Christian Metz
Photography and Fetish
The Shadow of the Object: Photography and Realism
Geoffrey Batchen
Photogenics
As always, please bring your notes to class and be prepared to introduce discussion topics.
If you have any questions please let me know.
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PS
We will take some time in class to further discuss the peer review project and address any questions concerns.
Photography and Fetish by Christian Metz:
ReplyDeleteDistinguishes between film and photography, considering their potential to work as fetish objects according to Freud. While a film narrates as it guides the spectator visually and acoustically, photographs address the imagination; the filmic camera wanders over scenery, the photograph arrests the gaze. Nevertheless, the viewer is tempted to imagine some off-frame exactly because he has no empirical knowledge of it. The photograph is integrated into an encompassing fantasy concealing the lack.
The Shadow of the Object: Photography and Realism by Sarah Kemper:
Speaks about the truthfulness behind a photograph, especially now with digital photography. It kind of bring up the old argument is photography art? Sense moving into the digital age the truth of a photograph has been placed under a magnifying glass. But isn’t all photography manipulated in a way considering we are basically manipulating the light and the composition to what we want the photo to be before even bringing in all the new digital technology.
Photogenic’s by Geoffrey Batchen:
I had a hard time understanding this essay but I believe it talks about the exhibition of photographic work. How digital has made it easier to reproduce an image. It also bring on whether or not you are actually purchasing a digital image or a printed image when it come to digital. He goes into a debate whether is not it is a good thing that reproduction is a good thing or is it making the work less valuable in the end
Christian Metz - Photography & Fetish
ReplyDelete"Photography very often means souvenir, keepsake." I think this is totally true, even as fine art it's still a reminder of something that intrigued the viewer. I also really liked the quote, "Photography is linked to death in many different ways." This statement to me was SO interesting, I never thought of it that way, until I saw it written down in front of me. Every photograph we take is like a memory that links us to our pasts, so I absolutely can see how photography is linked to death. So interesting!
"Power of suggestion" - photography does have an extreme power of suggestion. For example the photo of the soldier pointing his weapon at that little kid (which cropped out the group behind the kid -- all holding guns/weapons) is a very powerful statement against the US troops in Iraq/Afghanistan. The old saying: a picture's worth a thousand words, is completely true.
Sarah Kember - Photography and Realism
The three images she mentions in the beginning of the article which are fake (Pyramids of Giza, Tom Cruise/Dustin Hoffman, and the Queen of England being black), she kind of made it seem like such bad things to have altered these images, and how the people are 'lied' to. Let's be honest here, what we read, is that really all true? Aren't facts often left out? Of course imagery would be the same? Why would you ever believe that images you see in a magazine are real?
That being said, that doesn't mean that all photography is fake/staged. There are moments when you get the right picture at the right time, and it doesn't need post-production or cropping. What about candid moments? "Believe half of what you see and none of what you hear," is such a common phrase, yet people still get all bent out of shape when an image is altered. Start thinking outside the box people.
I wasn't really sure what Oedipal and fetishism had to do with photography throughout the article. "Yet photographs are fragile not only as material objects 'easily torn or mislaid,' but as a compensatory or fetish objects."
Geoffrey Batchen - Photogenics
We can pretty much find any image we need to online now anyway, but we all know it's not the original. Does it make the orignal loose value? Not to me. For example, I own a Richard Avedon book, so I know the images, I've seen them online, even had to manipulate one for one of my classes last year. But when I saw the images hanging in the MFA two falls ago, I was amazed. Yes they technically are the same image, but one is the original. I also happen to find Avedon's work to be amazing, and some of my favorite pieces, however it original didn't loose value to me because I could see it anytime I wanted to in my book.
I think that it would be a shame if people only saw digital copies of art. I think that a lot of how special art is, is it's physical form. I dabble in other art also, but for me, it's the way the paint smells, the long brush strokes that you can only see up close, it's the smell of the ink on the photo paper. It would be a waste of art to become a digital world.
Museums are dying as it is, and for the specific reason, people can just see the online exhibit. TOTALLY not the same at all. To me, there's just something special about being able to see a piece of art that you know the artist had his or her hands on. That they poured a piece of themselves into. How sad to never even leave your house to see 'art'. It wouldn't be art if it wasn't the original piece hanging in front of you.