Next class: 2011.09.29
A PHOTOGRAPH by Umberto Eco
PHOTOGRAPHY AND FETISH by Christian Metz
and introducing our next section on the postmodern.....
WINNING THE GAME WHEN THE RULES HAVE BEEN CHANGED: ART PHOTOGRAPHY AND POSTMODERNISM by Abigail Solomon-Godeau
Next class we will be discussing the readings in detail, so please have your comments and image examples available for in-class conversation. In addition, we will look at examples of critical/analytical reviews of work in conjunction with our forthcoming assignment (due class 05).
If you have any questions please contact me.
A Photograph
ReplyDeleteWhat Umberto Eco is talking about in this essay is how just a lone photograph can take on many meanings. He uses an image taken in Milan during an uprising in Italy during the 70’s. This image depicts a lone man in the street holding a gun. Is this figure a hero or the villain? The only ones that know this are those who were there at the time. We do know that this image had an impact on people since it mad all of the papers around Italy.
Another thing Umberto mentioned in his essay is that life itself is a form of art. We go about our lives not realizing this, but why can’t it be? If you go to the movies, or watching tv, this is a form of art, and what we watch comes from real life situations. If we were to be watched by space aliens, they would see all sorts of movement which movement is an art. Take dancing for example; there are lots of different types of dance with their own types or forms of movement within those forms.
Photography and Fetish
I just love what Christian Metz is talking about in this essay. He goes on to talk about the differences in still photography and film. In still photography, it is like “death”. That is to say, that with family portraits, amateur and professional alike, the image is taken while the subject is still alive but is a representation of that person when they pass on. It reminds me of the 1800’s when people would photograph a dead relative in their casket so that they would have something to remember them by in later years.
With film, however, the argument can be made that they aren’t like death since the scene is always changing. There is the “off camera effect” in both still and film photography. However, they have two separate meanings. In still photography, the “off camera”, means that there is a presence of someone, but you will never see them. This could be an image as simple as a pair of boots that are worn or as complex as someone’s home. In movies, however, the “off camera” works much differently. Eventually you would see someone come into the frame thus finally knowing who that person is, (if you hadn’t already figured it out.)
I just lost my whole post, so here it goes again.
ReplyDeleteSoloman-Godeau
Levine's image of Weston's "Neil" isn't something she could really put her name on. Though she had took a picture of his work in a time and space (maybe dimension) than the original image was taken in. To me it feels similar to if someone had taken a screenshot of an image on the internet they liked, added their watermark and posted it somewhere calling it their own. Though the internet is vast and it would most likely be a stupid teenager.
Eco.
What made me think the most was the differences between generations. My grandparents grew up on a farm where media wasnt a staple in everyday life. Things were much more simple than today. Today media is like a second conscious. Media is so prominent, I remember when i was younger telling my gram to get a new TV so that I could watch my TV while I was up there, and she kind of just laughed but I understand a little more now that I'm older. She grew up in a simpler time where TV wasnt around, let alone much more than the radio and the news paper.
Burgin
"Photographs are received rather as an environment"
I had read this before in some class and this was something that really made me think. Photographs in times like these are what is around us. We dont take them in as individuals, looking at every one for good technique, lighting, subject matter, etc. It is what is around us. In my notes from this reading before I had "diamonds subscribing to exploitation of people & blood diamonds". I dont remember exactly how that came up but I think it goes into that diamonds are popular, pushing up price, and the general idea that you get a diamond from your fiancee when he wants to marry you. 99.99% of women want a diamond as it is culturally the norm in our society, and have the money to be able to support the ring. but the diamond most likely comes from a hole in the ground where people are doing anything they can for a little food, while the diamonds are sold to buy guns and support war. Diamonds wouldnt be the norm if it wasnt around us everyday in the media plus the almost subliminal movies, ads, etc that tell girls from a young age that "you want this rock".
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ReplyDeleteEco - i thought it was an interesting opinion oh how they view photographs . they talked about media and politics can affect photographs and how you view them knowing that background. they also state that even though you know the background but the photographs keeps their classic structure. They also state that film is like a photograph. i will agree with that statement because we used film when there was no digital camera and film is still considered photography.
ReplyDeletemetz- i thought their view on film and photography different. they talked through the article about the differences between film and phonographs. they made some value points about the differences between and they talked about the backgrounds between them. film is considered as collective entertainment and photographs is considered works or art by society. throughout the article they made differences and simulaties between film and photograph and how they are viewed.
godeau - for postmodern i through their thinking interesting and i thought through the whole reading it was hard to understand i quite what they were saying but overall i liked what i did read about the article.
Eco – What I got from this reading was that our learned experience comes from images. We see images from the past and we experience them based off of our current knowledge and the current time we are viewing that image. An image taken in the 70’s will have a different context now. The image remains the same but as time changes, people’s perspectives change as well. The only people who might know the truth behind that photograph are the photographer and the subject(s), if that. The current time we view a photograph helps define it’s meaning to us.
ReplyDeleteMetz – Metz brought up some good points that I had not thought of before. I had never really put together that photography was like death, in the sense that it is a frozen, never changing image. Photography can be used to document life after it is lost. Film can also do the same thing, in reference to family films, but for the most part it doesn’t really have the same connection to death. Film is always moving, people walk in and out of frames and represent a very much alive person. I’m assuming that the “fetish” part comes in when referencing the “life” in a photograph or film. Film has a spirit, the magical ability to show people, of past and present, in motion. Photographs on the other hand are more worshiped for the fact that they represent a life, they capture that object in a specific moment and it is then immortalized.
Solomon-Godeau – Although I get Levine’s point about the concept behind her work I don’t necessarily agree with it. We all get inspiration from artists but the exciting part is finding a way to make it our own, at least for me it is. I think it’s awesome that she made this series of work and really got her point across in an affective way. With that said I think her point has been made and I’m not so sure as to why she has continued this project for so long. I would not be thrilled at all to have some photograph my work and present it as their own.
Thoughts on Eco reading: His point about being "barely middle aged, you will have learned personally the extent to which experience is filtered through 'already seen' images," is so true. Some images are a necessity to know otherwise some people look at you crazy. His point about being faced with dramatic events and trying to analyze them and define them I totally agree with as well. Where this need of defining something began, I'm not quite sure but it is now a necessity as well to define everything even if were told it's not definable. If we can't figure it out sometimes we feel stupid or not good enough. I feel like this need creates a type of battle for us as a society. Battling to know the "truth." The "truth" being the definitive answer, if there is one. Since our society and generation is so accustomed to thinking in images, some images we see that do not conform to the overall agreement of being acceptable become an argument like Eco says about the photograph mentioned in the reading. It become an argument to our view on a issue.
ReplyDeleteThoughts on Burgin reading: When Burgin talks about, "most photographs are not seen by deliberate choice, they have no special space or time allotted to them," I agree with him slightly. I agree with the part where photographs are not seen deliberately. Since we are a society of image thinkers we deliberately have to see images every day. To not see images would be kinda crazy. "Photographs offer themselves gratuitously; whereas paintings and films readily present themselves to critical attention as objects, photographs are received rather as an environment." I agree with this since I tend to find myself doing this when I look at photographs. Especially if they are landscape photographs. The rest of the reading is still kind of a blur because of all the details that I can't fully piece together yet.
Thoughts on Metz reading: I get what Metz is saying in the reading about the differences between film and photography but in a way when I was reading it I kept saying to myself, "Why should I care about the differences?" then when reading on about the differences in the death aspect I understood the reading a little bit more. In a way though think it depends on how you think of an image. You can either think of it as suggesting the subject is "dead" or as capturing and instance that will live on longer than the subject. Also when Metz talks about "death" in this reading I found it quite depressing to think that way which may just be me. I like to view a photograph as if it is timeless. I do agree with Metz when said, "Where film let's us believe in more things, photography let's us believe more in one thing." That separation right there is where I like to think of these too subjects. Why should they be the same or should be considered the same when they will never be because of the belief difference?
Thoughts on Godeau reading: Authorship and originality is, in my opinion, always going to be a battle. That's because of the time period in my opinion. How can we truly create anything original after everything seems like and feels like it's been done before? We also go to school to learn about what has been done before! Where is the sense in that? Ah yes, so we "don't" repeat the past. Right, like that won't happen. Reproduction make us want to see the original because we as a society have put the "original" on a pedestal for all the world to see. That's the "game." Refusing to play the game is still in a way playing the game. Levine is still playing in this game even if she is refusing authorship and originality. I honestly don't think this game can be won since we've created the rules over the course of the past 100 something years. Because we've examined and classified everything, given it a name and a meaning, going against that is essentially suicide.
Jessica Kinney:
ReplyDeleteThoughts on Eco reading: I've heard many times this incident of Radio Alice but I've never actually listened to a recording of it or have looked up a lot about it but the way Eco talks about it has actually made me understand it better than I think reading about it myself would. His point about being "barely middle aged, you will have learned personally the extent to which experience is filtered through 'already seen' images," is so true. I know I've been saying it in the past 2 classes about how we have grown up with this preconditioning to know what an image is and what emotionally it can do or say. Some images are a necessity to know otherwise some people look at you crazy. His point about being faced with dramatic events and trying to analyze them and define them I totally agree with as well. Where this need of defining something began, I'm not quite sure but it is now a necessity as well to define everything even if were told it's not definable. If we can't figure it out sometimes we feel stupid or not good enough. I feel like this need creates a type of battle for us as a society. Battling to know the "truth." The "truth" being the definitive answer, if there is one. Since our society and generation is so accustomed to thinking in images, some images we see that do not conform to the overall agreement of being acceptable become an argument like Eco says about the photograph mentioned in the reading. It become an argument to our view on a issue. The last sentence where he says, "the political and the private have been marked by the plots of the symbolic, which, as always happens, has proved producer of reality." I do not fully understand. I feel like I get the political part of it in producing reality since our government filters through the information being given to us so they in turn are creating the reality around us.
Thoughts on Burgin reading: Semiotics is still something I'm trying to grasp and understand. I get the basics of it but the way Burgin went into extensive detail was a lot for me to understand even after reading it multiple times. When Burgin talks about, "most photographs are not seen by deliberate choice, they have no special space or time allotted to them," I agree with him slightly. I agree with the part where photographs are not seen deliberately. Since we are a society of image thinkers we deliberately have to see images every day. To not see images would be kinda crazy. "Photographs offer themselves gratuitously; whereas paintings and films readily present themselves to critical attention as objects, photographs are received rather as an environment." I agree with this since I tend to find myself doing this when I look at photographs. Especially if they are landscape photographs. The rest of the reading is still kind of a blur because of all the details that I can't fully piece together yet.
ReplyDeleteThoughts on Metz reading: This reading for me felt like it just droned on and on for some reason. I get what Metz is saying in the reading about the differences between film and photography but in a way when I was reading it I kept saying to myself, "Why should I care about the differences?" then when reading on about the differences in the death aspect I understood the reading a little bit more. In a way though think it depends on how you think of an image. You can either think of it as suggesting the subject is "dead" or as capturing and instance that will live on longer than the subject. Also when Metz talks about "death" in this reading I found it quite depressing to think that way which may just be me. I like to view a photograph as if it is timeless. I do agree with Metz when said, "Where film let's us believe in more things, photography let's us believe more in one thing." That separation right there is where I like to think of these too subjects. Why should they be the same or should be considered the same when they will never be because of the belief difference?
Thoughts on Godeau reading: Just the title of this reading started an internal rant in my mind. Also after reading this I felt like this sums up all of the classes I've ever had with Thomas. That's probably because I've heard him reference every artist/photographer in this reading but I digress. Authorship and originality is, in my opinion, always going to be a battle. That's because of the time period in my opinion. How can we truly create anything original after everything seems like and feels like it's been done before? We also go to school to learn about what has been done before! Where is the sense in that? Ah yes, so we "don't" repeat the past. Right, like that won't happen. Reproduction make us want to see the original because we as a society have put the "original" on a pedestal for all the world to see. That's the "game." Refusing to play the game is still in a way playing the game. Levine is still playing in this game even if she is refusing authorship and originality. I honestly don't think this game can be won since we've created the rules over the course of the past 100 something years. Because we've examined and classified everything, given it a name and a meaning, going against that is essentially suicide. As she says in the last sentence, "The irony is that photography, a medium which by it's very nature is so utterly bound to the world and it's objects, should have had, in a variety of ways, to divorce itself from this primary relationship in order to claim for itself a photographic aesthetics." I believe photography has tried to divorce itself but our society won't let it happen. Instead it's had to conform to our rules in this "game."
ReplyDeleteImages:
1.http://keepcalmjessica.tumblr.com/post/10697061192
2.http://keepcalmjessica.tumblr.com/post/10689985926/laughingsquid-eric-hines-light-sky
3.http://keepcalmjessica.tumblr.com/post/10653655613
Metz - I loved reading this essay, the differences between film and photographs and photography relating to death was just so interesting to me. The relationship with death and a photograph was amazing. How he talked about how people may say a mirror is like a photograph but in reality the mirror changes with us, unlike a photograph which is frozen in time, where we can witness our own age changing. Then he goes on to talk about how film gives the dead semblance of life, but a photography reminds us that the dead are actually dead and no longer here. Its kind of really dark to think of, but I think thats why I enjoyed it so much. I somewhat understood what he was talking about with the castration and cutting things out of the frame, but it wasn't that clear to me. I just got that people can't help but imagine what is outside the frame and the anxiety it gives us not knowing.
ReplyDeleteEco- This reading was a little less enjoyable for me, his sentences kept going on and on and I would get lost in them. What I got from it though, is that visual art is now part of our memories, when someone tells us a story we can't help but relate it to a movie we saw or a photograph. That we are all now "accustomed to thinking in images." I think most people do, who are aware, but I don't think everyone does. I do agree with what he talked about saying that we don't really care about what actually in the picture, rather who took it, was he professional, is it set up, is it real, is it fake. I think its a little sad that it can't really just be about the image anymore. People are too curious, so I guess its our job to fool them.
Godeau- Everything has been done before, nothing is original. I think there could be an exception to the that, there has to be something no body has done before, but no one has thought of it yet, hence why everyone believes there's nothing more to do but copy and get "inspired" from. But I also see it as true because ideas come from somewhere, we might think their original to ourself, but in reality, we've seen something before in our live which triggered the thought. I love that she photographed someone else's work and called it her own. She took pictures of what was there, of what she saw and I don't think there is anything wrong with that.
Metz: He suggests differences between film and a photograph. That a photograph is like "death." I thought this was a very interesting perspective, that I had never really thought about before. A film and photograph can both portray the same thing, but the ways in which they are received by an audience can be very different. A photograph is a still replica of a moment in time, take a family portrait for instance, This moment is frozen in time forever, so to speak. Although the subjects in the photo were full of life when photographed, now they are unmoving, and never changing. Basically what you see is what you get, forever. When I think about this more, its kind of morbid, I can see that this is where the idea of "death" may come from. On the other hand, lets say this same event was filmed, so while these people were preparing to take this portrait, the viewer gets to see the "life" in these subjects. The people can be seen moving in and out of frame, talking to one another, the camera can move to reveal more of the people and spaces around them. However this recorded segment is to an extent as "frozen in time" as the photograph is, I believe the viewer retains more from the film because they can more accurately get a feel for these people, and experience more of the life.
ReplyDeleteEco: An image can have many different meanings, based on who views this image. I believe one point Eco was getting across in this essay was that the experiences of different people influence their interpretation of an image. The role of different generations greatly impacts this idea. Our generation is very much influenced by the media, we have grown and learned from imagery in many different forms. Not to say that previous generations have not, its just that now there are many more forms for these depictions to reach us, therefor our standpoint on an issue may be different from how someone maybe older that us may view it because of the ways they have experienced media though out their lives. The media wasn't so much "in your face" during previous generations times as it is today, because there weren't as many outlets for them to be thrown out there though. Today it to influence our lives today basically surrounds us, from the internet, TV, newspapers, magazines etc. So although, over time an image may stay the same, the ways in which it may be interpreted change due to different peoples perspectives.