Looking at the picture above, what are your thoughts about the image without any supporting context? In looking at the light piercing through the deteriorated ceiling, most of us would say that the household occupying the space is necessitous; that they cannot possibly live any longer in such a condemned structure. With a simple glimpse, any of us could tell from the sweat on Indira’s face, the stained clothing, and tools in hand the hardships she has faced; more than enough hardships at the young age of seven, especially from working at the local granite quarry. In, “When a Kid’s Bedroom Isn’t a Room: A striking look at where children from nine countries sleep at night,” Mollison creates a photo series where he documents …show more content…
Because of this, words and images cannot be put together without a direct context to lead the reader; otherwise, a message would be interpreted incorrectly. Due to this, there was a crucial overlap which linked Mitchell’s work with any other photographic essay. I noticed throughout W.J.T Mitchell’s work the main theme of perspective to be emphasized. Most importantly, Mitchell, Mollison and many other photographers that depend on words and images find a way for each reader to develop a distinct idea, to understand what the writer is conveying, and to develop a relative idea to others in interpreting the image from all other perspectives. To begin, the essay follows two important questions: “What is the relation of photography and language?”(Mitchell, 281). The short answer to this very general question is that it is and is not a language. Perhaps this brings the readers of his work to question whether or not perspective is the key to what we see. To later strengthen his argument, Mitchell uses issues arising in the Middle-East as a transition to John Mohr and Edward W. Said’s photo-essay following the obstacles Palestinians face amid the growing tension between them and …show more content…
In his work of “Harlem Gang Leader,” Parks makes it his responsibility to shift the perspective of those who have inaccurate thoughts about gang members. Throughout his essay. Parks believed delinquents in Harlem, New York were just “good, poor kids gone wrong.” To prove his points, Parks photographs the reality of Red Jackson over the long-term to show the intimate aspect of his life. As a result, Parks made it his intent to focus on the parts of Jackson’s life that revolved around work, friends, and family. In doing so, he would give the people of Harlem and those who disparage gang members in Harlem a common ground. In many ways, this can relate to Mitchell’s stance that perspective depends on the individual looking at the photograph and what they’ve experienced. Simply put, a privileged individual living in a luxurious penthouse is most likely to react with sorrow, whereas another individual who lived their entire life in the indigence of favelas in Brazil is most likely to react with more understanding of the conditions. This primarily follows Mitchell’s statement at the beginning of photographs typically being a “private ‘point of view’” (Mitchell,
The first photograph I am going to discuss is photo of Ellery Shufelt with his children in Albany County, New York. Arthur Rothstein took this photograph in 1937, which was when the Great Depression was taking place in the United States. This photograph depicts many of these formal elements and techniques such as, framing, lighting, composition, and space to help portray the true meaning of the image. Arthur Rothstein uses the technique known as composition, which can be defined as the organization of the photograph by inserting elements in particular places and sizes. This assumption can be made because Rothstein places the Ellery Shufelt and his children in specific areas of the photograph to help capture an emotion or option about how people live and work American society at this time. Also, the framing and position of the door and chair outlines the photograph asymmetrically for the viewer. The door offsets the image by dividing the image with a vertical line. This basically crops the photograph making the viewer focus on the father and his children rather than the background itself. In addition, the level the camera intensifies the feeling and framing by making you feel eye level with the subjects. The use of framing allowed the photograph to make you focus and control how you perceive the image.
When you were little did your parents ever let you go somewhere by yourself? Whether it was to go get the mail, to go to a gas station or the store to buy some milk or even just left you at home for a couple of hours while they went to work or the store or where ever they needed to be, you were left alone for a few hours. Well in the article “The Overprotected Kid”, Hanna Rosin explains what she sees when she brings her 5 years old son Gideon to The Land. She tells us about what are some of the kids are doing like learning how to start a fire so they can stay warm, she see some boys using an old mattresses like a trampoline which they are having fun doing flips on. She describes the land like a junkyard but safer, there is no slides, monkey bars, seesaws or swings there to keep the kids entertained what there is there is tires, a frayed rope swing, or whatever is already there or whatever gets donated. She sees some kids are using a walker that the elderly neighbor donated, it is being used as a jail cell but the next day it could be used as something else. You never know what the kids will come up with. What toys are there they are ignored. She sees a stuff animal faced down in the mud and another sitting behind a broken chair. In the article, “The Overprotected Kid “ by Hanna Rosin, she successfully persuades the reader that it's ok for kids to be alone and to let them go play with friends as long as they agree to come home at the time you tell them to.
While Postman points out the literal meaning of photography is “writing with light”; the two are from completely different universes when it comes to public discourse (p. 71). Unlike typography, photography cannot offer assertions, make propositions and offers no commentary. As long as it is not an altered photograph, it has no choice but to be true (p. 73). Thus, the photograph is only able to capture a moment in time and does not have the ability to comment on that moment. Our author contends, where language presents the world as an idea, the photographs only option is to show the world as an object (p. 72). Whereas in language, the correct context requires consideration of what is said before and after, in photography there is no before and after, only the snapshot of time. Therefore, by its very nature photography is context-free (p. 73). As photography immersed itself in the American culture author, Daniel Boorstin called this “the graphic revolution.” Postman is unequivocal on the point that the traditional forms of information, news, and even reality itself received an impairment by this new focus on images. For examples, he cites billboards, posters and advertisements. He points to magazines Life, Look and several newspapers. The picture was the focal point, and the writing was forced to take a less dominate roll and sometimes done away with altogether (p.
“That one has a jail-cell with his name on it”, (Ferguson 1). A quote this powerful lays a foundation of the stories shared within the book Bad Boys. This book allows us to see how the public school system is shaping black masculinity, and the affect it brings on these young boys.Yet, in the book The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace, it tells us about Robert’s struggle from poverty, the streets of Newark, and his education at Yale. These two books give us a powerful message. One that allows us to see the underlying triumphs Black men face. With poverty, biases, prejudices, and many more obstacles thrown in their path, they will always be set to prove themselves. The odds are constantly against them, as they are seen and viewed as
Sontag makes a logical claim the photography limits our understanding of the world. In her essay, Sontag says “photographs fill in blanks in our mental pictures of the present and the past… Nevertheless, the camera’s rendering of reality must always hide more than it discloses.” Though photography gives us a look at what is happening in the world, it does not always give us the perception that we need. The viewer of the photograph only sees what is inside of the frame.
This photograph is unique in introducing a new means of expression through photographic essay, recalling both artistic expression, as well as journalistic
The essay will make use of the works of photographic artists who engage in one of the two schools of photography, Pictorialism and Modernism. The artists that will be used for this essay are Paul Strand who has been selected for the Modernist development together with a Russian artistic photographer Alexander Rodchenko and As White remained rooted to Pictorialism, his stance on his methodology and set up in the 1920s and 1930s led to occurrence of the stirring up of quite a number of understudies to handle his visualization style which was fresh and innovative (White, Clarence H., Jr. and Peter C. Bunnell 1965). In the process of talking about the two schools of photography, Pictorialism and Modernism rather than focus on the clash and disagreements that occurred from Pictorialism and Modernism it is more suitable to examine the merits in both the method and styles used in the two schools of
The essay States, by Edward Said, describes the trouble for Palestinians to find their identity due to the loss of their homeland. He also describes the situation of the Palestinians and the isolation that they feel through photographs that he had taken. Said has many different pictures throughout this essay and each of them play a part in supporting the main point of this essay. Said believes that, without a homeland, the Palestinians cannot have an identity and the Palestinians should not be content with being exiles forever. So the purpose of the pictures is to support and further strengthen this idea. The photographer wants the viewer to understand the struggle that the Palestinians are going through.
It is said that “The true content of a photograph is invisible, for it derives from a play not with form but with time”. This makes me think that the real content of a picture, which is what the photographer tried to express, is not evident to perceive unless an explanatory text is provided. In fact, I believe that our perceptions of pictures changes over time as the historical context do. In addition, our opinions are never fixed as they are influenced by our environment. Therefore, when looking at a particular picture at a given time, it is certain that our perception of it will be different in the future based on what happen between the first time and second time we saw it.
In war, photography and art again serve the purpose of acknowledging and sometimes protesting suffering. In the First World War cameras were used for military intelligence, to capture an event. "The caption of a photograph is traditionally neutral informative: a date, a place, names." A photograph is supposed to just record what happened and not takes sides. However, "it is always the image that someone chose; to photograph is to frame, and to frame is to exclude." So the photograph is supposed to be neutral, but the photographer is still deciding what details to focus on. The caption has just facts on it, because supposedly that is what the photograph is recording. While it is true that photographs cannot explain everything themselves, they do serve as visual aids to, what otherwise be, a pallid world.
Photographs are re-collections of the past. This essay is about photography, memory, and history and addresses the relationship between photographic images and the need to remember; it is based on the notion that seeing is a prelude to historical knowledge and that understanding the past relies on the ability to imagine. At the same time, the role of thought and imagination in the production of society--as reflected in the earlier work of Louis Althusser (1970), Maurice Godelier (1984) and perhaps more significantly, Cornelis Castoriadis (1975), suggests yet another role for photography in the construction of a social and cultural reality. Photographs in capitalist societies contribute to the production of information and participate in the surveillance of the environment where their subjective and objective qualities are applied to the private uses of photographic images in the perpetuation of memory.
In “Ways of Seeing”, John Berger, an English art critic, argues that images are important for the present-day by saying, “No other kind of relic or text from the past can offer such direct testimony about the world which surrounded other people at other times. In this respect images are more precise and richer literature” (10). John Berger allowed others to see the true meaning behind certain art pieces in “Ways of Seeing”. Images and art show what people experienced in the past allowing others to see for themselves rather than be told how an event occurred. There are two images that represent the above claim, Arnold Eagle and David Robbins’ photo of a little boy in New York City, and Dorothea Lange’s image of a migratory family from Texas; both were taken during the Great Depression.
The messages being conveyed to the viewer are different from each of the photographers. In the two photographs displayed above the contrasts are very similar, but Franks photograph offers a slightly higher contrast to Marks. The photograph of Franks is of his off-the-cuff style that was revelation in the stylized, artificial 1950’s of Richard Avedon and Irving Penn. Marks photograph is more of a report on the state of our social environment. Although, Marks photographs are reports of what the social state has been for decades. All the photographs from both photographers are intriguing to say the
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
——A Critical Analysis of an Extract of ‘The Fifth Edition’ through Virginia Woolf’s ‘A Room of One’s Own’ Chapter Six’