Photography Is A Culture, Not Just A Medium

Early Landscape photography used the same principles as painters in order to create pieces of art. Before the 18th Century, artists used landscapes as backdrops and as a frame for the principal subject. Towards the later part of the century, however, artists such as Nicolas Poussin started to romanticize the environment, instead using it as a principle subject in paintings.

It is said that a picture is worth a thousand words, but maybe they are worth far more than that. Pictures, although seemingly simple in nature, are extremely complex. Far too often, people overlook what a picture truly is. When a person looks at an image, they most likely see only the image, nothing else. Many people do not look deep enough into an image to fully comprehend the true meaning of it. However, when an individual begins to truly study an image in an attempt to understand the true complexity of it, they will be surprised at what they overlooked before. As stated by French Realist Painter, Gustave Courbet, “Fine art is knowledge made visible.”

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

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).

Teju Cole, in his essay “Against Neutrality,” dissected the tones behind photography- which he believes are thought of as unbiased towards the subject. The power of words and of photos is crucial to Cole’s essay. He states that images can “make a grim situation palatable” because of the photographer’s craftiness in selection (Cole 1). To anyone who isn’t an experienced photographer these tricks can be hard to see but Cole provides further insight from the historian, John Edwin Mason. Expectantly, Mason sheds light behind the misconception on photography, how the “manipulation in photography isn’t really about Photoshop or darkroom tricks”, but the style, angle and other aspects of taking photos (Cole 1).

‘A picture says a thousand words’ this analogy often refers to photographs with immense amount of detail and meaning that it doesn’t need words or any description to exemplify its context. A photograph in particular engages an indicative role into promoting an issue that’s typical of the time. A photograph that highlights copious meaning is evident in Lawrence Beitler’s ‘Lynching of young blacks’. A role of a photograph is to provoke emotions and empathise within the subject of the picture. To do so, famous photographs often accommodate numerous conventions including the historical context, symbolic codes and technical codes. These codes and conventions operate simultaneously to epitomise the significance behind a

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.

Before starting this project, I knew very little about photography, photographers, or exactly how much impact photographical images have had on our society. I have never taken a photography class, or researched too in depth about specific pictures or photographers. This project has allowed me to delve deeper into the world of photography in order to understand just how much influence pictures can have over society’s beliefs, emotions, and understandings’. I have have chosen two highly influential photographers, Diane Arbus and Dorothea Lange, who I have found to both resonate with me and perfectly capture human emotions in way that moves others.

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

In addition, Rosler pointed out that a documentary photo has two paths. The images in the first “immediate” moment captured to be testimony evidences to support or argue against social practice. The second “aesthetic-historical” moment characterized as having less defined boundaries to evaluate a photograph, which means the traditional subjective judgments of an image have fell below its well-formedness and aesthetic pleasure it brings to the public.

I chose this article for the sole reason that I am a photographer so when I read that we could choose the topic of our paper I wanted to find out how photography and sociology can relate more to each other and what types of articles there are on the library website that I can read to get more of and understanding for how sociology and photography go hand in hand with each other. Therefore, obviously, the main topic is Sociology in Photography and how to build solidarity with subjects and the audience. I also found this to be an interesting topic because just last night I went to the Carnegie Museum of Natural History where I got to hear 6 of 11 women photographers from National Geographic speak about their work and they talked a lot about like understanding their subjects and how to build solidarity with their subjects before they photographed them and how to find a way to show the subject to the audience. It was a really wonderful experience to not only look at their works but to also hear them speak and I think that this journal I choose really relates to that which is another good reason I choose it. The research questions being answered within this article are ‘how to build solidarity with your subject’, ‘how to build solidarity with your audience’, ‘how to connect local and global issues with audience’ and ‘how to build an audience network.’

As this century fades into the past it is worth remembering that its course--in contrast to earlier times--has been chronicled by a visual narrative that relies on the attraction of photographs as means of storing

Culture is the lens through which we view the world; it is the mirror we use to reflect and interpret reality. It teaches us how to think and what to think about. It reveals to us what is beautiful or ugly, helpful or harmful, appropriate or out of place. In effect, every culture provides with a series of lessons. Among the lessons we learn are how to say “hello” and “good-bye,” when to speak or remain silent, how to act when angry or upset, where to focus our eyes when functioning as a source and receiver how much to gesture, how close to stand to another, and how to display emotions such as happiness or rage. By instructing members, culture guides behavior and communication, revealing to them how to act, think, talk, and listen.

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

Susan Sontag said photographs sends across the harmlessness and helplessness of the human life steering into their own ruin. Furthermore the bond connecting photography with departure from life tortures the human race. (Sontag 1977:64)