For samples of my photographic works, please see the Links in the right column. The Flickr portfolio is a temporary stand-in for my traditional website that I took down during academic hiatus. A new website is currently in development.
This blog was originally intended to act as a bridge between discussion, ongoing projects and as a placeholder to a variety of links showcasing my photographic projects and past exhibitions.
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Monday, August 07, 2006
Sontag says...
"Photographs furnish evidence."
from, 'On Photography' (1973) Dell Publishing.
Sontag's essays on photography most brilliantly sum and examine several aspects of the photographic medium; too much to fully discuss here, but lets look at a few key points in relation to that 'evidence'.
By furnishing evidence, she observes the notion of redefining reality. The medium represents our world with a kind of realism that we expect to convey the truth. It proves we went somewhere, saw, and that something happened or just is. And even if we didn't capture it ourselves, we can acquire and consume the experience through publications, online, through broadcast, or as fine art prints to hang on the wall. We all get to experience what was captured in that photograph whethor we were there or not.
Photography is about much more than just the act of recording a reflection of existance. It is more than just a medium used to represent two dimentional illustrations of reality. Yes, a photograph is evidence of what existed at a moment in time... it is also evidence that someone was there to make that image and because of this, according to Sontag, we all have the option of experiencing something from the comfort of our living rooms:
'On Photography' page 162: " As the taking of photographs seems almost obligatory to those who travel about, the passionate collecting of them [or consumption of them, ie: by looking at a blog regularily] has special appeal for those confined- either by choice, incapacity, or coercion-- to indoor space. Photograph collections [or consumption] can be used to make a substitute world... For stay-at-homes, prisoners, and the self-imprisoned, to live among the photographs of glamorous strangers is a sentimental response to isolation and an insolent challenge to it.... To possess the world in the form of images is , precisely, to reexperience the unreality and remoteness of the real."
from, 'On Photography' (1973) Dell Publishing.
Sontag's essays on photography most brilliantly sum and examine several aspects of the photographic medium; too much to fully discuss here, but lets look at a few key points in relation to that 'evidence'.
By furnishing evidence, she observes the notion of redefining reality. The medium represents our world with a kind of realism that we expect to convey the truth. It proves we went somewhere, saw, and that something happened or just is. And even if we didn't capture it ourselves, we can acquire and consume the experience through publications, online, through broadcast, or as fine art prints to hang on the wall. We all get to experience what was captured in that photograph whethor we were there or not.
Photography is about much more than just the act of recording a reflection of existance. It is more than just a medium used to represent two dimentional illustrations of reality. Yes, a photograph is evidence of what existed at a moment in time... it is also evidence that someone was there to make that image and because of this, according to Sontag, we all have the option of experiencing something from the comfort of our living rooms:
'On Photography' page 162: " As the taking of photographs seems almost obligatory to those who travel about, the passionate collecting of them [or consumption of them, ie: by looking at a blog regularily] has special appeal for those confined- either by choice, incapacity, or coercion-- to indoor space. Photograph collections [or consumption] can be used to make a substitute world... For stay-at-homes, prisoners, and the self-imprisoned, to live among the photographs of glamorous strangers is a sentimental response to isolation and an insolent challenge to it.... To possess the world in the form of images is , precisely, to reexperience the unreality and remoteness of the real."
Saturday, July 08, 2006
What does McLuhan say?
For inspiration regarding my thoughts on how I feel about art and photography, within the context of communications, I've looked to Marshall McLuhan (and many many others).
McLuhan made a fervent case regarding the theory that 'the medium is the message' as explained in his 1964 book, "Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man'. He suggested that it is not the content in media that affects people; it is the existence of the medium itself. For instance, society is more affected by the fact of having television than what is actually being broadcast.
To play on and expand those groundbreaking ideas (of which I can't even scratch the surface of here) I agree that the existence of photography and photographs have had a profound affect on the way that we live our lives and contextualize the world around us, but I'd like to take his discussion over content a few steps further-- into our current technological era. What I am trying to accomplish and understand photographically through my own work and others' goes far beyond the mere existence of the medium itself. In a world where we are now bombarded with imagery in so many forms, I believe that content, or how we view content, has had to evolve to rise through the medium it is presented with. Also, the message must stand out from the medium for the viewer or the image itself may simply be bypassed. We are in an era of visual abundance. How do we image makers get our photos to stand out?
For example, a photograph of a person grieving in front of a bombed out building is going to have some sort of impact on the viewer (not to say that every viewer would be impacted the same way, if at all)- do you think that impact would be different if the viewer saw the image in a digital form on a website or if they saw it in a newspaper? The two formats are very different forms of media yet the content in the photograph does not change. The viewer isn't necessarily being affected as much by what medium they are viewing it with as much as the impact of the content itself.
One could certainly argue in McLuhan's favor that the medium does bear impact in the above example. The internet has provided a platform for almost instantaneous consumption of images/data. The picture of the person grieving may have been uploaded moments after the incident happened bearing a completely different impact on the viewer than the delayed newspaper photo... because by the time the paper publishes that photo, the viewer may have already seen versions of the image on the internet, on television thrice and from different angles... perhaps the viewer is already desensitized to the event and the photo content at that stage bears no impact and simply gets bypassed. If that's the case, the medium does indeed have more significance than the content.
We image makers/photographers can learn from Mr. McLuhan's theory. We need to really understand different media conduits and their context in order to maximize our ability to have our photos/messages stand out-- through the medium. The message has to be more than the medium.
McLuhan made a fervent case regarding the theory that 'the medium is the message' as explained in his 1964 book, "Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man'. He suggested that it is not the content in media that affects people; it is the existence of the medium itself. For instance, society is more affected by the fact of having television than what is actually being broadcast.
To play on and expand those groundbreaking ideas (of which I can't even scratch the surface of here) I agree that the existence of photography and photographs have had a profound affect on the way that we live our lives and contextualize the world around us, but I'd like to take his discussion over content a few steps further-- into our current technological era. What I am trying to accomplish and understand photographically through my own work and others' goes far beyond the mere existence of the medium itself. In a world where we are now bombarded with imagery in so many forms, I believe that content, or how we view content, has had to evolve to rise through the medium it is presented with. Also, the message must stand out from the medium for the viewer or the image itself may simply be bypassed. We are in an era of visual abundance. How do we image makers get our photos to stand out?
For example, a photograph of a person grieving in front of a bombed out building is going to have some sort of impact on the viewer (not to say that every viewer would be impacted the same way, if at all)- do you think that impact would be different if the viewer saw the image in a digital form on a website or if they saw it in a newspaper? The two formats are very different forms of media yet the content in the photograph does not change. The viewer isn't necessarily being affected as much by what medium they are viewing it with as much as the impact of the content itself.
One could certainly argue in McLuhan's favor that the medium does bear impact in the above example. The internet has provided a platform for almost instantaneous consumption of images/data. The picture of the person grieving may have been uploaded moments after the incident happened bearing a completely different impact on the viewer than the delayed newspaper photo... because by the time the paper publishes that photo, the viewer may have already seen versions of the image on the internet, on television thrice and from different angles... perhaps the viewer is already desensitized to the event and the photo content at that stage bears no impact and simply gets bypassed. If that's the case, the medium does indeed have more significance than the content.
We image makers/photographers can learn from Mr. McLuhan's theory. We need to really understand different media conduits and their context in order to maximize our ability to have our photos/messages stand out-- through the medium. The message has to be more than the medium.
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