Photography's Discursive Space

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 “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.

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).

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 is such an eternal concept and part of our lives. It lives on through generations, transcending many periods, and can speak through many mediums. Art is a way of expression, when nothing else can capture, but is something that can be interpreted in many ways. I chose photography—that which best portrays mankind, in that it hides nothing and only shows what is there to begin with. “It is the language most readily understandable to all and our most important form of communication among nations and cultures.”(Schuneman; Koner 59-60) Two excellent representations of this is a street

Vanguard photographers might engage in critiques of the photographic referent, but Marco Breuer pursued a more literal and fundamental deconstruction of the matrix of the photograph. He began like so many other photographers in the 1960s with the cameraless photogram and cyanotype. Slowly he dispensed with the agency of light and the mechanisms of its impedance, instead directly attacking the surface of unexposed photographic papers, burning them, soaking them, scraping and abrading them, inscribing on and in them a record of death of the subject and posing a new set of terms for photographic communication. Breuer’s photographs bare evidence of their own decisive moments, however, moments not witnessed but physically observed. They are in fact, three-dimensional objects but also appear like photographs of the very surface they embody, with shadows, depth, and

"Close all shutters and doors until no light enters the camera except through the lens, and opposite hold a piece of paper, which you move forward and backward until the scene appears in the sharpest detail. There on the paper you will see the whole view as it really is, with its distances, its colours and shadows and motion, the clouds, the water twinkling, the birds flying. By holding the paper steady you can trace the whole perspective with a pen, shade it and delicately colour it from nature."

Chaos, a state of utter confusion or disorder. Chaos, a word often used to describe the scene of a tragic event such as a natural disaster or an act of terrorism. Whether in movies or in real life we have all seen chaos at work. Smoke and screams fill the air. Law enforcement franticly runs about trying to help in any way possible. Reporters and photographers arrive in swarms to get the inside scoop on the next ground breaking tragedy. When the Boston bombing happened on April 15, 2013 there was no exception to this pattern of events. Many photographs were taken of the aftermath, but one photo in particular seems to have captured the frantic atmosphere of the moment. It depicts an older man who, mid run, had been knocked

However, I wish to focus my attention on its undetermined, vague and tacit aspects to set forth perceptual relations that are mutable, mimetic and interchangeable. In my work I attempt to articulate something in between the freezing of time—that so often characterizes photography—and its relentless passing. I hint towards temporalities that are fluid, speculative, and somewhat loose, and formulate narratives that are circular and self-contained like möbius strips —where beginning and end become undifferentiable—to denote implied intervals and inconclusive spatial

Paul Ziff, an artist and philosopher, wrote an article in 1997 titled, “Anything Viewed.” This article asserted that a work of art is something that is “fit to be an object of aesthetic attention” (Ziff, 1997). He classifies this fitness based on a person “p”, who performs a certain action “a” with a work, or entity “e” under the right conditions

Sebald has made it seem as though image and text consisted of a tight bond that would otherwise fail if separated. For example, particular photographs within “The Rings of Saturn” are barely legible, creating a sense that something is missing and the reader’s job is to find it. His purpose here gives the impression that one is to diminish their confidence in visual representation. Sebald wants his readers to question image without textual depictions in order for them to understand that one cannot exist without the other, but also to explore various forms this relationship can express. When studying art or photography, an image itself holds the possibility that an individual can analyze it without textual support. From a writer’s standpoint, it would seem common sense to utilize images that will not overwhelm the narrative, in order to not draw to much attention to the image rather than the text. This gives the reader the impression

Careful visual observations are key when distinguishing masterpieces of photography. The attention to the slightest details and uses of many various techniques are what distance Gregory Crewdson and William Eggleston from the norm. Though it is simple to discuss the contents of a photograph, it takes a trained eye to analyze the true visual art that the picture portrays. Every image by both of these photographs contains a hidden meaning, a variety of thousands of possible interpretations made by the viewers. Composition and content are both considered and involved when the photographers make the final decisions of the arrangement. Thus, the artist’s intensions of the the subject of the image are also essential to consider. All in all, the

I have titled my essay, - Reshaping Reality and Artist Representation in Landscape Photography. Some may argue that photography is a reshape of the real world. As it is not what we see with our naked eye. The camera isn’t a strong enough tool to show a true representation of what the eye sees. This is where the argument stems from. Landscape photography is traditionally naturalistic. Therefore it is expected to be truthful, with no dramatic adjustments that instantly change the truth of the image. Landscape is a very powerful genre of photography; it can awaken memories of travel, smell, date, time, atmosphere or an experience in a particular place. It is up to the camera, or photographer to unravel these aspects? Which the audience feels looking at an image. I believe it’s the artist, as it is their choice to photograph the site. Therefore, I will be looking into artists that argue back at this argument.

As onlookers peer into the artworks in front of them, there is no question as to whether or not they considered what the artwork means, where it came from and what the artist was interested in who created it. The