Class 02 Readings:
Selections from Camera Lucida by Roland Barthes
Benjamin and the Political Economy of the Photograph by W. J. T. Mitchell
In Our Image by Wright Morris
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Additional information regarding the authors:
Roland Barthes:
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/rbarthes.htm
W.J.T. Mitchell
http://humanities.uchicago.edu/faculty/mitchell/
Good video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9-c1vfykhw
Wright Morris
http://www.unl.edu/plains/publications/resource/morris.shtml
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Note: MFA or Gallery papers will be due next class. Please be prepared to turn in and discuss your paper in class.
Alissa D. Brossmer
ReplyDeleteTheory & Criticism
Reading Response #1
Roland Barthes
Scribbley notes on the side of the reading I took on the T rides.
“I am looking at the eyes that looked at the emperor” … Maybe he had more of the connection to photography because of we can take our time to think about what we are looking at.
“…Once I feel myself observed by the lens, everything changes; I constitute myself in the process of ‘posing,’ I instantaneously make another body for myself, I transform myself in advance into an image…” This also goes for just simply being looked at or someone walking into a room. We become more aware of our selves when the idea of someone looking directly at us arises.
“ I decide to ‘let drift’ over my lips and in my eyes a faint smile which I mean to be ‘indefinable,’ in which I might suggest, along with the qualities of my nature, my amused consciousness of the whole photographic ritual: I lend myself to the social game, I pose I know I am posing, I want you to know that I am posing”… I have though about this idea a lot and for a long time now. The traditional smile, putting your arm around a person, standing close to someone all the ways I’ve come to know how to act when taking a photo with others; this idea is funny to me. Yes I understand that smiling signifies happiness but the act of pushing people together, wipe smiles on there face to represent a time of happiness and togetherness… its just funny and kind of awkward.
Photo of 'Happy family'
http://www.johnstrange.com/edm310summer07/hughes/family.jpg
There are a lot of other notes I took on this reading but to write them all, this would be very long. Ill talk about them in class.
Alissa D. Brossmer
ReplyDeleteTheory & Criticism
Reading Response #2
W.J.T. Mitchell
Scribble notes as usual
“ This image replaces the traditional or ‘aureole’ around the figure with a new sort of aura – the ‘living qualities’ of the subject.” … Painting has one type of basic ‘aura’ enhanced beauty; photography has the aura of real life.
“ This is more then the claim to merely optical fidelity, a correct transcription of visual appearances; it is a claim to have captured a piece of the ‘historical life-process’ as well as the ‘physical life-process.’ ” … Photography is more telling of history considering all the content in the image is “real”. As time progresses, that fact is being more and more untrue.
Reading Response # 3
We as humans always try to create history using text and now imagery. Because these two things are both only one sided it’s a scary though to not know the truth in history. Simple example: Christopher Columbus… Bam.
“… In my role as a gullible tourist, I had been the true witness of false events…” … This idea of what is true or not true. If he had taken an image and left, the history of the image would have been a complete lie.
(Talking about old portraits) “ A minimum of animation, the absence of smiles and expressive glances, enhances the aura of suspended time appropriate to a timeless image…… Nothing known to man spoke so eloquently of the equality of men and women. Nor has anything replaced it.”… This is an interesting though, I agree with it. Nothing much was telling of the photographs besides the clothing. Sometimes there were objects in the image to tell of the profession but nothing more. We cannot gain that naturally neutral expression back.
<3 A.D.B.
Michael Karigianis
ReplyDeleteresponse to Roland Barthes' excerpt from "Camera Lucida."
Mr. Barthes is taking this way too seriously. By “this,” I mean, whatever the hell he is talking about. I think it has something to do with photographs. Like any contemporary philosopher he refrains from plainly stating that something is “good” or “bad.” He just begins to list, in a myriad of ways his problems with photography and then what he perceives as problems with the process. Sometimes a photograph is just a photograph. He points out the tautological nature of a photography and makes his case against it. A tautology for those of us who don’t know is a logic problem that lends itself to statement of the obvious. The phrase “adequate enough” is a text-book example of a tautology. Some of us maybe familiar with Yogi Bera’s misguided philosophical limericks; such as “It ain’t over ‘til its over” is another very popular tautology. In relation to photography, a photograph is tautological by saying, for example if you had a picture of a tree, “Look. it’s a tree.” Its kind of obvious. Isn’t that the point though? If you look at the history of photography haven’t people been trying to make that obvious statements about, well, everything, since we realized we could make images? Now we have the photograph.
Another point , from pg 21 he says, “Each time would read something about Photography, I would think of some photograph I loved, and this made me furious.” Huh? Why? Isn’t that the point? Every time I hear the word “Art” I think of something (a painting, a photograph, a Kubrick film) I love. As a purveyor of the medium wouldn’t you be thrilled if your work became synonymous with the medium itself. Its probably not going to but for the good of our practice isn’t that something we should kind of strive for? Maybe I’m not smart enough to understand this. Maybe the material is too dated to put myself in Barthes’ timeframe (or I just refuse to do it). Maybe I missed the point, but I don’t think so. I think sometimes you can over-think things and Barthes did that the moment he put pen to paper. Stop. Settle down. Sometimes you can just enjoy something for what a person is trying to tell you through a photograph
Michael Karigianis
ReplyDeleteresponse to W.J.T. Mitchell "Benjamin and the Political Economy of the Photograph."
I love when we make nouns into adjectives. I also love when we turn forms of art (fine or otherwise) into analogies for economic models. In this reading we have plenty of both. Raphaelite, Rembrantian for example. Mitchell even mentions Vermeer. How 'bout "Vermeeric." Why stop there?. How bout "Titianian." Of course all of this is absurd. As is comparing photography to an economic model. I didn't know socialism, communism and capitalism were in the market for an official art form? Well I guess, Socialism and communism wouldn't be "in the market." Would it? Maybe state-sponsored? Mitchell makes the argument that photography is analogous to capitalism because of its deconstructionist or destructive nature. What he is getting at is the ability of photography to break its subjects down in all their unglorified glory in the same way capitalism works to break down the people it exploits. I get these arguments a little more than I got Blarthes'. I will say however, lets not get too carried away. It seems Mitchell is hearkening back to a time when we didn't know if we wanted photography to be a clerical or scientific medium or one of fine art. He even mentions peoples' fervent arguments in support or dissent of it. He never brought up the fact that it could be both. Why is photography more suited to capitalism or socialism? I don't think that it is anymore than the chisel or the paint brush. I think the ability of of photography to objectify can, at times, be very anti-authoritarian. But again, those authorities can recognize people will believe anything they see and use it to their advantage. So in the end, we are left with a new way (to those of Marx's era) to make images and art. It does not matter what economic model the image makers subscribe to, just that they make images.
“to pry an object from its shell to destroy its aura, is the mark of a perception whose “sense of the universal quality of things” has increased to such a degree that it extracts it even from a unique object by means of reproduction. Benjamin’s camera does to the visible world that Marx said (in the Communist Manfesto) that capitalism was doing to social life in general.” Interesting idea that a camera is related to a marxist concept.
ReplyDeleteWhat I liked the most, “Photography, for Benjamin, is neither art nor nonart (mere technology)” I am intrigued that he thought that. It brings up the fight from the being of the camera’s career that it is not art, but every day the students at schools and others like this school disprove his thought every day.
The 2nd Commandment excerpt from Morris put me on a fun little rabbit trail. I enjoyed this reading the most because it was an attention grabber from the beginning, he started it like a story making it easier to get to the point of saying that the ability to film from Birth to Death is upon us. Which is a good thing. Because that makes me question what happens to the human condition? I am not sure if the condition is what I am looking for though.. Human Existence, Human Experience? How does the fact that we can document everything change how we go through life?
Michaela Rocchio
ReplyDeleteBarthes
The reading opens up with the author saying "And I realized then, with an amazement I have not been able to lessen since: 'I am looking at eyes that looked at the Emperor." I have felt similar feelings when I was younger and getting into photography. After reading, I got that Barthes was talking about the opposite of that feeling sometimes, and that he was almost disenchanted by it at some points.
This also reminds me of last weeks second reading when he talks about people wanting to show you their own photos when they see yours, we have started to use images as an actual language.
"In front of the lens, I am at the same time: the one I think I am, the one I want others to think I am, the one the photographer thinks I am, and the one he makes use of to exhibit his art" This really fully summed up a lot for me and immediately images I had taken of others or myself popped into my head.
This photo is seems fitting for an example of an image, the one that the author looked at of his mother to try and feel some connection. I just imagine an older woman, or maybe a woman in her 30's, the way he remembered her from when he was younger.
http://www.julieharrisphotography.com/in_between/images/old_italian_women.jpg
This one is something like the one that popped into my head when I thought of people trying to look like a better version of themselves.
http://theaveragegirlnextdoor.files.wordpress.com/2010/09/girl_looking_out_window-28993534_std.jpg
I was interesting reading about Barthes’s interest in cultural aspect of the photography and his personal journey into discovering what photography was, and how it is distinguishable from other forms of images. While reading the article I thought about the various classification within the photography medium and how each photograph can portray a different story to each viewer. The photograph itself has the ability to pause moments in time, moments that will never progress or fade away. The photography medium will never become obsolete because people need photographs to reflect on their life, to remember emotional moments they lived through and experienced with people.
ReplyDelete"There i was, alone in the apartment where she had died, looking at these pictures of my mother, one by one, under the lamp, gradually moving back in time with her, looking for the truth of the face i had loved. And i have found it."
When my uncle pasted away a few years ago I remember viewing a photographic slide show at the wake, it displayed various moment throughout my uncle's life. When photos of my uncle and me appeared on the slide show I instantly remembered the moments that we had shared together. They were moments that I couldn’t possibly remember on my own because I was very young when the photo was initially taken. This, to me displays how effective photography is as a medium. having the ability to recreate long lost memories.