lost in translation...

Cotton Chapter 7: Revived and Remade

Within Cotton's chapter 7 she talks about how photographs can be a process of signification and cultural coding.  Like in Susan Sontag's article on photography, Cotton brings up that many of the photos in the chapter are images that must have past experiences or personal knowledge brought in by the viewer to fully understand the image.  But the images can never be understood in the same way that the photographer meant them to be, due to everyone else's opinions and personal experiences.  Cotton talks a lot about how Cindy Sherman, a postmodernist photographer, created the viewer's experience in her images.  I personally thought Gillian Wearing's photo was really interesting.  She would wear prosthetic masks and leave one spot that would give it up that she was wearing a mask.  I think masks are something that are very ambiguous.  They can hide things about an image but also reveal an uncomfortable truth.

Susan Sontag On Photography

Susan Sontag in her paper summarizes what photographs are and what modes photography can be used in everyday life.  She says, " they are a grammar and, even more importantly, an ethics of seeing"(3).  Photos are a way of life that has slowly become more readily available to the common person.  She also mentions the arrangements of photos and that books help preserve the longevity of the photos.  with the preservation it allows for the images to show change.  Photography, as Susan sates, "is mainly a social rite, a defense against anxiety, and a tool of power" (8).  Photography is used as many tools; tourism, family and past ties, experiencing something, an event, show desire, and time.

Ears...

“A Picture You Already Know” Sze Tsung Leong

“A Picture You Already Know” Sze Tsung Leong

Photography is a field in which is very repetitious.  Just simply the act of taking a photo is duplicating reality. Leong goes into different sections talking about how repetition can form a significant part of photography. "Repetition is the basis for the recognition of things and the creation of familiar grounds from which the new and unfamiliar can be identified and understood" (254). Photography is already duplicating a process which is repeating first.  

I thought it was interesting to read about uniqueness. I think the way I understand this is that in order to consider something unique you must notice the sameness or repetition of  things in images.  

This can't be Wooster Ohio...

5 Rules

1.  Must take images where repetition or patterns occur.
2.  The image must be black and white.
3.  An object of color must appear in the image.
4.  Images must be shot inside.
5.  No human should appear in the image.

The Self Portrait

Tentative 5 Rules

1.  Use the same location and setup
2.  I need to be in the photo
3.  Someone else needs to take the photo
4.  Put an object from the photographer in the setup
5.  Incorporate words

Dry Film Scans

Too Drunk to Fuck (On the Anxiety of Photography) MARK WYSE

 In "The Perfect Human" whatever Leth is seeing he makes it know to the audience.  "It is within this constant repetition of seeing, and of thinking about what we are seeing, that he prevents us from feeling the content of this repression" (86).  Because we are prevented from feeling in Leth's piece Lars von Trier created "The Five Obstructions" to show the emotions that come along with the perfect human.  He doesn't want to hide the feelings and emotions.  

 Mark Wyse continues on using Eduardo Cadava and Paola Cortes-Rocca to show the divide between desire and intellect just like how Leth is trying to not express feeling while Trier in trying to bring about feeling.  

I think that when looking at Christopher William's work and the fact that he uses a commercial photographer to photograph what he set up is interesting and should be something we keep in mind for our next project while we set up rules.  Maybe I will give it a try on restricting myself from photographing the subject.  Leave the photographs up to chance.  

Late night studying :/

The Color Ring Around

Cotton Chapter 1 If this is Art

Within Cotton's Chapter 1, many of the photographers have moved from a point and shoot to images they were taking were thought about and created by the photographer.  She says, "artistic creation begins long before the camera is actually held in position and an image fixed, starting with the planning of the idea" (21).  This chapter focuses on the "planning of the idea", like what we are doing for our next project.  WE are thinking out what we want to do for our self portrait portrait project.  We arent just going to take meaningless images but we are thinking out and planning what we want to do and how we want to portray emotions and other things.
Performance started to play roles in photos.  Photographers started to stage their subjects so that they could convey a certain political or social meaning.  I think The Blob 4 is an image that impacts me a lot.  I don't want to stop looking at it.  The image isn't just about what it is showing in the image but instead it gives off this uncomfortable feeling to the viewer. "The blob embodies the embarrassment and vulnerability of human physicality" (27).  I think this is extremely true especially for women and how they are always concerned with how they look or how they are perceived.  With Erwin Wurm he thought of the image as the idea.
To close out the chapter Cotton ends with talking about repetition of images.  I especially liked Roni Horn's You are the Weather image because of the small game that you get to play by making up her emotions with every image even though most of the images are the same.  So the viewer has control of what is being portrayed in the images.

The Self Portrait Proposal

For "this is a self portrait portrait" I'm not exactly sure what I want to do quite yet.  I think that I may want to photograph my feet in different environments.  Photographing my feet may show how mobile of a life I have had.  I also really like eyes.  I think that you can tell a lot from someone's eye and what emotions they may be trying to convey.
For "this is not a self portrait portrait"  I don't want to photograph just objects but maybe photographing my friends will create an atmosphere that reflects myself.  I was also thinking about using a location or area that reflects my personality.
I am still thinking about what I may do for this project but for now this is where I will start to see if any more ideas take off from there.

Things I did not know about Photoshop

• You can add flash into your image (select image>adjustments>exposure)
• Layers always seem to be a hard concept for me to understand: you build things on top of each other which creates an image
• I had no idea what flick panning was.  It is photoshop responding to a flick of the mouse pan gesture by continuing to scroll the image in the direction you first scrolled.
• There is more than 1 way to open an image file in photoshop:  can open in bridge, lightroom, or by double clicking on the file to open it.
• I also did not know that you can restrict access to certain files.