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