Summary Of Mirrors And Windows By John Szarkowski

Walls and Mirrors: Mexican Americans, Mexican Immigrants, and the Politics of Ethnicity. By David G Gutiérrez. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995).

Takaki’s book, A Different Mirror, offers the multicultural history of the United States. This book provides the reader with the American experience of Native Americans, African Americans, Mexican Americans, Irish Americans, Chinese Americans, Japanese Americans, and Jewish Americans. During this time, America demonstrated manifest destiny and the Master Narrative. They were led by the belief of “white purity,” which these ethnic groups threatened. America exhibited supremacy over all of these ethnic groups. Takaki’s work allows me to become aware of the history and the outcomes of manifest destiny and the Master Narrative.

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

Although the Civil Rights Act of 1964 ended legal Jim Crow, the perpetuation of prejudice, institutional racism, and discrimination towards African Americans continued. The tolling effects of this social paradox on the African American community are manifested within the works of Ann Petry, an African American writer whose short stories reflect her own perspective on the results of discrimination. The short stories, The New Mirror and In Darkness and Confusion conjunctively display the negative psychological consequences linked to racism, such as loss of personal identity, social reflectiveness, insecurity, anxiety/paranoia, weakened family bonds, and violent outbreaks.

He tried to remain calm, but a panic was taking hold of Jim at his very core. Susan and her safety played on his mind, regardless of the danger he was currently facing. Jim shook his head back and forth as a means of clearing away the mental fog. He refused to remain trapped in an “inescapable” room of mirrors.

The Shattered Mirror, is a short excerpt written by Kwame Anthony Appiah, explaining the idea of “cosmopolitanism,” through the use of an extended metaphor. Appiah uses the life and travels of Sir Richard Burton, to explain both “cosmopolitanism,” and “Anti-cosmopolitanism.” Appiah effectively explains what this term means, and why we should be willing to adopt “cosmopolitanism,” by use of allusions, metaphors, and sarcasm as an appeal to emotion. Appiah exemplifies Burton as both “cosmopolitan,” and “anti-cosmopolitan.” In short, being “cosmopolitan,” is defined by Appiah in the text as, “recognition that human beings are different and that we can learn from each other’s differences,” and “the recognition of our responsibility for every human

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 construction of the picture space, impeccably correct from a mathematical point of view, is characterized, first, by the extreme shortness of the perspective distance which, if the room were drawn to natural scale, would amount to only about four feet; second, by the lowness of the horizon which is determined by the eye level of the seated Saint; third, by the eccentric position of the vanishing point which is little more than half a centimeter from the right margin. The shortness of the distance, combined with the lowness of the horizon strengthens the feeling of intimacy. However, the vanishing point prevents the small room from looking cramped and box-like because the north wall is not visible; it gives greater distinction to the play of light on the embrasures of the windows; and it suggests the experience of casually entering a private room rather than of facing an artificially arranged stage.

John Szarkowski, a photographer and director of the Department of Photography of the Museum of Modern Art. Not only that, but based on the reading he’s also critic. Throughout the years Szarkowski had influence many American photographers, a forward thinker person who at that time had control of the art institution change photographer’s point of view. He taught American photographers how to look at photographs, from proving representations of the world, to making a story real, and to unique angles and perspective through photography.

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

Susan Sontag discusses the difference in viewing art in physical form versus viewing in through a lens. Throughout the essay “In Plato’s Cave”, Sontag thinks both Plato’s cave images and photographs represents, “the mere image of truth” (Sontag 3). With that, Sontag repeatedly uses the terms “truth” and “reality”, but does not define what these terms mean to her. The impression Sontag left for these terms is that “truth” or “reality” stand for nothing more than what we can see. Being said, the difference between what we can with our own eyes and what we can see with a camera is reduced to the physical/mechanical differences between the human eye and body camera/lens.

Girl before a Mirror, an oil on canvas painting by Spanish artist Pablo Picasso, shows two sides of a girl; one which is illustrated with a dark tone and one with a vibrant colorful tone. This painting is bright; colors are at full intensity and are arranged next to their complements, producing a visual relationship between shape and form. Forms are used to draw the viewer’s eye across the canvas where circular shapes, repeating throughout the work, are compensated by the pattern of diagonal lines of the background. The viewer observes the girl’s profile and full frontal image, looking into a mirror and noticing a different image of herself. In order to achieve this effect, Picasso uses a range of formal elements that highlight the