Analysis Of ' Camera Lucida '

In his introduction of the paper he grasps the reader’s attention by using emotional words that create a sympathetic image to show as if the photo wasn’t available. Furthermore, rhetorical analysis of the photo is its appeal to pathos for the audience. The photo gets you to feel a sense of distress for the person falling to his death in the photo. The photo also appealed to ethos to a point. It makes you question whether taking the photo was ethical on the photographer’s part.

Marcel Duchamp stated that "It was his achievement to treat the camera as he treated the paintbrush, as a mere instrument at the service of the mind” (Biography.com, 2017). In addition, the photogram might seem expressive and abstract, yet on the contrary, it is the precise medium to document the everyday objects in an unrepeatable and somehow uncontrollable way. The artist cannot predict how the selected objects will be recorded under the light sources that were tampered with. From the first glance, the image completely dissociated from its original subject, allowing one’s memory to fill the gap. Yet below its surface, the image is an accurate documentation that captured a moment of psychical intensity. It revealed a new visual experience, using objects in the simplest way. One can say that the use of this medium disclosed reality more preciously due to its invisibility and mysterious representation (The Museum of Modern Art, 2017).

The image may become deeply ingrained in one’s brain and create an everlasting cycle of what-ifs. This is evident through Tim O’Brien’s depiction within the section “The Man I Killed.” The imagery of the dead man makes the audience almost feel like they know him, despite the author never knowing him.

The documentary What Remains follows photographer Sally Mann’s life over a span of five years as she balances being a mother, wife and photographer. In the film viewers are able to get an intimate glimpse of Mann’s creative process as she captures various images of her loved ones, landscapes, and even a new series that explores death. In this paper I will discuss Mann’s work detailing the criticism it receives as well as how my experience as a novice photographer parallels hers.

His attempt to depersonalize the subjectivity that Bartleby represents crushes a part of himself. The photograph can only deal with a particle of experience but, as Bartleby explains to the lawyer, “I am not particular” (Melville, “Bartleby” 69)” (Weiner,

The photograph is a very powerful medium. The French painter Paul Delaroche exclaimed upon seeing an early photograph “from now on, painting is dead!” (Sayre, 2000). Many critics did not take photography seriously as a legitimate art form until the 20th century. With the

Photographs are also manifestations of time and records of experience. Consequently, writings on photographic theory are filled with references to representations of the past. Roland Barthes (1981, 76), for instance,

It is a common occurrence in which one begins to describe a situation or event to an acquaintance, and they do not conceive the event as you did in the moment of its manifestation. The narrator may have all the details perfectly correct, and all of the imagery is present, but there is no way to fluidly transcribe perception. Photographs allow for perception to be made by the observer, without words. Louis P. Masur, the author of the article “How the Truth Gets Framed by the Camera, states in his article that “Photographs seduce us into believing that they are objective records, but, in fact, all images are interpretations, texts that must be read (2007)”. Masur, as any photographer does leaves the perception of the story he is trying to communicate, up to the observer.

Memories can be as short-lived as the moments that created them. The recollection of events and the deterioration of memories over time is a constant process that cannot be stopped. This inevitable passing of memory is fused to the inevitable passing of human life. Emily Davis’s still life photograph of wineglasses is reflective and fragmented, allowing the image to act as a metaphor for this fleeting aspect of memory through its own memory-like qualities. The photograph is also symbolic of the transience of human life through the use of the traditional symbol of the wineglass, ultimately serving as memento mori.

Plantigna deliberates on various differences between the fiction and non-fiction filmmaker, particularly the role of imagination to the two differing styles of film. He discusses that the fiction filmmaker “freely creates imaginative events”, where the non-fiction filmmaker “portrays or makes explicit claims about actual historical events” (104). He then puts forth the idea that imagination is also important for the non-fiction filmmaker as he as the creator “decides how to represent historical events” (104). This is demonstrated in shot 237 where Resnais’ camera pans over the ceiling of a gas chamber that has been carved in and scored by human fingernails and the voice-over narrates, “the only sign—but you have to know—is this ceiling, dug into by fingernails”. Here, Resnais using his imaginative ability, has seamlessly

Art critic Robert Hughes once said, “People inscribe their histories, beliefs, attitudes, desires and dreams in the images they make.” When discussing the mediums of photography and cinema, this belief of Hughes is not very hard to process and understand. Images, whether they be still or moving, can transform their audiences to places they have either never been before or which they long to return to. Images have been transporting audiences for centuries thanks to both the mediums of photography and cinema and together they gone through many changes and developments. When careful consideration is given to these two mediums, it is acceptable to say that they will forever be intertwined, and that they have been interrelated forms of

It is at that moment that mastering an image becomes a great physical and intellectual joy”. It is clear that one of Bresson’s fundamental principles of photography was spontaneity. Because photography is all about capturing a moment, a photographer always needs to be prepared to capture a moment that one thinks is

This dissertation attempts to explore the last vision, both in real life and artistic expression. According to John Berger when he sat beside his father's coffin,” People talk of freshness of vision, of the intensity of seeing for the first time, but the intensity of seeing the for the last time is, I believe that greater”. Seeing for the last time here is between viewer and corpse, however, this article wants to explore, the so-called richer last vision it contains various situations. In my opinion, the last vision is not only for the dead people, but it should also exist in between the object and the viewer. Through the first chapter I will discuss the possibility of the existence of viewing between people and objects, based on Lacan’s theory.

It creates an illogical connection between ‘here-now’ and the ‘there-then’. As the photograph is a means of recording a moment, it always contains ‘stupefying evidence of this is how it was’. In this way, the denoted image can naturalise the connoted image as photographs retain a ‘kind of natural being there of objects’; that is, the quality of having recorded a moment in time. Barthes stresses that as technology continues to “develop the diffusion of information (and notably of images), the more it provides the means of masking the constructed meaning under the appearance of the given meaning’ (P159-60).

What is a photograph? The simplicity of taking a photograph leads many to ponder its artistic value. Yet, it is undeniable that there are some photos that cause an emotional reaction deeper than simply observing a recorded point in time. Surely, there are photographs that cause more reaction than some modern art pieces. There seems to be two types of photographs. The first classification is the ‘time capture’ photo – an image with the sole purpose of recording a particular event or point in time. The second nature of a photo carries a ‘deeper meaning,’ which has the ability to change the observer’s mood and cause a reaction. But what distinguishes these two varieties? There are a