Scan samples

Face your pocket

Ritchin Chapter 7 and 8

 Ritchin discusses the photograph not as a reporter, but a recorder as well as the possibilities of collaboration that come with the web and instant view on the back of a digital camera. Amateur photographers come into the process as collaborators as well through their feedback and their ability to navigate the narrative that they are presented with.  As the web opens the doors for self-publication, it also allows for amateurs to carry a voice and depict things through their own perspective, it opens the door for interesting things to happen. Amateurs have the advantage of depicting their culture from within verses being a hired professional from a journalistic background that can never fully penetrate the true culture.  Professionals are also constrained by the limits of their assignments; even their formal education can be a limiting factor. Photography’s emergence as an art form was inevitably met with much skepticism but gained credibility when it became a useful avenue for eyewitness accounts. Cell phone cameras and instant web uploading also aided in providing new possibilities for knowing and responding to the world.

Ritchin Chapter 8 Dives into the role of the amateur a bit deeper but it also discusses the role of the camera in a journalistic realm. How does the presence of a camera change the situation that it is there to depict? He exemplifies the $500,000 that was spent to air-condition an outdoor press conference between the U.S., Egypt, Israeli, and Palestinian politicians so that they wouldn’t appear to be sweating in photos. Ritchin also outlines the possibilities that emerge from the use of digital and cell phone cameras. As I mentioned above, cameras encourage the staging and manipulation of reality, including the possibility to manipulate the future through depicting events that foreshadow etc. Ritchin tends to repeat himself quite a bit and these two chapters really blend together. I am stricken, however, by the significant differences and possibilities between digital and analogue photography in terms of public participation. It almost becomes a completely distinct medium. Analogue does possess some of the same possibilities to be uploaded onto the web after scanning etc. but it is much more time consuming and expensive. With analogue, instantaneous feedback is not possible.

ICE 7

Single:

Stair:

Ritchin Chapter 6

Chapter six in Ritchin’s After Photography could almost be seen as an account of the internet into a near virtual-reality. Exemplifying the Turing test in the beginning, the stage is set to think about the advancements in technology and their effect on our mentality. Ritchin discusses his participation in the New York Times development of an online resource and the growth of a web of images and information that was engineered to tailor to the individual’s interests. Virtual realities such as Second Life and the “serious game” such as Food Force or the US Army’s basic training bring to light the dynamic of social interactions and codes within technology and the web. The internet has developed into a collective consciousness with unlimited information while still allowing for individualized experiences for those who utilize it. Ritchin also addresses the amateur’s grown potential in the age of the Internet and shared information. The refined capacities of a single professional are being outdone by the limited potential of multiple amateurs. Just as we are seeing exemplified through other forms of technology advancement and availability of resources, the collective amateurs are able to provide more information and context to a scene than a hired professional. This isn’t always the case but the developing trends of the Internet are making that increasingly more realistic.

ICE 6 Dry Mount

Book Concept Proposal

Continuing with screen-shots and camera-less photography, I am interested in working with google maps and the "street view" function. I explored a few different concepts using this resource as a method and they all led me to back to the notion of Voyerism.  As I got distracted navigating my way around the streets of San Francisco, I became extremely aware of the people that I was capturing in my screen shots as well as the windows I was looking in. In some cases, I was able to "walk" right up to someones street level living room or bedroom windows and take a picture without ever having been there or spotted peeping in. This series of work will work really well in a book format because it will allow room for variety in the shots that I include.

Image, War, Legacy

 

In the chapter “Image, War, Legacy”, Ritchin discussed photography’s role in media and politics. Photography is increasingly being used as a tool to “package” politicians and sell them to the target audience. It is not a means to make public figures a commodity. Ritchin uses examples of Richard Nixon and George Bush (both of them) posing for the camera to come across in the media as more macho or more involved with the soldiers in the Iraq war. He discusses how photography is being censored in the same rite, dictating how a person or situation is being portrayed or not allowing portrayal at all. During war time, graphic images of injured and dead civilians are being censored from new sources and deemed unpatriotic or morbid. In some cases, photographers are being held back from covering the wars at all. This reading made me think about Jean Baudrillard’s theory on post-modernism and consumer culture. He argues that after the industrial revolution and the possibilities for mechanical reproduction, consumption of objects (fueled by Capitalism) has developed into a type of alternate reality that dictates social hierarchy and individual status. Advertising and communication has turned into rapid, impersonal and shallow instances of interaction. All of these dynamics are creating a society, which has ultimately lost touch with reality. Photography, TV and film are significant factors that have paralleled this development and ultimately changed art in the process. Ritchin acknowledges this implication of photography etc, “even many non-governmental organizations, like major corporations have recently embarked on strategies to use photographs to “brand” their identities”, the branding being an effort to appeal to the consumerism that has plagued our society (89). I think this stance really has most relevance within journalism but certainly is something to consider when thinking about fine art and its evolution after photography and film came along. That, however, is a whole other beast.

Ring Around the Ring Around

Selective and Split Tone Black and White

Fred Ritchin, Chapter 3 "From Zero to One"

 

From Zero to One discusses the evolution of digital photographic means and their uses. From digital manipulation software to high tech billion-pixel cameras, photography is not solely reserved for artistic purposes. Photographic outputs have breached our lives as there is almost a guaranteed daily interaction in some form or another. Billboards, magazine ads and newspapers are a few examples of the medias manipulation of photography into a means of manipulating the readers or viewers into some sort of response. Photos are manipulated after being taken for a multitude of different reasons. To remove blemishes or change eye color, for scene completion, to remove or add loved ones from a photo, and the list goes on. Where is the sincerity in this medium, which is so easily manipulated? Ritchin ends this chapter with a quote from filmmaker Wim Wenders, “We are entering an era when no one will be able to say whether a picture is true or false. They are all becoming beautiful and extraordinary… soon they will really end up making us blind”, who recognizes that the potentials of photography and editing will begin to create a world that we cannot live up to (67). With the possibility to mimic reality but with the “perfect” person standing in front of the magnificent landscape, how are we going to see the beauty in the honest and comparatively lackluster reality? While the possibilities that are being developed within the field of photography hold incredible artistic potential, they are being lost to the agenda society and the medium is becoming just another societal tool.

Color Check

Project 1 potentials

Color Ring Around 1

After Photography Summary 1, Chapters 1-2

 

The reading After Photography discussed the transitions seen over time that led to digital photography. Fred Ritchin exemplified the evolution of painting into photography, compared the Internet to society’s fascination with fast moving cars, and also demonstrated the influences that a new medium obtains from its predecessor (TV from the radio, early photography from painting etc.). The reading seeks to demonstrate the increasing rapidity in which mediums are changing “for the better”. It seems to come across that the digitalization of photography (along with the internet) means a different experience aesthetic and artistic experience.

The tone seems to be split between critical and embracive regarding digital photography and what it means for the art world. On the one hand the possibilities are endless and on the other, it’s too easy. Photography, which threatened the success of painting, has now split into 2 categories: Analog and digital. The latter seemingly farther removed from painting than the former. As a student of photography developing my skills in the digital age, I have a world of options and tools available for any type of approach I want to take with my photography. It’s not like the original masters who were experts at the fundamentals of photography. They had fewer chances to get it right and therefore had to be as precise as possible. Today, the discipline is much more lenient and could arguably be considered less specialized. The easy access to cameras, editing programs, publishing sources and the ability to self teach photographic skills, makes it much more difficult for photographers today to set themselves apart and create the unique, specialized images of the past.

Chapter 2 discusses how photography parallels and, in a way, conditions society towards manipulating the natural. Comparing Photoshop to plastic surgery and genetic engineering, Ritchin demonstrates the abundance of fabrication for a more desirable product.  He mirrors the questions that seem to be dominating the societal understanding of photos today, namely the level of truth that they contain. I think the overall theme of this chapter addresses the value, authenticity, and credibility of photography and the realm of post-photographic processes. The creativity and mastery once lied in the framing and setting up of an image where it now seems to be in editing (as exemplified in the National Geographic’s manipulation of the pyramids for the cover image). Even journalistic photography is losing credibility as more and more people are beginning to question whether or not it was manipulated to show something different. How will manipulated news affect historical recollection? This digital revolution has given rise to efforts aimed at detecting fabrication, known as digital forensics. Looking at a photograph now includes evaluating the underlying architecture of it. While reading this chapter I couldn’t help but feel motivated to reject post-photographic editing and concentrate on mastering and manipulating my work before I hold down the shutter button. What’s almost scary is that the digital revolution has changed societal expectations on what is acceptable and what is real. Everything that we see in the media and advertisements are, more likely than not, adjusted. How is this priming the value and potential of my work as non-journalistic photographer? It is certainly less significant that my work could be photo-shopped or falsified, but that changes the innate understanding of it none-the-less.

Advanced Digital Photography: Intro paragraph

Valarie Cooley:

I am becoming more and more interested in the potential of staging and even slightly into the realm of the cinematic styles like Laurie Bartley. I especially love her attention to color and lighting within her work. Katharina Bosse has really drawn me in with her use of color and staging as well as Jeff Wall for the beautiful detailed staging he does while still bringing across an ambiguity to the viewer leaving us unsure of the image’s candidness. All these photographers are really skilled at shooting with people in the shots but move along the same vein, I also wanted to mention Dianne Arbus solely for her skillful way of portraying her subjects and drawing out the strange within them. All this being said, I am also extremely interested in the limits of digital photography and its processes. I did a couple projects for the intro class that didn’t use my camera at all using screen shots and my scanner. Blake Shell is an artist that was recommended for me to look at as inspiration for my final project in Digital 1. He experiments with the limits of the digital and internet world, which is similar to the direction I've been exploring with screen shots of video chatting and emphasis on the poor quality/resolutions that result.

Jeff Wall:

 Katharina Bosse:

 Laurie Bartley:

                                                                      Diane Arbus:

 

Blake Shell: