be viewed as art, he is then giving the viewer a phenomenal gift: seeing an everyday action that appears to not yet be contaminated by the presence of an immediate viewer. This brings me to Wittgenstein's "thought activity" (see above diagram). Ludwig Wittgenstein, an Austrian philosopher in the first half of the 20th century, created a thought activity that goes like this: imagine you are in a theatre and on stage there is a man pacing back and forth, lighting a cigarette, sitting down, completely unaware of an audience at all. This man is doing the things that he does when nobody is around to see them done. In this activity, there is a barrier between the audience and the pacing man, where the man is actually in his flat, performing his everyday tasks to himself, and the audience is able to view this as if it were being presented on a stage in front of them. It is something we cannot ever view, this purely individual action, because although we've happened upon people acting in the everyday by themselves, the moment where they do not realize we are there lasts only briefly, and we are not able to view it in the same perspective (with the same admiration for its beauty and pureness) as we would looking upon this man with the lit cigarette. The ideas in this thought activity are directly mimicked in Wall's photographs of the everyday (whether he knew about Wittgenstein's ideas or not), and these photographs can therefore be viewed in the same manner: with wonder and a realization of its untouched beauty.<br />
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Jeff Wall creates these images of the everyday, of people being absorbed in these everyday scenes, of the beauty (when viewed as art and from with an artist's mind) of these previously unobserved, pure moments. Fried quoted Heidegger earlier in the chapter as saying that our absorption in the everyday is essentially our "falling" into the world and as Pippin points out, our self-conscious realization of how we go about in that world and how/where we choose so situate ourselves into said world. We become so absorbed in the world, we tend to miss its phenomenal aspects. Wall seems to fills these moments that we miss with his images, almost as if to show us that it's not too late to still marvel at these moments of intrinsic beauty.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://slavin.tumblr.com/post/174916081/dead-troops-talk-a-vision-after-an-ambush-of-a">Photo 1 - Dead Troops Talk</a></td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/jeffwall/rooms/room1.shtm">Photo 2 - Picture For Women</a></td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/jeffwall/rooms/room12.shtm">Photo 3 - Morning Cleaning</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3fGga1pN-K5YBXRUWrA_jeer-HXNRoTY3rHs2tuDL6sp3D_6aQpJ7sRPdoh79yi8SEscgGL4dK_J-fOY4ZVCcg9YvDtaMrdKRbEVdqjde2QSS9w2wxeRodi0VUYh17Tp5N876ttMdHuI/s1600/rm12_morning_cleaning_lrg.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="246" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgt7CYnUrV_NYj8y5SFdgaZlBtwimkskzxmYz_kiij3f2GbLkk1zw_tGCjMRtKGemyoPm4z9nVCcpdkEcstPJD4QiV9ilNn-3fugGfdPIMhpcEfv_B0Ufzv7_-nrmxTYPhyphenhyphenYsmSewFgcYo/s320/hires7815.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="320" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://pressetext.at/show_attach.mc?pte=030224003">Photo 4 - Housekeeping</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgt7CYnUrV_NYj8y5SFdgaZlBtwimkskzxmYz_kiij3f2GbLkk1zw_tGCjMRtKGemyoPm4z9nVCcpdkEcstPJD4QiV9ilNn-3fugGfdPIMhpcEfv_B0Ufzv7_-nrmxTYPhyphenhyphenYsmSewFgcYo/s1600/hires7815.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="253" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWHRyAtEQJC6Xe885dgoo3pPmTg2bMzCThctteeETeX0tz-W7r4-fIXjxX7CZM44wWvUWYkBcBcvH9hhWaTU_tx5cPZQfHxwprYDfXI-M8OztnIBFByeGzoSJkhioPUfZGBA2xycJhTKo/s320/rm11_woman_tray_lrg.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="320" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/jeffwall/rooms/room11.shtm">Photo 5 - Woman with a Covered Tray</a></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br />
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</tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWHRyAtEQJC6Xe885dgoo3pPmTg2bMzCThctteeETeX0tz-W7r4-fIXjxX7CZM44wWvUWYkBcBcvH9hhWaTU_tx5cPZQfHxwprYDfXI-M8OztnIBFByeGzoSJkhioPUfZGBA2xycJhTKo/s1600/rm11_woman_tray_lrg.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a></div>*As a side note, some of Wall's earlier works remind me a lot of Gregory Crewdson's photographs, what with the elaborate set ups, the amount of work needing to be done, etc: <i>Dead Troops Talk</i> is one of these, and <i>The Flooded Grave</i> is another, seen here.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="270" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIEXdbecUvnxQjlTAcPRgbgFbIZB23DxwI0wGdv5vhrbr21F6Undkg4vo6XAvZ2lD-Jlim3LP4TfMQUlU2Kl01mNmMtsBSjl_qw6FRT2EEarpsmuLoSAmLDxRMeL1lIYRvkXgbgUhmkm4/s320/flooded.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="320" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://faculty.cua.edu/johnsong/hsct101/Wall/wall-hsct.html">The Flooded Grave</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIEXdbecUvnxQjlTAcPRgbgFbIZB23DxwI0wGdv5vhrbr21F6Undkg4vo6XAvZ2lD-Jlim3LP4TfMQUlU2Kl01mNmMtsBSjl_qw6FRT2EEarpsmuLoSAmLDxRMeL1lIYRvkXgbgUhmkm4/s1600/flooded.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="256" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_ojvukAhI_h2lEBZqH-pDUZeba5jugZC_j3Pe0zQagWOTP7h7cWIn5Ncp3bE5iFVeitL7Zaq0PzU7dg482eiUVhyM0MiYspvJr-SKZdYysv0xDikPa1QGEkIPoDjJyV0XyvPmJlLzx2g/s320/00027gyt.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="320" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://sarahh.net/blog/?p=64">Gregory Crewdson - Untitled (Ophelia)</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_ojvukAhI_h2lEBZqH-pDUZeba5jugZC_j3Pe0zQagWOTP7h7cWIn5Ncp3bE5iFVeitL7Zaq0PzU7dg482eiUVhyM0MiYspvJr-SKZdYysv0xDikPa1QGEkIPoDjJyV0XyvPmJlLzx2g/s1600/00027gyt.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="219" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEin1MuhuZQuDlPA1kwTEEEfJglk1G-SxwbD56r_vf9aTGHWFOQkB2clrkTmLEkYJ7ISL9k3I2boQBDYX51JbRYXWwUle82dq1ap80k8jrUZAoxq9IYO6i-nXpWwI8KEf9ubjJUdJWYk01c/s320/gregory-crewdson-amstaged_0305.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="320" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://georgiaperryphotography.blogspot.com/2010_06_01_archive.html">Gregory Crewdson - Untitled</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEin1MuhuZQuDlPA1kwTEEEfJglk1G-SxwbD56r_vf9aTGHWFOQkB2clrkTmLEkYJ7ISL9k3I2boQBDYX51JbRYXWwUle82dq1ap80k8jrUZAoxq9IYO6i-nXpWwI8KEf9ubjJUdJWYk01c/s1600/gregory-crewdson-amstaged_0305.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a></div>The cinematic effect is prominent more so in Crewdson's work, as he strives to make his images very dramatic and set up, but I found that Wall, especially in <i>Dead Troops Talk</i>, does a bit of the same in the stagedness.Class Blogshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06361471714844186037noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2652832806922201391.post-858147472415390692010-09-20T09:58:00.000-07:002010-09-20T09:58:21.881-07:00Fried (Intro and Ch. 1): The Audience.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwbQpHITOZKG39HwtflB03vexBiCV-hk-LkT85Qng129ClEtNJduSd884Z3jWEv7EZ6oAfIn5T7oLDj27Sv_VkeHJ8YnVkiO9RRWSW7EYYjGhGHwk45FClMrGrzJRJY42W4crsNUSNcR4/s1600/IMG.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwbQpHITOZKG39HwtflB03vexBiCV-hk-LkT85Qng129ClEtNJduSd884Z3jWEv7EZ6oAfIn5T7oLDj27Sv_VkeHJ8YnVkiO9RRWSW7EYYjGhGHwk45FClMrGrzJRJY42W4crsNUSNcR4/s320/IMG.jpg" /></a></div>In the first chapter of his book <i>Why Photography Matters As Art As Never Before, </i>Michael Fried Breaks down his discussion into what he calls "The Three Beginnings". These three beginnings each touch upon the validity of the audience, and the effect upon the art pieces (mainly photographs, but his metaphor is discussing voyeurism through writings) when an audience views them.<br />
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This first "beginning" focuses mainly on the theatricality of photography, specifically in Cindy Sherman's <i>Untitled Film Stills</i>, Hiroshi Sugimoto's <i>Movie Theaters</i>, and Jeff Wall's <i>Movie Audience</i>, and the tension between their theatricality and the lack thereof. The above diagram indicates each of these photographer's works on a scale from theatrical to non-theatrical. Starting with Jeff Wall's <i>Movie Audience</i>, we can see that there are seven people who appear to be looking up at a movie. However, the belief that they are actually looking at a real movie screen in an actual theater (as the title would like you to "believe") fades instantly as the viewer notices the perfectly even lighting on each subject's face, and the brightness of it compared to an actual movie. There is also a hairlight behind each subject, slightly illuminating the backs of their heads as well. These clues bring us out of the movie theater and into a photo studio, where the people are posing for Wall purely for the creation of the image. This "stagedness", as Fried puts it, is what makes this work theatrical. However, in a gallery setting, some of this theatricality fades out, as Wall puts these images on a lightbox and proceeds to place them above eye level, removing the connection one usually gets when staring directly at a photograph or art piece at eye level.<br />
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Next, Sherman's <i>Movie Stills</i> land somewhere right in the middle of the theatrical scale. Fried starts by giving us a description and reasons as to why Sherman's work is non-theatrical, regardless of the fact that she has created these scenes herself, of herself, with the intention to create scenes of nonexistent movies (which are usually non-theatrical, but I'll talk about that in a minute). She creates this work in a non-theatrical style by using lighting that appears to be natural lighting (or at least not over the top cliche movie-style lighting), she distances herself from the viewer by never looking through the photograph to us, or even acknowledging our presence, and she will sometimes distance herself (scale-wise) in the photograph to be further away from the lens, and therefore further away from the viewer. However, Fried then goes on to say that, although these are all valid points, there are some things that we cannot deny. For instance, Sherman does not bother to cover up the fact that she is indeed creating these scenes and staging a "reality" that does not exist. She will often times leave the shutter release in her hand to show you this. Here we can see this tension that her work draws between the lines of theatrical and non-theatrical.<br />
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Hiroshi Sugimoto's <i>Movie Theaters</i> falls closest to the non-theatrical side in comparison to the other two photographer's works. These theaters show us what an entire movie looks like in a single exposure. As one looks closer at the image, they will notice that this brilliant white screen has illuminated slightly the room in which the screen is located. The soft glow on the rest of the theater is enough to make clear that there is no audience in the chairs. Sugimoto does not allude to any existence of audience within these theaters, past, present, or future, or to the audience looking at these photographs. There is no connection between the viewer and the photograph because there is nothing to point out that we at some point were there, or that we have some reason to have any sort of emotional connection with the photos. Sugimoto also shoots at a point of view that is not usually seen of a theater by the average movie-goer, separating the viewer even more from the theaters. However, I believe that there is still something to be said about the photographs' theatricality (what little there may be), that the scene is an unlikely one of a movie being played to an empty audience. This draws up questions for me, such as "Why is the movie reeling if there is nobody to watch it?" and "Were there ever people in the theater at any time previous?" and even further detached "Are there people left in the world?" to which I have no answers, but the thought of these questions and potential answers brings up a certain amount of emotion or feeling in my viewing of the photographs. This small emotional "twitch" would seem to add some theatricality to the image, at least for me, and would remove Sugimoto slightly from the non-theatrical node on the above scale.<br />
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Though these three works all relate to the common subject of "The Movie", they all incorporate some form of theatricality into them. They are imitations of what surrounds a movie and therefore cannot be completely non-theatrical as Fried says that movies are. When he said that the cinema does not have a theatrical aspect, I was inclined to disagree. What could possibly be more theatrical? As I continued reading, it became clear to me that what makes a cinema experience non-theatrical was not the film itself, but the experience of the audience to that film. Theatricality demands that the viewer feel some sort of "responsibility" to the piece, or some strong urge toward themselves or their inner emotions when viewing said film. However, when people go to see a movie, they go to leave themselves, and their own views behind, and opt to be sucked into this almost "out of body experience" where they become part of the film and their physical bodies have nothing to do with what his happening before their eyes. This separation from self would create this non-theatricality and doesn't even allow room for a theatrical side. Though there are exceptions to this (such as documentaries, educational films, etc), it was fitting to place the cinema at the farthest point of non-theatricality.<br />
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Continuing with the validity and relationship of the audience to the photographs, Fried delves into the second "beginning", talking about the new regime in photography as having two main points:<br />
<ol><li>There is a jump into large scale prints, multiple feet by multiple feet.</li>
<li>There is an intention that these prints are to be hung on a wall in a gallery, and this intention starts from the moment the photographer has the idea of an image in their mind. The photographs are made to be walked up to, looked at, and walked away from.</li>
</ol>This jump in size, first of all, made way for photographers, like Jeff Wall and Stephen Shore and Jean-Marc Bustamante, to create crisp, large format photographs that were able to be blown up to sizes comparable to paintings. At these sizes, the acute attention to detail became a prominent factor in viewing the images, whereas the images that were smaller in size and meant to be copied into books, magazines, and held in the hand, could not compare.<br />
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For Thomas Ruff, the immensity of his portraits of seemingly expressionless people draws the viewer into the image (or maybe it draws the image out into the same room as the viewer), and calls upon this viewer to respond to its complexities and immediacy. These images are meant to challenge their audience, and their scale helps in this mission by removing the photographs as physical objects and recreating them as forces with which you encounter as you look upon them. The incorporation of the audience in this way draws directly back to the "argument" of theatricality (or non-theatricality), falling neatly at the theatrical node (although not in relation to movies this time).<br />
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Bustamante takes a slightly different route with his images. Though he is printing large scale like Ruff, his images do not challenge the viewer for an interaction, or invite them to walk in the landscapes he has photographed. Bustamante's photographs are non-imaginative, and involve no guesswork. They are straightforward images of information, overwhelming in their flatness, sharpness, and sheer size. However, they are not completely non-theatrical. Though the actual image does not necessarily interact with the audience, the photographs do call upon this audience to become responsible for what they are viewing (his photographs are mainly images of traces of man's impact upon the world). He does this by his size, use of dull colors, the mass amount of information he captures with his 8x10, and the lack of shadows and specific focal point in the image (he shoots mainly at midday and does not allow one thing to stand out more than anything else in his photographs).<br />
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Taking the middle ground between Thomas Ruff and Jean-Marc Bustamante, is Stephen Shore, creating images of scenes with great depth and attention to shadow, color, and detail. His photographs are not theatrical, as they do not confront the audience as Ruff's did, and they do not call for responsibility from the audience as Bustamante's did. These photographs invite the viewer into their space, allowing the audience to step through the frame and explore the corners of the image and the miles of depth that it shows. The only incorporation of the viewer to the photograph is this exploration. It is not, however, a contextual exploration, but an aesthetic one. The link to Shore's photographs is one of visual pleasure, of being looked at, appreciated, and walked away from.<br />
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The third "beginning" that Fried explores is the idea of voyeurism through three different readings: Yukion Mishima's <i>The Temple of Dawn</i>, an anonymous author's<span style="font-size: small;"> <i>Adelaïde, ou la femme morte d'amour</i>, and Susan Sontag's <i>Regarding the Pain of Others</i>. Fried talks a bit about each story and how voyeurism plays into each one, and then compares it lightly to photography. He disproves that the photographic audience is voyeuristic because the idea of voyeurism is that whatever it is that the audience wants to see is something which they are not supposed to be viewing (such as the protagonist in <i>The Temple of Dawn</i>) and that after this "thing" is viewed, everything has changed and taken a complete turn, which can only be fixed and brought back to equilibrium by death of the voyeuristic person(s). Photography is not at all viewed in a voyeuristic manner. Whether the photographer wants the audience to become theatrically involved in his photographs, or have absolutely no part in his photographs, he has still created these images to be viewed. Most photographs are not created to visually incorporate an audience, they are simply, well, what they are. Because of this, there technically is no audience, and without an audience, there is no purity to contaminate by viewing the images.</span><br />
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</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">As one can see, the audience takes on quite an important roll in the viewing of photography. Though many times the theatricality of an image is directly dependent on the individual (and their experiences and ideas) and the photograph, we can see that photographs can be generally determined theatrical or non-theatrical, and that there are still many factors that can contribute to this determination.</span>Class Blogshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06361471714844186037noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2652832806922201391.post-72252741403207588652010-09-13T09:57:00.000-07:002010-09-13T09:58:39.702-07:00The Breakdown of The Contemporary<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEib7onDsUtt64Af4Gn4g7AnDQBbP-bOnjn15bx1JbLE9wel7wz4k-o6K06hJV3DBNhC4TpGWvAN3ik1By7mC7idhPChhIMfeQxeW5Fxb6QEwVre3-NlMdmCyAeM6Tmp9O4lQcoIzI6genY/s1600/Contemp1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="307" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEib7onDsUtt64Af4Gn4g7AnDQBbP-bOnjn15bx1JbLE9wel7wz4k-o6K06hJV3DBNhC4TpGWvAN3ik1By7mC7idhPChhIMfeQxeW5Fxb6QEwVre3-NlMdmCyAeM6Tmp9O4lQcoIzI6genY/s400/Contemp1.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>Through three readings, "Questionnaire on The Contemporary, <i>October </i>from Fall 2009" with Alexander Alberro's response, Terry Smith's "Contemporary Art and Contemporaneity", and Leesham & Wright's "Review of <i>Why Photography Matters as Art as Never Before </i>and <i>The Civil Contract of Photography"</i>, the contemporary as a word, as a movement, and as an idea was broken down and analyzed piece by piece in the attempt to create some form of solidarity within its meaning. As seen in the above mind map, the success of this quest for a true definition is still somewhat questionable.<br />
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Starting right off with Alberro's response, there are contrasts of meaning and ideas behind what the contemporary is. On one hand, Alberro implies that the contemporary we have found ourselves in at the present moment was brought upon by a seamless pass from the past into the present, or from the modern, through the postmodern, and into the contemporary, with little weight on the bordering lines between these three movements. On the other hand, there is an implication that the break to contemporary was just that: a radical break into the 1990's to present day. Though these two polar opposite ideas of movement are both valid in their own right, it is unclear as to which, if either, can take the top spot in helping to form a definition of the contemporary. Because of this, and I believe as with most major movements, both will have to do for the time being. Continuing forward, Alberro brings up a major point of debate in the discussions of what the contemporary entails. He states that the contemporary is a period in which you can place changes in concepts, movements, and, most importantly globalization. Globalization here is the integration of global ideas, economy, and movements, often coming together under hegemony. In considering that the contemporary would be globalized, there will also be the accompaniment of followers and oppositionists, each attempting to make their influences known. This constant clash of ideas and theories directly parallels the clash of ideas that attempt to define the contemporary, and this tension is part of what makes up the movement.<br />
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In Terry Smith's "Contemporary Art and Contemporaneity", the differences between the modern, postmodern, and contemporary are brought to light, weighing more heavily on what the contemporary is and how it differs from the two former. Possibly seen more clearly through contradictions in the mind map, contemporary is:<br />
<ul><li>global</li>
<li>an integration of technology</li>
<li>a reinvention of concepts</li>
<li>imagined (vs. the stable and tangible of the modern and postmodern)</li>
<li>aesthetic</li>
<li>a participation of the people</li>
<li>unsettled</li>
<li>a period</li>
<li>ambiguous/mobility of meaning</li>
<li>closure/openness</li>
<li>nonuniversal</li>
<li>alive</li>
<li>the new modern</li>
<li>non-literal</li>
<li>timeless</li>
<li>revealing</li>
<li>contaminated</li>
<li>confrontational</li>
</ul>Specifically with the contemporary's break from postmodernism, Smith comments on what contemporaneity is: the inclusion of modernity and post modernity, but encompassing a broader meaning into the present, near future, and future. Though, keeping with the contradictions, it is also said that the modern is the futuristic mindset, whereas the contemporary is the present, and the present alone. I personally cannot say that either are wrong, but mainly that it would depend on the events, ideas, or art being analyzed. One problem with "period movements" is that many would like them to be set in stone and the products of these movements be black and white: either part of the movement or not. But because the contemporary has influences like no other movement has had, what with technology, globalization, and the integration of the world's knowledge all accessible through the internet, shades of gray are exponentially increasing between the seams of the contemporary, pulling it to its limits, its breaking point, and its ultimate success as an individual movement.<br />
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However, in getting to this point, the contemporary has faced the same challenges in the past 3 decades as all other period movements have faced (namely the modern and postmodern), with low acceptance rates at first, and a slow incline of the collection of ideas, theories, and art into an ultimate acceptance that has spread worldwide, hand in hand with the globalization of the turn of the century. Though the words "modern" and "contemporary" are still paired, as Smith shows us, they have broken off from each other (though they will never be completely separate, as the contemporary has grown from the basis of the modern, and this cornerstone cannot be removed.) As the contemporary has taken shape, Smith talks about the "Passage Between Cultures", which proves that the globalization of the movement has fully taken hold. The contemporary does not discriminate between borders or world classification, as contemporary art, events, and ideas have been born in first, second, third, and fourth world countries, and even parts of the world that may seem to have settled comfortable in the modern, have put forth contemporary work. This forward movement of the entire globe has created this outcome of the changes that have occurred in the past 30 years from which art has been based upon these events and not a mold of formalism like the previous modern and postmodern were based. It is truly a free flowing, open ended movement.<br />
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The third reading, from Leesham & Wright's "Review of <i>Why Photography Matters as Art as Never Before </i>and <i>The Civil Contract of Photography" </i>breaks away from analyzing what the contemporary is, and focuses more on how we perceive it. Fried relies more on the view that the contemporary art has an aesthetic to it that will encompass the viewer as they are viewing it, and will draw them to the edges of the piece, but that the interaction will stop there. That there is nothing more than the object as its art, and that it should not be considered more than that. However, Azoulay (again adding to the contrasting ideas within contemporaneity) says that while there can be an aesthetic portion to any art piece, that the main reason of the existence of the works is to make a meaningful statement that draws the viewer in and demands a participation and understanding into what the art piece shows. Azoulay believes that the observer should walk away even feeling a sense of responsibility for things that they just viewed, and want to do something about it, not feel satisfied with the aesthetics of the piece and quickly forget about it.<br />
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Although there may never be a solid definition of the contemporary movement and what it fully entails, there are many branches of what the contemporary currently is and how these current trends have shaped the period and differentiated it from the modern and postmodern periods before it. The clashing of ideas and theories that weave themselves through the contemporary are what strengthen its fibers and give it the backbone to keep growing and changing.Class Blogshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06361471714844186037noreply@blogger.com0