Photography and why it is important within art.
Photography presentation:
- This session was about thinking
- Fine Art Photography - what defines it (something we have to discover for ourselves)
- It is based on our own research
- From an industry point of view (the mid 70s) (conceptualism)
- From the artists point of view
- Walter Benjamin
- Abstract to literal
- Edward Steichen (Moonlight: The Pond 1904)
- Alfred Stieglitz (Winter, Fifth Avenue 1892)
- Photographing what people did in the "everyday"
- Julia Margaret Cameron 1867
- Photographed the first image
- From romantic period to realism
- Truth
- Daguerre Boulevard du Temple 1828
- Humanity viewed in a different way when compared to traditional images
- Fine Art Photography is the understanding of how an image works
- Thinking and conceptual changed
- How the formal qualities underpin the picture
- How it became the start of the artists language (start of aesthetics)
- The photograph becomes something new
- Roland Barths Camera Lucidia (Must read)
The things we say, believe and feel are important
- You can't plan the photograph
- The camera respond in that exact moment
Ansel Adams - Technical and evenly framed
Robert Adams - Emotional response and not technically brilliant
The "Studium"
“a kind of general interest, one that is even stirred sometimes,
but in regard to them my emotion requires the rational intermediary of an ethical or political culture.
What I feel about these photographs derives from an average affect, almost from certain training.
I did not know a French word which might account for this kind of human interest,
but I believe the word exists in Latin: it is studium, which doesn’t mean, at least not immediately,
“study,” but application to a thing, taste for someone, a kind of general enthusiastic commitment, of
course, but without special acuity. It is by studium that I am interested in so many photographs…”
- The photographs we look at have a theme/reason
- Punctum
“it is this element which rises from the scene,
shots out of it like an arrow, and pierces me”
“for punctum is also: sting, speck, cut, little hold–and also
a cast of the dice. A photograph’s punctum is that accident
which pricks me (but also bruises me, is poignant to me)”
- Sting, speck, cut
- How the photograph makes you feel
William Klein: Litile Italy
- Small boy with friends or family
- Gun aimed at his head by an adult
- The identity of the adult isn't revealed
- Social problems and politics
Diane Arbus: Child with toy grenade
- What humans are about
- The child with a grenade within a peaceful environment (Park)
- Less about the kid and more about the world he was brought into
Henri Cartier - Bresson
- Boy carrying alcohol
- Innocent
- Cheeky
- Relationship between what he is holding and who he is
Martin Parr
- Photographs the innocence of who we are
- Around the time of Thatcher
- Mines shut
- Humanity
- Strong woman starting straight into the camera (confronting)
- Boy staring at the woman - the start of his sexual identity
The Last Resort
- How we live on the edge of things
- The "what if"
- Isn't a "beautiful" photograph
- Majority of the subjects are white (Is this important?)
It is important to read the whole photograph
- Super jets
- Mother and child
- Plane
- Fair ground
- Fire exit
- Old
- Dark
- Washed out
- 70s feel
- Fun but not happy?
- Voyage of discovery
- These women aren't sure how to handle this new situation
- New life
- Shovel - red - bad
- Leaving the old ways of life behind (mining)
- Milkyway bar - future
- Water - wet - dirty
- Addicted to the "what if" and not "the now"
Robert Frank
- Swiss - Lived in the States
- The Americans
- White Supremacy
- The technically defined picture
- Tall buildings
- Men in suits walking past the working class man
- This man seems almost invisible to them
- Two sides that are separated
"Photography asks us to see the world"
- Embrace being alive
- Get out and make photographs
- Photograph our culture
- New experiences
- Black and white tones
- Drop the concept of truth
- Context is absent
- Context is what we project onto the world
Include the Punctum concept within work
For next weeks photography session, watch the Vivian Maier documentary for the next photography session.
Session 2
RECAP on what the studium and punctum is.
The studium indicates historical, social or cultural meanings extracted via semiotic analysis.
The punctum always turns into the studium when expressed in language.
- Something we control
- How we read a picture
- Rationalise how we see things
- It's more about you than the picture
Barthe (look into)
- Majority of our interactions are pointless
Vivian Myier
- Her work was about looking
- She recognises the humanity of the world
The clown picture
- This photograph shows is a sad clown which is the opposite to what a clown is meant to be portraying.
- He is almost wearing a mask
- Hiding his emotions
- The picture makes us feel sad without telling us to
Henri Cartier Bresson
- Son of a linen factory owner
- Started by painting and drawing
- Not interested in documenting
- Surrealism (private business)
- Photojournalism
- Accidental
- Geometry, joy, pleasure, structure
- Millimeters can make a good or bad photograph
- Whole world is an image
Portrait is difficult
- Animal within his habitat
- It's about trust
- Wrinkles are like a finger print
- Impulsive
- No new ideas, only situations
- Death is present everywhere
- Keep on, and on, and on
- Camera is a weapon
Masters of photography (look at website)
Be subjective
Session 3
Watch how photography joined the art world
Where it became a constructive part of art
What constitutes a photograph
Look beyond the photograph
When art becomes more subtle
Gregory Crudson
- Disconnected to photography
- The camera is just a tool
- Cinematic effects
- Artificial
The pond moonlight
- Is the most expensive photograph ever sold
Henri Cartier Bresson :The eyes of the Century
- The man and his reflection
- The man looking at the other man from behind the fence
- Railway
- The ladder which the man is running away from
- The ballerina
- The clock
- Everything is a reflection
- Mirror like image
- Walking
- Looks depressed
- He is static
- Doom and gloom
Ballerina punctum
- Carefree
- 1931 Paris
- Life was crap
- The socialites
- Post World War 1
- Rebuilding itself
- Dada and Surrealism
- Very poor
- Its a reflection of the time
- Two sides
- Its a performance (stage)
"I'm like a hunter"
- Bresson
- Politic of representation
- Cropped the image
- The camera is a tool
What is my practice about?
- What is my reference
- What about other photographers
Session 4
During this session we were asked to start thinking about how we display our photographs. We ere tasked with taking five photographs of our current space which we were sat in. Once these were taken we were asked to send them into the teams chat for us to examine. Fir next weeks session we were asked to choose 3 sets of images and re arrange them in a way which we thought made sense.
Session 5
In this session we went through our arrangements and discussed why we arranged them the way we did. For my arrangements I like to have a lot of control. I arrange my images in a way where the backgrounds match, or create a story in which I arrange them how I would see these individual sections when I walk into a space. I also like to arrange them in a way where the sizes match up and I isolate the one that is a different size.
