Informing Contexts
Developing from the last module I am looking at pushing the slower editorial portraits that were inspired by artists like Spencer Murphy and experimenting with what I could archive.
trying to get out of my comfort zone I wanted to play with some ideas surrounding the snap shot aesthetic.I wanted to let go a little bit and shoot some work that I would not normally do. I have been listening ( as always) to music that is important to me and then shooting whatever feels organic. I'm still at the beggening of my journey with this inter-contextual approach but 2 images below were shot whilst taking time thinking and listening to the following tracks.
*Education use
I shot two shows one in Bristol and one in Cardiff. I didn't have more access and didnt have any communication with the bands or venues. I decided to shot whatever felt natural. With a nod to the more traditional reportage style of imagery i produced this work but would love to have had more of a connection with the artists and the audience. It was a last minute plan so I got what I could. I processed in monochrome as the venue lighting was horrendous with both high levels of magenta and green causing me lots of grief getting an image that dint look super abstract ( which i felt distorted the transmission of the message).
Reality has come to seem more and more like what we are shown by cameras. It is common now for people to insist upon their experience of a violent event in which they were caught up — a plane crash, a shoot-out, a terrorist bombing — that "it seemed like a movie." This is said, other descriptions seeming insufficient, in order to explain how real it was.
(Sontag, 1977, p161)
I'm so terrified that we'll all age and we'll all die - Chris Chucas (words from Bangers)
I've started looking at capationing my work with lyrics from the music I've been listening to from bands that are part of the punk rock scene.
I agree with Sontag's statement that Hollywood has is a bench mark in visual culture that one likening everything to and that of course comes with many problems, like, who makes the rules for this popular visual icons and the make up of this pop culture is steered but the the male gaze. It may seem like a far reaching link but although my project isn’t really directly exploring or questioning themes of the gaze I feel it is strongly connect to it in that the members of the punk rock community the songs that are written the ethos and drive interlaced through the personalities and subject matter is VERY conscious of the gaze and careful when looking at representing others. The slower portraits of people involved are in themselves attempting to convey the sensitive nature of these people and there philosophy.
It's only getting harder and I don't think I can take it. Chris Chucas, 2018
I being a member of that community and playing in and listening to bands myself am surrounded by these ideas that are questioning the way we live our lives and a disconnect that seems to be growning. The bigger social media gets the more disconnected I feel we are becoming.
I don't hate my job and I'm not living on the breadline, but spending money still seems strange to me. - Chris Chucas
Words from Bangers- https://bangersbangers.bandcamp.com/album/small-pleasures
I’m hoping to explore strategies in which I can bring in thees elements from the community along with my personal life to create something personal meaningful ambiguous to others coming in. I refer back to my initial spark on this when learning of Jeff Walls way of thinking on reportage photography and the photographers role as an image maker. In short, objectivity is almost impossible and that by interacting with people to archive an image doesn’t make it fake.
At what moment in history did the discursive desire to photograph emerge and begin to manifest itself insistently? At what moment did photography shift from an occasional, isolated, individual fantasy to a demonstrably widespread, social imperative ( Batchen, 1997)
So What if We Know All Our Audience By Name, Chris Chucas. 2018
I agree with Batchen on that this need to photograph everything has intensified and become normal, but has rapidly increased in the intensity and volume that we do take pictures of everything. I feel that it's having a negative effect on us in general and would like to get that into my work if possible. I think it's hard to comment on issues like this within my work without it becoming the primary message, I can try but I instantly feel doubtful of successfully doing so. I feel like work commenting on the negative affects of social media tends be so potent and direct that any other message can get drowned out but it.
On the note of the ‘tidal wave’ of images that we are bombarded with on with mass media the punk rock community’s genral feelings on it are quite thoughtful and sensitive. Hear are some words from songs that talk about that very issue.
I guess that the two main themes I hear in songs are a ( hearing gaze?) are songs about mass consumerism and also mass marketing and the abundance of images with the negative effect they have on everyone.
I kind of find it offensive that everything's for sale, coupled with the realisation that there's nothing here I need - Chris Chucas
Hearing the Beach Boys playing on this rainy high-street makes me chuckle at the amount of surf shops here. I've tried, there's just no waves in this town. Just more coffee shops that we could ever hope to drink in and I don't care how cheap their drinks are, I'm better off at home. I kind of find it offensive that everything's for sale, coupled with the realisation that there's nothing here I need. It's strange, I don't hate my job and I'm not living on the breadline, but spending money still seems strange to me. On the plus side when I'm outside I repeat mantra-like "The last thing I need is any more things”.
I don't care how cheap their drinks are, I'm better off at home - Chris Chucas
My computer broke down again and I'm sure there's too much money to be made for it to be something simple, and it's such a fucking waste of my time. And how convenient, the warranty went out of date a month ago. The professionals say "What do you expect mate? You should have paid for our protection." And I hate that we can tell an Apple owner by their dress code, cause products have always bred fashion and the fashionable. The kind of people who'd say "Advertising's the only real art form these days" when an actual human being would say "That shit just gets in my way." So thanks a lot Bill. You really got me this time.
I have a personal connection to Church st in ruins. I remember being in Daegu South Korea feeling pretty low with depression and I remember taking this image and looking at it on the computer feeling pretty isolated. When Roo talks about church st I remembered I sued to run down it every day whilst on my Ba final major project. I used to run past the same shops and think the same thing, ‘ the last thing we need is anymore things. As my project was looking at consumerism linked with the punk rock scene. I looked at the image that I just taken and realised that there were lots of signs in Korea I couldn’t understand but I could kind of guess what they were by the colour and shape and if not from the shop would be a good indication of what it sold.
It got me thinking I need food or a drink I’ll go around and find a shop but all of the text being used was lost on me. It just amplified how much it were told what to think with marketers intentions.
At what moment in history did the discursive desire to photograph emerge and begin to manifest itself insistently? At what moment did photography shift from an occasional, isolated, individual fantasy to a demonstrably widespread, social imperative ( Batchen, 1997)
I agree with Batchen on that this need to photograph everything has intensified and become normal, but has rapidly increased in the intensity and volume that we do take pictures of everything. I feel that it's having a negative effect on us in general and would like to get that into my work if possible. I think it's hard to comment on issues like this within my work without it becoming the primary message, I can try but I instantly feel doubtful of successfully doing so. I feel like work commenting on the negative affects of social media tends be so potent and direct that any other message can get drowned out but it.
One artist I found particularly interesting is Nastya Ptichek
Taken from
https://www.behance.net/gallery/15413671/emoji-nation-part-2
She is making statements about how we have evolved in our means of communication and expressing our selves. by using emojis and placing them on the Edward Hopper paintings. This juxtaposition of the classic fine art painting and the very brash and mundane emoji icons clash horrible but also seem fitting in this example perhaps with the use of colours. I think it works well because communication and all the new ways we do it has been so success-full that those icons really do connote something to us. They do so because they've been adopted on such a mass scale and are part of society and our culture now that they can be employed like Pticheck to (ironicly) comment on our disconnect that comes along with it.
And maybe Kafka was a writer
But I've been living like my name is Samsa - (lyrics from My Friend Chris)
One of my best friends at all times not least when I am hvaing a hard time coping with everything. The song ' My friend Chris' makes me think of the reversal role I have as a self employed photographer/film maker where 'Coco' is one of my best friends.
I don’t make sets, I wanna be a bit of a sticky about this vocabulary for a reason photography is still being id d as an art form i don't believe we really do know it as well as we know painting,… we’ve had painting for a thousand years and its part of our tradition.
Jeff Wall we are all actors youtube
Interestingly in this hunter farmer analogy. Intertextual way we view photographs based on other media ( mostly cinema) . Charlotte Cotton offers a very useful unpacking of what he means, that the farmer, the hunter, tracks down and captures their subject matter as prey, whilst the farmer cultivates, constructs, and tends to his images over time.
‘Postmodern photographic work in particular exploits and challenges both the objective and the creative’ - (Hutcheon.2003, p117)
My working practices are to primarily be as equal as possible to the subject, there are times where I might ask to move to a different place if the light is better when taking a portrait but in general my main concern is not of the final quality of the image but to not exploit anyone and to convey what i believe to be true. Although I’ve already mentioned that I don’t believe in photographs being completely truthful I feel that as the artist we have a responsibility to protect our subjects.
"They wouldn’t be your friend if it wasn’t worth it, if you didn’t have something they could take" - Chris Chucas
When placing myself within the hunter or gather analogy I don’t think I completely belong to one category. Perhaps part of each. When we talk about being a hunter or gather (in reference to raising or hunting animals) would it be a possibility to be an animal oneself. That analogy sits better with me describing my own practice. I try and be as democratic as possible with my approach and place myself within the work to a certain degree. The argument could be made that if the photograph cannot be objective and all the flaws that go along with it then is a hunter completely so? I would argue that even a hunter is part farmer, with the conscious and unconscious decision leading up to the point of the image being taken and what's being framed, whats excluded and what’s not. Surely it’s a big hitch pitch of everything in every circumstance ?
‘The term ‘uncanny’ refers to everything that was intended to remain secret, hidden away, and has come into the open’ - (Freud, 1919 p.132)
Whatever the semantic context of the text, its condition as a signifying practice presupposes the existence of other discourses. Every text is, from the outset, under the jurisdiction of other discourses which impose a universe on it’ -- (Kisteva in Culler, 2001, p.105)
I agree with Kisteva in with this in what I understand is her explaining that our culture and society and exposer to various media ( or texts) can inform how we reread other media ( texts). For example Wall and Crewdson have been described as having a cinematic feel to them. I interpret this as people finding similarities in the stills of these artists and Hollywood movies.
Jeffery Crewds
Fight Club directed by David Fincher Director of Photography- Jeff Cronenweth
There’s definite lighting choices and comparisons that are very popular choices in cinema. To me I think of it like Crewdsens work is like a book and you need to wear glasses to read it, those glasses are our indoctrination to cinema. By experiencing cinema and its place in our world you have the instructions almost to ascribe meaning to his images.
I’ve been fascinated by the devices that make crewdsen’s work so captivating. The way we read the images with an intertextual lens of cinema makes us appreciate every tiny detail in it, especially when it’s frozen in time as opposed to running into the hundreds of other frames that motion films do. I’m not to familiar with his construction of them but I imagine a large set and crew is involved. The part of his work that I love is the power given to the viewer. Its that ambiguity that empowers the viewer to ascribe their own meaning to the image. Its something I explored earlier years with photography but I wanted to explore how I could use this ambuigty and empower the viewer with their own multiple decoding of the image.
For me the overall ambiguity of the narrative in my work is less of a conscious nod toward the viewer and more of an inherent trait of how it exists in my mind. I experience the pictures as one singular and fixed moment in time both in my imagination and in the picture itself. So it is inescapable that the pictures would be surrounded on all sides by ambiguity. There is no before, no after; and I offer no motivation or resolution.- (Crewdson, fstoppers.com Oct 11 2014, https://fstoppers.com/fine-art/creating-photographic-art-exclusive-interview-gregory-crewdson-40498)
the accumulation and generation of meaning across texts, with all meanings depend on other meanings. The self-conscious citation of one text within another as an expression of enlarged cultural self-consciousness’
( Barker 2008 p482)
There are artists that use this inter contextual relationship as a big part of their practice and one artists that we looked at was Joan Fontcuberta, he creates fictional work but photograph the in a way that utilises conventions of science and natural history photography. On top of this he also displays the work in arenas that have credibility within the science and natural history world which I feel commentary on the audience and their viewing of the work. By placing somewhere where you wouldn’t expect created or fictional work as it certainly more believable people questioning less, what does that say about our society. Maybe we are to gullible to quick to believe what we shown. This
‘I photograph to find out what something will look like photographic’
(winogrand in Badger, 1985, p18
Violent delights. Chris Chucas. 2018
Reality has come to seem more and more like what we are shown by cameras. It is common now for people to insist upon their experience of a violent event in which they were caught up — a plane crash, a shoot-out, a terrorist bombing — that "it seemed like a movie." This is said, other descriptions seeming insufficient, in order to explain how real it was. - (Sontag, 1977, p161)
I agree with Sontag's statement that Hollywood has is a bench mark in visual culture that one likening everything to and that of course comes with many problems, like, who makes the rules for this popular visual icons and the make up of this pop culture is steered but the the male gaze. It may seem like a far reaching link but although my project isn’t really directly exploring or questioning themes of the gaze I feel it is strongly connect to it in that the members of the punk rock community the songs that are written the ethos and drive interlaced through the personalities and subject matter is VERY conscious of the gaze and careful when looking at representing others. The slower portraits of people involved are in themselves attempting to convey the sensitive nature of these people and there philosophy.
I being a member of that community and playing in and listening to bands myself am surrounded by these ideas that are questioning the way we live our lives and a disconnect that seems to be growning.
I’m hoping to explore strategies in which I can bring in these elements from the community along with my personal life to create something personal meaningful ambiguous to others coming in. I refer back to my initial spark on this when learning of Jeff Walls way of thinking on reportage photography and the photographers role as an image maker. In short, objectivity is almost impossible and that by interacting with people to archive an image doesn’t make it fake.
At what moment in history did the discursive desire to photograph emerge and begin to manifest itself insistently? At what moment did photography shift from an occasional, isolated, individual fantasy to a demonstrably widespread, social imperative ( Batchen, 1997)
On the note of the ‘tidal wave’ of images that we are bombarded with on with mass media the punk rock community’s genral feelings on it are quite thoughtful and sensitive. Hear are some words from songs that talk about that very issue. I guess that the two main themes I hear in songs are a ( hearing gaze?) are songs about mass consumerism and also mass marketing and the abundance of images with the negative effect they have on everyone.
Hearing the Beach Boys playing on this rainy high-street makes me chuckle at the amount of surf shops here. I've tried, there's just no waves in this town. Just more coffee shops that we could ever hope to drink in and I don't care how cheap their drinks are, I'm better off at home. I kind of find it offensive that everything's for sale, coupled with the realisation that there's nothing here I need. It's strange, I don't hate my job and I'm not living on the breadline, but spending money still seems strange to me. On the plus side when I'm outside I repeat mantra-like "The last thing I need is any more things”.
My computer broke down again and I'm sure there's too much money to be made for it to be something simple, and it's such a fucking waste of my time. And how convenient, the warranty went out of date a month ago. The professionals say "What do you expect mate? You should have paid for our protection." And I hate that we can tell an Apple owner by their dress code, cause products have always bred fashion and the fashionable. The kind of people who'd say "Advertising's the only real art form these days" when an actual human being would say "That shit just gets in my way." So thanks a lot Bill. You really got me this time.
I have a personal connection to Church St in ruins. I remember being in Daegu South Korea feeling pretty low with depression and I remember taking this image and looking at it on the computer feeling pretty isolated. When Roo talks about Church St I remembered I sued to run down it every day whilst on my Ba final major project. I used to run past the same shops and think the same thing, ‘ the last thing we need is anymore things. As my project was looking at consumerism linked with the punk rock scene. I looked at the image that I just taken and realised that there were lots of signs in Korea I couldn’t understand but I could kind of guess what they were by the colour and shape and if not from the shop would be a good indication of what it sold.
It got me thinking I need food or a drink I’ll go around and find a shop but all of the text being used was lost on me. It just amplified how much it were told what to think with marketers intentions.
Back from nostalgia to today. I wanted to play with using lyrics from songs as captions with the work.
INSERT PICS WITH LURIC CAPTIONS
Without wanting to cause any offence to the many wonderful people that I have had the pleasure of listening to and working with on my current project I’m going to talk about the way in which marketers have played upon stereotypes with the binary genders for academic purposes. I fully support anybody’s desire to be recognised in the way you want,I am not dismissing or ignoring you by not talking about you in this post I’ve been given the male and female genders to discuss and Need to analyse the way in which they (wrongly in my opinion) do so.
From - https://stylebeats.wordpress.com/2011/01/16/70s-glamour-dg-ss11-ad-campaign/
The happiness of being envied is glamour.
Being envied is a solitary form of reassurance. It depends precisely upon not sharing your experience with those who envy you. You are observed with interest but you do not observe with interest - if you do, you will become less enviable. In this respect the envied are like bureaucrats; the more impersonal they are, the greater the illusion (for themselves and for others) of their power. The power of the glamorous resides in their supposed happiness: the power of the bureaucrat in his supposed authority.” - John Berger, Ways of Seeing
I agree with burgers point here that women are constantly objectified by visual culture. It’s then supported by brands and marketers that are catering to the female audience. The whole system supports the idea that women are to be looked at, that they are trophies of men and the the reason to look pretty is to get a husband or a partner which is absurd.
Artists like Barbara Kruger who were strong critics fighting against these entrenched ideas informed from the male gaze and also touching upon consumerism. I think the two go together as it seems that today's visual culture is dominated by the male gaze and it objectifies women, in turn they are consumed visually.
Marketers often use women to sell there product, ie use this product and get a trophy glamorous wife. Selling the idea that that is the goal, to have an attractive wife or partner and their purpose is to be pretty and to be consumed ( as the partner, mostly as a sexual object,
“In a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female. The determining male gaze projects its phantasy on to the female form which is styled accordingly. In their traditional exhibitionist role women are simultaneously looked at and displayed, with their appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact so that they can be said to connote to-be-looked-at-ness.”
― Laura Mulvey, Visual And Other Pleasures
There seems to be a positive push forward with some members of the advertising industry pushing for change. Badger ( of Badger and Winters has been campaigning for a change in the way women are used to sell pretty much anything.
In this playful ad it painfully shows how absurd the current status quo is with regards to women represented in visual culture. I thikn we've been hard wired and over whelmed with the amount of images to the point that perhaps we know its wrong but swere just visually exhausted by it and apathy has got the better of us.
https://fstoppers.com/originals/photographing-women-sexual-manner-are-we-all-guilty-objectifying-women-112940
Historically women have always been objectified and used to sell products with sexuality. Take Beer for example a product thats primarily marketed at men. Take this ad below for example. We see the man having a break with tools smiling as his ( we assume) wife is pouring him a drink. Tending to him, literally like a waitress. He's not even looking at her and she's doing a task for him. This signifies that in this scene her role is to support her husband. The words in small print also adding anchorage to the power dynamic. "The King' imp[lying the male is in charge and the women is a subject of his.
For reference I decided to use the same brand but from a more recent time and hopefully it will show that the male gaze is still present and how visual culture has become more explicit.
In these image we see 3 attractive women laid on a towel. Wearing swim wear that has the Budweiser branding on that blends into the beach towel below them. The woman in the middle is smiling at the camera and leaning back in a relaxed way. The beach towel sun glasses and swimwear are all signifiers that denote a beach scene. We are culturally accounted to the beach being a fun place, looking at 3 ladies on a beach towel smiling in swimwear connotes a fun and happy place. The combination of the signs and the context ( it being a bear ad) builds the myth that these women are happy, and that their inviting you to look with the centre women staring straight into the camera and smiling it connotes a complicit and agreement to watch. The viewer is welcome. What the marketers are trying to communicate here is, come and drink Budweiser beer. This is the world in which it belongs to. You can be a part of this world where beautiful women are inviting you to be with them on the beach, a place where fun happens and people are more flirty perhaps. One could argue that this is a bad example as beer seems to be enjoyed more by men then women, but on that note beer is advertised to men more than women. Either way the woman is objectified and is their for the viewing pleasure of the intended male gaze.
So another example of the male gaze here. Again maybe not he best example but this ad is selling a product to men by projecting a strong powerful handsome man as someone that uses the product. On the most basic level there saying you should use this after shave to be more like this man. He’s half naked which shows he’s good physical form, indicating that women will find him attractive. The way that the image has been made also plays to the myth of a deepness and being close to nature. Holding a surf board which is a signifier that he surfs ( sounds obvious) but the surfing cub culture has been portrayed with many many cliche ideals of being one with nature and a spirituality, and to bring it back to the gendered ads and male gaze, it’s this closeness to nature and spirituality that is ( or is at least told to us) appealing to women, ( we’re told) that this is a virtuous trait to have and will make you more desirable. The male gaze is rampant throughout visual culture and thankfully more and more artists and agencies are moving past it but I highlighted before this change is long and slow one and I feel that social media and new media are making more difficult then ever to speed things up.
I talked about all the problems with the male gaze being over dominate in todays visual culture and how media outlets and social media perpetuated the damaging and un archive-able ideals people have come to adopt as a bench mark today. There is a lot of positivity a movement almost in challenging these 'cultural standards' how fast it's actually making significant change is questionable but much like the feminists photographers working int he 80s onwards ( Kruger, Nan Goldin, Sherman ) the trickle down effect in everyday culture is apparent today almost 20-30 years later it's a long progress but perhaps the power and reach of the internet and social meda can make speed it up. There are a lot places on the internet that are furthering this male gaze dominated view but also many that are not. I feel that we as photographers and visual artists have the means to make a change. It's perhaps a little harder to stand out from the noise with the abundance of information and images that exist in todays world. It's easy to ignore an image when there are so many of them .
An interesting historical portrait that I keep coming back to me is one of Dorothea Lange's . Her Migrant Mother shows a women is very difficult situation but I don't find her weak or powerless. i just thought it was interesting that a women in a very difficult situation can be portrayed ( to me ) as an icon of power. Perhaps coming from the stereotypes of the mother being the primary care giver and protecting her family. I think Lange's intentions where to be as objective as possible, her work was commissioned to highlight the problems in the dust bowl areas and creating an empathy for families stuck in the hard conditions with other Americans.
It seems a bit lacking that culturally we jump the gun and mostly depict women as objects with reference to sexuality even when marketing to women themselves. It's obvious when people have juxtaposted the same scene but swapping a male in place of the female.
“The spectator-buyer is meant to envy herself as she will become if she buys the product. She is meant to imagine herself transformed by the product into an object of envy for others, an envy which will then justify her loving herself.” ― John Berger Ways of Seeing
https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/08/14/bondi-hipsters-do-parody-of-miranda-kerr-s-gq-shoot_n_7332592.html
It seems that ideas and principles that differ greatly from the social norm take a long time to become accepted themselves. I don’t profess to have a great ( or even mediocre ) sociological understanding of art and it’ s effectiveness to change society, but it’;s an observation. That links in to my project specificaly, as most of the people within the punk rock community are ( wrongly in my opinion) thought of as thoughtless adelencant youths more interested in self indulgent and with a minimal awareness on the people around them. More on topic within the punk rock community there is a huge focus on recognising other genders, genders other then male or female. I am very limited in my knowledge of people that identify as non binary and as such I’ve checked in with a few colleagues that play in bands with people who identify as non binary and also people that are transitioning from one gender to another. I mention this as I feel it’s relevant to my project. The non binary community has a strong presence within the punk rock community. I think it’s worth noting when being asked about our understanding of semiotics and how marketers employ tactics to make effective ads to a specific genders one must make a note of those not accounted for,
Playing in bands and listening to punk rock music myself since 14 one of the most influential bands that has shaped my music my practice and general make up of my adult thinking has been 'Against Me' of which Laura Jayne is has songs about transitioning. She talks a little bit about her experiences.
We are all actors
Another artist I've looked at closely and can find inspirational although I haven''t really worked in a similar way is Jeff Wall but I'm looking at producing work in a similar way.
Milk, Jeff Wall 1984
This place would so much better over our shoulders , Chris Chucas ,2018
In his interview he talks about being asked about the notion of staging within his photographs.
" A gentleman came and asked about the staging of the people in the photograph,, and Jeff very politely commented " I don't stage, I work with people." ' -Thierry de Duve ( quoting Jeff Wall)
I don’t make sets, I wanna be a bit of a sticky about this vocabulary for a reason phtoography is still being id d as an art form i dont believe we really do know it as well as we know painting,… we’ve had painting for a thousand years and its part of our tradition. - Jeff Wall 08:30
The replica that becomes a document that vanishes into the picture to me its a dialectic, lets say a movement inside of our experience, our aesthetic experience... art is made essential to be an experience it's an experiential thing .... and it's also a judgement of quality. Jeff W
During that interview linked above Jeff Wall talks about his strong objection to his work being called fake or false. To paraphrase in very blunt terms Wall walks us through our cultural understanding of 'reportage' work. Which loosely defined is generally accepted as work made with no interaction or collaboration ( even with the most minimal of interaction this is still achievable in my opinion as I've mentioned previously). I also agree with Wall's words on the viewers job in interpreting the image. Thierry de Duve quotes Wall
The only narrative element in the picture is supplied by the viewer not the director or screenwriter. 35: 28
I really enjoy how Wall employs his relationship with cinema and how we decode images and motion with this sense of narrartive and search for meaning. The idea that the viewer brings their realty to the image. It is subjective albet Wall embracing that but also defending it as documentary and not fake is something I can support. As he mentions he is different to film directors and or screen writers in the sense he using people and their behaviour even if they are acting, by getting non trained actors to do tasks over and over and stripping away the performance the left over results are a document of the behaviour.
This is enough for me to abandon any defence of a photograph being ‘really real’. The term itself ‘really real’ means different things to different people. For example a photograph of a book could prove the existence of a book to a viewer and although the cover could resemble a book they own the pages could be empty in the photographed version. It’s not proof of anything, our problem comes becuase we’ve culturally grown and evolved over the lifetime of photography.
It’s inventors and creators had intentions using it for ‘scientific recording’ and trying to do objectively and the problem with the audience behind with photography’s perculiialr quality to render the world with such life like appearance unlike any other medium that came before it. How could something that looks so real not be true? Fast forward to today and the amount of digital imagery around let alone the amount of digital manipulation it’s hard to decipher what is truthful ( although photographs cannot be completely truthful because of the flawed nature in which a photograph has to be made ( with a human at some point of the process) and what is not.
Photographs cannot be completely truthful and thats ok to me. It’s a medium of expression, it can have elements of truthfulness but cannot be an objective record. I use it as a record of my opinion and thoughts both inwardly and self reflective and outwardly. In both cases they are my opinions and ways in which I look at the world with parts of it out of my control and other aspects within my control. Objectivity in a photograph is impossible.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fPwsLeH8fA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8P9S6FeAuU
Recapping over this weeks look into the male gaze and how gender is represented within visual culture today. I’m not really looking into gender or any gaze as such but I think that it’s an important consideration when evaluating ones work and even tho its not a main theme being aware of it will no doubt influence the work being produced.
I started out in the beginning with the intention to be to show people outside of the community and to hopefully capture a sensitive portrait of the people involved in the in the punk rock music scene.
My Intent was to show people a world they would not have seen. I utilised my place within the community to capture moments that I could later deliver via a zine or on a wall.
My strategies where to make contact explain my intentions and put myself in the place where I would capture those events. I had ethical and moral obligations to be mindful about they included making sure people knew I was working and taking images, explaining my intentions and most importantly taking into consideration to the context and arena in which the work was delivered. As I covered in a precious module with Jeff Mitchell’s work that was purchased by UKIP for their anti migration agenda, we as photographers have a moral duty to protect the message, albeit theres a weakness in our own subjectivity in decided what is morally right and wrong we must do our best it is the minimum.
The shift has been a slow but definitive one throughout the modules. In the informing contexts module I’ve been looking at more contemporary artists like Jeff Wall and Crewdson and I’m fascinated with the inter-contextual relationship between disciplines (most notably cinema).
I have a background in film making as well and although I wanted to explore motion images on my Ba I was discouraged by staff but inevitably film found me after graduating. I am now producing both and to me it feels very natural. I mention this because I feel that contemporary photography has a relationship with cinema and they complement each other greatly.
I feel I have grown more throughout this module than in any phase of my working practice. After looking at wall and watching a considerable amount of interviews in which he talks about the way he frames his work, in particular his statement ‘ I don’t make Sets’ and ‘we are all actors’ ( I’ve expanded on in other posts) has changed something within me and I have a new perspective on my photographic practice.
With this new perspective I’ve been exploring my relationship with music. My intention was to build narratives in which there was an ambiguity and also a personal reference. I wanted to create something that was personal and meaningful to me but also open enough that the viewer could find their own meaning and sincerity within the work.
Baker, Chris Chucas
That was my intention whether or not that has been successful is to early to say but the strategies that I’ve employed to attempt it have been to lend certain conventions from cinema ; lighting and very shallow depth of field in urban environments predominantly. The intention was to build an image with said conventions that would include powerful signifiers and ambiguity to build a personal narrative with it.
Then after some experimenting I wanted to anchor the meaning to the projects initial ambitions, I found that by using lyrics from songs that mean a lot to me I was close to archiving a personal connection whilst leaving space and ambiguity for the viewer to have their own. I don’t think my intentions have been completely successful but I feel like the intention is there and perhaps the way I want to archive it but the final outcome perhaps needs some more work.
Originally I had the idea of the work being for a diverse audience and that would be mainly two groups. One being members of the punk rock community themselves and the other being outsiders curious to take a look. I think my-intention to display the work in a zine and exhibition would deliver to both audiences. The context in which the work is consumed would also be affected by the location and medium. I'm still unsure of traditional white wall galleries as space to display the work as I've often found that it connotes negative myths of art being for the wealthy or well educated, mostly to those outside of the art world I want the work to be as accesable as possible whilst keeping a personal meaning to me and also having an ambiguity to afford others personal meanign from the work.
‘The Grotesque effect of the photograph of the movie poster depends on the equivalence of object and it’s representation, of woman and it’s representations, of woman and picture-woman, that photography allows’ - Savendoff,2000, p.51
Savendoff points out that the cropping of the picture changes it’s reading by pointing to the mystery of the original poster, isolating the feeling of terror from it’s source. But the large rip through the image makes us very aware that the image is an image and we are more inclined to look at the image as an object and not an image.
Walker Evans, Movie Pos
Missing, Bronston Jones 2001 NYU Medical Center Wall
In our discussions the notion that a lot photographs have a primary function to record the likeness of someone is to serve a purpose, for example to find a missing person.
If we were to apply Savendoff's thoughts on recontextualization of the images from before, do we experience a grotesqueness here? I don’t think we do, the way that Jones set up his exhibition ‘Missing’ using images of people that did not come home after 9 / 11. In an attempt to keep their memory alive and photographing the missing peoples poster in the outdoor environment and their exposure to the wind and rain, symbolising their passing on and the breaking down of the paper symbolises the mortality of the persons depicted. To me, it isn’t grotesque but a sensitive and melancholy depiction of their passing symbolised by the degrading of the materials.
The Intrusion of the world into the poster, instead of showing up the poster as a mere representation, imparts its own concreteness to the poster’s image’ -Savendoff, 2000 p.86)
Barthes notes…..
‘It exists only for me. For you, it would be nothing but an indifferent picture one of the thousand manifestations of the ordinary’ - Barthes, 1980, p.73
In reference to his mother in the winter garden picture. To him it is very personal and to anyone else it would not hold the same significance when reading it. It's an interesting point surrounding the viewer that as image makers this might be a consideration in the making of the work. Is the audience important, is it a self reflective means of expression? Is it a commentary on a social or cultural issue, if it is then the audience and the context they understand the work is much more of a consideration.
Interestingly within this work the American flag is used quite a lot in the posters. The American flag has a lot of significance and meaning to Americans . Being born and raised in the UK I don't personally have any deep psychological attachment to the British flag and therefore cannot completely understand or empathise with an American’s viewing of the flag and the connotations it could invoke in them.
Based on other deconstruction of the reading of it it seems that to some the flag (is meant to) be a symbol of, Freedom, liberty, and working hard to make a good life for yourself. I’m not sure which Americans this is for ( white middle class Americans perhaps), but to me the whole ideology seems riddled with irony. Without digressing too much I don’t think any African Americans over the age of 50 would automatically agree with the meanings attached to the flag, neither would any Native Americans. To me the American flag does have embedded connotations and meanings that are probably more ironic but even still these only work based on the wide social and cultural accepted stereotypes of the flag and its meaning to Americans.
Bronston Jones , M
In Jones’ work I feel the flag has become a vehicle in which to convey a personal sense of closeness to Americans all over . Perhaps unintentionally and along with the annononymity with the subject ( in this particular image) it reaches all Americans to and becomes a lot easier to feel a sense of loss for those other parents, brothers, sisters, and loved ones. The flag is the one thing that they all have in common, the subject is then transformed into a relationship with the flag and thus Americans. It’s very powerful and works very well. Unlike a lot of work that employs the flag to either sincerely (in this case) comment on ‘America’ in a positive way or if it’s used in a way to criticise it, it is a strangely powerful icon today.
Another artist that spring to mind that comments on the American ideology but without using the icon of the flag is Margaret Bourke-White. To me it’s a great photograph that looks at the indifference and inequality in America at the time. It is an example of someone questioning these great American ideologies.
Margaret Bourke-White - At the time of the Lousiville flood 1937, Margaret Bourke-White
Interestingly with regards to my work which is looking at the punk rock scene, it’s historically been associated with being anti establishment and anti government in general. I feel that in the earlier days that was one of the main focuses and artists like Edward Culver, they were capturing the energy within the subculture rebelling back and questioning these American Ideals.
Back flip , Edward Culver.jpg
Glen E friedman Bad Brains .jpg
It’s been a common theme in the punkrock world, I personally feel that the anti establishment themes were quite simplistic and have since matured with a more balanced POV and looking at the human condition and understanding that there is no perfect answer. It seems like punk rock has matured a lot and this was one of the motivating factors that led me to purse my project, that and how it’s commonly misinterpreted today.
Ruth Buzzi Better Watch Her Back
My clothes are stained with the blood from my hands as the needle is dripping dry.
It’s resting on the table by my bedside.
I can feel the fabric within my veins.
I’m sure it's stained by now.
I’m not sure I’ll ever get out.
Father told me this would feed the family if just for a little while.
He said, "We’re needed by the Americans and their ever changing style."
He used to be the strongest man my eyes had ever seen.
Now he lies in a shallow grave thanks to faulty machinery, fuck this machinery.
Back to our interpretations of these symbols and their connotations. This image of ‘American Heroes’ postage stamp re creates the scene of 3 fire fighters that apparently constructed the the flag at the top of the ashes as a monument after 9 / 11 .
Interestingly this image was used in varying ways. While some called it a tribute to those who died, CNN called it a summons to renewed pa and renewed triumph. This is really interesting because it’s one image that's being interpreted in a few different ways. Although one could argue that CNN’s motives may by commercial and political, perhaps they are trying harder to see this image in this way. They're a news station that makes money from (supposedly) reporting the news. It seems that the more emotion they can pack into the story they are covering, the more attention it gets and the more emotional the response they get, making it viral and in their eyes more successful. I feel like its a problem and it furthers the manipulation of images and situations that perpetuates this news cycle culture that seems to be about making an impact emotionally over reporting simple facts.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xY-XmGEcpTM
On America’s obsession with the flag and the ideals that goes with it. If you notice the emotive use of the flag against the back drop of moving music, to me it’s this framing of the object albeit this time it's footage that's being framed a political propaganda piece. This makes me refer back to Savendoff …
‘The Grotesque effect of the photograph of the movie poster depends on the equivalence of object and it’s representation, of woman and it’s representations, of woman and picture-woman, that photography allows - (Savendoff,2000, p.51)
For me I can apply this reading of the image but swap out the women in Savendoff’s image with the American ideologies presented in the political commentary from the Glen Beck Video.
I’m glad to see that i’m not alone in my reading of this manipulation of these icons, especially on America and the use of its flag. Although we started with the flag and how it's used as a symbol of American idealogy, which I think there is truth in, the American dream to work hard and succeed etc, but I feel it has been hijacked for political purposes and in the above video is destructive to its own values by being a caricature of a champion fighting for those 'values'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dU22QEclVQo
‘The most significant indexical power of the photograph may consequently not lie in the relationship between the photograph and it’s subject, but in the relationshop between the photograph and it’s beholder, or user’.
(Olin, 2002, p114)
Olin’s comments perfectly describe how the power of the photograph lies within it’s meaning and not in the relationship with the subject. I agree with the view that we must decode the image before and make sense of it. Each reader's personal history and cultural relationship with images and the subject matter within it has it’s own set of rules which I liken to lens that the image is viewed through.
“A photograph is not necessarily a lie, but it isn’t the truth either. It’s more like a fleeting, subjective impression.” ― John Berger, Understanding a Photograph
Artists like Cindy Sherman with her ‘Untitled film stills’ work plays with these conventions that art, society and culture have embedded in us the viewer. Her work is multilayered and works by imitating the conventions that Hollywood movies use to build their narrative. Framing, wardrobe, lighting and other stylistic choices all mimic film stills of the time. Sherman was playing with ideas of identity and how women were represented at the time. It’s a really interesting idea. I think of it almost like an inside joke, you need to know extra information in order to understand and with that extra information and deeper meaning the context evolves and you both view it and appreciate it in a different way to those who may not know all the information or may be presented with no information at all. So if the work was presented at a gallery one would think; why has this artist done this? Is it mocking another art form? Is it trying to say something about the culture and society it was born out of? In this case, yes it was.
Barthes also notes-
I cannot reproduce the Winter Garden Photograph. It exists only for me. For you, it would be nothing but an indifferent picture, one of the thousand manifestations of the ‘ordinary’; it cannot in any way constitute the visible object of a science; it cannot establish an objectivity, in the positive sense of the term; at most it would interest your studium: period, clothes, photogeny; but in it, for you, no wound -Barthes Camera Lucida 1977 (p73).
I agree somewhat with what Barthes elaborates on from the quote. As photographers we make images for some sort of reason, whether its for a personal family album, or if it is an art project exploring time or space where the actual finished image is irrelevant but the actual taking of it is the purpose, the end photograph has been undertaken by ourselves and means something to the owner. This can also mean something to other viewers but it is possible for some images to be solely for us. Our personal relationship with the image with the reasons that motivated us to take them can affect the image maker in a way that cannot affect other viewers. I think there it is not a polarised idea that either an image is or is not but it simply can be.
First Night in Korea, Chris Chucas
I'll try and demonstrate the idea using the above image. I'm going to attempt to deconstruct the image as if I'm viewing it for the first time. Initially I can see that composition and lighting as well as the final colour produced at the end seems to be of a fairly decent standard. This makes me think ( some might say tricks me) that it is not of personal relevance but for an illustrative or journalistic / advertising purpose. We can see city lights amongst the twilight sky, with cars on a 4 lane road travelling towards and away from the camera. The buildings and large road are signifiers that signify we are looking at a city. The City is the signified, the socially agreed place we expect to see all of these things, the City. With the city comes a vast array of the signified, what we expect the city to be, loud noisey and busy dangerous etc. All of these connotations are going to be different for different people but with some overlap for everyone ( at least in similar cultures). When we add up the semi otic deconstruction of the image and the visual conventions we have the last piece of the puzzle in which we can look for meaning is in the context and or environment that the image is produced. If this image was on a gallery wall with no accompanying material one would assume that it is a nice picture of the city. It's purpose , for aesthetic pleasure and nothing more. If it were in a gallery with some accompanying text that would offer some sort of post modern exploration it would be thought of as art, and the same goes if this was seen in a magazine or a news paper with a product and text next to it. The truth of the image ( my truth anyways) is that I wanted to take a picture of the first night I spent in Korea. I went to live and work there for 2 years as an English teacher. I wanted to take a picture of the city as a record for myself. When I look at it I remember the excitement I had, I remember all the sights and sounds of the new city. I remember looking forward to my first day in work and not knowing exactly where I'd live or how I was going to get about. All of these feelings I get from looking at this image don't exist for anyone else. So in that sense Barthes notion that some images exist only for the maker is true.
“A drawing of a tree shows not a tree but a tree being looked at”
“The painter constructs, the photographer discloses. That is, the identification of the subject of a photograph always dominates our perception of it - as it does not, necessarily, in a painting” Sontag On Photography p92
‘One finds oneself entering the world of the simulacrum, a world where as in Plato’s Cave the possibility of distinguishing between reality from the phantasm, between the actual and the simulated, is denied’
(Krauss, 1984, p.62)
Barthes also notes-
I cannot reproduce the Winter Garden Photograph. It exists only for me. For you, it would be nothing but an indifferent picture, one of the thousand manifestations of the ‘ordinary’; it cannot in any way constitute the visible object of a science; it cannot establish an objectivity, in the positive sense of the term; at most it would interest your studium: period, clothes, photogeny; but in it, for you, no wound -Barthes Camera Lucida 1977 (p73).
I agree somewhat with what he elaborates on from the quote. As photographers we make images for some sort of reason, whether its for a personal family album, or if it is an art project exploring time or space where the actual finished image is irrelevant but the actual taking of it is the purpose the end photograph has been undertaken by ourselves and means something to the owner. This can also mean something to other viewers but it is possible for some images to be solely for us. Our personal relationship with the image with the reasons that motivated us to take them can affect the image maker in a way that cannot affect other viewers. I think there it is not a polarised idea that either an image is or is not but it simply can be.
Is the Nature of the photograph ‘really real’
Although this sounds like a simple question to me it’s loaded with problems before I even try to answer it. First of all from a philosophical point of view reality is a very subjective and controversial topic.
“Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.”
The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance, and this, and not the external manner and detail, is true reality. - (Aristotle)
I’m not an expert in philosophy at all but found some interesting reading from a recent philosophical hypothesis with regards to ‘Simulation’ an idea that it’s quite plausible that we could be living in a computer simulation.
A popular argument for the simulation hypothesis came from University of Oxford philosopher Nick Boston in 2003, when he suggested that members of an advanced civilisation with enormous computing power might decide to run simulations of their ancestors. They would probably have the ability to run many, many such simulations, to the point where the vast majority of minds would actually be artificial ones within such simulations, rather than the original ancestral minds. So simple statistics suggest it is much more likely that we are among the simulated minds.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/are-we-living-in-a-computer-simulation/
The reason I mention this is because I think before thinking about answers to questions posed surely we should ask ourselves if we’re qualified to make such opinions and if we have the right facts. I’m not going to attempt to navigate the intricate nuances of simulation theory but the fact there are renewed academics in their replicative fields saying it is a possibility makes me think about our perception of reality from a photographers point of view. Firstly with the abundance of theory showing us that the world as we see it might not be what it appears, it makes me think, why does it matter? We could spend our whole lives trying not to worry about things that are not real but of course we do worry because they feel real to us. Is it important if a photograph is real or not?
I’ve always found it interesting how we look at images and decode them and based on semi optics. When we look at making the images in the first place it’s preciously here that the objectivity of the photograph is lost and we begin to apply prejudice in the chosen of subject matter, framing, composition, and most importantly by being there in the first place makes difference to what is happening.
Certain ethical and stylistic consequences follow from the close connection between photography and "physical reality" or "the facts of the moment." The picture taker is on slippery ethical ground since "the photographer is part of the situation he depicts" and his picture, like the photon in atomic physics "upsets the facts on which it reports" -Synder and Allen (p. 152, 151).
I like the way that Cindy Sherman plays with this notion of how we deconstruct images by playing with conventions. In her picture Untitled film still number 14 it looks indicative of a hollywood film still becuase of the way it has been shot. The lightening the framing and composition along with her face with it's reactionary look would not look out of place if it were presented as a film still. But by choosing to deliberately archive this look and even name the work 'film stills she commented on this notion of looking and how we look at photographs and challenging the viewers to re evaluate what their seeing. I find a lot of her work inspirational as was fighting back at how women were though to be treated and presented like objects. That's something that still happens today but I think Sherman's work was brave in challenging these sterotypes and her untitled film stills were a way for her to express her anxiety how she felt living and working in NYC as a female at that time.
The debate continues is this a real picture? She was there in front of those buildings and wearing that outfit , she set up the tripod and took the image. That happened so in one sense it is real. Is this photograph captured spontaneously capturing a subject that's unaware? No. Is it fake or unreal? I don;t know. It's hard to argue that this is not 'fake ' because it is intentionally trying to look like certain type of photograph by copying it's conventions. I'm not saying this is wrong at all, if anything i would argue that the everyday way of thinking about photographs needs to be challenged. It's an inward reflection of Sherman's world so to her it's real or at least based in a reality in how she was feeling.
“Needing to have reality confirmed and experience enhanced by photographs is an aesthetic consumerism to which everyone is now addicted. Industrial societies turn their citizens into image-junkies; it is the most irresistible form of mental pollution.”
― Susan Sontag, On Photography
I agree with Sontags sentiment that the oversa
Another artist I've looked at closely and can find inspirational although I don't really work in a similar way is Jeff Wall but I'm looking at producing work in a similar way.
In his interview he talks about being asked about the notion of staging within his photographs.
" A gentleman came and asked about the staging of the people in the photograph,, and Jeff very politely commented " I don't stage, I work with people." ' -Thierry de Duve ( quoting Jeff Wall)
I don’t make sets, I wanna be a bit of a sticky about this vocabulary for a reason phtoography is still being id d as an art form i dont believe we really do know it as well as we know painting,… we’ve had painting for a thousand years and its part of our tradition. - Jeff Wall 08:30
The replica that becomes a document that vanishes into the picture to me its a dialectic, lets say a movement inside of our experience, our aesthetic experience... art is made essential to be an experience it's an experiential thing .... and it's also a judgement of quality. Jeff W
During that interview linked above Jeff Wall talks about his strong objection to his work being called fake or false. To paraphrase in very blunt terms Wall walks us through our cultural understanding of 'reportage' work. Which loosely defined is generally accepted as work made with no interaction or collaboration ( even with the most minimal of interaction this is still achievable in my opinion as I've mentioned previously). I also agree with Wall's words on the viewers job in interpreting the image. Thierry de Duve quotes Wall
The only narrative element in the picture is supplied by the viewer not the director or screenwriter. 35: 28
I really enjoy how Wall employs his relationship with cinema and how we decode images and motion with this sense of narrartive and search for meaning. The idea that the viewer brings their realty to the image. It is subjective albet Wall embracing that but also defending it as documentary and not fake is something I can support. As he mentions he is different to film directors and or screen writers in the sense he using people and their behaviour even if they are acting, by getting non trained actors to do tasks over and over and stripping away the performance the left over results are a document of the behaviour.
This is enough for me to abandon any defence of a photograph being ‘really real’. The term itself ‘really real’ means different things to different people. For example a photograph of a book could prove the existence of a book to a viewer and although the cover could resemble a book they own the pages could be empty in the photographed version. It’s not proof of anything, our problem comes becuase we’ve culturally grown and evolved over the lifetime of photography.
It’s inventors and creators had intentions using it for ‘scientific recording’ and trying to do objectively and the problem with the audience behind with photography’s perculiialr quality to render the world with such life like appearance unlike any other medium that came before it. How could something that looks so real not be true? Fast forward to today and the amount of digital imagery around let alone the amount of digital manipulation it’s hard to decipher what is truthful ( although photographs cannot be completely truthful because of the flawed nature in which a photograph has to be made ( with a human at some point of the process) and what is not.
Photographs cannot be completely truthful and thats ok to me. It’s a medium of expression, it can have elements of truthfulness but cannot be an objective record. I use it as a record of my opinion and thoughts both inwardly and self reflective and outwardly. In both cases they are my opinions and ways in which I look at the world with parts of it out of my control and other aspects within my control. Objectivity in a photograph is impossible.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fPwsLeH8fA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8P9S6FeAuU
After taking closer look at ‘photography, vision, and representation’ we have been asked to look at some core questions and to think about whether or not we agree or disagree with those sentiments propose in the paper.
In its introduction introduces itself as investigation into what critics and laymen believe about photography by taking a step back and looking at what photography is all about. More such magical geography in its earliest days with practitioners like Dagurre and Emerson. And Fox Talbot interested in photography’s ability to ‘capture’ round it with a particular focus on nature. This is understandable as paintings and other art at the time focus primarily on nature with its subject matter.
Fox ~Talbot Photogram
Interestingly Emerson broaches on an ethical question of the truthfulness photograph when talking about his ‘naturalistic’ representation in which he suggests that the photograph would render the same amount of detail that the human eye would would pick up. Interestingly with most of his research linking with the human eye he warned against an excessive detail arguing that in doing so would be ‘artificially false’ even though it may be ‘scientifically true’. I think is interesting practitioner dating back as far as Emerson is thinking about what is real and is not real photographically. I feel that in its earliest days it was seen more scientific tool than an artistic representation. Perhaps this is an early indication that culture and ways of understanding images is the most important factor in whether photography is either a scientific tool or a means of artistic representation. I believe it’s possible for a photograph to start its life is one thing and become many more.
Peter Henry Emerson
Photography overcame subjectivity in a way undreamed of by painting, one which does not so much defeat the act of painting as escape it altogether: by automatism,by removing the human agent from the act of reproduction."3 Photographs are not simply different from other kinds of pictorial representation in certain detailed respects; on the contrary, photographs are not really representations at all. They are the practical realisation of the general artistic ideals of objectivity and detachment.
-Snyder and Allen Autumn 1975 Critical Inquiry, p145
I would disagree with this point I would argue that somebody operating the camera is not the removal of human agent in the act of reproduction because there are several decisions and active choices that the photographer makes which are in substitute of the painter’s brush stroke but no less they are part of the reproduction process or process of making an image. I also agree with Arnheim’s sentiment on the peculiar nature photographs.
In his recent article, Arnheim bases his argument squarely on the "mechanical" origin of photographic images. "All I have said derives ultimately from the fundamental peculiarity of the photographic medium: the physical objects themselves print their image by means of the optical and chemical action of light" (p. 155). Because of this fundamental peculiarity, photographs have "an authenticity from which paint- ing is barred by birth" (p. 154). In looking at photographs, "we are on vacation from artifice" (p. 157). We expect to find a certain "documen- tary" value in photographs, and toward this end we ask certain "documentary questions": "Is it authentic?" "Is it correct?" and "Is ii true?" (p. 157).
Because photography is accurate detailed rendering of the world around it much more realistic than any of the other art forms ‘especially in the early days’ its very nature forces the viewer to raise these questions over authenticity in the earlier days of the first photographs with long exposure times needed they would be closer statically to paintings and I think that helped culturally ease our way into photography. I couldn’t imagine what it would be like if someone could go back with photograph taken with modern day equipment and show somebody in the 1800s, I liken it to if somebody could plug one’s consciousness into virtual reality or artificial reality today, something that is not too far away I feel.
I particularly agree with Arnheim’s thoughts on the effects of the photographer being part of the situation and thus have an effect on the environment it does have an effect on whether we like it or not photography cannot ever be truly objective and as such within my practice I acknowledge this and embrace it. Being part of what is going on around me and my personal experiences with subject matter I work with the people I work with all rolled into one when it comes to the context of my work, to try and be completely objective is impossible.
Certain ethical and stylistic consequences follow from the close connection between photography and "physical reality" or "the facts of the moment." The picture taker is on slippery ethical ground since "the photographer is part of the situation he depicts" and his picture, like the photon in atomic physics "upsets the facts on which it reports" (pp. 152, 151).
Not entirely sure if his views on the limitations of photography applied to the same degree today, with the advancement of technology and especially digital manipulation I disagree that photography “limits the creations of the mind powerful material constraints”, used to and now digital manipulation can do the job that Woods originally take huge sums of money and large amounts of materials to do but I feel like photography has never been as limitless as it is today with the practitioners creating work born of the imagination and that doesn’t exist in real world.
“Of course, compared with painting, photographs suffer from the same deficiencies that "physical reality" or "the world" itself does. They lack the "formal precision" and "expressive freedom" which the "private visions" of the painter possess. Photographs are tied to the world which is "irrational" and "incompletely defined." By its very nature, photography "limits the creations of the mind by powerful material constraints" (p. 160).
But regrettable as these constraints may be "from the point of view of the painter, the composer, or the poet," they are "an enviable privilege" when we consider photography's "function in human society" (p. 160). “
I think that photography is one of the newest mediums in artistic expression has disrupted a our views on art whether off r not photography has placed within it. It seems to be a lot of traditionalists that don’t see or didn’t see photography as a creative means of expression and I agree with Snyder and Allen on their criticism on Arnheim’s argument un the fundamental flaw that he believes that if the physical objects themselves print their image"
I also agree with Snyder and Allen’s comments on how peculiar photography is and how complicated it is to deconstruct it with out in-depth knowledge various aspects.
Arnheim describes himself as a "media analyst," not a critic, but despite this disclaimer, we must point out that he makes criticism of photographs difficult if not impossible. And since his views are held by critics and their audience as well, it is not surprising that there is very little intelligent criticism of photography. We are told that when we look at a photograph we are on "a vacation from artifice"-but should we be on vacation? We are told that a photograph is a "coproduction of nature and man"-but is this coproduction along the lines of Michelangelo and a piece of marble, or a geneticist and breeds of corn, or some other sort of coproduction altogether? We are told that it is wrong to look at a photograph as though it were "made and controlled by man"-but what might we discover if we did look at photographs in just that way? In addition, we might ask whether Arnheim's "acknowledged fact" that "the physical objects themselves print their image" is really a fact at all, and whether the photographic process itself really guarantees much of anything about the relation between image and imaged. It is odd that modern critics who believe that the photographic process should be the starting point for criticism have had very little to say about what the process is, how it works, and what it does and doesn't guarantee. Aside from the simple notion of automatism, two models of how photography works have been used, or at least assumed. One of these, which we will call the "visual"model, stresses the supposed similarity between the camera and the eye as optical systems, and posits that a photograph shows us (or ought to show us) "what we would have seen if we had been there ourselves." The other version of how photography works we will call the "mechanical" model. It stresses the necessary and mechanical connections which exist between what we see in a photograph and what was in front of the camera. According to this model, a photograph may not show us a scene as we ourselves would have seen it, but it is a reliable index of what was. Writers on photography have often treated these models as though they were identical, or as though one were contained within the other, but this is not the case, and such assumptions gloss over the basic challenge to any theory which attempts to find the meaning of photographic images by referring to their origins the challenge of extracting pictorial meaning from the operation of natural laws. p148-149
Like I mentioned earlier the photographer makes several choices or ‘characterisations ‘as Snyder and Alan label it, these choices or characterisations being the choice of lenses choice of environments 1 Would Pl themselves in time-of-day to undertake the photography angle of the camera there are many many steps decisions taking into account which renders Arnheims statement “the physical objects themselves print their image” seems unfair.
The position of the camera effects further characterisations; once again, this holds true whether the position of the camera is carefully planned by the photographer, or whether the camera goes off by accident when dropped, or whether the camera is built into a booth and goes off automatically when people feed coins into a slot. The camera position will determine whether one of two objects within the camera's field of view will be to the right or the left, in front of or behind, another object. Together with the choice of lens, the camera position will deter- mine the size and location of individual objects both in relation to the total image area and to each other. Thus, given a man standing in a room, the photographer can characterise the scene so that the man appears to dominate his environment or to be dominated by it. With these kinds of characterisations in mind, Arnheim's notion that "the physical objects themselves print their image" seems more like a fanciful metaphor than an "acknowledged fact.' p151
I find interesting and I agree with Snyder and Allan’s comments that the visual and mechanical models to deconstruct photography do little more than break give a basic overview of the process by likening it to our biological means of seeing.
What we have called the "visual"model of the photographic process is another way of trying to flesh out the bare bones of photography's alleged "intimate involvement" with "physical reality." No doubt this model originated in, and retains its plausibility because of, the supposed resemblance of the human eye with its lens and retina to the camera with its lens and film. But once this resemblance has been stated, the model fails to establish anything further. The notion that a photograph shows us "what we would have seen had we been there ourselves" has to be qualified to the point of absurdity. A photograph shows us "what we would have seen" at a certain moment in time, from a certain vantage point if we kept our head immobile and closed one eye and if we saw with the equivalent of a 150-mm or 24-mm lens and if we saw things in Agfacolor or in Tri-X developed in D-76 and printed on Kodabromide #3 paper. By the time all the conditions are added up, the original position has been reversed: instead of saying that the camera shows us what our eyes would see, we are now positing the rather unilluminating proposition that, if our vision worked like photography, then we would see things the way a camera does. The camera-eye analogy is no more helpful for people investigating human vision than it is for the investigator of photographs. p151
The camera-eye analogy is no more helpful for people investigating human vision than it is for the investigator of photographs. The problem is that all such theories presuppose some standard or baseline of retinal correctness from which "artistic" or "good" photography either ought or ought not to depart-but that standard or baseline does not exist. P153
Schneider and Alan make some interesting points on a simpler level on our relationship with this camera I analogy, for at first it seems rather complex and unrelated to photography but looking into it further I think they have a point that people who use it to form a basis of a deconstruction of what photography is by using this analogy the basis for the argument or opinion is flawed in principle as the way in which we view things has perhaps been oversimplified even on a biological level, I think it further argues against Anheim ’s notion of a ‘Objects print themselves’. Photography is so peculiar in this way it’s detailed lifelike reproduction of what we see causes what problems when talking about its process. As Snyder and Alan discuss we have to go further back again the most fundamental level seeing to question it.
The camera-eye analogy is no more helpful for people investigating human vision than it is for the investigator of photographs. The more the supposed analogy is investigated, the more convincing becomes the conclusion that we do not possess, receive, or even "make" an image of things when we see-that there is nothing corresponding to a photo- graphic image formed in one place which is then inspected or interpreted. Images are indeed formed on the retina of the eye, but they do not answer functionally to the image at the film plane of a camera. In the living, active eye, there is nothing that can be identified as the retinal image, meaning by that a persisting image that is resolved on one definite topographical portion of the retina. Rather, the image is kept in constant involuntary motion: the eyeball moves, the image drifts away from the fovea and is "flicked" back, while the drifting movement itself vibrates at up to 150 cycles per second.10 Amidst all this motion, is there one privileged image to set beside a photograph for comparison? At the material level (the level at which arguments about photography are usually pitched), the two processes are simply incommensurate. We might, of course, identify the end result of vision-"what we see"-as the image. But unless the camera-eye analogy works at some simpler level, why should we call what we see an "image" at all? P152
Interestingly on these new lines of what is it we see? Can we guarantee that what one person views looks the same to somebody else if neither one can have the experience of the other? Leading into more conceptual artists whose work is born out of imagination that Arnheim states photography ‘limits the creations of the mind by powerful material constraints.”
“ Of course, compared with painting, photographs suffer from the same deficiencies that "physical reality" or "the world" itself does. They lack the "formal precision" and "expressive freedom" which the "private visions" of the painter possess. Photographs are tied to the world which is "irrational" and "incompletely defined." By its very nature, photography "limits the creations of the mind by powerful material constraints" (p. 160)
thoughts on the mechanical model of how photography works; and is it an objective way to see if we don’t ‘naturally see that way anyway?
The other version of how photography works we will call the "mechanical" model. It stresses the necessary and mechanical connections which exist between what we see in a photo- graph and what was in front of the camera. According to this model, a photograph may not show us a scene as we ourselves would have seen it, but it is a reliable index of what was. Writers on photography have often treated these models as though they were identical, or as though one were contained within the other, but this is not the case, and such as assumptions gloss over the basic challenge to any theory which attempts to find the meaning of photographic images by referring to their origins the challenge of extracting pictorial meaning from the operation of natural laws. p199
I agree with Snyder and Alan with the sentiment on this this mechanical model to deconstruct the process of photography doesn’t work on the basis that we don’t see motion in the way the camera captures it.
But we don't see motion in any of these ways; we see things move. When Eadweard Muybridge succeeded in "freezing" rapid motion-to settle a bet as to how horses galloped his results were met with dismay by artists, photographers, and the general public alike as being "unnatural" and "untrue." This was not an expression of doubt in the veracity of Muybridge's results but, instead, a perception that the results lay outside of common visual experience, and outside of the conventions of representation that obtained at the time. People believed that horses might indeed gallop as Muybridge had photographed them, but the proposition could only be confirmed by other photographs, not by direct observation. p156
Reality in Science/mechanical images
In an interesting example Snyder and Allen look at how a scientific approach to using photography and in particular the photo finish method used at horse races is used as a means indexing and proving what was actually there at a particular time but the optical result is completely different what we would ‘naturally’ see with our eyes. It’s interesting that of course, once we know how a photofinish picture is made, it upsets us. We are accustomed, when we see five horses occupying five different positions in a photograph to think that we are looking at a picture of five horses that were all in different places at the same time. In a photofinish, we see five horses that were at the same place at different times. The most scientific images are the most bizarre looking and unnatural looking to the laymen. The picture seems "realistic" or "natural" or to display "the manifest presence of authentic physical reality" in spite of the way in which it was made, in spite of the fact that what the photograph actually manifests is far from what we normally take "physical reality" to be. The mechanical relations which guarantee the validity of the photograph as an index of a certain kind of truth have been almost completely severed from the creation of visual likeness. It might be objected that the photofinish is a special case, or a "trick" photograph. This invites the question why people who bet on horseraces should consent to have their bets settled by trickery. Nor is the photofinish a special case; many kinds of "scientific" photographs dis- play a similar divorce of pictorial content and "the facts of the mo- ment." In infra-red and ultra-violet color photography, visible colors are arbitrarily assigned to invisible bands of the spectrum. In color Schlieren photography used to analyze motions in gases and liquids, colors are arbitrarily assigned to directions, and no surgeon expects to find anything resembling an X-ray when he opens up a body. In all these cases, the picture is valuable as an index of truth only to the extent that the process by which it was made is stated explicitly, and the pictures can be interpreted accurately only by people who have learned how to inter- pret them. To the uninstructed viewer, red and purple potato plants look equally bizarre; only the expert interpreter, who knows how color infra-red film works, who knows what filter was placed over the lens, and who knows something about potato plants can confidently equate red with health and purple with disease. Even when a scientist uses “conventional" kinds of photography, he is likely to rely on the inclusion of stopwatches or yardsticks or reference patches in the image, rather than on the photographic process pure and simple, to produce pictures which are a reliable guide to the truth. p162
When dealing with photography and it’s relationship with reality within the constrains of science and measurements it’s universally agreed that although the images may seem unnatural ( at least to what we see with our human eyes) they show us more and it could be argued they are more truthful. All of this is on the universal understanding that the scientists looking at the images have been specifically trained and have set parameters in which to analyse the images with. Do we not apply this rational to the non scientific world of photography. Also where is the line between photography as a scientific record and a photography as a creative? Context? I would say that the line is constantly moving and shifting. It’s possible for one photograph to be both. A photograph can be a record of an object but can also be the object in itself and it can prove that said object existed but it is also questionable whenther it ever existed at all. Paramount to the process ( which I still can’t wholly subscribe to any theory) intention and reading and both of which subjective in their very nature can constantly shift and evolve.
Trying to find out what photography is by establishing what it is not is a peculiar theme that re occurs within photography.
If automatism" and both the visual and mechanical models of photography explain so little of how photography works, why are they advanced? At least one reason seems to be that they are not intended as serious descriptions of the photographic process in the first place and are only put forward as "negative" definitions in order to establish what is peculiarly photographic about photography by way of contrast with what is peculiarly "artistic"about art. Thus what is truly significant about a photograph of a horse is not really that the horse himself printed his image, or that the photograph shows us the horse as we ourselves would (or wouldn't) have seen him, or that it establishes something in the way of scientific truth about this horse. What is significant (it seems to be alleged) is that this horse wasn't invented by some artist: this is a picture of a real horse. This sort of thing is usually more hinted at than stated explicitly, and it seems to encompass a number of different beliefs, some about photography and some about art, some mainly ontological and some mainly aesthetic. p163
Ontological
As far as principles of aesthetics go, John Szarkowski has gone further than many other writers by stating explicitly the theory of art that separates photography from "handmade" representations: "most of the literature of art history is based on the assumption that the subject exists independent of, and prior to, the picture. This notion suggests that the artist begins with his subject and then does something to it -deforms it somehow, according to some personal sense of style. "in the very next sentence, Szarkowski adds that this theory probably doesn't account for the work of any artist in any medium, which makes his assertion that "it is especially irrelevant in the case of photography" somewhat less than definitive. P164
The poverty of photographic criticism is well known. It stands out against the richness of photographic production and invention, the widespread use and enjoyment of photographs, and even the popularity of photography as a hobby. To end this poverty we do not need more philosophizing about photographs and reality, or yet another (this time definitive)definition of "photographic seeing," or yet another distillation of photography's essence or nature. The tools for making sense of photographs lie at hand, and we can invent more if and when we really need them. p169
Geoffrey Batchen (2002: 139) notes: 'In the mere act of transcribing world into picture, three dimensions into two, photographers necessarily manufacture the image they make. Artifice of one kind or another is therefore an inescapable part of photographic life’. I agree with this but the deeper question for me is ' is this the nature of photography, is it inherent to it's very being?' I think it's impossible to be completely objective with any human choices being made.