Week 14

The readings this week focus on what is Real in photography.  As photography continues to advance and evolve, we're assaulted by more and more technology that is capable of altering the photograph to the extent that it's next to impossible to tell if what is contained in the image has been altered or is even a photograph at all.

The image above was created by my friend Nick who is an architect.  They were supposed to take a photograph of the models they created for a class.  However, Nick is a crazy perfectionist and was unable create the lighting he wanted for his model, so decided to simply model it in 3D studio max instead.  I can't tell that it's an image that was created- rather than taken, and neither could anyone in his class.

The Remediation articles talked quite a bit about virtual reality.  "In order to create a sense of presence, virtual reality should come as close as possible to our daily visual experience"(p.22).  This statement interests me because when I think of VR, I don't think of it as employing technology to do everyday things such as doing the dishes or walking my dogs.  Instead, VR is often expected to show us things that are fantastical and that we cannot access in our everyday lives.  

This of course leads us to the photoblog in comparison.  "Photobloggers like, most of all, to make photographs of what they call 'the everyday', the 'banal' or 'the mundane'.... most photobloggers say that 'real life' is the desired content of their photographs.  They want pictures of real life as it happens, as they experience.  'Real life'... traditionally happens outside of photographs, and this is precisely what they want in their photographs" (p.887).  Digital pictures are free and therefore many many more images can be taken, providing the photographer with an arsenal of images with which to describe even the smallest moments of their days.  A desire is expressed for a camera to be inserted in their eyes so that it is possible to capture every detail of their existence.  Below are a few images from a friend's photoblog.

 I also found it interesting that the reading points out that most photobloggers do not use flash.  In general, they avoid any behavior or photographic tool that causes people to be put on guard or strike a pose.  They capture the moments before and after the instant when someone expects the photo to be taken.  

Modernism Rewind

I'm going to journey back in time to week 2 and refresh my own memory on modernism.

Beginning with Harrison- he defines modernism as "intentional rejection of classical precedent and classical style."  Modernism distinguishes between the classical and the transformation of art in the 19th-20th centuries through industrialization, urbanization, and mechanism (taken from Amy's blog- thanks!).  The artist in the modernist realm believes that the most important thing about art is it's aesthetics and rather than simply being a kind of artist- the modernist is a critic who has a certain set of beliefs about art and it's development.

In Greenberg's Modernist Painting, he states that modernism is "the use of characteristic methods of a discipline to criticize the discipline itself, not in order to subvert it but in order to entrench it more firmly in the area of competence."  Modernist photographers included members of f/64- a group that focused on highlighting the sharp detail in which a photograph can render it's subject- rather than making photographs that look like paintings.  Michael Fried- a follower of Greenberg in turn attacks minimalist art for producing effects that do not derive from within the work itself, but instead are dependent on the viewer's relationship with the object (Art and Objecthood, 1966). This, he insists, "is now the negation of art". According to Fried, these minimalists took Greenberg's plea for purity too far; instead of exploring medium, all they do is present the materials for what they are. 

Week 13

This week's readings focused on the writings of Michael Fried and the release of his new book, Why Photography Matters.  Fried identifies two modes of relation between figures in pictures and their spectators.  The first is the "absorptive mode" in which the subject figure of the work is absorbed in their own task and unaware of their surroundings and the presence of the viewers.  One such photography trend and example of this work involves our attachment and focus on our electronic devices.  Andrew Curtis created a series of work titled "Cell" in which the subjects are all focusing on their cell phones.

www.andrewcurtis.com

Another artist who uses this technique is Evan Baden and his series "Illuminati."  This project includes subjects on cell phones, waching tv, and playing video games.

www.evanbaden.com

Both of these series show figures who "appear not to be 'acting out' their world, only 'being in' it."  The subjects are so absorbed in their electronic devices that they seem to be completely unaware of the photographer.  

The second mode that Fried talks about is the "theatrical mode."  In this mode, the figure in the picture is performing for the viewer (and at the time the picture was made- the artist.)  While these two modes seem to be opposites, they are share in common that the act of the subject focusing on something in the image is a performance in itself.

Week 12

The essays for this week, George Baker's Photography's Expanded Field and Rosalind Krauss's Reinventing the Medium, are fascinating to read in an era where film and photography are closely intertwined.   The still image came first, and Baker argues that photography was not deconstructed to form film, but rather was expanded.  "Photography is no longer the priveleged middle term between two things that it isn't. Photography is rather only one term in the periphery of a field in which there are other, differently structured possibilities."  Through multiple frames strung together we are able to see a more complete and expanded narrative.  Krauss examines the work of Robert Coleman in her essay.  His photographs are presented as slides in a traditional carousel regulated by a timer.  Coleman seems to be elaborating on the "paradoxical collision between stillness and movement"  by essentially rotating photographs through a slideshow.  His work is the first step towards a more complete moving picture- the video.  Interestingly, just as Coleman begins to step from still image to a moving narrative, Cindy Sherman creates her pieces moving the opposite direction.  Her film stills seem to take snippets from moving imagery.   

The Baker essay raises one of my concerns in photography by stating “critical consensus would have it that the problem today is not that just about anything image-based can now be called photographic, but rather that photography itself has been foreclosed, cashiered, abandoned—outmoded technologically and displaced aesthetically.”  It seems that photographers are encouraged to divulge in a variety of media to convey their message.  Ann Fessler, a photographer professor at RISD, uses sound and installation in combination with her images about adoption.

In her piece, Cliff & Hazel, the walls are hung with enlarged color snapshots of the Fessler's family.   The center of the room is carpeted, with a comfortable sofa and a television (housed in a wooden cabinet to suggest age). A mobile of Fessler family photographs dangles over the TV, which plays a looping 23-minute video that Fessler made while visiting home for Hazel's 80th birthday. 
Another room installation, Everlasting, has only a carpet pad, no carpet; the upholstery on the sides of the five armchairs has been cut out: the comforts of the family room ripped away. Projected on a wall is a silent, black-and-white archival film loop of nurses wheeling babies, two-by-two, around the corner of an institutional hospital corridor. A 17-minute sound collage plays of some of Fessler's interviewees. The form is expressionistic—five discrete speakers pipe in overlapping voices—but the women collaborate on a linear narrative account, from pregnancy to sequestration to birth, then surrender and sorrow. 

While Fessler's roots are in the medium of photography, it has all branched out into other factions.  The onslaught of digital photography and the access that the general public now has to cameras makes me think that other photographers will continue to involved a variety of media in their work to preserve some sense of originality.

Week 11 Update

One photographer I just remembered is Julie Moos and her series of portrait photographs, Friends and Enemies. In each of her portrait series Moos has been interested in examining objectively a specific socio-cultural milieu, placing her subjects in neutral environments, posed frontally and usually in pairs against a blank backdrop. The series Friends and Enemies was shot at a private high school in Moosâ home city of Birmingham, Alabama. At the invitation of the school's principal, Moos spent several months during the 1999-2000 term interviewing students, teachers and counselors, as well as analyzing candid photographs in school publications.

Recognizing that much of the high school experience revolves around interpersonal relationships, and thinking about the violence that had recently occurred at Columbine High School in Colorado, Moos was sensitive to the friendships and rivalries which she discerned in the class of 2000 at the Birmingham school. Converting a classroom into a temporary studio for a week, with parental consent forms signed and students agreeing to participate, Moos selected students in pairs to be photographed, sometimes choosing students who were good friends and other times students who were enemies, rivals or barely knew each other. The students did not know with whom they would be paired until they arrived for their sessions.

"In presenting her finished color images, which are printed large so that the sitters are virtually life-size, Moos does not inform viewers of the relationships among her subjects. With the stark settings and the face-forward poses that do not allow for interaction among the sitters, viewers are left to try to discern the feelings and relationships from the subtleties of codes of behavior reflected in body language, facial expressions, and styles of clothing and hair. Moos straightforward portraits are compelling for the way they evoke the nuances of character and personality in her subjects. At the same time her photographs challenge viewers to resolve the visual riddles they contain, bringing forth our own memories, experiences and preconceptions and making the photographs in a way portraits of ourselves as well."

This body of work hits heavily on two aspects of the Baker essay.  The first lies in the use of text to convey narrative.  Allan Sekula has "repeatedly insisted on regarding photographic meaning as a hybrid construction depending on both textual and contextual factors in order to be capable of being read" (p.75).  In Moos' work, each photograph is labeled only with the names of the people in the photos, but the viewer has the knowledge that these are "friends and enemies."  The viewer then naturally attempts to read body language and visual clues to label whether each portrait is one of friends or enemies.  

These images are of course also double portraits.  When two people are presented within a photograph- it is simple to try and relate them  Within Moos' work, you are already informed of their relationship.  Moos' has taken control of the generation of crucial questions by giving them text and titles, just as Sander's did in his "Farm Girls."  

Narrativity and Stasis

I believe it was August Sander who said "I want to photograph the world."  George Baker's essay discussing narrative and stasis does an interesting job of dissecting the difference between these two and how they relate to Sander's portraits.

Baker defines the two as such... "By narrativity, I mean simply those techniques that sustain a readable discourse, involving duration, movement, and inevitably a certain sense of plurality.  Stasis, on the other hand, involves signifying properties that are diametrically opposed to those of narrativity, encompassing primarily the petrifaction of motion, the freezing of time, and instead of plurality, the fixed or repetitive motif.  Photography is a static medium.  It is a moment frozen in time, and we are seeing a representation of that object, person, or landscape.  

To me, all photography, and most especially portraiture, has a narrative and a stasis.  While the photograph is a single frozen frame, it also presents a story.  We are humans looking at representations of other humans and therefore have a tendency to try and connect to their lives in some way.  In looking at one of Sander's images below- it is a natural development to begin constructing a story about the man depicted.  He is a chef- which we conclude by his presence in the kitchen and he is holding a mixing bowl.  While photography does not provide us with the future, it does give us clues to make guesses about what is about to occur.

Below I just included two portraits, the first from Bill Sullivan and the second from Anthony Blasko.  While in my own theory that narrative is created simply by context clues and our own imaginations- does it then matter if the narrative imagined is incorrect?

Race Test

I mentioned this briefly in class last week... but if you wanted to take the test to see if you're racist- check this out.

An online psychology test developed by the University of Chicago has been developed to test how racism is inbred in people. The test involves showing 100 pictures of black/white men with and without guns. The test comes as you decide very quickly if you should shoot or holster your gun.
http://backhand.uchicago.edu/Center/ShooterEffect/

Week 10- Race 2

Did you know that Pond’s “White Beauty” cream, pushed in India, Korea and Malaysia, is part of Unilever’s “international stable of skin lightening products”? That the “Pond’s White Beauty Detox range that gives a visibly illuminated and nourished pink glow”? That it “neutralizes the effect of darkness-causing impurities found in the environment and reduces accumulated melanin, thus giving a smooth, pure and bright skin”?

All of this week's readings kept leading me to think of Nancy Burson's The Human Race Machine.  This is an interactive device containing the software programs Burson created in collaboration with her former husband, David Kramlich. It allows you to view yourself as if you were of another race, gender, or age. 

http://www.nancyburson.com/pages/publicart_pages/hrmachine.html

Week 10- Race

I found there to be many similarities between the Butler article from last week and Howard Winant's The Theoretical Status on the Concept of Race.  Butler presents gender as a performative act.  It is not something that we are born with biologically, but rather something that is formed through a series of repetitive acts.   In Winant's piece, he states that "race is either an illusion that does idealogical work or an objective biological fact.  Since it is certainly not the latter, it must be the former" (p. 53).  Winant presents the work of Barbara Fields who explains that race is something we have constantly altered and adjusted to fit our social vocabulary.  This allows us to "make sense, not of what our ancestors did then, but of what we choose to do now" (p.54).  Both Butler and Winant present gender and race in such a way that says that it is something we create, rather that a solid biological fact. 

However, one of the problems that Winant points out with Fields' idealogical concept is that it fails to recognize that race is a part of our identities.  Especially in the US, where people from so many different countries have come together, race is one of the ways in which we define ourselves.  

In September, an ad for L'Oreal cosmetics ran featuring singer Beyonce.  The ad generated a lot of controversy when readers noticed that the singer's skin color appeared to have been lightened.  L'Oreal denied that her skin or features had been changed, but the noticeable difference between the singer's looks in the ad versus other photos of her may have been to the lighting or "creative touchups."  I think in this ad L'Oreal was trying to blur the issue of race in order to reach a larger target audience.  While most people know that Beyonce is "black,"  by lightening her skin, the company is trying to make sure that the "white" population know that their haircolor line will also work on them.  

This issue gets more and more confusing as people from different ethnic backgrounds continue to marry and their children cannot simply break their race down into white, black, yellow, red, and brown.  In many ways, it will become more difficult to judge people on the color their skin because more of the population will no longer be an extreme, but will rather fall somewhere in the middle.  

Gender Update

I mentioned this briefly in class last week... but CAMP cosmetics is the makeup company out of Glen Ellyn that is featuring the world's first line of cosmetics with the spokesperson being a transsexual.