Criticizing Photogrpahy by Terry Barrett

There have been, in history, a multiplicity of uses for photography, but the true question is can it be trusted? Terry Barrett states that photography grew up and progressed with claims of having a special relationship with reality. This would suggest that everything we see is true and shows "exactness," especially with a caption the image can be qualified as reality. A view of what someone else saw, of what really happened.  Now more then ever we can see that photographs can be changed and altered, that captions no longer hold truth to what may have actually occurred. "A Capitalist society requires a culture based on images."the undermining of images altogether rids any reality.

As far as captions go, there is a insisting that "all text be read critically." Postmodernists would say that the author persuades only one type of meaning. Modernist photography is focused on positions parallel to those given in early paintings and sculptures, which would allow them to think that this type of photography is much above commercial photography. This type of photography has become its own entity. Photography has been turned into something that may evoke emotions of resistance or sympathy, but it does need to be noted that through the authors descriptions we need to determine "how representation affects what is represented."

There are so many subsets of photography as an art form that it can influence many aspects of the world. "There is no single Marxism, no single feminism, no single, universally accepted postmodernism."

"Theoretical questions receive different answers, as do interpersonal and evaluative questions. Theorizing about photography, like interpreting and evaluations photographs results in conclusions that are more or less enlightening, more or less informative, more or less helpful in making photography, photographs, and the world understandable."

Artist Statement

http://www.derekpaulboyle.com/about/

This is short, to the point, and informative. I like ever bit of it and want to push my own work in a similar direction.

Extra Credit

 1/2 at f/5.6

 2.5 at f/11

 10 at f/22

 1/1.6 at f/5.6

 1/6 at f/11

 10 at f/22

 1/250 at f/5.6

 1/60 at f/8

 1/15 at f11

1/15 at f11 while moving

Who Cares About Books? by Darius Himes

The reading starts off with an important statement which gives true meaning and importance to books:

 "Books are conveyors of ideas, mementos of civilization, and harbin- gers of change. As the late historian Barbara W. Tuchman wrote, “Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill. Without books, the development of civilization would have been impossible.”'

The importance of books is never ending. The photographer has many advantages with books, including the ability to revisit important works, it is like a hand held exhibition. We are able to use photo books and re-live what was from the past and learn from it as well. "We are at a point where the history of the photobook has now entered into the realm of academic study." All the aspects of a book come together to create something that is more then just a book but a vessel of information and visual experience. 

"A photobook is an autonomous art form, comparable with a piece of sculpture, a play or a film. The photographs lose their own photographic character as things “in themselves” and become parts, translated into printing ink, of a dramatic event called a book."

The golden age is now a stepping stone to allow the book making processes to be put into the hands of anyone willing to pay a small starting price. This implies that an entire industry will be set aside and the power of book creation is now given away.This leaves photographers with the task of truely understand their art form and the craft and language therein.

"The job of photographers, apart from making relevant work, is to learn the language of a complex art and craft, and to consider the rich pos- sibilities therein, before stating that they want to publish a book of their photographs."

"Remembering and Forgetting Conceptual Art" by Alex Klein

1. How does ideas in the article relate to your work and your interpretation about how photography is developing?

2. What are the boundaries that make photography conceptual?

3. How relavant is conceptual art?

4. When does the transition come on between practicle and conceptual art?

5. By placing photography into the aesthetic of conceptual art, are we taking away from conceptual art and art in general?

6. "Conceptual artists’ reduction or amateurization of the photograph must also be acknowledged as an aesthetic decision, no matter how much it may be tied to chance operations or deconstructive procedures" That being said, does conceptualization of the image come from the viewer or the artist, or the two together?

8.  What is the relationship between the two, artist and audience?

9.  How does preformative, documentational photography, and parodic, refuses or eludes depiction, so refuses concepts, exist in the same ideological model? Is there conflict between these two ideas?

10.  At what point do we call a work conceptual – does it begin with an idea or an aesthetic?

11. Bonus Question : WHAT?

ibanana (in progress)

Panorama

Artists that inspire

“Freak Out” at Greene Naftali

George Rippon

Notes
Installation view, Sprüth Magers Berlin, 2013

 OLOF INGER
MEDVETANDE KROPP

Final Project Proposal

For the final project I would like to do a critique on societies usage of cell phones and their constant attachment to them. There are new disorders that suggest that there is an addiction aspect to technology. This idea is something I would like to further explore and in a sense make fun of. This concept will be important because it may help others understand the ridiculous obsession we have to inanimate objects and how we as people give life to material goods. My major inspiration stems from visuals of people all sitting together, but all on their cell phones. Also the people who have ruined their personal relationships because they couldn’t give up their cell phone usage for more then a few seconds. This project will help introduce what I intend to do to further my photography because in the beginning I said that I wanted to make images that made people think. This project will encourage people to think of their own attachment to whatever material object they carry around and reflect. What if it were a different more trivial object? Because this project will launch my photographic techniques and creative thought processes behind each photo, it will push me further into creating better photographs and will help me to move forward from where I was before I entered the class. In my photos I will use other objects in place of cell phones to create an illusion to them. A nonsensical approach to technology.

Link to real life situations of technology "taking over"....

http://www.mtv.com/videos/true-life-im-addicted-to-the-internet/1708520/playlist.jhtml#series=2211&seriesId=5232&channelId=1

A Picture You Already Know

"The layers that form the practice of photography are themselves permeated by layers of repetition and multiplication."

There is so much difference in the mediums of art in the world. In contrast, within each medium and among them is a certain repetition. Repetition can be seem within the image, but also within the technique. A quote from the reading stated: “photography is the easiest medium in which to be competent and the hardest medium in which to have a personal vision because there’s no touch, there’s no hand, there’s no physicality, there’s no interface.” This is wrong. Within photography just like any other medium there is personal style, personal preference. This causes a repetition of some sort, from the creator and infuses personal vision, which in turn allows the artist to use whichever technique, whichever slit of hand to create their image. A series of images would not be a series without a little repetition amongst the bunch.  Our repetition is what makes our photographs unique.

"As photography already points to larger fields and contexts, rendering an expanded view in time and space, repetition opens the possibility, through the accumulation of individual parts, of depicting a picture larger than what we may be able to see as individuals."

Expression

5 rules

1.  Catch people off guard
2.  No posed images
3.  fill the frame with the image
4.  Capture reaction of the previous picture being taken
5.  walk behind them and shout!

Too Drunk to Fuck (On the Anxiety of Photoraphy) by Mark Wyse

"Photography has shifted from being a discourse on trying to understand the world to a discourse on trying to understand ourselves. "

Does the true anxiety of a photographer come from the desire to know or feel a meaning behind an image? Depedening upon what you choose to derive from photography as you create an image, is your answer. In this essay by Mark Wyse, Wyse compares Nan Goldin, who uses photography to bring fourth emotion and feeling to her images, and Christopher Williams, who uses intellect within the creation of images. Each creating a sense of desire for the image either within its creation processes or desire for the image itself. The confusion lies within the interpretation. Do we as viewers project meaning where there isn't any, or lose the meaning in something overwhelmed with it?

 

"There is a difference between interpreting and experiencing: the former is a learned thing, an exercise in knowledge; the latter is perhaps more humanly accessible"

Things I never knew before... Photoshop edition

• I didn't realize that the move tool allows you to not only move images already part of that photograph but also allows you to copy layers and move one document to another.
• Photoshop can open and recognize nearly every file type and if it does not open or fails to open then that means that either the file is corrupt, which means the damage is most likely permanent, or the file extension has been changed or file wrongly renamed.
• You can use the Clone stamp tool to get ride of "hot spots" or areas where the flash of the camera has left an image looking shiny. 
• When saving in a TIFF file, the TIFF is saving pixels in an interleaved order, for example if you have RGB, it will save it as RGBRGBRGB. 
• Photoshop can also put all your colors together when saving in Tiff, in the Per Channel order. So the sequence would RRRGGGBBB, saving all the reds together, blues together, and greens together. Photoshop gives you many options!

Overall Ive learned that Photoshop has many useful and helpful tools which help create beautiful images. It can read every document and is an incredibly smart program, that is worth having if in the photography world.

Lost and Found

Within the Scanner

Qualifying Photography as Art, or, Is Photography All It Can Be?

There is some speculation as to how to qualify photography as art because of the numerous dimensions that go into a single photo that are completely unseen by the viewer. This problem generates more problems as how to critique photography. There is no model to follow when discussing photography unless you fully understand the intentions and stages of processing. "No adequate framework exists by which to measure the achievements of these photographers." For many to fully accept photography into the art world a universal understanding of technical and "conceptual implications"needs to be addressed to "remedy" these thoughts. With the proper awareness, photography will be able compete other mediums.

Is Photography Over?

Is Photography Over? Many artistic and informative voices have been put together to discuss this very question. Many say that it has just started a "mutation" into modernity. Others say that it is over and it has been for some time now, its reached the end of it "life cycle" and its "zenith of popularity only to be superseded"  (Blessing). The rapidly changing world comes with rapidly changing mediums for the art institution. Does this mean that because photography as a medium has changed too much, it cannot continue to be called photography? "The tradition keeps extending itself even if, in order to do so, it has to mutate into something which may not look or sound like what has gone before" (Dyer). The content of photography has stayed relatively the same but the ways in which images are created has changed. Photography is growing. We no longer use scratches of symbols on walls to communicate through writing, we have letters to create words on paper. Like language or any other evolving institution or structure, photography is ever evolving which would insinuate its immortality. 

Inspiration in Life

Sally Mann's Images of her children are breath taking. Although very controversial for many, the realism and natural tendency of her photographs transport viewers into another world. This in particular is of great inspiration to my own pieces because it has a sense of freedom and whimsy that was not forced but captured by Mann. Her work with which I am most impressed is photos that caused most controversy, photos of her children. The images are based around her home and her children's lives. They portray life in its most natural state. The multitude of photos with nudity, give life to her idea of freedom and beauty within the image, which I would like to work my way into and have started to explore the bodies natural beauty and the power behind it in its simplest form.The contrasting blacks, whites and gray tones seen in many of her images give depth and drama to her subjects. These colors and deep contrasts give her subjects a statuesque feel which further enhances her imagery. Sally Mann has taken simplistic situations and made them seem much larger. She has caused those around her to take notice and think about her images rather then just see them. Her images provoke feelings and emotions within viewers. I wish some day to provoke similar sensations from my own work.