Photography Final Exam - Photographs

Margaret Bourke-White, Paper Rollers, 1930

- focuses on machines close up - Maybe speaks to the idea of machines replacing nature -interested in mechanical;geometric shapes - no humans (only focuses on the machine, not who is operating the machines)

Gary Winogrand, Democratic National Convention, 1960

- he said "I photograph to see what the world looks like photographed" - interesting vantage point - seeing the back of Kennedy, but also seeing what is being projected on the front through the TV monitor behind him - we don't see audience, only see other photographers - photography mediates our view of the world - the only way to see politics is through photography --> demonstrated through Kennedy on the television and the fact that the background consists of people taking photographs of Kennedy

Marcel Duchamp, LHOOQ, 1920

- in 1920, Duchamp alters photographic postcard of the world's most famous picture - by this time, postcards are everywhere - Name is supposed to be said as Elle a chaud au cul - which translates to she has a hot ass - photographic reproduction as sexual reproduction - the Mona Lisa is promiscuous and is replicating continuouslt - How can one continue to paint when art is being endlessly reproduced photomechanically? - Is this the condition of the "work of art in the age of mechanical production"? - Benjamin's essay examines the effects of mechanical reproduction, chiefly photography, on the work of art - Walter Benjamin discusses that before mechanical reproduction, images are authentic, permanent, unique, distance, Cult Value (ritual), autonomy - after mechanical reproduction, they are reproducible, transitory, mass distribution, proximity, exhinition value (market), and interaction - Comparing LHOOQ and Steichen's, Self Portrait - self portrait reinscribes an aura into a photograph, making an original photograph - LHOOQ using photography for reproducibility means there is no original photograph - "From a photographic plate, for example, one can make any number of prints; to ask for the 'authentic' print makes no sense. But as soon as the criterion of authenticity ceases to be applied to artistic production, the whole social function of art is revolutionized."

Robert Mapplethorpe, Brian Ridley and Lyle Heater, 1978

- like a traditional portrait, the way it is taken in a living room, but its sexual - clearly they are homosexual and there are a lot of sexual undertones - man sitting - legs are spread and chained, man standing has a boner - Mapplethorp

Richard Prince, Untitled (Cowboy), 1980-84

- marlboro advertisement in a magazine in 1984 by Jim Krantz - "There are actually people behind these images, and I am one of them" - cropped images after copying advertisements

Quote: Abigail Solomon-Godeau, "Playing in the Field of the Image" (1982)

Abigail Solomon-Godeau, "Playing in the Field of the Image" (1982): "While the aesthetics of consumption (photographic or otherwise) requires a heroicized myth of the (male) artist, the exemplary practice of the playeroff of codes requires only an operator, a producer, a scriptor, or a pasticheur."

Lecture 24: Reading

Alix Ohlin, "Andreas Gursky and the Contemporary Sublime," Art Journal 61/4 (2002), 22-35.

Readings: Benjamin

Benjamin: be familiar with the condition of the "work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction" Related Key Terms: Aura: the originality and authenticity of a work. This is loss through mechanical reproduction. The loss of aura is a loss of singular authenticity within the work of art itself Cult vs. exhibition value: - The uniqueness of a work of art is inseparable from its being embedded in the fabric of tradition. This tradition itself is thoroughly alive and extremely changeable. - An ancient statue of Venus, for example, stood in a different traditional context with the Greeks, who made it an object of veneration, than with the clerics of the Middle Ages, who viewed it as an ominous idol. Both of them, however, were equally confronted with its uniqueness, that is, its aura. - Originally the contextual integration of art in tradition found its expression in the cult. We know that the earliest art works originated in the service of a ritual - first the magical, then the religious kind. It is significant that the existence of the work of art with reference to its aura is never entirely separated from its ritual function. In other words, the unique value of the "authentic" work of art has its basis in ritual, the location of its original use value. This ritualistic basis, however remote, is still recognizable as secularized ritual even in the most profane forms of the cult of beauty. The secular cult of beauty, developed during the Renaissance and prevailing for three centuries, clearly showed that ritualistic basis in its decline and the first deep crisis which befell it - With mechanical reproduction ---> To an ever greater degree the work of art reproduced becomes the work of art designed for reproducible. From a photographic negative, for example, one can make any number of prints; to ask for the "authentic" print makes no sense. But the instant the criterion of authenticity ceases to be applicable to artistic production, the total function of art is reversed. Instead of being based on ritual, it begins to be based on another practice - politics. - With the different methods of technical reproduction of a work of art, its fitness for exhibition increased to such an extent that the quantitative shift between its two poles turned into a qualitative transformation of its nature. This is comparable to the situation of the work of art in prehistoric times when, by the absolute emphasis on its cult value, it was, first and foremost, an instrument of magic. Only later did it come to be recognized as a work of art. In the same way today, by the absolute emphasis on its exhibition value the work of art becomes a creation with entirely new functions, among which the one we are conscious of, the artistic function, later may be recognized as incidental. This much is certain: today photography and the film are the most serviceable exemplifications of this new function. - In photography, exhibition value begins to displace cult value all along the line. But cult value does not give way without resistance. It retires into an ultimate retrenchment: the human countenance. It is no accident that the portrait was the focal point of early photography. The cult of remembrance of loved ones, absent or dead, offers a last refuge for the cult value of the picture. For the last time the aura emanates from the early photographs in the fleeting expression of a human face. This is what constitutes their melancholy, incomparable beauty. But as man withdraws from the photographic image, the exhibition value for the first time shows its superiority to the ritual value. To have pinpointed this new stage constitutes the incomparable significance of Atget, who, around 1900, took photographs of deserted Paris streets. Overview of Reading: Re-inscribing aura into photography; Making an "original" photograph Summing up mechanical reproduction and art for Benjamin. It allows... 1. independence from original (enlargement, slow motion, interesting angles) 2. copy of the original to be in situations that would be beyond original itself 3. the withering the "AURA" of a work of art, as well as the reactivation of the work because of its changed surroundings. 4. for a politics of the image - art not tethered to "cult value" but politics. Benjamin is a Marxist Is mechanical reproduction a good or bad thing for Benjamin? Why or why not? Photography was supposed to liberate art from bourgeois power; photography was not something valuable and precious that the rich and powerful collect.

Lecture 22: Key Terms

New Topographics, - It is 35 years since the term "new topographics" was coined by William Jenkins, curator of a group show of American landscape photography held at George Eastman House in Rochester, New York. The show consisted of 168 rigorously formal, black-and-white prints of streets, warehouses, city centres, industrial sites and suburban houses. Taken collectively, they seemed to posit an aesthetic of the banal. "What I remember most clearly was that nobody liked it," Frank Gohlke, one of the participating photographers told the LA Times when the exhibition was restaged last year at the LA County Museum of Art. "I think it wouldn't be too strong to say that it was a vigorously hated show." The exhibition's clunky subtitle was "Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape", which gave some clue as to the deeper unifying theme. What Jenkins had identified in the work of US photographers such as Gohlke, Robert Adams, Stephen Shore, Lewis Baltz and Nicholas Nixon was an interest in the created landscapes of 70s urban America. Their stark, beautifully printed images of this mundane but oddly fascinating topography was both a reflection of the increasingly suburbanised world around them, and a reaction to the tyranny of idealised landscape photography that elevated the natural and the elemental. In one way, they were photographing against the tradition of nature photography that the likes of Ansel Adams and Edward Weston had created. Adams, who is now perhaps the most well-known chronicler of America's disappearing wildernesses, pointed his camera at eerily empty streets, pristine trailer parks, rows of standardised tract houses, the steady creep of suburban development in all its regulated uniformity. Baltz made stark photographs of the walls of office buildings and warehouses on industrial sites in Orange County. Nixon concentrated on innercity development: skyscrapers that dwarfed period buildings, freeways, gridded streets and the palpable unreality of certain American cities in which pedestrians seem like interlopers. Selecting work for "Other Landscapes," we apply this filter to contemporary landscape photography to examine how it, as a genre, can lean on unexpected traditions and practices. Many landscape photographers who have emerged over the past 20 years have been making work that is heavily influenced by New Topographics photographers of the 1970s like Stephen Shore, Lewis Baltz, Robert Adams and Bernd and Hilla Becher. The term, coined by curator William Jenkins who organized the pivotal 1975 exhibition of this work at The George Eastman House in Rochester, New York, reflected a rejection of the grand classical landscapes that proceeded them in exchange for a more realistic attention to the banal, sometimes industrial details that were replacing them. Often large format, today's disciples of the New Topographics tackle ideas ranging from how the eye travels through space to their ongoing challenges with an increasingly developing world and the general intersection of the natural and the synthetic. Like the Bechers, their work can be coldly typological, and at times it includes the industrial structures of strip mall culture, occasionally nodding in appreciation to the overlooked details the everyday. While there is no shortage of inspirational work in those who follow this tradition, and we continue to find it as moving as its predecessors, we're curious about landscape photography's next step. If Ansel Adams' generation elevated the land, and Stephen Shore's applied a banally realistic approach, what's next? How the genre can blossom into new, uncharted territory, and how has it done so in the past 15 years? How can it build on these traditions but incorporate other influences as well? How can it look outside of photography and get more fluid? How has technology updated the conversation? Conceptual Art, - As a methodology conceptual photography is a type of photography that is staged to represent an idea. The 'concept' is both preconceived and, if successful, understandable in the completed imag snapshot aesthetic =From a personal point of view—rather than a strategic sensibility—the significance of snapshot aesthetics often revolves around what we see and feel when viewing snapshots, rather than what they mean to art historians, curators, and collectors. Douglas Nickel suggests, "the snapshot aesthetic" to capture their lives in a photo-diaristic manner, with a pronounced frankness and sense of familiarity. The term snapshot aesthetic refers to a trend within fine art photography in the USA from around 1963[citation needed]. The style typically features apparently banal everyday subject matter and off-centered framing. Subject matter is often presented without apparent link from image-to-image and relying instead on juxtaposition and disjunction between individual photographs. Examples: frank, winogrand, eggleston

Gary Winogrand Quote:

"I photograph to see what the world looks like photographed."

Robert Frank, Parade, Hoboken, New Jersey, 1955

- Frank's first image in his book - showing us Americans in the shadows in a modernist, self-conscious way - influences by Evans, but reacting agaisnt Steichen - physical separation of these people - may convey boredom - can look at it compared with the next three images in the book - convey boredom, political dramatics, and death -blinded by patriotism -Juxtaposition of clothing -- wealthy on right, poor on left - not connected to family man -- more concerned with setting, faces are hidden -connected to family of Man -- blinded and connected by patriotism

Renger-Patzsch, Machine Hammer, 1928

- demonstrating new objectivity form - providing sharp, crisp focused images of things in the world -uses photography to present the world as is. - Renger-Patzsch isolates the object from its social context, - criticize that he gives the machine too much power

Richard Avedon, Dovima with Elephants, Evening Dress by Dior, August 1955

- desire to remove works from this "media culture" and establish them as "art" - image printed in 1978 for exhibition at the MoMA - sold for more than a million dollars

Barbara Kruger, Untitled, 1982 [atomic blast]

**maybe referencing nuclear testing on Bikini Atoll • The economy of Kruger's use of image and text facilitates a direct communication with the viewer. Within a short declarative statement, she synthesizes a critique about society, the economy, politics, gender, and culture. • Kruger merges the slick facade of graphic design with unexpected phrases in order to catch the viewer's attention using the language of contemporary publications, graphic design, or magazines. Rather than attempting to sell a product, her works aim to sell an idea to the viewer that is meant to instigate a reconsideration of one's immediate context • Kruger appropriates images from their original context in magazines and sets them as the background against which she emblazons confrontational phrases. From her use of clearly legible font to her jarring palette of red, white, and black, each element of the final artwork is crucial to its effectiveness as both an artistic expression and a protest against facets of postmodern life. • With her conscripts, typically in the form of pgrases or individuals wods in bold-face type, she spreaks with a voice of anonymous authority and preclude the possibly of anything but affirmation. • Her photographs are like Alexanders, except that, instead of sleeky elegant blandishments of fashion, Kruger generally works with vaguely indeterminate, style-less images, images that are in fact as anonymous as the texts that label them. • Much of her work uses techbologies, forms, and modes og mass communication to graphically revel her message. • Where texts are superimposed on photographs, they are typically decarative and accusative. Thus, a photo a Pacific atom bomb test is captioned "Your manias become science," with the words "your" and "science" both in a larger point sixe and printed black on white, rather than white on black.

Larry Clark, from Tulsa (1971)

- "I was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1943, and when I was 16 I started shooting amphetamine. I shot with my friends every day for three years, and then left town but I've gone bath through the years. Once the needle goes in, it never comes out. - Lary Clark took pictures of him and his friends - taking pictures of typical teenage life in Tulsa - him and his friends doing drugs, etc. - I DONT HAVE NOTES - MISSED THIS CLASS

Diane Arbus, Patriotic Young Man with a Flag, 1967

- "frea" - different looking, flawed - maybe a "village idiot" idea - Arbus is interested in individuals that make up society - takes something off-putting and frank and makes it more average - american portrait - idea in Sontag reading that "The Camera is a kind of passport that annihilates moral boundaries and social inhibitions, freeing the photographer from any responsibility toward the people photographed" - conflicting views on Arbus - is she compassionate champion of the neglected, forcing viewers to make eye contact with those who we might otherwise avoid? or is she an exploitative, privileged, slumming narcissist who lacks compassion?

Jeff Wall, Dead Troops Talk, 1992

- 14 feet long picture - separate shots that are all digitally stitched together - "near documentary" - staged war scene - we can't accurately perceive what is being represented - based on story from Soviet invasion of Afghanistan - are there ethical problems that are posed here? Can fiction - art - perhaps say more to us than a "real", indexical image of actual war? Is this "near documentary" image more powerful than documentary? - idea that photography allows the dead to "speak"

Brassai, Girl in Montmartre at Snooker, 1933, photograph

- According to Krauss, this image is surreal because of its references to sexuality - her hands appear to be shaped like phallic symbols - there are also reflections in the mirror, one of a man and one of herself, with which her hands perfectly line up beneath - "representation of a representation" - idea that photography itself is a species of index - this image gives us a concatenation of both themselves as their sign ??? - mirrors are like reduced, miniature photographs conained within the space of the master photograph 0 imply that any unity of reality can be optically decomposed or rewritten - reality that shows the strangeness of reality - allows reality to be read as a dream

Rodchenko, from an issue of USSR in Construction, "White Sea Canal", 1933

- Art historian Buchloh has called this "factography" - "fact writing", using images to create a sense of fact, whether it is true or not - CLASS NOTES Photographer Martin Parr on this image: "it's only when you see the original, and you see how it's changed in its intention and its meaning that you really understand the extent of the photo-montage."

Sherrie Levine, After Walker Evans, 1981

- Benjamin - from a photographic negative, one can make a number of prints - to ask for the "authentic" print makes no sense" - Levine questions the notion of why a photograph is a precious work of art - is it absurd to think of one as "art" and the other as fake - "Pictures generation" - from the 1977 exhibition, "Pictures" , organized by Douglas Crimp -- "We are not in search of origins but of structures of signification; underneath each picture is another picture - can be compared to LHOOQ - uses appropriation - Weston's work only makes sense when you see what is outside of the frame???????????

William Eggleston, Jackson, Mississippi, 1971

- Eggleston's work at the MoMA in 1976 was teh first ever exhibition of color photography - Szarkowski organized his exhibition - experiments in color photography began in the 1850s -

Walker Evans, Allie Mae Burroughs, 1936

- Evans was born in st. louis, had a comfortable upbringing, moved to NY in 1927, spent a year in Paris - he did not like being told what to photograph - a document while also being a photograph - art - can be compared to the Migrant Mother - similar idea - The haunting eyes of Allie Mae Burroughs look straight at us in this photograph -- relates to his modernist-notion of unmediat edcdepiction through simplicity and objective observation of detail, straightforward. - This is the face of a woman old before her time, who has known not only hard work but the realization that her children have gone to bed hungry.

Lee Friedlander, Newark, New Jersey, 1962

- Every image is a self-portrait --> self-reflexivity -he is a good example of American street photography as art - explicitly connects photographer to subject of picture - interesting because you can also see his reflection in the window in the picture - in a lot of his images, you can see his reflection or shadow - what can you really see and what is reflection within the glas? framing - 1 dif. colored bottle in the center, 2 white posters on either end

John Heartfield, The Meaning of the Hitler Salute, 1932, photomontage

- He wanted to promote a certain ideological position -this depends on its position withing the photojournalistic narrative to fully convey its import - that Hitler and the Nazis are fed by specifically capitalist funding - printed thousands of times in communist newspaper - to open up an issue of AIZ is to realize how embedded the meaning of heartfield's work is in its mass-media framework - Photomontage - a combination of several photographs or negatives, sometimes re-photographed, to create one image, usually seamless - 3 things about Heartfield: -twisting symbols and words - semiotic ambiguity, mass published - not unique works of art, is this constructed reality more real than mainstream media? is he showing hidden operations of power? relied on manipulations of photography to reveal "truth" - MORE NOTES FROM CLASS?

Man Ray, Rayograph, 1922, photogram

- Man Ray was an american surrealist photographer in Paris - objective and allusive - not scientific, but strange - CLASS NOTES?

Gregory Crewdson, Untitled (Ophelia), from Twilight, 2001

- Ophelia is from Hamlet - traditionally, she goes crazy and drowns in a pol - here, they put the pool inside the house - opposite of the decisive moment, essentially - very constructed before hand, not waiting for the right moment but making it yourself

W. Eugene Smith, "Country Doctor," Life, 1948, page from photo-essay

- Photo essay in Life magazine, confusion of the general and the specific - here the power of a single man to make a difference in the aftermath of the depression - sweeping generalizations about health care - the meaning of the essay happens between pictures - using not only captions, but other photographs as supplements - appearance of truth but subtly manipulated - Life against the New Deal, against labor unions - what we need are hard-working, tireless individuals like the "country doctor"

Man Ray, Untitled, 1933, photograph

- Realism and surrealism can be found in the same image - Male hat, female genitalia - confusing sexual difference - can any photograph being surreal? is surrealism a state of mind? - CLASS NOTES

Rodchenko, Portrait of my mother, 1924, gelatin silver print

- Rodchenko turned to photography as a way of educating the viewer - Rodchenko used a repertoire of de-familiarizing - try to shock viewers out of their habitual modes of perception - Techniques - extreme up and down angles, tilted horizons, fragmentary closeups - how can we describe this photo? how can we think about it as political? as communist? NOTES FROM CLASS?

Cindy Sherman, Untitled Film Still #2, 1977 [bathroom mirror]

- Sherman is creating new images from "film stills" - still of a film that doesn't actually exist - similacrum - a copy without an original - one of the two main ideas of post-modernism - all of her images are herself, disguised - compared to other images - identity as pastiche???? - images "seem" familiar to us - shows us the power of filmic tropes and stereotypes - copies with no original - very condition of subjectivity conditioned through the media and photography - society like a hall of mirrors - images are like currency that individuals copy - everything is based on pre-exisiting model - we can't escape culture industry

Man Ray, Solarization 1929, photograph

- Solarization: photographic print exposed to light during development process - this photograph was created by by chance, from chance effects - no conscious control -turns it into metallic silver -it created a halo quality -estranged -like face is becoming detached - can compare to self-portrait by Steichen, which has effects that were created by conscious control - painting is always artifice - photography's indexical connection to the "real" makes it ideal for surrealism - CLASS NOTES

Weston, Pepper no. 30, 1930

- Weston left mexico and ended up in California - from 1927 to 1930, he photographed fruits and vegetables - used large-format view camera and long exposures - carefully lit - get lighting and exposure correct at the start and both developing and printing can be practically automatic - "pre-visualized" photography - no darkroom manipulations, everything set up before - saw these images as totally objective - he says that he has recorded the quintessence of thr object or the element before my lens - rather than interpretation - a superficial phase, or passing mood - Weston was a founding member of the f/64 group in 1932 - sharp images, smooth printing

Thomas Demand, Poll, 2001

- can remind us of surrealism because none of it is real - pre-manipulation - "observeds inspect and count ballots during the hand recount of presendential ballots at the palm beach county Emergency Operations Center on November 19, 2000 West Palm Beach, Florida" from Life - imitation of this picture with all fake items - recreation of an actual place - objects are made out of paper????????

Robert Adams, Mobile Homes, Jefferson County, Colorado, 1973

- connected to Ansel Adams - America is building and building on landscape - America is "on the move" with industrialization, these are mobile homes - vastness of nature vs, the vastness of industrialization

Various photographers, pages from Family of Man catalogue, 1955 (curated by Steichen)

- couples around the world, linked through theme of heterosexual partnership, around Ovid quote - suggests that there are vast differences in form and content are elided under a generalized theme - the depicted subjects are made over into generalized abstractions - not global differences, but cheap similarities - suggests romantic ideals organized under single individuals point-of-view, with photography's documentary quality revealing the "truth" or the world - collapses art and science into something very persuasive - photography is NOT a universal language, but it is presented as one - imposes American views of life around the world - Cold war photography more broadly: as a "cold" battle of images - photography is a crucial battlefield for conflict - battle over interpretation of images - over ideology

Cartier-Bresson, Place du l'Europe, Paris, 1932 (Behind the Gare Saint Lazare)

- no flash, no cropping, not printed by the photographer, accept grainy textures, limited tonal scale, strong contrasts - "The Decisive Moment" - the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event as well as the precise organization of forms which gives that events its proper expression - idea that you wait and wait and wait until there is something that comes into the field of vision that makes the image different - he wasn't interested in any dark room manipulation at all - uses a Leica camera -The composition creates layers of paralleling detail and shapes within Bresson's work. Specifically, the man in the background mirrors the person jumping and their reflection in the water. In addition, the rippling circles made by the ladder echo the circular bands of discarded metal debris.

William Eggleston, Black Bayou Plantation, near Glendora, Mississippi, 1971

- not what you would expect to see when you think of a plantation, as this photo is entitled - you see different aesthetic parts - the bottle mimic the clouds, the box mimics the box in the right corner of the image

Walker Evans, House and Billboards in Atlanta, 1936

- photography creates a parallel world of doubles - like in the spirit photographs we looked at earlier in the semester - informs the artists associated with the artistic movement of surrealism - juxtaposition of two different types of things - rounded forms of windows mimic rounded forms of shapes of the faces and eyes on the billboards - people in billboards are looking at you - entertainment complex providing a cover of the domesticity behind it -In Evans' photograph, he also creates a unique composition through juxtaposing and paralleling objects. Specifically, the bleak nature of houses contradict the advertisements which display a lifestyle (i.e. movies) uncharacteristic of those of lower socio-economic status. -. In addition, the oval structure of the porch with the windows centered visually echoes the eyes of the women on the billboards. There is also a sense of doubling - two houses and two women. Lastly, the composition creates an exchange between the camera and the subject matter - it appears as if the camera is looking back at the viewer. - exchange of glances- camera looking back at us

Hannah Hoch, Dada Panorama, 1919

- photomontage - the primary language of Berlin Dada - cutting images and text from mass media and collaging together - compared to the image on the right on the slide list, which is the original where she took images from to collage - trying to destroy the homogeneity of press - constructing a "counter-media" that emphasized rupture and discontinuity - forging new meanings be bringing together unrelated images - collage transforms the two leaders, exposing some reality that was hiding behind the surface of mass press - dissecting culture with a pair of scissors - this is a "counter-media" - one that expresses chaos of the time period - working against uses of photography in the conservative press

Lewis Baltz, Tract Houses portfolio, 1971

- picture here is just one of 25 that are viewed all together in this grid format - taking the logic of photo books and putting them in display format - repetition of high contrast rectangles throughout - looks different all together as opposed to looking at one at a time - emphasizes formal parts instead as opposed to the house itself. - idea of part vs hole

Weston, Excusado, 1925, Platinum Print

- reminds us of Steiglitz's - trying to elevate the toilet into art - as an art photograph, what is WEston doing here? What about it as a photograph is interesting? - formal beauty out of lowly, different surfaces, subtle eroticism, enigmatic, porcelain as flesh - transforming something common into something worthy of aesthetic appreciation - defamiliarizing you from a toilet

Andre Kertesz, Dubo, Dubon, Dubonnet, 1934

- repeated images of man on the wall wearing a hat - advertisement on the bench is a man wearing a hat - image was taken at the moment where there is a man walking with a hat on, and a woman sitting on the bench with a hat on as well

David E. Scherman, Lee Miller in Hitler's Bathtub, Munich, 1945, 1945

- seems like an ordinary picture at first - an old trope of Western Art - the nude bather - surrealist disjunction used to convey the horror of the scene - showing banality of evil - evil can be hiding behind a rational facade - she took this picture in Hitler's bathtub

Frank, Trolley - New Orleans, 1955-56

- segregation AND constructed, incomplete nature of photography - suggests meaning but NOT about certainty - Frank becomes a model for American art photography - subjective photojournalism mixed with self-reflexivity - interesting separation of social classes as well, with the wealthy older people in the front, and the blacks in the back - many of them are looking at Frank - we can also see what is behind Frank because of the reflection in the windows above the people

Diane Arbus, Child with Toy Hand Grenade in Central Park, New York City, 1962 (with contact sheet)

- she never gives us explicit violence, but still gives us disturbing images - how is this unsettling? his posture, clenching fists, distorted smile, overalls falling off - a little crazy - she had a ton of pictures of this little boy that were normal and standard with him smiling and looking at the camera and posing traditionally, and she chose this one - vry odd looking, deranged, strange, other images that are traditional and she maybe wanted to show something that other people don't show - stand apart from everyone else - she likes the Flaw - like the "freudian slip" - accidental moment when the truth is revealed - her images may convey how outcasted she felt herself - Arbus used roliflex camera

Irving Penn, Woman with Umbrella, New York, 1950

- similar to puddle jumper, and the picture that was created in imitation of that - they are both fashionable women with umbrellas - fashion photography - humans as objects, more of an F-64 style -Criticized for portraying women as machines

Andreas Gursky, 99 cents, 1999

- site of consumption - the ceifling is edited to show the reflection of the stuff below - evidence of digital manipulation - color homogenizing by creating the reflection on the ceiling - he also combines shots - BUT he rejected the "collage" or "montage" labels, saying "I strive for a condensation of reality" - idea that Gursky's work "contrasts the documentary nature of photography with an image created by the artist - as if he were as much a painter as a photographer" - visually overwhelming --> nature is gone in the face of globalization

Martha Rosler, Bringing the War Home, 1967-1972, photomontage

- someone who is really struggling in Vietnam during the war is placed in a suburban home - people living in suburbia in America may be passive to the problems going on in Vietnam - how can we understand what they are going through from out sheltered american homes? - she takes images from magazines and newspapers and collages them - linking consumerism to Vietnam - social problems, international violence - post-modernist image - resistance of aesthetics, more an interest in HOW photography functions socially

Weegee, Their First Murder, 9 October 1941

- street photography grew out of crime scene photography - interesting image - several difference facial expressions - look interested, upset, scared, confused, maybe amused by the photographer's presence - Weegee works for Newspapers and publishes his own book - what is weegee telling us with these pictures? crime as a "spectator sport" - difference in people who were looking at the murder, and those who were looking at the camera - there is an expansion of crime scene photography as part of street photography

Eugene Atget, Eclipse, 1912

- surrealists become interested in Atget in 1926 but wanted nothing to do with surrealism - he addressed his images as simply documents he makes - a document AND a surrealist image? Surrealism - as much of a mind-set as any definite style - He was actually a photographer documenting paris and somewhat failed as an artist. He was rediscovered by Surrealist and they began to reprint his work. -he did not consider his work to be surrealist at all. --> shows how you can take an intentional document and make it have surrealistic undertones if you are in the state of mind

Diane Arbus, Identical twins, Roselle, N.J., 1967

- tension between sameness and difference here - different patterns on their tights - one is smiling more than the other - one is kind of frowning - sameness and difference, both biologically and photographically - a photograph that addresses the qualities of the medium - photos seem to replicate the reality but differences in prints - cover of the Diane Arbus MoMA catalogue in 1972

Migrant Mother 1936 by Dorothea Lang

- the great depression changed the idea of poverty - resettlement administration - Farm Security Administration - FSA run by Stryker who liked photography - Stryker has choices- sad and happy images to choose from - could choose whichever one support the depression - he developed shooting scripts - MORE NOTES SOMEWHERE.... - nicknamed the "madonna of migrants" - Lange was on her way home after completing her first assignment for Stryker - photographing migrant farm labor in Cailfornia for a month - stopped at a camp site - this image is so powerful becayuse the kids are looking away, she has a furrowed brow - jagged sweater edge - she took several shots of the mother and her kids but chose this one - power of selection - can pick one image that captures gritty realism AND is a powerful icon - The mother was tracked down years later - says she wished Lange hadn't taken her picture - she doesn't get any money for it, she didn't ask her her name- she told her she would not sell the pictures and that she would send her a copy but she never did

Diane Arbus, A Husband and Wife in the Woods at a Nudist Camp, N.J., 1963

- this image refers to the margins and to tradition - they are nude but she is wearing sandals and he is holding something - brings to mind the idea of Adam and Eve - traditional posing, not contorted - margin because not many people are nudists

License-Photo Studio, New York, 1934 by Walker Evans

- this is the first image in Walker Evans' photo book - complex image, exactly the opposite of how one would read an ID photo - making an art photography out of a place where documents are made - CAN'T FIND CLASS NOTES

Penny Picture Display, Savannah, 1936 by Walker Evans

- this is the second photo in the photo book - idea that portrait does not construct identity, but subverts it - they might be documents, but Evans is reminding us that they are also photographs -reinvents the penny portrait, moving it out of its vernacular photographic history and giving it a new aesthetic identity. -->How does he do this? - image is a single picture made up of many pictures, - formed a grid, crops the images tightly, - edited photographs in darkroom, - straightforward view related to unmediated depiction through simplicity and objective observation of detail, - the word studio is vocal point with the thick black line around each letter mirrors the white border that separates each grid of portraits.

Duane Michals, Proof, 1973-4

- you have an idea that everything he provides you with in the image, through the writing at the bottom, that this is an image of him and a girlfriend or ex-girlfriend - not true at all - not him, not what you would think it would be from the text at the bottom - this is about the expectations and assumptions we bring to photography

Margaret Bourke-White, Fort Peck Dam, Montana, 1936, Life Cover

-- Life magazine debuted in November of 1936 - most influential weekly magazine until rise of tv - 2 important things in life magazine: the photo essay, blending of ads and editorial content

Lecture 19: Key Terms

...1. Leica - Made in the 1920s, it made photography on the mood. o Characteristics: o Smaller o Easier to use o High quality lens o Fast shutter - Advertisements: "an integral part of the eye" and "an extension of the hand" "Smaller wonder" camera - Used by Henri Cartier-Bresson and Andre Kertesz switched to it 2. Rolleiflex (TLR) - Another new design of the 1930s - light weight, fast, good for motion -held down, look down into camera 3. "the decisive moment" - Characteristics of capturing "the decisive moment": no flash, no cropping, not printed by the photographer, accept grainy textures, limited tonal scale, and strong contrasts - Quote: Henri Cartier-Bresson, The Decisive Moment (1952): "the decisive moment, it is the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event as well as the precise organization of forms which gives that event its proper expression." 4. Magnum Photo Agency - Capa, Cartier-Bresson, and others founded Magnum in 1947: "Magnum is a community of thought, a shared human quality, a curiosity about what is going on in the world, a respect for what is going on and a desire to transcribe it visually." -Henri Cartier-Bresson 5. "New American Vision"- post-war period when America comes to predominate in arts; seen in fashion photography in the work of Avedon, who evoked fantasy, movement.

Lecture 22: Photography in the 1970s: Subcultures, Suburbia, Sprawl

1. Arbus's idea of "photographing freaks" and the photography of subcultures. 2. Street photography (in color!) and the exploration of suburbia and sprawl

Lecture 19: The Decisive Moment: Photography, Photojournalism, and Fashion Photography

1. Consider the implications of the "third explosion of photography." 2. Continue our conversation about what makes photography unique as a visual medium through "the decisive moment" in art photography, photojournalism, and fashion photography.

Lecture 20: American Street Photography

1. Consider the origins of "street photography" 2. Position Robert Frank in our discussion of Walker Evan's "documentary style" and the unifying vision of "The Family of Man"

Lecture 21: Diane Arbus

1. Consider the work of Diane Arbus in terms of "photographing to see what the world looks like photographed." 2. Discuss Susan Sontag's view of Arbus's photography.

Lecture 16: The Strange Poetics of the Everyday - Surrealist Photography

1. How can a photograph be an image of the unconscious? 2. Can any and every photography be surreal?

Lecture 17: The Strange Poetics of the Everyday: Seeing Photographically in America

1.) Is the camera as unique as a "way of seeing" 2.) With this in mind, can ANY photograph be surreal? Is surrealism a state of mind?

Lecture 16: Key Terms

10. Surrealism: type of photography characterized by interpretation beyond realism. Surrealist interpretation is governed by factors such as dreaming, unconscious, ghost-like people, distorted nature, superior beyond the everyday (not direct), just off. - as much of a mind-set than any definite style? - Quote (Andre Breton, 1924): Surrealism is based on the belief in the superior reality of certain forms of association heretofore neglected, in the omnipotence of dreams, in the undirected play of thought.... I believe in the future resolution of the states of dream and reality, in appearance so contradictory, in a sort of absolute reality or surreality. - André Breton - Often surrealism and realism can be found in the same image. - The camera takes what is there (the index) and provides it with a new meaning (the icon). This facet of photography interested Surrealists . . . - Both indexical - directly connected to concrete reality. But in surrealism, projecting one's own desires onto the index. Using it to make reality strange. - Photography is the medium of surrealism par excellence because it is an indexical image of reality but it also allows us to read reality as a sign. It is real but also undoubtedly strange as an image. 11. Automatism : Automatic expression of the unconscious. Not rational, not filtering self. - In psychology, "automatism" refers to involuntary actions and processes not under the control of the conscious mind—for example, dreaming, breathing, or a nervous tic. Automatism plays a role in Surrealists techniques such as spontaneous or automatic writing, painting, and drawing; free association of images and words. - Frottage: an example of automatism. Rubbing over surface to reveal forms beneath - like the grain of wood. 12. Rayograph: made without a camera by placing objects-such as the thumbtacks, coil of wire, and other circular forms used here-directly on a sheet of photosensitized paper and exposing it to light - Illustrated in Man Ray's work. A photogram. - Objective and allusive - not scientific but strange - Hovering between the abstract and the representational, the rayographs revealed a new way of seeing that delighted the Dadaist poets who championed his work, and that pointed the way to the dreamlike visions of the Surrealist writers and painters who followed. 13. Solarization: Photographic print exposed to light during development process (developed by May Ray)

Lecture 17: Key Terms

14. New Objectivity: German art movement of the 1920s that emphasized sharp focus documentary aspects of photography - Quote: Edward Weston, Seeing photographically, published in 1943: But the camera's innate honesty can hardly be considered a limitation of the medium, since it bars only that kind of subject matter that properly belongs to the painter. On the other hand it provides the photographer with a means of looking deeply into the nature of things, and presenting his subjects in terms of their basic reality. It enables him to reveal the essence of what lies before his lens with such clear insight that the beholder may find the recreated image more real and comprehensible than the actual object. 15. Group f/64: A group of photographers that focused on producing sharp images, smooth printing. - The term f/64 refers to a small aperture setting on a large format camera, which secures great depth of field, rendering a photograph evenly sharp from foreground to background. Such a small aperture sometimes implies a long exposure and therefore a selection of relatively slow moving or motionless subject matter, such as landscapes and still life. - Quote: Manifesto of Group f/64 from the first exhibition, 1932: "The members of Group f/64 believe that photography, as an art form, must develop along lines defined by the actualities and limitations of the photographic medium, and must always remain independent of ideological conventions of art and aesthetics that are reminiscent of a period and culture antedating to growth of the medium itself."

Lecture 18: Key Terms

16. Henry Luce : co-founder of Life Magazine - Life magazine debuted in November 1936. America's most influential weekly magazine until rise of television. - Robert Hutchins, former president of the University of Chicago claimed that Luce's magazines did more to mold the American character than "the whole education system put together - Henry Luce, "Prospectus for Life," 1936: To see life; to see the world; to witness great events; to watch the faces of the poor and the gestures of the proud; to see strange things - machines, armies, multitudes, shadows 3 in the jungle and on the moon; to see man's work - his paintings, towers, and discoveries; to see walls and within rooms, things dangerous to come to; the women that men love and many children; to see and to take pleasure in seeing; to see and be amazed; to see and be instructed. Thus to see, and to be shown, is now the will and new expectancy of half mankind. - Henry Luce's prospectus for Life: 1.To see life, to see the world - news 2.To see and be amazed - things of interest (dancing horses and pin-ups) 3.To see and be instructed - educational and persuasive - Powerful magazine that offered a particular vision of the world through photography - Dominated visual culture until the end of the 1960s - wide appeal. - Cheap - price kept down by ample advertising. First mass magazine with ample color. 17. Photo essay: Between fact and symbol, like the original essay "invented" by Montaigne. - Not invented by Life, but used extensively and among its important legacies - Fifty or twenty years ago, people used to write 'essays' for magazines.... The essay is no longer a vital means of communication. But what is vital is the photographic essay Like photography itself - seems like fact but manipulated - Photo-essay in Life: Confusion of the general and specific - Meaning of essay happens between the pictures. - Using not only captions but other photographs as supplements - Appearance of "truth" but subtly manipulate 18. Cold War - Atomic Bomb ended WWII, but also important to Cold War. (Some argue that 2nd bomb was more to make a point to Stalin.) - Cold War: 1945-1989. What was it? - Paradox of mushroom cloud photos: Refers to bomb but also reduced it to an recognizable icon, an abstract symbol. Manages anxiety of the unthinkable. - What does Family of Man have to do with the cold war? ...a self-congratulatory means for obscuring the urgency of real problems under a blanket of ideology which takes for granted the essential goodness, innocence, and moral superiority of the international 'little man.' - The Cold War and photography more broadly... As a "cold" battle of images - photography a crucial battlefield for conflict. Battle over interpretation of images. Over ideology --> Related to the photo (William J Smith, The faces of Attention, 1954); using photos to prove communist associations - Unidentified Photographer, MRBM Field Launch Site [Cuba], 1962 -->Demonstrates the stakes of interpretation during the Cold War - a blurry photo could lead to World War III. Ideology could make unclear photos seem clear!

Lecture 20: Key Terms

24. Street Photography: going out on the streets and taking photographs, usually without the subjects' awareness. • Lee Friedlander: a good example of American street photography as art Explicitly connecting photographer to subject of picture • A lot of Street Photography focused on violence of the city, even juvenile city Ex: William Klein, Little Italy, 1955, from Life is Good and Good for You, NY - He served in WWII, he had a pessimistic attitude toward NY • Even removed from crime scene, he identifies casual violence in daily life • Origins of Street Photography: 1.) Grew out of crime scene photography (ex: Weegee's Naked City, 1945) - Crime as a spectacle interested in others perspectives of crime/how others respond to it - A city of confluence of setting and actors opposite of Atget 2.) Decisive Moment and European Examples 3.) Influence of Walker Evans (i.e. City Lunch Counter, NY, 1929) - Looking and not looking etiquette in urban area - Strangers sitting next to each other 4.) Photo Essay and the Family of Man - Meaning creates through combinations of images John Szarkowski, "the Photographer's Eye" 25. John Szarkowski, "The Photographers Eye" • Believed photography was not a social message, but a formal structuring of experience - He ignores Frank's book format, focusing on individual frames. • John Szarkowski (replaced Steichen in 1962) championed Street Photography at MoMA • According to Szarkowski, "It should be possible to consider the history of the medium (ie. Photography) in terms of photography's progressive awareness of characteristics and problems that have seemed inherent in the medium." 1.) The thing Itself: photography deals with "the actual" 2.) The Detail: details make it real 3.) The Frame: Concentration on the edge— choosing and eliminating 4.) Time: The decisive moment 5.) Vantage Point: unexpected, withhold narrative • Quote: Immobilizing these thin slices of time has been a source of continuing fascination for the photographer. And while pursuing this experiment he discovered something else: he discovered that there was a pleasure and a beauty in this fragmenting of time that had little to do with what was happening. It had to do with rather with seeing the momentary pattering of lines and shapes that had been previously concealed within the flux of movement. • Friedlander, Winogrand, and Diane Arbus were the "stars" of Szarkowski's 1967 exhibition "New Documents." They take the idea of documentary photography and make it more personal.

Lecture 23: Key Terms

30. "Pictures Generation" ** • The idea of Using found images, not making new or original ones. Can question the circulation of images. (Outside of frame) • Example: Sherrie Levine, After Walker Evans, 1981 "Pictures Generation"—from the 1977 exhibition "Pictures," organized by Douglas Crimp • Points out that photographers are indebted to a larger body who has authorship. 31. Pastiche: - an artistic work in a style that imitates that of another work, artist, or period 32. Simulacrum: a copy for which there is no original. • Two key ideas of 1980s postmodernism emerge here: 1.) "Death of the Author" - Roland Barthes. Thinking about a single author limits the text. How text/image functions is more important than an author's intention. "Birth of reader." 2.) "Simulacrum" - Jean Baudrillard's notion of a copy without an original. We cannot find a moment of origin. (eg. Mall Santa) Both criticize the idea of originality - that bedrock of traditional art! What is originality? Is it even possible? Levine questioning notions of authority, how images come to signify. • Significance: 1.) Images seem familiar to us - shows us the power of filmic tropes and stereotypes. Copies with no original - the Simulacrum. 2.) Very condition of subjectivity conditioned through media and photography. Awareness of this mediated condition is a type of postmodernism.

Lecture 24: Key Terms

33. "the directorial mode," Quote: A. D. Coleman, on "the directorial mode of photography:" "The fictional nature of the photographic image is not only recognized and explored but openly declared as an active premise . . . this mode might most simply be defined as the deliberate staging of events for the express purpose of making photographs thereof—as distinguished from addressing oneself through the camera to an ongoing, uncontrolled external 'reality.'" 34. Sublime- the unknown and something much larger than oneself • Different notions of the sublime • An attempt at connecting the dots - mapping our position in global economy. Suggesting the late capitalist sublime and globalized networks of commerce --> illustrated though Andreas Gursky • Different notions of the sublime - the unknown and something much larger than oneself --> Andreas Gursky, Shanghai, 2000, digital p • Quote: Alix Ohlin, "Andreas Gursky and the Contemporary Sublime," Art Journal 61/4 (2002), 22-35: "Photography is supposed to capture a specific place at a particular moment in time; Gursky's process changes the place and collapse the time at will. His work, then, contrasts the documentary nature of photography with an image created by the artist—as if he were as much painter as photographer."

Lecture 15: Key Terms

6. Dada : playful, anarchic art that ridiculed traditional notions of art and artistic practice. - Dada born in neutral Zurich in 1914. - Berlin Dada: took absurdity of Dada and matched it to the post-WWI political and social chaos of Germany - 1918 - Failed socialist revolution, republic set up in Weimar (the Weimar Republic). But political radicals agitating for socialism and Hitler gradually accumulating power. 1918 - Failed socialist revolution, republic set up in Weimar (the Weimar Republic). But political radicals agitating for socialism and Hitler gradually accumulating power. --> Chaos - Photomontage - involves cutting images (and text) from mass media and collaging together. This was the primary language of Berlin Dada. - Quote by Tristen Tzara (c. 1920): We are often told we are incoherent, but into the word people try to put an insult that it is rather hard for me to fathom. Everything is incoherent. ... There is no logic. The beginnings of Dada were not the beginnings of an art, but of a disgust. 7. Readymade: the camera takes what is there (index) and provides it with a new meaning (icon). This facet of photography interested surrealist. - mass-produced common objects displaced in an art context. In process, stripped of its utility and made useless thoguh art. Ex: Duchamp the fountain -produced common objects displayed in an art context. In process, commodity stripped of its utility and made useless through art. 8. Photomontage: a combination of a several photographs or negatives, sometimes re-photographed, to create one image, usually seamless. Cutting images (and text) from mass media and collaging together. - the primary language of Berlin Dada. - Quote: Though famous as an independent iconic image, this photomontage depends on its position within the photojournalistic narrative fully to convey its import - that Hitler and the Nazis are fed by specifically capitalist funding. 9. De-familiarization: Rodchenko used a repertoire of de-familiarizing—try to shock viewers out of their habitual modes of perception. Techniques: extreme up and down angles, titled horizons, fragmentary close-ups.

Lecture 24: Quote

A. D. Coleman, on "the directorial mode of photography:" "The fictional nature of the photographic image is not only recognized and explored but openly declared as an active premise . . . this mode might most simply be defined as the deliberate staging of events for the express purpose of making photographs thereof—as distinguished from addressing oneself through the camera to an ongoing, uncontrolled external 'reality.'"

Lecture 14 Key Terms:

Farm Security Administration (1937) - was an agency established under the Department of Agriculture as a part of the New Deal under President Roosevelt during the Great Depression. (Note: originally called the Resettlement Administration (1935)). During the Great depression, there was a 25% unemployment rate and stocks lost 60% of value in October 1929. It helped with rural rehabilitation, farm loans, and subsistence homestead programs. One of the most memorable programs of the FSA is the collection of photographs that document the rural conditions from the Information Division of the Resettlement Administration. FSA was headed by economist Roy Stryker. He hired photographers to document the agency's mission and work, and he made these images available to the press. Photos were evidence of good works done by agency. All photographs by RA/FSA photographers became property of the US Government and could be used in any way that Stryker saw fit. Stryker amassed over 100,000 photographs at the FSA - perhaps the greatest archive of photographs in America. FSA photos published in newspaper and other mass press sources. Shooting Scripts (developed by Sryker): outlines of intended photographic coverage. Example: "Home in the Evening: Photographs showing the various ways the different income groups spend their evenings, for example: Listening to the Radio." Shooting script for Arthur Rothenstein, "pictures emphasizing a feeling of geographical spaciousness and desolateness." Speed Graphic Camera: Could be hand-held or placed on a tripod. Lange used a "Speed Graphic" camera "Documentary Style" - a term coined by Walker Evans who refused to be called a documentary photographer, indicates that the style and subject are inseparable. Specifically, it is the mode of an image that makes it appear to be a document when it is not. For Evans photographic reality as produced by the photographic apparatus coincided with the underlying reality if the image follows the conventions of realism. Walker Evans created images that looked like documents and looked like they had a use, when in fact, according to Evans own definition, they were not documents, since they did not have any use. Quote (Walker Evans, 1936): The term should be documentary style. You see, a document has use whereas art is really useless. Therefore art is never a document, although it can adopt that style.

Lecture 24: Modes of Photography in Contemporary Art

Goal: Consider the ways in which large-scale digital fine art photography plays with the idea of "proof"

Lecture 23: The Pictures Generation

Goal: explore the relationship of photography to post-modernism to examine questions of subject matter and authorship.

Lecture 21 Quotes

John Szarkowski, from The Photographer's Eye (1964) "It should be possible to consider the history of the medium (ie. Photography) in terms of photography's progressive awareness of characteristics and problems that have seemed inherent in the medium." Diane Arbus on photography c. 1970: You see someone on the street and essentially what you notice about them is the flaw.

Lecture 14: FSA and Walker Evans

How did the tension between "art" and "document" influence photography of the Great Depressoin 1. Dorothea Lang and "documenting" the Great Depression 2. Walker Evans and "documentary style"

Lecture 15: European Photography and Politics in the 1920's and 1930's.

If there are multiples, what does that mean for the work of art? How can artists make photography "unique?" Is that even a goal? 1.) Photography and Politics in Germany -- collage and mass media 2.) Photography and politics in the Soviet Union -- de-familiarization, followed by propaganda uses of photo-montage and "factography"

Important Note:

In the 1970's, Photography divided into two camps: 1. Modernist: Szarkowski believed in a disengagement from the social world and was in favor of aesthetics 2. Post- Modernists: resistance to aesthetics, more interested in how photography functions socially.

MAUD LAVIN QUOTE*(related to John Heartfield, The Meaning of the Hitler Salute, 1932, photomontage) Where do these photomontages originally appear, according to Maud Lavin?

Maud Lavin (1985): Though famous as an independent iconic image, this photomontage depends on its position within the photojournalistic narrative fully to convey its import - that Hitler and the Nazis are fed by specifically capitalist funding.

Primary Reading: Rosalind Krauss

Notes: ...for photography which has always seemed like something of an afterthought of Surrealism, a minor appendage grafted onto its body, has I think a major function. Photography...is itself a species of index. ... In that sense we would think that the photograph's process of reduplication would capture these bodies and objects in their essential unity and coherence. But as Brassaï records these bodies, living out their lives in the semipublic, semiprivate space of the nocturnal city, he displays them as curiously split, or fragmented - he gives them to us, that is, as a concatenation of both themselves as their sign. The mirrors, which function in this image...like reduced, miniature photographs contained within the space of the master photograph, imply that any unit of reality can be optically decomposed and then recomposed, or rewritten. Interpretation: Although the reduplication is replications of reality, you would assume that it would create the same portrayal of reality; however instead, it creates something surreal. The mirrors function as miniature photographs that can be rewritten. The indexical nature of photography allows it to take on a new meaning --- surrealism as a state of mind

Blind, 1916 by Paul Strand

Paul Strand: - featured in last issue of Camera Work - rejected Pictorialist style: he favors "absolutely unqualified objectivity" - transitional figure - "Blind" looks like a document, but it sis artistic as well - she is wearing a badge that licenses her to beg - photograph is about seeing and not seeing - makes her condition visible - relationship between photography and visualization - big contrast in white and black - looks like a document, but questions the medium of photography -Looks like "document" but it addresses question of art and medium. In the context of "art," not about blind woman or social poverty but about conditions of vision and photography -geometric surroundings to complement the subject. - sense of directness, straight photography -he woman's asymmetrical position of eyes, her dark shall, the "BLIND" sign, and the diagonal bricks of the background leave us with a very direct and non-idealized impression. Additionally, the simplicity of the basic shapes, including the circular face, oval sign, and square bricks strongly hint at cubist origins.

Result of Russian Revolution (1917) and Civil War (1921): Communist Government. The Goal was to create a classless society. What does this mean for photography?

Photography in the Soviet Union becomes a mode of political power. Stalin Government celebrated photography, but fabricated it to express their own truth. Gustav Klutsis - photography also becomes a way vocalize the power of Stalin --> Rodchenko --> was hired and given assignments by gov. -->The "Commissor Vanishes" exposes the photography fabrication.

Lecture 21: Key Terms

Rolleiflex: - connected to body, not eye (used by Arbus)

August Sander, The Bricklayer's Mate, 1929

Sander's Citizens of the Twentieith century, a "topographical pictorial atlast" - 46 portfolios of 12 photographs each - chronicle the professional and class types in Germany from the 1910s to the 1930s - Opposite of Renger-Patzsch and Margaret Bourke-White --> Focuses on individual connection to occupation. Power of machines is in the power of humans. - Rejected the idea of seeing for the sake of seeing.

Lecture 21: Reading Susan Sontag (1977)

Susan Sontag (1977) Diane Arbus on photography c. 1970: You see someone on the street and essentially what you notice about them is the flaw. Susan Sontag (1977): The camera is a kind of passport that annihilates moral boundaries and social inhibitions, freeing the photographer from any responsibility toward the people photographed. Discuss Susan Sontag's view of Arbus's photography • he an exploitative, privileged, slumming narcissist who lacks compassion? • She was attracted to oddity; most of her subjects were wearing grotesque clothing or in dismal surroundings. Concentrating on "victim," many individuals criticize Arbus for not being compassionate and narcissistic • author points out that society has a perception that these marginalized individuals are unhappy; however, they do not show emotional distress in most of the photographs. • I was intrigued by the fact that the author highlighted that the death of Diane Arbus was by suicide. Because of her suicide, specific interpretations of Arbus's work have been generated. In a sense, her death might illustrate that she felt isolated and like a "freak" just like the individuals she photographed. Therefore, she might have felt like she could relate and develop compassion for these individuals because she felt the same way. On the other hand, if one believes that Arbus was a narcissist, they would argue that Arbus took advantage of these individuals. Also, in relation to the suicide, if she was narcissistic she would seek pain in others in order to minimize the pain she was feeling. The intentions of Arbus remain a mystery.