“Unlike Smith, Lonidier takes the same photographs that a doctor might. When the evidence is hidden within the body, Lonidier borrows and copies X-ray films. These pictures have a brute, clinical effect. Each worker’s story is reduced to a rather schematic account of injury, disease, hospitalization, and endless bureaucratic run-around by companies trying to shirk responsibility and liability.” (Sekula 1984, p 67) Continue reading “Fred Lonidier”
Author: carlwhetham
Allan Sekula, Dismantling Modernism, Reinventing Documentary (Notes on the Politics of Representation)
Found an interesting essay by Allan Sekula in his collection of essays and photoworks.
“Political domination, especially in the advanced capitalist countries and the more developed neo-colonies, depends on an exaggerated symbolic apparatus, on pedagogy and spectacle, on the authoritarian monologues of school and mass media. These are the main agents of working class obedience and docility; these are the main promoters of phony consumer options, of ” lifestyle ,” and increasingly, of political reaction, nihilism, and everyday sadomasochism. Any effective political art will have to be grounded in work against these institutions.” (1984, p 55) Continue reading “Allan Sekula, Dismantling Modernism, Reinventing Documentary (Notes on the Politics of Representation)”
Thomas Annan: socially concerned photographer?
I always thought that Riis was the first to take ‘socially concerned’ documentary images, but recently found out that Thomas Annan was commissioned by the Glasgow City Improvement Trust to photograph slum areas in the heart of the city. According to the Glasgow University Library website, the aim of the photographic project was to provide evidence for the clearance and demolition of the slums as opposed to actually improving the lot of the inhabitants. Continue reading “Thomas Annan: socially concerned photographer?”
Erich Salomon
Newhall cites as case in point the photography of Erich Salomon, whose ‘candid’ style he claims has been imitated by anyone who can afford a camera and f/2 lens! Unfortunately, in Newhall’s opinion, the imitations fall far short of the original. Continue reading “Erich Salomon”
Ben Shahn: Robert Frank’s precursor?
Newhall also mentions Ben Shahn, whose images I had only really read about and not looked at in great detail. It is interesting to note that Shahn was first of all a painter, and as such his understanding of composition is two dimensional, which is a great advantage when composing photographs. Continue reading “Ben Shahn: Robert Frank’s precursor?”
Beaumont Newhall, Documentary Approach to Photography
As one of the leading lights in photography criticism, the words of Newhall are often an insight into the fundamental principles of the art. At the beginning of an essay he wrote in 1938, Newhall touches on an issue which is still relevant almost 80 years later:
JOURNALISM has discovered that the camera is one of its most powerful tools. A picture can often tell more than thousands of words, and a picture made by photography implies by its method of production a basis of fact. All know that such an implication is untrue, but everyone accepts the photograph as the pictorial evidence of an eye-witness – the cameraman. (Parnassus 10.3 (1938): p 3)
Continue reading “Beaumont Newhall, Documentary Approach to Photography”
The art of storytelling and the construction of narratives
Despite Benjamin’s lament in 1936 that the art of storytelling was coming to an end (1969, p 83), the documentary tradition of real life stories does not seem to have waned in popularity. Kenneth Plummer insists that stories have come to the fore in the various spheres of social science:
“In anthropology, they are seen as the pathways to understanding culture. In psychology, they are the bases of identity. In history, they provide the tropes for making sense of the past. In psychoanalysis, they provide ‘narrative truths’ for analysis. In philosophy they are the bases for new forms of ‘world-making’ and the key to creating communities. Even economics has recognised its ‘storied character’.” (1995, p 18) Continue reading “The art of storytelling and the construction of narratives”
Disability research – goals
This part of my research will focus on disability and how it is represented in the media and elsewhere. I will look into disability studies to help me with terminology and an understanding of the general issues arising in disability discourse, as well as looking at some disabled artists to get an idea of how they are representing themselves. The goal is to reach a deeper understanding of the issues surrounding disability in order to avoid misrepresenting disabled persons, as well as to inform myself about how disabled persons themselves wish to be perceived (obtaining such information can enable me to more effectively empower my subjects).
David Hevey
After reading his essay, The Enfreakment of Photography, I decided to look a bit more at David Hevey and what kind of work he is doing. He calls his work a ‘post-tragedy form of disability representation’. He faults postmodern theory since it does not take into full account the distribution, audience and production of images, and he (along with Jo Spence) distrusts academic nit-picking since he believes it obliterates larger issues of class with psychoanalytic analysis (according to Mary Warner Marien in Photography: A Cultural History). Continue reading “David Hevey”
The Enfreakment of Photography
During research for my last major project, I came across a reference to this essay and then later located it in the Disability Studies Reader. In it, David Hevey looks at how, on the whole, disability imagery is oppressive to its subjects, regardless of the photographer’s intentions. Since the author is both a photographer and disabled himself, this essay has some valid insights into how disabled persons are portrayed in the media. Continue reading “The Enfreakment of Photography”
Carl Whetham photography 