One of the most interesting things in this article for me was the comparison at the beginning between photography being invented by painters, or invented by scientists. People do not always consider photography as a scientific process, when, especially with film photography, it is. This is an interesting way to view photography as a whole, because most people see just the image, and the color and beauty of the image, like they would with a painting. In reality photography deals directly with science and the process is more complicated than it appears to be on the surface. This article is relevant to our project. I like the way the different readings offered new viewpoints to different aspects of photography.
Wednesday, March 7, 2012
Sontag On Photography
Sontag's reading was an interesting addition to the others for this project. It strongly contrasted the video we watched that stated photography is not a realistic depiction of the world. This article explains photography on almost the opposite spectrum. She describes how photography can preserve a piece of the world for years to come. The idea of photographs being immortal is also suggested. Even though they are delicate objects, they preserve an exact replica of what the world looked like at the time the photograph was taken. This reading pertains to our project, and also provides an argument to the video we watched. It is interesting to have them as comparisons of how people view photography.
The Photographer's Eye
John Szarkowski's “The Photographer's Eye” offers a completely new viewpoint of photography as a whole. The process itself has developed over the years, but Szarkowski suggests the concept of photography being existent all along, and humans simply uncovering the medium, little by little.
He breaks down each element of a photograph into the photograph, the detail, the frame, time, and vantage point. It is a fresh sort of perspective, breaking down the process of photography into separate, and equally important elements. The process evolution of photography has improved upon these elements, such as frame, but making the final images cleaner, and more easily developed, but the photographer is the one who ultimately has control over the success or failure of a final photograph.
Szarkowski explains the access to viewing the world in a completely new way photography offers. When the process was discovered, people had never been able to replicate a scene from actual life, and have it preserved the way a photograph becomes preserved. People began to trust these images more than they trusted their own eyes. This is an interesting concept; people viewed, and still do view, photographs as the truth, when the photographer has more input in the appearance of the final image than people realize. By utilizing the vantage point, angle, and lighting, something can be viewed in a completely different context than it would be originally.
Szarkowski ends the article with a strong statement about photography in general: “Like an organism, photography was born whole. It is in our progressive discovery of it that its history lies.”
Errol Morris on Photography
This video focused mostly on photographs ability to deceive. This is a concept people do not usually consider, because photographs provide an exact replica of what is in the viewfinder. His argument dealt with how small of a window a photograph allows someone to see. In reality the photographer could be selectively choosing what to take a photo of, in order to display an event in a certain way. Most people just accept photographs as truth, he brings up an interesting point by challenging that notion. This video relates to the current project because we are basically composing our own view of reality, using photographs. The project completely contradicts the idea of photographs a truth, because the images become something so abstract.
Ways of Seeing: Episode 1 Response
The narrator in Ways of Seeing describes how photographs have become to many people a replacement for viewing paintings. His point of view is interesting because most people do not consider a painting in the context of where it is placed. This problem is his main argument. The location where a photograph resides is important, and he even argues that it is as important as the photograph itself. This is an interesting outlook on the medium of photography versus painting and drawing. Even though it offered an interesting perspective, I do not really see a relation between the video and our current project.
Masters of Illusion Response
Masters of Illusion is a helpful video easily related to our photography project. It describes vanishing points, and other perspective techniques used primarily in painting that make an image look more realistic an three dimensional. This may not be as applicable to a single photograph; but with this project we have the freedom to create our own vanishing points, and compose things the way we want them to be seen, more so than in a typical photograph. The video describes ways to compose the backgrounds to make them recede, and how to make certain figures pop out, or fade away. These overall are helpful solutions for this project, especially considering the emphasis placed on scale, and receding backgrounds that we have to deal with creating the composition.
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