What is Photography?

Photography is the intention to capture. It is the art of fixing the shadows, it is freezing life in a single frame.

A Photograph can bring people to their knees, it can make them hopeful beyond all rational thinking, it can show people who are dead and gone alive again.

Cultral Photography

I found this content interesting as it was sort of documentary but almost art for arts sake too.
Some of it was strikingly beautiful but then you were reminded of the atrocities the early settlers committed.
In most of the head shot images, there are numbers and rulers next to the figures which makes me feel like I'm looking at animals, not human beings. A few of the early photographers did make note of their names but not nearly enough did. A lot of the photographs now are just objects from the past with no links to the now. Without names they go forgotten and that is the saddest part of cultural photography.  

Scientific Photography

I knew this existed but I didn't expect it to be so creative or so unique. To be quiet honest I thought it'd be more like photos of test tubes, dirt, maybe a dissection of an uninteresting plant but to my surprise it's a little more hardcore than that. 
It's more about molecules and cells, speeding bullets, macro shots of bugs and the odd maggot, heat sensitive objects and things like that. 
It's actually pretty cool. I must say though, that photograph of that maggot has haunted me since I saw it.  Rather like Alex's take on displacement. 

Week 11 - Photojournalism

Photojournalism is a particular form of journalism (the collecting, editing, and presenting of news material for publication or broadcast) that creates images in order to tell a news story.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photojournalism

In class we were able to draw distinguishing lines between two different photographers, Jacob Riis and Lewis Hine. 

Jacob Riis, who is considered a conquer in photojournalism, liked showing his subjects in squaller, he liked to catch them at their worse and as the rest of the world believed they were, with no hope. 

Lewis Hine on the other hand was an artist before money maker. He took care with what he was shooting and gave the subjects a chance at dignity. He was one of the driving forces behind having Child Labour Laws introduced in the work place and created some beautiful work because of it. 

He also documented the rise of many great buildings, some such as the Rockefeller Center and The Empire State Building.

http://vnovember.com/rockefeller-center-construction-site-lewis-hine/

http://www.rleggat.com/photohistory/history/hine.htm

James Nachtwey

I can't imagine how he fights the demons that haunt his memories. There is only so much a human can detach themselves from and James Nachtwey is constantly testing the limits of that.
How many photos can one take of children with missing limbs? Of people whose brain matter is splattered across a room? Of women crying for their dead sons and husbands? Of the hopeless look in their eyes?


His work is eerily beautiful but there is no way I could look at it more once, it's a tragic album of the world.

Week 7 - Photographs and War.

If somebody rearranged my dead sons body so it would appear aesthetically pleasing I'd probably find them and rearrange their face. 

I really disagree with what Brady, O'Sullivan and Gardner did to those poor boys who died in the line of fire. Yes, they sold the war in a big way but did they sell a piece of their dignity and soul too? It takes a desperate man to touch a cold, dead, bloody body just to make a buck. 

Really? What ethics ....?

Anywhoo.

Frank Hurley. Wow. What a life he lead. 

He went everywhere, saw so many different people, so many different cultures and above all, survived against all odds.

So disregarding the whole Papua New Guinea blip on the radar, everything he touched seemed to soar. He is the kind of photographer I want to be like, one that survives and changes the world. 

Week Four. What's a Photograph?

What makes a photograph? 
Is it an idea? A concept? A piece of equipment? A name? A subject? A stray red thought in a grey  cloudy world?
I love that after 170 odd years we still can't answer that question, we are still struggling to define what we do and what we love. 
It was once said;

"To hold a camera in your hands in the 1920's was to hold the future."

I'm unsure of who said this but I believe it is one of the truest things I have ever heard. 
There were no set rules or etiquettes about photography, it was purely about if you could fix the shadows. 
I have a great love for Eugene Atget as his albumen types are phenomenal, he documented the mundane tasks of day to day life and made them beautiful, he remained unknown for most of his life but still made such an impact after he was gone, he struck a cord with me as he was just a quiet artist who had nothing to sell or promise people with, he just had his camera, his chemicals and his eyes. Simply intriguing. 


Before this class I had a simple idea of what Pictorialism was but until I saw Silvia get into the bare bones of the movement I had no clue of what It really is. 

Pictorialism largely subscribed to the idea that art photography needed to emulate the painting and etching of the time. - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pictorialism

As a photographer, the last thing I want is for my photographs to look like paintings and that's something the Pictorialist's felt was necessary at the time. Maybe they were sick of being segregated from the other artists such as the sculptors and painters, they probably thought they could do the same thing, if not better, as the impressionists of the time with their hand cut lenses as they could do with their primitive brushes. 
I'm so glad we live in time where photographs can be photographs and not laughed at or scoffed at because they're photographs and not paintings.