Saturday, 8 October 2011

The Lecture session 2

Wednesday 5th October 2011

The History of Photography

Ascetic questions of photography (Group work)
What makes a good image?
How many ways can you display an image?
What defines a good photographer?
What is the limit of Photography? 
When was the First Photograph?

Ethics 
Design brands exploit cheap labour in other countries.
Use Of animal products
Airbrushing - unrealistic views of people 
Size and health of models 
Permission and Law issues
Paparazzi 
Nude images - the body/nakedness

Photography is the art process of producing images of objects on photosensitive paper. The lesson had a long list of the earliest photographers, which was very interesting to see how the first image was produced and how quickly the photographers  got in an artistic way. 
There are other topics in today's lesson was about how photograph's can be shown in the wrong light and that people can easily see pictures being very disturbing. 


Tom Stroddart

This image is very disturbing, there are sympathetic photographs that people show for advertisement but the shock and horror of this image shown is just disgusting. I honestly don't see why to take a photograph of a man that is literally dying of starvation and why anyone would even want to document this. Maybe it's a particular topic of how bad it is for the third world and is this image supports of how much we should give for them as a charity.


How ever the years got more interesting with photography and they had new ways  of it's great power. Crime scenes were photographed to use certain references to how it was committed, as well as people who had mental health, people who had a criminal record would have had there photo taken for a mug shot. There is so many different ways on catching detail from a camera and it shows a lot throughout history. 


Sally Mann interview 


Untitled, 2001, from What Remains by Sally Mann

A controversial photographer, during the interview the issues raised.Why would she have had published a book, with her children without clothes on for people to look at as well as the dead corpses. I strongly believe that Sally is going with the flow of how photography can be all kinds of topics including the corpse that she had decaying and having documented. This new type of evidence or knowledge can be useful, for example a cold case unit. There are things in the world that we may not like and would be deemed as crazy or unethical, but she has gone in a direction that no other person has investigated before.


However there is a personal matter that she has exposed her children by showing them naked and that is for the public to view? This subject should be left in the value of there own house hold because there are sick and violent people in the world of today and it is something that could drive them to commit these crimes. But in some aspects of her photography she has had her children in a happy moment like for example (this image shown to the right)


   This shows kids being kids, a more subtle light than be told hold a particular pose.


Sally mann isn't a bad photographer it's just her decisions of how her mind likes to follow different topics. There are really risky images that she shouldn't take as in my opinion they are very different.