Summary Of The Social Definition Of Photography By Pierre Bourdieu

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

A photograph is a powerful tool for life. A single, unchanged image of reality can be utilized for a variety of situations. For one, one photograph could decide the lifestyle in the foreseeable future of a person that committed a crime. Furthermore, one photograph could reveal the horrors of a particular event. On another note, one photograph could hold heartwarming memories forever. In addition, one photograph could stir a controversy that will have people debating whether an entity is real or not. Overall, as Susan Sontag mentions in her book Photograph, “Photographs furnish evidence.”(Sontag); in other words, whether if it is, good, bad, or misinterpreted, one photograph can be used as evidence that something in fact happened or is real.

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).

No matter it’s effect, photography was and is very pivotal throughout society. Photography can be a beautiful but yet haunting form of art. It displays an image which is characterizing

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.

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,

The photo can stir something within us; make us look within our being. The photo should not frighten or stigmatize, rather it should be reflective to cause a revolution (Barthes, Camera Lucida, 38). For the contemplation component of examining photography begins only after it executes a feeling within us (Brown, 29). There are photos that we view that make us say “this one is saying something for me” or “this exists for me”. Diana Markosian, photographer of the project 1915 did exactly this in her work. Markosian is a photojournalist who captures photos by immersing herself into the community in which she is photographing. Her photos are very intimate and bring in a mystery of past times, the place between the dimensions of memory and place

Intro Text: Society, As Told Through Still Life is an exhibit of works that aim to portray different facets of life through the use of objects. Since the conception of photography in the 1830s, the use of people and the landscapes in which people reside are often used to depict human life. However, the use of found objects in still life are seen in certain themes, such as the vanitas, a Dutch genre of painting that embodies the use of objects to showcase death and the inevitability of change. This exhibit features work that uses still life to convey motifs ever-present in human existence. These motifs range from ideas that mimic the familiar and perennial vanitas genre, to ideas of contemporary phantoms that plague people today. Objects that

A world without photography seems merely impossible to the modern age humans. Photography is seen throughout our everyday lives, from the television, to smartphones, and on our computers, it seems impossible to avoid it. But why would we want to? Photography is a vision, a memory, a moment captured in time that makes it possible for humans to share these moments with others. But more than times than not, these moments, visions, photographs are altered, manipulated, and distorted to influence, and change the audience’s view. By analyzing the many methods the photographer’s ways of manipulating, altering, and the distortion of the truth of their works, one can conclude that not everything shown is accurate and often overlooked by the

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.

In Roger Scruton's Photography and Representation the author establishes the idea that ideal photography is not art. In the same breath he says that ideal photography is not necessarily an idea which photographers should strive, nor does it necessarily exist. Yet, he bases his argument upon the ideal. In reviewing his paper, I’ll take a look at why he painstakingly tries to make this distinction between ideal painting and ideal photography. His argument is based upon the proposition that photographs can only represent in a causal fashion, whereas painters create representational artwork via intentional relations. Scruton manages to create a solid argument, but in the end I’ll decide it is not a fair assumption to say that photographs

Benjamin’s death in 1940 at the age of 48, is rumored to be a suicide when the Naza’s took office, but is still a mystery. His ideas and concepts however, would live on for decades to come. Much of what he wrote about when discussing art came essentially after the development of photography and film. In his work, “Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” Benjamin addresses his perception of the changes in art and the aesthetic experience congruent with societal changes. He writes with concern of how the great artworks are viewed after the introduction of photography and film. His idea of mechanical reproduction changed the art world as society knew it, particularly in how the public views artwork and the value of that work as more and more people are able to own, view and discuss it. This paper will specifically look at aspects of Benjamin’s groundbreaking essay and how educators can relate his ideas to the practices in their art classrooms.