Author: carlwhetham

Image reading and context

“Every photograph is an act amid a complex structure of choices. These choices, which extend beyond the time of the photograph, influence the photograph before, during, and after its instant. Reading photographs in context is a participation in this complex,” (David Levi Strauss 2005, p 33).

Although we have faith in the assumed ‘reality’ of photographs because of their scientific origins (the products of optics and chemistry), Andy Grundberg contends that it is their meanings that are up for grabs, since these are determined “not so much by the camera as by the human being behind the machine and by the contexts in which the resulting images are seen” (1990, n.p.). Continue reading “Image reading and context”

The power of the frame

“all art dramatizes things by putting them in an intensifying frame and thus giving them a sense of heightened reality or vividness” (Shusterman 2012, p 72)

‘Photography is about finding out what can happen in the frame. When you put four edges around some facts, you change those facts.’ (Winogrand, cited in Newman 2015) Continue reading “The power of the frame”

Image Simulations, Computer Manipulations: Some Considerations

In this article, Martha Rosler discusses the danger to truth posed by digitally manipulated images. She points out that image manipulation is as old as photography itself, and the first montage techniques came about as a result of the limitations of the medium (early orthochromatic film did not have a wide enough dynamic range to make good exposures of both sky and land in the same exposure). Such manipulations, Rosler claims, were “in the service of a truer truth, one closer to conceptual adequacy, not to mention experience” (2004, p 263). Continue reading “Image Simulations, Computer Manipulations: Some Considerations”

Indexical relationship as truth claim

In his pamphlet King Leopold’s Soliloquy, Mark Twain, assuming the voice of Leopold II of Belgium, bemoans the fact that the photograph serves as incontrovertible evidence of the atrocities that were committed in the Congo Free State, his personal colony: “the incorruptible kodak … The only witness I have encountered in my long experience that I couldn’t bribe” (Twain 1905, p 40). Continue reading “Indexical relationship as truth claim”

Power of photography to change public opinion

During the last module, my tutor raised the question about idealist photographers assuming that they can somehow change the world and whether this is a pure pipedream or images can in fact bring about some sort of social change through raising awareness on certain issues. Continue reading “Power of photography to change public opinion”

Serving Up the Poor as Exotic Fare for Voyeurs

Searching online for the original article where this phrase was coined (unsuccessfully, as it happens), I came across this exhibition review in the NY Times, which although it doesn’t actually mention the original context in which the phrase was used, does touch on some interesting issues worth considering. Continue reading “Serving Up the Poor as Exotic Fare for Voyeurs”

David Antin

Another reference from Sekula, this time a poet and performance artist whose work looks at oral traditions as well as questioning traditional narrative structures. In an interview, he speaks of how his talk performances differ from traditional poetry readings in the sense that they are improvised rather than learned and recited – as he said in an interview, reading a poem is like “returning to the scene of the crime/you try to reenact it and the more you try to bring it back to life the deader it becomes.” Continue reading “David Antin”

Studs Terkel

Following up on the reference that Sekula made, I decided to research the work of Terkel. Although I could not find the entire works online, I managed to locate transcribed excerpts from Hard Times here, and some original recordings from all his publications here. This is work in the tradition of the Grimm brothers and Alan Lomax (whose recordings of delta blues artists are among my favourites), but Terkel gets his subjects (uncelebrated people) to relate their own stories in their own words. Continue reading “Studs Terkel”

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