Photo Essay Review Gursl And Klima

The artist that I will be focusing on is Ori Gersht, an Israeli photographer. He is a modern photographer and the names of his work are Blow Up #1; and Black Soil: White Light Red City 01. His works often reference violence, beauty, life and death. The medium vary from different printing methods. Blow Up #1 is light jet print, mounted on aluminum and size 96 x 72 in. (as the rest of the Blow Up series). Black Soil: White Light Red City 01 is a chromogenic print and size 47 1/4″ x 59 1/16.

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.

To not judge someone by their appearance is an important idea in the film because it teaches how it may affect the person you are judging and how damaging it could be for someone’s mental state.

We know how much the look matter, but many times our judgments are hasty. At the beginning of the book, we had a character, Ana, who used to make judgments based on appearances. For instance, when she saw Kim hiding something in the garden, she was almost about to call the police since she thought that Kim is hiding a gun. These days we have a lot of people like Ana, and many times we suffer consequences from these judgments. Thus, before making any predictions or judgments about someone, we have to be careful and think about consequences.

Vivid images can be found abundantly throughout the novel and helps to portray scenes to the point where the audience can actually imagine, smell, touch, and hear everything that is going on. “No matter how they scrubbed their hands, the residue of Red Hot Mama had a way of sticking round, as pesty and persistent as a chaperone at a high school dance.” (158). In some instances the audience can acquire a sense, based on the description whether the characters are self absorbed, considerate, or overly concerned about their appearance. “I ought to be shot for looking like this” she’d tell the mirror in the front hall before going out the door. “I look like I’ve been drug through hell backwards,” she would say on and ordinary day. “Like death warmed over. Like something the cat puked up.” (103). The emergence of the images presented in the novel can help present a better understanding and in some cases, a connection to one of the

Photography plays an important role in reflecting a society. In the article "Looking at discipline, looking at labor", Eric Margolis talks about the representations of the photos of the Indian boarding schools in the US. Photographs are used to demonstrate the civilization of Native America Native American Children. Not only can we see the change of the students after civilization, but also the oppressive system in the Indian School. The photographs are used as the monitoring tool of the government too. The photographs provide us evident to all of these. We can know these by comparing the photos before the Native Indian Kids go to boarding school and after they attend the boarding school. By contrasting the photos from the two periods, we can see that the civilization of the Native American Indian children is actually an oppressive system.

We were assigned to read chapters 3, 5 and 6. In chapter three we are introduced to the authors view on images. He feels that we put too much of an emphasis on images, to the extent where the written word is being ignored. I find this to be true, in this generation people are constantly glancing at images, let it be on their phones, tablets, magazines, newspapers, billboards etc. We put more time into visuals than the actual message itself. Reinke asked us, “What will we lose if we ignore books” (40). Personally I say A LOT!

In “Material Beings: Objecthood and Ethnographic photographs”, Elizabeth Edwards argues the importance of looking at the physical attributes

The violent markings of the photo album and its images, however, produce an equally powerful message that jars the memory as it disrupts and distorts the photographic chronicle of her life and that of her family and friends. The result is a complex visual experience that addresses the use of images in producing knowledge and making history.

She cites the Vietnam War as an example of how photographs can have a negative impact. Photographs of the war were “bound to have consequences: mainstream media are not in the business of making people feel queasy about the struggles for which they are being mobilized” (65). The photographs of American soldiers dying in the Vietnam War did make people feel sick, sad, and disgusted. Since the army fighting with South Vietnam was from America and not Cambodia, Americans cared more about the situation. Fellow Americans, who were innocent, and fighting for their country’s freedom, were killed in a war that was unnecessary.

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

Sontag claims that “photography is, a social rite, but it can also be a defense against anxiety and a tool of power (page 130).” She backs her claim by stating “photographs give people an imaginary possession of a past that is unreal, they also help people to take possessions of space in which they are insecure.” (Sontag page 131). In other words, having pictures allows people to tell stories that may not be exactly true. I agree with Sontag because I have witnessed and experienced how pictures can hurt someone emotionally while empowering others.

Throughout Ways of Seeing, John Berger uses European oil paintings and art to describe the relationship between women and men and the way that men view women. The entire chapter focuses primarily on a women’s body, how her body is surveyed by men, and how this causes the women to also survey herself. When first introducing the relationship between men and women, Berger clarifies women are an object of vision, stating,

During the sixties, more and more women were finding their way into the work place. The women’s rights movement was taking shape and it became more common and acceptable for women to go to work. The photo’s that Winogrand captured of these women were made into a collection entitled Women are Beautiful. The collection greatly excited Gary, but disappointed him when the published collection failed to sell. Women were offended and felt that the collection set back the women’s movement. Men were merely mystified and confused, but not intrigued enough to buy Winogrand’s book. Critics and photographers found his collection to be lacking in both quality and subject. He agreed that Women are Beautiful was his weakest collection, but felt that the most interesting photographs were those that were the most controversial.

He shows a woman examining herself in a mirror and we can see that her reflection shows differences from her actually body. Women rarely see themselves as others do. We are prone to point out all of our flaws that we think the world sees, but in reality the world does not notice the things we do. In the painting, “Facebook” by Pawel Kuczynski, the man seems to be hiding behind Facebook. The man is in a room, with the door open, but yet he is still choosing to look through the periscope. I believe the point the artist is arguing is Facebook, and other social media outlets, are being used as a way to hide ourselves from the true realities of our lives. This allows us to stay isolated from life and pretend we have our lives under control. Sadly, most people do