Camera Lucida Analysis

This photograph is unique in introducing a new means of expression through photographic essay, recalling both artistic expression, as well as journalistic

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.

The “Photographic Icons: Fact, Fiction, or Metaphor”, written by a photographic critic and writer Philip Gefter, represents the various situations lying in a photograph and how these situations can affect the authenticity of the photograph. The article also refers to the success and failure of fictional and metaphorical photographs in disclosing the reality.

Winogrand took photos of everything he saw; he always carried a camera or two, loaded and prepared to go. He sought after to make his photographs more interesting than no matter what he photographed. Contrasting many well-known photographers, he never knew what his photographs would be like he photographed in order to see what the things that interested him looked like as photographs. His photographs resemble snapshots; street scenes, parties, the zoo. A critical artistic difference between Winogrand's work and snapshots has been described this way, the snapshooter thought he knew what the subject was in advance, and for Winogrand, photography was the process of discovering it. If we recall tourist photographic practice, the difference becomes clear: tourists know in advance what photographs of the Kodak Hula Show will look like. In comparison, Winogrand fashioned photographs of subjects that no one had thought of photographing. Again and again his subjects were unconscious of his camera or indifferent to it. Winogrand was a foremost figure in post-war photography, yet his pictures often appear as if they are captured by chance. To him and other photographers in the 1950s, the previous pictures seemed planned, designed, visualized, understood in advance; they were little more than pictures, in actual fact less, because they claimed to be somewhat else the examination of real life. In this sense, the work of Garry Winogrand makes a motivating comparison to Ziller's

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).

Uelsmann’s work was not well received in the photography community. His creations were not considered photography; however, he was well received in the art community. John Szarkowski hosted a solo exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in 1967. Uelsmann was considered “iconoclastic” and “set out to convince critics that photography offered alternatives to the conventional “purist” sensibility…” Uelsmann debated that photos could “evoke elusive states of feeling and thinking triggered by irrational and imaginative juxtaposition” (Kay). Uelsmann has succeeded in finding a following among photographers and artist alike. In the past forty years, Uelsmann’s work has been exhibited in over 100 solo shows throughout the US and overseas. He has permanent instillations in museums worldwide (Taylor). Uelsmann’s photos are now revered for their original technical form as well as their surreal matter (Johnson).

In John Berger’s essay “Ways of Seeing,” he shares his view on how he feels art is seen. Mr. Berger explores how the views of people are original and how art is seen very differently. By comparing certain photographs, he goes on to let his Audience, which is represented as the academic, witness for themselves how art may come across as something specific and it can mean something completely different depending on who is studying the art. The author goes into details of why images were first used, how we used to analyze art vs how we do today, and the rarity of arts. He is able to effectively pass on his message by using the strategies of Rhetoric, which include Logos, Pathos, and Ethos.

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

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,

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

In “Photography and Fetish”, Christian Metx explores his essay with his interpretation and some basic differences between film and photography. He explains the effects that fetish and fetishism have on the viewer of a photographic image. Metz explained the term of fetish, using Freudian techniques. Fetish can be an object or activity that adds to an individual sexual pleasures. Photographs are more likely to work as a fetish due to their smallness and the possibility of a lingering look, which a film, in general, is not accessible to ordinary people due to the expense of its production. Althrough, he explains thatn the photographs served as static image and how the observers understanding of the photographic image is able to altered by its

This dissertation aims to look at three photographs of the same location, produced by three different photographers:

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).

Henri Cartier Bresson (1908-2004) was a French photographer and photojournalist, working throughout his homeland of France and around the world. When looking at Cartier-Bresson's artistic practice – the physical actions, techniques and procedures used to create the work combined with the conceptual ideas, influences, meanings and beliefs – we can see an emphasis on the story behind the image rather than its formation. There is a subtle influence of composition on his works though, due to his interest in painting before he became a photographer.1 We can observe his ability to capture the decisive moment, producing a

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