Think about future processes and develop a few new techniques

While the first two are basically controlled bluing, the third is artificial 3D perspective. I can take once image an simulate two. Blending them together results in a fake 3D image that works with the right glasses. 

The final version after my premise was ‘tightened up’ 

Title- Democratisation: How technology shapes photography.

My Essay is about the gradual increased availability of imaging technology and its connection to the most common practiced genre of photography- The Vernacular.

Vernacular photography is the genre of snapshots. Images of generic social life and places that makes up the large bulk of photographic practice most people will work within. Quality varies greatly, with some snap shots considered to be works of art and others falling into the maw of history.

The essay will be about extrapolating technological gains and putting them on a timeline to show how they expanded the practice of photography into a planet-wide pastime. This was possible through several factors that have occurred over the past 150 years. The west experienced an automation that simplified mass production. This was coupled with ever smaller cameras that were increasingly easy to use. Eventually this lead to the digital revolution and inevitably to the camera phone. This has made photography more democratic.

Even with massive technological change however- People take the same photo’s they always have. The connotations and the semiotics of the images from 100 years ago and the present are practically the same bar a few small differences.  This is due partially to how vernacular photography as a genre operates but also because technology could feed into it successfully without altering its culture.

David Bate mused about why people take photos at all by analysing an idea posed by Sigmund fraud. I think it’s key to understanding vernacular photography specifically-

“In the photographic camera he has created an instrument which retains the fleeting visual impressions, just as a gramophone disc retains the equally fleeting auditory ones; both are at bottom materializations of the power he possessed of recollection, his memory.¹ … Freud links the invention of photography to the faculty of memory rather than vision. It is certainly true that memory is an important aspect of the function of many types of photography. A portrait of a person stands in for that person when they are absent and a landscape reminds the photographer of a place they once visited. Memory is a way of keeping something, not losing it.” Bate, D. (2009). Photography. Oxford: Berg.

Bate’s argues that photography is a way for people to remember something that’s happened, or something they’ve experienced- That the camera is an extension of our need to remember. However, he goes on to qualify that statement-

“Yet these pictures, like snapshots, documentary or photojournalism photographs, also show other viewers something (people, places and things) that they may have never visited or seen before….photography becomes a device that adds to the memory of things that the naked human eye cannot see. “Bate, D. (2009). Photography. Oxford: Berg.

This is what completes vernacular photography as a practiced genre. Not just our need to remember but also a doorway into lives human beings cannot live due to typical responsibilities and restrictions. Random holiday snaps may not have meaning to some, but to others can be a doorway into what they want/can’t have- Financial Security/ and or family. These reasons are part of why vernacular photography is so popular. The general public want to take photos of their memories and look at the memories of others.

Vernacular photography- be it historic or modern, has consistent connotation and signifiers. The naiveté and ignorance needed to practice vernacular has remained consistent because technology has complemented the genre. It did this by automating the technical aspect of photography, increasing its franchise exponentially with every innovation while decreasing cost and enabling more people to see the photography (Think modern social media)

I can show you the textual similarities by comparing a few photos. one was taken a hundred years ago on a box brownie and the other on a modern iphone.

 (IMAGES ARE NOT AVAILABLE ON TEXT POSTS) 

Notice the similarities-

·         The eye-level angle of view

·         The roughness of the photo

·         The lighting is mostly naturalistic and only modified with on camera flash

·         Both photos depict a social event as it was happening

·         Common locations (House party/ Pub)

·         Common subjects

·         All subjects are aware of the photography  

·         Composition is loose and unaware of attractive framing

These links are maintained because both cameras are automated. The box brownie has control of aperture and a latch to lock the shutter but that’s it. Both cameras are automated to the point where the photographer doesn’t need any extra knowledge/skill other than a quick trigger finger to operate them.

Because of this most conventions that are considered to part of ‘good photography’ are ignored. Thus the standard texture of vernacular photography was maintained because of the democratisation of photography as a pastime- The conventions were established because enough people practiced vernacular photography over a long period of time.

David Bate also came to a similar conclusion in terms of photography’s transition to digital

“Even though the computer as a meta-system has been able to technologically absorb various genres of photography (and other media too: books, cinema, music, etc.), it is surprising how far these types of picture and media have all maintained their identities within a computer environment. “  Bate, D. (2009). Photography. Oxford: Berg.

“Certainly, the same old tricks of manipulation, forgery and deception are replicated from older media, but no less or more than in previous times.” Bate, D. (2009). Photography. Oxford: Berg.

His remakes about genre are non-specific, but can easily be applied to the relationship between vernacular photography and technological innovation in general. Each new innovation has brought photography to the masses without changing how they practice it. In fact, an argument could be made for technology re-enforcing how the general public takes photographs.

My essay will be about exploring all of the themes I’ve mentioned above. I’ll also go more into depth with theory from Steven bull, David Batman and Geoffrey Batchen. I’ll also explore imaging technology in greater detail, highlighting key innovations that increased the photographic franchise

Proposed Timetable

END OF YEAR 2

• Summer:     Organise texts ready for research (read and analyse) Look more into depth     about how my theme connects with theory. Read through relvant text and     make paper copies of relevant pages
• September:     Introduction and early structural analysis- The basic ‘nuts and bolts’ of     the essay will be extrapolated upon.    
• October:     Establish timeline and develop thesis of essay more
• November:     middle reached. Halfway through timeline
• December:     Christmas: revise first half. Make sure it’s consistent. Check syntax and     spelling
• January:  Begin later half of essay. Timeline is     almost finished. Will begin reviewing and checking essay. Will consider     revising sections that might be irrelevan.t
• February:  first proof completed. Conclusion wrote.     Formatting to be completed. Will create a table of condense and sub     chapter structure
• March:     Formatting completed. Second proof sent for checking. Any emergency last     minute revisions will have a’ buffer period’ of one week.

HAND IN

References

Batchen, G. (1997). Burning with desire. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press.

Bate, D. (2009). Photography. Oxford: Berg.

Bull, S. (2010). Photography. London: Routledge.

Vernacular Photograph. (n.d.). [image] Available at: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/33/Family-House-1969.jpg/1013px-Family-House-1969.jpg [Accessed 7 Nov. 2014].

 I Didn’t attend the Format festival trip. I have decided to do a blind reading of the above image to compensate for my absence

“An incomplete narratology of photographic truths”

TIMER- 5 minutes

• Black and white (35 millimetre?)
  

• Car on fire
  

• No passengers
  

• Daytime (sunny)
  

• Door’s been detached (fire staged)
  

• Fire from centre of car (petrol igniton)
  

• Smoker obscures landscape
  

• ISLOLATED (HAS IT BEEN DELIBERATELY ‘BLOCKED’?)
  

• Who drive the car there? (was it already there?)
  

• Desolation
  

• Car could be communicating capitalism. Fire= decay
  

• Could be showing personal belongings as finite
  

Reality

The image is part of a series of images SELECTED by larry sultan and Mike Mandel. It’s part of a gallery exhibition they set up.

Artist’s statement

“ From 1975-1977, Larry Sultan and Mike Mandel selected photographs from a multitude of images that previously existed solely within the boundaries of the industrial, scientific, governmental and other institutional sources from which they were mined.  The project, “Evidence”, was funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, and was one of the first conceptual photographic works of the 1970′s to demonstrate that the meaning of a photograph is conditioned by the context and sequence in which it is seen.

The resulting collection exhibits a brilliant sensibility for the absurd and a keen awareness of the complexity that the single image possesses when viewed outside its original context. Some of the photographs are hilarious, others are perplexing, but it’s in their isolation from their original context that these images take on meanings that address the confluence of industry and corporate mischief, ingenuity and pseudo-science.  The book has been recognized as a precursor to subsequent postmodern strategies of photo practice.”

I was close with my ‘ISLOLATED’ observation. Took away wrong connotations (I’m getting better at this)

Gallery Review -Web Gallery

Evidence: Larry Sultan and Mike Mandel

http://larrysultan.com/gallery/evidence/

Sample

http://larrysultan.com/archives/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/EV_PP5_SULTAN_MANDEL_1977.jpg

http://larrysultan.com/archives/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/EV_PP6_SULTAN_MANDEL_1977.jpg

http://larrysultan.com/archives/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/EV_PP8_SULTAN_MANDEL_1977-929x1200.jpg

http://larrysultan.com/archives/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/EV_PP10_SULTAN_MANDEL_1977.jpg

http://larrysultan.com/archives/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/EV_PP20_SULTAN_MANDEL_1977.jpg

The images in this gallery are part of a series of ‘found photos’ from larry sultan and Mike Mandel. They are from completely different from one another as each was taken from a different government archive.

The web gallery contains 61 images set on a white background. All the images are candid black and white shots of institutions functioning.

All of that initially gives the view the impression of journalistic credibility. This is because B&W candid shots were the typical genre conventions of documentary during the the period.  People are present is some of the shots but have no solid identity. They are communicated as ‘iconic’ (meant as a representation of something). The tone is also cold and detached, leading me to reinforce my genre opinion .

As the statement above explains, the pictures have been deliberately picked and organised to obscure the ‘truth’ behind them. Instead of each picture reinforcing meaning as a typical documentary series would, the images obscure meaning with their construction. This makes the series into a ‘trap’. The trap is the viewer’s perception about what evidence is and whether the authors hand can be trusted even when documentary’s genre conventions are applied.

There is also a loose narrative pattern in the series. The first quarter of the images are indoors. The next half are in open brown fields with the last quarter mixing up the two settings. This gives the view a false sense of transition as none of the images (in reality) have anything to do with each-other.

Defining documentary photography- Inherently problematic

“Documentary can refer to a category so wide as to be meaningless (all photographs as ‘documents’) or so narrow that it cannot deal with even its own eclectic history in social documentary

This also makes the criticism of documentary a more complex issue too. If documentary practices are as different as the visual means used to achieve them, then how to define documentary photography as a social practice?

Nineteenth-century photographers, like Matthew Brady, Jacob A. Riis and Lewis Hine in the USA, or John Thomson and Henry Mayhew in Britain,. ….They all aimed to inform, educate and disseminate the truth about an issue by using photography, alongside writing. The issues they documented – war, slums, immigrants and child labour, and street workers (respectively) – already pre-empted the territories and subject matter of later social documentary photography. These men (early campaign photographers were mostly men) wanted to demonstrate that documentary seeing was a way of knowing and, further, that knowing would improve humanity. The emphasis on ‘seeing’ was to show something as true, associated with giving the reader empirical evidence with a strong pedagogic or even judicial tone. The idea of the photograph as providing documentary ‘evidence’ came into currency.”

David bates on street photography

“In this mode of documentary work, the camera is perhaps better thought of as a portable theatre or studio, where the photographer ‘stages’, creates a scene from the flux of life. The photographer operates the camera when the figures are juxtaposed in the right combination of gestures, expression and action. This art of staging is the common trade of the cinema and theatre, but also crucial to documentary and news photography too. We might, like film and theatre studies, also employ the concept of mise en scène in photography, since it recognizes the work of staging and mediation that goes into the production of any visual meaning.”

This was a very popular form of documentary photography who’s proponents were influential photographers like Robert frank, as described by Steven bull-

“When Robert Frank toured America in the 1950s making photographs along the way for his book The Americans, originally published in 1958/9,he deliberately set out to discover and present his own point-of-view on the country….With its saubtle, rhythmic ordering of images and recurring motifs, Frank’s book was a cynical and celebratory ‘poem’ in photographs – and hugely influential on future generations of photographers who were to convey their subjective viewpoints in projects on specific subjects”

Large quote from Steven Bull. Not sure I have time to include an extrapolation of this in final presentation 

What is arguably the definitive concerned documentary photography project took place in 1930s America during an era when the US capitalist system seemed on the verge of collapse. At a time of droughts and economic depression, the government-led Farm Security Adminstration (FSA) commissioned a team of photographers including Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange to record the plight of the starving farmers, many of which had left their farms to search for work. Evans’ images of farming families and the austere conditions in which they lived (such as the corner of a barely furnished farmhouse kitchen taken in Hale County,Alabama during 1936 (see also Chapter 7)) and Lange’s famous photograph of a worried but stoic woman still looking after her children (a picture usually known as the Migrant Mother, see Lange 1996; Price and Wells 2009: 38–49), have come to represent not just the FSA but concerned documentary photography in general.

Many of the FSA photographs were published in widely read newspapers and magazines to raise awareness of what was happening. Mary Panzer has traced the development of photography in newspapers and magazines where, from the first reproduction of an actual photograph in 1880 to the boom in photo magazines from the 1920s to the 1960s, photographs were prioritised and appeared along with text, applying the principle of montage

During the middle years of the 20th century, freelance photographers such as Robert Capa and Henri Cartier-Bresson strived for such a freedom, travelling the world and getting close to the action using new smaller and faster cameras such as the Leica (Rosenblum 1997:480–191). Capa’s pictures from the D-Day Landings and Spanish Civil War show his close proximity to the fighting,especially in images such as that of a falling Spanish loyalist soldier (published in magazines including VU and Life) who was apparently shot dead in front of him. Cartier-Bresson defined the act of street documentary and coined the term ‘the decisive moment’,where an action, gesture or expression is caught in a perfectly composed photograph

By the time of the Vietnam War in the 1960s and 1970s – and following in the tradition of practitioners such as Capa – photographers, including Larry Burrows and Don McCullin, got as close to the conflict as possible while it happened (sometimes at the expense of their own lives). The photographs they made reached a vast audience via their reproduction as photojournalism in widely read publications such as Life and The Sunday Times Magazine.Many of what Umberto Eco has called the ‘epoch-making’ images of war and conflict (the ones that go beyond individual incidents and speak of a whole era) have often been regarded as ‘shocking’ in their content (Eco 1987; see also Barthes 1999). In the imagery of the Vietnam War these include Eddie Adams’ image of a suspected Vietcong terrorist being executed, shot in the street by Saigon police chief Nguyen Ngoc Loan (the picture capturing the moment the bullet is in his head) and Huynh Cong ‘Nick’ Ut’s picture of a naked girl fleeing the napalm attack that has burnt off her clothes and is still burning her skin.

John Taylor has argued that these kinds of photographs are images of a simultaneously repulsive and attractive ‘body horror’, revealing bodies that are what Julia Kristeva calls ‘abject’ – where borders have been penetrated, threatening the imaginary limits of the body that the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan argued are established in childhood during the mirror phase – and reminding the viewer of their own mortality (Kristeva 1984; Taylor 1998: 2; see also Chapter 3). The mass reproduction of such images of a ‘dirty’ war helped to create active resistance against America’s involvement in Vietnam. Taylor argues that, although such images disturb us, in a civilised society they need to be seen in order to provide knowledge of the atrocities of war (Taylor 1998: 193–196; Taylor 1999).This is a point agreed on by Susan Sontag in 2004 (2004: 102–106), consciously reversing her earlier belief that the repetition of such images eventually numbed their audience (1979: 19–21).

The Vietnam War also marked a turning point in the photojournalistic coverage of conflict. Although still images were widely reproduced, the war was also transmitted on television throughout the world. Photography in newspapers and magazines, which had dominated reportage since the 1920s, was no longer the fastest means of visual communication (Campany 2003c: 127; Sontag 2004: 52). Governments learnt lessons from Vietnam. Later conflicts such as the 1981 Falklands War were kept ‘clean’ through the barring of coverage by all but a few photographers (McCullin, for example, was refused access; see Brothers 1997: 201–217). In more recent wars, photojournalists have been granted access through being ‘embedded’ within a regiment, leading to empathy with the soldiers and, arguably, less critical reflection on what they are photographing (Panzer 2006: 25; Ritchin 2009: 88).The Western mass media has also displayed a tendency to self-censor horrific images of death and suffering.Yet, as both Rosler, Sontag and Taylor have all pointed out, in an echo of a colonial past, the exceptions to this are the ‘foreign bodies’ of Others in distant countries (Sontag 2004: 63–65; Taylor 1998: 129–156). Such censorship became most apparent with the early 1990s Gulf War wherein, as Taylor puts it,‘the body vanished’ from coverage to be replaced by images of glowing dots on screens representing missiles and targets, prompting Fred Ritchin to note the absence of any close-up photographs in the style of Capa or McCullin from the conflict (Ritchin 1991: 11; Taylor 1998: 157–192). This situation led Jean Baudrillard to controversially declare that ‘the Gulf War did not take place’; although his point was that, due to the lack of images the public saw of it,the war may as well not have happened (Taylor 1998: 175–176;Walker 1995: 246).

Sourced from brief

INTRODUCTION 

This module builds knowledge and understanding gained in Module 401 (CS) to focus on the critical ideas that are shaping contemporary photography contexts. This module will run alongside studio modules, and Research into Practice to help you make links between theory and practice, and prepare you for your final year dissertation. It will support your studio modules and facilitate a deeper engagement with ideas development through the understanding of the photographic canon.

Knowledge and understanding will be developed through staff and student lead seminars, research tasks, exhibition visits, practical tasks. There will be a clear focus on discussion, debate. There will be a series of assignments that encourage you to develop an understanding of how the critical contexts of photography can inform your own practice. Indicative assignments include writing critical reports on exhibitions and other cultural activities, reflective learning journals, completing a portfolio of personal work and presentations.  You will learn how to be more confident and informed image-makers. Elements of PDP are also embedded into this module in the form of learning journals.

The first semester will predominantly focus on the development of your learning journals through a series of short tasks based around set readings, research, interpretation, critical evaluation, and critical reflection. You will continue to develop your learning journals (through set tasks but a greater focus on independent study) throughout semester two. You will further develop your skills in independent judgement and argument through a series of student-lead thematic presentations. The second semester will culminate in a summative assessment of a 10-minute presentation where you will make critical connections between a chosen aspect of photographic discourse, key practitioners and the impact of this on your own practice.

INDICATIVE CONTENT

·         Reflective writing through learning journals / blogs

·         Report writing - on exhibitions, artists’ books, films and other cultural materials.

·         Critical analysis - verbal and written

·         Research tasks - exploring the wide range of research methods, and sources that would support a visual practice.

ASSIGNMENT BRIEFS

Assignment One: An illustrated digital learning journal that contains – completed short reading, research and interpretive tasks, reflection and appraisal of the work of selected key practitioners, analysis of key theories and the work of others, critical reviews of exhibitions, talks, texts, films and other relevant cultural activities. You will work on your learning journals independently and during sessions. The indicative word count for this completed assignment is 4000 words. There will be an interim submission of your learning journal on Tuesday 6^th January 11.58pm

Final Submission: Monday 11^th May 2015  11.30 am

Assignment Two: You will complete TWO critical reports (400 – 600 words) on a relevant cultural activity of your choice (exhibition visit, artist talk, film screening, artist book, performance etc.). The completed reports will be uploaded to Moodle for assessment.

Report One: 11.30 am Monday 8^th December 2014

Report Two: 11.30 am Monday 2^nd March 2014

Assignment Three: You will deliver a ten minute illustrated presentation to tutors and your peers where you make critical connections between a chosen photographic context, key practitioners and the impact of this on your own practice. For example, you might select your context as – the influence of the ‘snapshot aesthetic’ on fashion photography, you will discuss the direct influence of certain practitioners operating in this mode on photographic practice – for example – Robert Frank, William Eggleston and Martin Parr – and identify their influences on particular fashion photographers, ad campaigns or magazine aesthetics (for example – Jürgen Teller & Corine Day  / Dazed and Confused magazine, Vivienne Westwood’s campaigns), discuss how this informs your own practice, and make reference to some key texts (e.g. Stephen Bull). Your presentation should be illustrated, and a copy of your presentation and notes should be uploaded to Moodle by the assignment deadline.

Final Submission: Monday 13^th April 2015 11.30 am

ASSESSMENT WEIGHTING

·         Assessment One - Learning Journal 60%

·         Assessment Two – Critical Reports 20%

·         Assessment Three – Presentation 20%

KEY TEXTS

Badger, G. (2010) The Pleasures of Good Photographs. Aperture, New York

Barrett, T. (2012) Criticizing Photographs: An Introduction to Understanding Images. 5^th edn. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Bate, D. (2009) Photography: Key Concepts. Oxford: Berg.

Bull, S. (2010) Photography. Abingdon: Routledge.

Clarke, G. (1997) The Photograph. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Cotton, C. (2009) The Photography as Contemporary Art.  London: Thames & Hudson.

Durdon, M (2012) 50 Key Writers on Photography. London: Routledge

La Grange, A. (2005) Basic Critical Theory for Photographers.  Amsterdam: Focal Press.

Modrak, R. (2011) Reframing Photography: Theory and Practice. Abingdon: Routledge.

Shore, S. (2010) The Nature of Photographs: A Primer.  2^nd edn. London: Phaidon.

Wells, L. (2003) The Photography Reader.  London: Routledge.

Wells, L. (2009) Photography: A Critical Introduction. 4^th edn. Abingdon: Routledge.

�����sY;/�D

Photography: key concepts (David Bates)

 Analysed documentary section…

•       “The two tendencies in documentary photography as first-person or third-person documents (expressive/neutral, subjective/objective) positions the viewer differently in relation to the events. The subjective viewpoint appears involved and engaged in the event, while the neutral picture seems to lack commitment, as almost indifferent or disengaged.”

ANALYSIS OF CONCEPT

First-Person

‘HOT’

The photographer is part of events.

Are the subjects are posed?

Is the photographer is street level?

The decisive moment (look at Henri Cartier Bresson)

Is the context not always specified or maintained?

Is it concerned with life experiences?

Is The photography is visually ‘rough’?

Third-person

‘COLD’

Opposite traits of first-person

Is the photographer elevated away from eye level? Looks disconnected from the observed space?

Context is critical for maintaining an objective view of the space and subjects

Is it concerned with ‘state’?

Are the Images are shot on high resolution film/sensors?

There’s an extra set of parameters

Fluid between first and third-person perspectives

Is the subject is posed?

Is a ‘process’ is being displayed?

Whether the dignity of the subjects is maintained?

^^^CAN ANALYSE ANY IMAGE USING THOSE POINTS^^^

Dorothea Lange 55

The critical text I will be examining is a compilation of Dorothea Lange’s most iconic photography narrated by Mark Durden. The text itself retains a sequential layout in small book format (A5). Most images are on the right-hand page, while the title is accompanied by an explanation is on the left. Occasionally this changes with the image placed across both pages and the explanation on the next right hand page. Also Images always have a full white border that fits differently if the photo’s aspect ratio is atypical.

This flexible layout allows the work to define the parameters of how viewers perceive the images. It’s more visually effective that a large image takes up a double page spread. Durden’s flexibility makes the overall presentation stronger with landscape The Road West (1938) able to occupy two pages to make it more visually pleasing. Every image is accompanied by a shot blurb of approximately 50- 100 words about what the image is communicating. I’ll touch on this later as it’s quite deliberate in its inclusion.

The Images are coming from a specific viewpoint. Not only was Lange commissioned by the government to capture these images but she shared their perspective. A bout of childhood polio left her with a limp. This gave her a humility about herself and a desire to raise awareness about poverty.  Mark Durden writes about Lange’s perspective. It contradicted much of the thinking surrounding American self-reliance, exposing a world of poverty and destitution-  

“Lange’s street photography in my ways countered such idealism: her lone figures were bereft of any heroicizing vison- lost trapped by poverty” (Dorothea Lange 55, 2001, 4)

Shipyard worker (1942) good example of this. The stairway the subject’s walking down is gritty and she (subject) reflects that in her attire and body language. A Symbiosis between location and subject is apparent and it’s a fundamental tenant of Lange’s photography. A link between the character and the environment helped her communicate what America was experiencing during the great depression- A loss of identity and confidence. Durden noticed this and wrote-

“Man Beside a wheel Barrow thus functions not as a portrait, but as an abstraction of despair: the unemployed man remains faceless; all we see is the cap on his bowled head- Its shape and pattern rhyming with the wheel barrow” (Dorothea Lange 55, 2001, 5)

The man no longer exists as simply a person but as an iconic symbol of American despair during that period. Lange’s subjects usually are either iconic or character but her most famous work Migrant Mother (1936) is both. It has 6 full pages dedicated to the ‘outtakes’ and commentary by Durden. The layout for this section works to bring the viewer closer to the Migrant Mother metaphorically and literally. Each picture is physically closer to the subject than the last while Durden’s explanation aids context. The imagery and the structure of the book work together to help understand the iconic final portrait.

The Mother was heavily posed and even retouched with the final image having the subjects thumb removed. Lange had a perspective to communicate. It was more important than absolute truth- with small details worth sacrificing to retain the overall communication of what the work was about. This is why the explanation from Durden and her quotes are so important. The whole text is a conduit into why Lange captured these images the way she did. Subjectivity was not the goal with this book, the opposite was. That’s why every image has context connected to it. Lange’s intention was always to create these images to communicate American suffering and Durden understood that when he was constructing the media.

Just like Lange’s subjects- the book itself is in symbiosis with her images. Each design choice complementing what the photograph is trying to communicate. This was a smart method of communicating her viewpoint in another way than just writing it and reinforces the overall text.

References

Durden, Mark, and Dorothea Lange. Dorothea Lange. London: Phaidon, 2001. Print.

What was it like to talk about an image without preparation?

It was surprisingly difficult. I had no time to prepare and really mine the image for clues about it’s intention. I decided to pick apart obvious parts of the image first. I tried exploring the technical angle  (colour, size and composition) and tried working backwards to discovering the images genre.

If I could understand its genre, i would be able to lift accurate connotations and signifiers from the photo. This did not go according to plan because i’d never done a blind reading before.

Must practice more.

Was absent from the session. Used Sarah’s notes 

Contextual week 8

Documentary

Define documentary - discuss the differences between Photography as document, and the genre ‘documentary’ which shapes real life to tell stories - neither is objective, but both use language of objectivity.

John Grierson - “documentary is creative treatment of actuality” - documentary film often mixed in constructed elements and non constructed elements - looking for a bigger truth through narrative…

“For Grierson, a good documentary is a good ‘interpretation’ of real life, one that ‘lights up the fact’. The means is not proscribed as essentially one form or another, as ‘staged’ or not. So documentary could include a number of approaches; it is about interpretation, not objectivity or truth.” (Badger, G 20012)

Two tendencies in documentary photography as first-person or third-person documents (objective / subjective) positions the viewer differently in relation to the events. The subjective viewpoint appears involved and engaged in the event, while the neutral picture seems to lack commitment, as almost indifferent or disengaged.

Staging - 'giving reality a hand’ common too - Brassai and Brandt- another way to tell stories about real life ….

“In the theatre ‘staging’ can mean realist, naturalist or anti-realist. There is no reason why staging (mise en scène) cannot be used in the same way for photographs. ‘Staging’ refers to the act of creating a scene, it does not imply any lack of reality, it merely acknowledges the work involved in the production of meaning in any pictorial composition” (Badger, G)

Brian Winston has wondered just what is left of ‘actuality’ after it has been treated creatively (1995: 11). In answer to this, Walker proposes that the documentary photograph combines construction with indexicality: positioning the documentary photograph as a kind of subjective fact (Walker 2002: 8–29). Catherine Belsey has defined the term ‘expressive realism’ as one which describes works in any medium that ‘tell truths – about the period that produced them, about the world in general or about human nature – and that in doing so … express the particular perceptions, the individual insights of their authors’ (Belsey 1980: 2). Victor Burgin has argued that this idea of expressive realism underpins a great deal of visual practice in the Western world, ‘and it is nowhere stronger than when it is legitimating documentary photography’ (Burgin 1986b: 157).

Slides - discuss the positioning of the photographer / viewer in Cartier Bresson’s work…what was his method - what are these photos revealing.

Q What do think the decisive moment means?

“Henri Cartier-Bresson’s famous idea of the ‘decisive moment’ fuses a notion of instantaneity in photography (the freezing of an instant) with an older concept from art history: story-telling with a single picture. The problem of how to depict an entire story or event within one picture was the problem that beset ‘history painting’, the genre that deals with the depiction of important historical events”

“German dramatist and critic, Gotthold Lessing, is to show the ‘pregnant moment’ of the story, where the past, present and future of the story can be read, summed up, ‘at a glance’. Henri CB used the repeated motif of the foot that doesn’t touch the ground to communicate this pregnant moment - the viewer can imagine the past and future of the scene. This mode is used in reportage and war photography (could be considered contemporary history painting).  

"The decisive moment is thus the instant when the photographer must click the shutter (harder to do with the slow shutter delay of some modern digital cameras) to capture not ‘reality’, but the dramatic instant that will come to signify it. In this mode of documentary work, the camera is perhaps better thought of as a portable theatre or studio, where the photographer ‘stages’, creates a scene from the flux of life.”

Robert Frank

Documentary photographers came to increasingly acknowledge and exploit this idea of presenting subjective facts in their photographs, and the single-authored book (or ‘photobook’) became one of the key vehicles for their opinions. When Robert Frank toured America in the 1950s making photographs along the way for his book The Americans, originally published in 1958/9, he deliberately set out to discover and present his own point-of-view on the country. With its subtle, rhythmic ordering of images and recurring motifs (flags, jukebox, cars), Frank’s book was a cynical and celebratory ‘poem’ in photographs – and hugely influential on future generations of photographers who were to convey their subjective viewpoints in projects on specific subjects.

Q Are these images objective / subjective? Why? What is the difference between these and HCB? Fragmented view - series, building up narrative, rhythm etc through body of work rather than a single image.

Anthony Hernandez c.1970

Street photographs of LA (people do not inhabit streets. Q- what kinds of people inhabit streets?)

An awkwardness or stiffness to the images - Jane Livingstone wrote that they are at odds with their environment.

Difficult work - needs time, not immediate…

Q Compare to HCB’s Decisive Moment, and Frank’s approach - these are an indecisive moment. Subjective or objective?

The word alienation might be appropriate to describe his images / his subject matter…isolated within the crowd….people at the margins, not the American Dream (like Frank), waiting, walking…

Move to large format camera - people at bus stops, eating in public spaces, physically  took a step backwards - the images became landscape rather than portrait - (difference? Ratio people to land….look at van der meer football matches - landscape / environment takes up as much or more space than people)

Photographing a social landscape….

Two elements in the photograph - the visible and the invisible (denote & connote) - discuss,  the depicted and the inferred. The depicted could be the city itself, and the inferred is the social reality…(work mirrors LA - Hollywood and sunshine vs. social divides - see Elmore Leonard, film noir etc).

Large format - how do you animate the frame? Make it interesting when it is so static? Composition - line, tone, texture, perspective, form, light - see bus stop pictures and perspective.

Could be considered constructed - use of large format, hardly inconspicuous - subject would be aware of the camera - but you could argue that it is more 'truthful’ the longer gaze revealing more…inequality etc.

Stephen Shore - American Surfaces

Travelled across US taking pictures of diners, hotel rooms, people, himself - self reflexive documentary - hence title American Surfaces - link to Robert Frank  

Susan Lipper Grapevine c. 1980s/ 90s

The is a line from her work to Alec Soth, Jon Gossage, even Robert Frank.

Q Discuss her work - subjective / objective - put yourself in her shoes…how would you do a project like this…capture these moments…

Q What are the visible and invisible (denotative and connotative) elements of the scene?

Issues around 'truth and reality’ in terms of photographing small communities, including the family - who has the right….insiders or outsiders.

Metaphor in Lipper’s work - for violence, poverty, gender

Use the website - images are in order…

Editing - how she tells a story….for it is a story, a narrative, about her and what she sees and makes sense of as much as them… some images are 'constructed’ - recreated…they are performing their lives… Also link to Sally Mann and Richard Billingham…

Anna Fox Back to the Village & Country Girls

http://www.annafox.co.uk

Q discuss- position of viewer/ photographer etc….what effect does colour have?

Mixing constructed with observed…dark tales about country life (Badger links her work to short story writer Alice Munro, but also see novelist Sarah Hall), underlying violence…

She uses her own life and friends to make work but keeping a balance between social and personal- it doesn’t become self indulgent (she keeps an intellectual distance). Her work is mostly based around her home in Hampshire and Hampshire is one of those typically 'English’ counties - there is a heritage industry that promotes it as an idyllic and pastoral rural county (see John Taylor’s Thinking of England and Keith Arnatt’s AONB).

Which is a fantasy (also home to Jane Austin and other 19th C novelists whose work helped create those fantasies (although Austin was a satirical writer, but the TV adaptations don’t represent this) - which are perpetuated by heritage industry).  

Anna Fox’s main theme, in Badger’s opinion is the 'tug’ between modernity and tradition (or rural and urban). The area is close to London, development for commuters pushes locals out… More images on website

Back to the Village is inspired by Benjamin Stone’s photographs of English customs (also see Tony Ray Jones, Parr), examine the masquerade of village life - you could  say that wearing elements of fancy dress represents a desire to escape, and preserve vanishing English traditions (Badger’s words) - push back the 'encroaching tide of modernity, which represents the “other” in a different sense, the sense of a weakened, diluted Englishness" (issues of national identity etc)

New British Colour movement - link to Parr (her old tutor), Paul Searight, Gem Southham, Paul Reas,

Country Girls - interest in stories (old folk tales based on happenings?) of young women being the victims of violence - Sweet Fanny Adams (a murdered young woman).

Obviously constructed - but what strategies / visual approaches would you use to make work about something so un photographable.

Rural women had very restricted lives-

“It subverts the innate conservatism of the countryside, as well as highlighting the repression of any overt display of female expression.” (Jason Evans, On the Path, in Anna Fox - Photographs p.183)

Link-

http://moodle.blackpool.ac.uk/pluginfile.php/635287/mod_resource/content/1/Shields_Hip_Hop.pdf

Will analyse in due time 

For personal interest and to keep my analysis skills sharp 

Book review- Zev Rogan

Sanctuary by Gregory Crewdson

Sanctuary is a collection of photography by Gregory Crewdson. They were shot on 4/5 large format film and digitally merged into the final set of images. The location is Cinecittà, a legendary film studio that’s been ravaged by time.

The books construction follows a sequence order. The images at the start flow as a complete narrative to the end without discontinuity. Sanctuary works along the lines of any standard photobook in this way. One major difference is it size and print quality. The book is A3 double bind with some high fidelity prints on nearly every page. The images are always on the right hand side, with the left blank except for the sequence number centred in small type.

The book is attempting to explore the space from the perspective of a ghost. By that I mean the feeling of disintegration projects an emotional symbiosis onto the viewer. The onlooker emulates the imagery and internalises the idea of being an immaterial being wandering through the lot. The images are constructed to aid this. The position of the camera is almost utilitarian in the sense that Crewdson constructed the images to look like human vison. This is a departure from his standard cinematic feel- there are no artificial lights and (more importantly) there are no people. The only participants in this ‘narrative’ are the viewer and the decaying studio. This reinforces my perspective on its construction- that the viewer is a ghost wandering through this forgotten environment. No people are present as the ghost cannot experience them and is eternally locked to the space.

These are the notes I’ve made for my documentary presentation. I’ve analysed the texts of Steve bull and David bates. I also ended up looking at historic and modern photographers to establish textural links

Documentary: Facets of the genre

Notes

Texts analysed

Stephen Bull Photography, David Bate Photography Key Concepts.

Look at golden ratios. Find Photographers. Mention street photographers

1

Documentary is a popular genre of photography that’s gone through several major creative revisions. The aim of this presentation is to create a framework describe the current spectrum of photography the documentary now envelopes. I’ll also touch upon history when relevant

2

Defining documentary photography- Inherently problematic

“Documentary can refer to a category so wide as to be meaningless (all photographs as ‘documents’) or so narrow that it cannot deal with even its own eclectic history in social documentary

This also makes the criticism of documentary a more complex issue too. If documentary practices are as different as the visual means used to achieve them, then how to define documentary photography as a social practice?

Nineteenth-century photographers, like Matthew Brady, Jacob A. Riis and Lewis Hine in the USA, or John Thomson and Henry Mayhew in Britain,. ….They all aimed to inform, educate and disseminate the truth about an issue by using photography, alongside writing. The issues they documented – war, slums, immigrants and child labour, and street workers (respectively) – already pre-empted the territories and subject matter of later social documentary photography. These men (early campaign photographers were mostly men) wanted to demonstrate that documentary seeing was a way of knowing and, further, that knowing would improve humanity. The emphasis on ‘seeing’ was to show something as true, associated with giving the reader empirical evidence with a strong pedagogic or even judicial tone. The idea of the photograph as providing documentary ‘evidence’ came into currency.”

3

Documentary has developed three main modes of practice and several different presentation styles. These were inspired from musings in Photography: key concepts (David Bates) and along with several supporting theorists.

What am I talking about?

A mode of practice is a deliberate logical approach to talking a creative/practical problem. The problem in this instance is related to objective and subjective truth and , as posed by David bates-

“The two tendencies in documentary photography as first-person or third-person documents (expressive/neutral, subjective/objective) positions the viewer differently in relation to the events. The subjective viewpoint appears involved and engaged in the event, while the neutral picture seems to lack commitment, as almost indifferent or disengaged.”

Bates is referring to the logical placement of ‘the self’ while creating the images

4

First-Person – expressive and subjective (HOT)

The photographer is obviously part of events. This can be determined through the physical perspective of the photographer, whether the subjects are posed and what weather context is elaborated. In the case of first-person-

·         The photographer is street level

·         The decisive moment (as described by Henri Cartier Bresson)

·         Context is not always specified or maintained if it initially is

·         Is concerned with life experiences

·         Stylistically- The photography is visually ‘rough’

Third-person - neutral and objective (COLD)

This has the opposite traits of first-person

·         The photographer is usually elevated away from eye level. Looks disconnected from the observed space

·         Context is usually critical for maintaining an objective view of the observed space and its subjects

·         Is concerned with state

·         Stylistically, images are shot on high resolution film/sensors. Expected to hold up to visual scrutiny  

5

There’s an extra set of traits that’s incidentally woven through documentary as a genre but has fluidity in-between first and third-person perspectives

·         Whether the subject is posed

·         Whether a ‘process’ is being displayed

·         Whether the dignity of the subjects is maintained (will elaborate later)

From these criterion we can analyse any documentary image

6

I’ve chosen three practitioners that exemplify the current state of documentary as a genre, as well as aiding the overall theretical picture of the genre-

•       Zack Arias

•       Brandon Stanton

•       Edward Burtynsky

Each represents a different facet of documentary photography. Have differences and similarities

7+8

Zach Arias

Gifted commercial photographer with a distinctive street style. I technical terms, he leverages the decisive moment-

Works in the first person mode.

Maintains street level view and looks embedded in the space

No context for images beyond signifiers of place. Each image could stand on its own.

Each presents a unique story that’s up for interpretation depending on the viewer.

The decisive moment is key- as described by Bates-

“In this mode of documentary work, the camera is perhaps better thought of as a portable theatre or studio, where the photographer ‘stages’, creates a scene from the flux of life. The photographer operates the camera when the figures are juxtaposed in the right combination of gestures, expression and action. This art of staging is the common trade of the cinema and theatre, but also crucial to documentary and news photography too. We might, like film and theatre studies, also employ the concept of mise en scène in photography, since it recognizes the work of staging and mediation that goes into the production of any visual meaning.”

This was a very popular form of documentary photography who’s proponents were influential photographers like Robert frank, as described by Steven bull-

“When Robert Frank toured America in the 1950s making photographs along the way for his book The Americans, originally published in 1958/9,he deliberately set out to discover and present his own point-of-view on the country….With its saubtle, rhythmic ordering of images and recurring motifs, Frank’s book was a cynical and celebratory ‘poem’ in photographs – and hugely influential on future generations of photographers who were to convey their subjective viewpoints in projects on specific subjects”

(COMPARISON BETWEEN WORK)

9

‘The decisive moment’ is key for this form of documentary. The photographer that originally coined this phrase was Henri Cartier-Bresson

“To me, photography is the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event as well as of a precise organisation of forms which give that event its proper expression.” (The decisive moment 1952)

“Above all, I craved to seize the whole essence, in the confines of one single photograph, of some situation that was in the process of unrolling itself before my eyes.” (The decisive moment 1952)

Brandon Stanton

Brandon Stanton is the creator of Humans of New York- A blog turned published book.

His style is a distinctive mix of both expressive and neutral styles. His photography is utilitarian in the sense that the photograph serves the subject.

His perspective is still strictly intimate, but the subjects are posed, facing the camera. This is a technique described by Bull

“a self-dignity in their social identity whatever it was or whatever it meant, via a direct gaze at the camera”

An historical photographers that uses this technique was Dorothea Lange. (Notice the similarity in the subjects gaze)

The first person perspective is supplemented with interviews with the subjects. This gives his work a very personal flavour that’s a blend of an expressive with an objective logical approach. It gives the work the attributes of state

Edward Burtynsky

Edward Burtynsky is an award winning documentarian that strictly works in the third person. This is evident from his camera equipment. He uses a large format film camera for maximum detail and colour accuracy.

His position is raised and distant. The semiotics of this image makes the viewer perceive the work as objective. The wide angle-of-view aids this perception.

The mode of third-person was the earliest form of documentary photography pioneered from the earliest war photography. As described by bell-

“British photographer Roger Fenton’s photographs, made using a large format camera during the Crimean War in the 1850s, are often regarded as some of the first examples of war photography”

“The images Fenton made were generally either posed portraits of soldiers at rest or landscapes showing the aftermath of battles, most famously TheValley of the Shadow of Death (1855) where cannonballs strewn across the scene are the only visible suggestion of the preceding conflict”

“The discursive context of the newspaper reportage also provided the images with an alleged neutral and factual objectivity, which the distance of space and time that photographers such as Fenton and Brady maintained from the events of war emphasised.”

Comparison

Conclusion

We examined links between theory and past practice to decode current genre trends

Any Questions?

 CUT CONTENT

What is arguably the definitive concerned documentary photography project took place in 1930s America during an era when the US capitalist system seemed on the verge of collapse. At a time of droughts and economic depression, the government-led Farm Security Adminstration (FSA) commissioned a team of photographers including Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange to record the plight of the starving farmers, many of which had left their farms to search for work. Evans’ images of farming families and the austere conditions in which they lived (such as the corner of a barely furnished farmhouse kitchen taken in Hale County,Alabama during 1936 (see also Chapter 7)) and Lange’s famous photograph of a worried but stoic woman still looking after her children (a picture usually known as the Migrant Mother, see Lange 1996; Price and Wells 2009: 38–49), have come to represent not just the FSA but concerned documentary photography in general.

Many of the FSA photographs were published in widely read newspapers and magazines to raise awareness of what was happening. Mary Panzer has traced the development of photography in newspapers and magazines where, from the first reproduction of an actual photograph in 1880 to the boom in photo magazines from the 1920s to the 1960s, photographs were prioritised and appeared along with text, applying the principle of montage

During the middle years of the 20th century, freelance photographers such as Robert Capa and Henri Cartier-Bresson strived for such a freedom, travelling the world and getting close to the action using new smaller and faster cameras such as the Leica (Rosenblum 1997:480–191). Capa’s pictures from the D-Day Landings and Spanish Civil War show his close proximity to the fighting,especially in images such as that of a falling Spanish loyalist soldier (published in magazines including VU and Life) who was apparently shot dead in front of him. Cartier-Bresson defined the act of street documentary and coined the term ‘the decisive moment’,where an action, gesture or expression is caught in a perfectly composed photograph

By the time of the Vietnam War in the 1960s and 1970s – and following in the tradition of practitioners such as Capa – photographers, including Larry Burrows and Don McCullin, got as close to the conflict as possible while it happened (sometimes at the expense of their own lives). The photographs they made reached a vast audience via their reproduction as photojournalism in widely read publications such as Life and The Sunday Times Magazine.Many of what Umberto Eco has called the ‘epoch-making’ images of war and conflict (the ones that go beyond individual incidents and speak of a whole era) have often been regarded as ‘shocking’ in their content (Eco 1987; see also Barthes 1999). In the imagery of the Vietnam War these include Eddie Adams’ image of a suspected Vietcong terrorist being executed, shot in the street by Saigon police chief Nguyen Ngoc Loan (the picture capturing the moment the bullet is in his head) and Huynh Cong ‘Nick’ Ut’s picture of a naked girl fleeing the napalm attack that has burnt off her clothes and is still burning her skin.

John Taylor has argued that these kinds of photographs are images of a simultaneously repulsive and attractive ‘body horror’, revealing bodies that are what Julia Kristeva calls ‘abject’ – where borders have been penetrated, threatening the imaginary limits of the body that the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan argued are established in childhood during the mirror phase – and reminding the viewer of their own mortality (Kristeva 1984; Taylor 1998: 2; see also Chapter 3). The mass reproduction of such images of a ‘dirty’ war helped to create active resistance against America’s involvement in Vietnam. Taylor argues that, although such images disturb us, in a civilised society they need to be seen in order to provide knowledge of the atrocities of war (Taylor 1998: 193–196; Taylor 1999).This is a point agreed on by Susan Sontag in 2004 (2004: 102–106), consciously reversing her earlier belief that the repetition of such images eventually numbed their audience (1979: 19–21).

The Vietnam War also marked a turning point in the photojournalistic coverage of conflict. Although still images were widely reproduced, the war was also transmitted on television throughout the world. Photography in newspapers and magazines, which had dominated reportage since the 1920s, was no longer the fastest means of visual communication (Campany 2003c: 127; Sontag 2004: 52). Governments learnt lessons from Vietnam. Later conflicts such as the 1981 Falklands War were kept ‘clean’ through the barring of coverage by all but a few photographers (McCullin, for example, was refused access; see Brothers 1997: 201–217). In more recent wars, photojournalists have been granted access through being ‘embedded’ within a regiment, leading to empathy with the soldiers and, arguably, less critical reflection on what they are photographing (Panzer 2006: 25; Ritchin 2009: 88).The Western mass media has also displayed a tendency to self-censor horrific images of death and suffering.Yet, as both Rosler, Sontag and Taylor have all pointed out, in an echo of a colonial past, the exceptions to this are the ‘foreign bodies’ of Others in distant countries (Sontag 2004: 63–65; Taylor 1998: 129–156). Such censorship became most apparent with the early 1990s Gulf War wherein, as Taylor puts it,‘the body vanished’ from coverage to be replaced by images of glowing dots on screens representing missiles and targets, prompting Fred Ritchin to note the absence of any close-up photographs in the style of Capa or McCullin from the conflict (Ritchin 1991: 11; Taylor 1998: 157–192). This situation led Jean Baudrillard to controversially declare that ‘the Gulf War did not take place’; although his point was that, due to the lack of images the public saw of it,the war may as well not have happened (Taylor 1998: 175–176;Walker 1995: 246).

Some rough concepts I want to explore in my dissertation 

O = Accepted X= Rejected

Democratization O

A study on photographic technology through the past 120 years. The goal will be to gain a deeper understanding of how technology has influenced the culture medium as a whole. This will be based from a CS presentation I researched and delivered this year. The text will explore the link between technology and people deeply using examples of relevant technicians and photographers. A strong timeline will connect them together in a comprehensive way.

Conflict Photography X

A study that focuses on modern conflict photography and the evolution of the citizen journalist. The prevalence of camera phones has blurred the line in-between bystander and qualified journalist. I would examine the recent events in the greater middle-east. I would find many examples of imagery created during the past ten years.

Documentary: Truth or fiction X

Recent controversies involving editing of journalist photography has caused several debates about what constitutes the line where post processing becomes editing. I’ll examine the historical context for these debates and examine several works that have been selected for contention. Technology will also be a factor.