Photography Over?

Is photography over?  Like many stated this question is very open to interpretation.  Photography in the most understood term of just taking pictures with a camera is far from being over, today millions of people have the ability to take pictures due to new digital technology and the fact that nearly every cell phone produced today has a camera increases this ability.  Might it then be this reason that one would feel the “Art” of photography to be over due to this accessibility?  This mass production is not that different from the introduction of the Kodak Brownie, similarly this technology has given formally trained photographers a barrier to over come and has also simultaneously given others the ability to produce work.  Today with the internet at our disposal artist are able to be found and work to be dispersed easier than ever imagined and even this fact has spawned ideas and work i.e. Penelope Umbricos series Suns. 
            

This, the ability that photography has to grow with technology is to me one of the most exhilarating things photography has to offer.  Since day one photography has been growing changing and mutating and since the medium itself has only been around for some 160 years it is still very young as a practice, as a medium, and especially as a art.  New technology will constantly give us new techniques and new rules to break and to this I say photography is over but merely only over its adolescent years.

Expanded Field

I found Bakers essay to be quite compelling and his thoughts on the changes within the medium gave me hope for the survival (or death) of photography.  Baker claims that the field of photography is expanding (hence the title) he states that "photography" no longer consists of just merely a photograph but can contain much more.  This is not only consisting of much more such as influence from film, painting etc. but can also contain these mediums.  He talks mentions similarly Jeff Wall and Cindy Sherman as Fried did with the mention of the cinematic within their pictures but he also includes cinema itself.  Baker mentions Douglas Gordons work where he would slow down films so they would last for days or even years reducing the narrative version of the film.  Similarly Brian Enos "Thursday Afternoon" consisted of film slowed down which comes in and out of focus and transforms into essentially paintings done through cinema.

Cinema thinks photographically and photography thinks cinematically there is no need for a definitive separation between these mediums the lines can be blurred and this is the expanded field of photography these blurred lines.  Another artist thinking very photographically while working in film is Stan Douglas.  Coming from the Vancouver School (which includes the earlier mentioned Jeff Wall) Douglas plays very interestingly with the narrative qualities of cinema in his piece "Win, Place or Show".  The video is shot using two cameras and are projected together, the video was made to be able to consist of many different combinations of the narrative.  There are enough different combinations to play the film for 20,000 hours of the six minute clip before every combination was used. http://www.ubu.com/film/douglas_win.html

Realism

Ribalta and WJT Mitchell are both arguing against the death of realism due to digital photography, photoshop, digital alterations etc.  They both discuss that even though the process of altering a photograph has become easier in the digital age due to photoshop alterations within photographs have always occurred.  Ribalta states that the photographic activity of postmodernism had already denaturalized photography in the decades before and that now there needs to be a new critique for this new type of realism that has emerged "a new kind of molecular realism."WJT brings into his essay William J. Mitchells thoughts on the difference between analog and digital and that is analog being continuous and digital being discrete or separate.  He makes this comparison through the metaphor of rolling down a ramp and walking down stairs and a analog clock with a hand and a digital clock with merely just numbers displayed.

WJT easily destroys this comparison by pointing out that one you can in fact figure out how many rotations it takes for a ball to go down a ramp and two that for this metaphor to be consistent one would walk down the ramp.  By this WJT claims that though there is a difference between analog and digital it is not as rigid or binary as William J. makes it out to be but it is much more flexible the stairs can be given analog representation and the ramp can be digitalized.  WJT further discuss digital and analog through the work of Chuck Close.  He brings in Nelson Goodmans relation of digital and analog through numbers but explains that they do not need to be just numbers but any discrete set of things i.e color.  This is where he brings in Chuck Close as a example the paintings are arranged like a digital grid with pixels but each "pixel" is treated like a painting.

Final Paper

For my paper I plan to explore abstraction in photography.  I am interested in how abstraction in contemporary photography performs visually and progressively to further establish the medium as art.   I plan to examine the point of the work and how it functions as artwork to hopefully better understand why is this type of work being made, how abstract photography functions similarly or differently then Frieds ideas, and how it functions as a art form.

Adam Fuss

Picturing Violence

Reinhardt discusses the problems and different ways in which aesthetics function and are seen in pictures that depict the subject in pain, suffering or in war.  Reinhardt begins with talking about the war in Iraq and how many situations are not shown in the media do to the political repercussions that these would cause.  This decision just shows the sheer power that a photographer or photograph can hold.  Reinhardt then transitions into the discussion of the pictures which came out of Abu Ghraib of war prisoners being tortured and humiliated.  These photos were the main source of humiliation for the prisoners though the acts alone were awful, inhumane, and extremely humiliating the fact that pictures were taken and then threatened to be sent sustains this humiliation for the length of the existence of the pictures themselves.  One way in which it is seen that these pictures are very powerful is the fact that pictures were not released when a Freedom of Information Act suite was filled to view them because they claimed it would cause further public humiliation.  Reinhardt states that this shows that it is recognized that photographic representation can undermine the dignity of those pictured.  In turn Reinhardt discusses how these pictures can also be used for the benefit of the victim.  

Ali Shalal Qassi claimed to be the man pictured in one of the photographs that Reinhardt discusses and used this to his advantage to help promote his torture advocacy group and start somewhat of a career for himself.  It was later discovered that though Qassi had been humiliated at Abu Ghraib he was not the man pictured and just used this to his advantage.  This transformation of something meant to be used one way into being seen another way by a photograph is very similar to what was discussed about Captain John Walkers Slave Stealer brand on his hand which was photographed and used in the averse way it was meant to.

Next Reinhardt gets more into the discussion of aesthetics in these type of photographs.  He talks about James Natchweys photographs from Sudan.  Though these pictures are composed well and are very well made pictures Natchwey claims these were not meant to be aesthetic because he wanted to keep the downfall of aesthetics out of the way.  The downfall is to be viewing the pictures aesthetically rather then looking at these photos as something that needs to be prevented or helping us further see the problem.  Reinhardt discusses the failures within Natchweys pictures do to the fact that we see these people more as outcasts and this is all we will see them as due to the portrayal by Natchwey.

Reinhardt then discusses someone he felt achieved the balance of aesthetics within these types of images and that is Alfredo Jarr and his work called The Eyes of Gutete Emerita.  Reinhardt believes these images are successful for a couple reasons.  One being how the work is displayed the text for the images are timed longer than needed and the image itself is only a short flash.  The image itself does not directly show suffering but you can see this in the eyes of the subject. 

Photography and Ethics

In Susan Sontags Regarding the Pain of Others she has changed her view from what she though previously, which was the idea that viewers of the news have been bombarded with images of war and devastation so much that we are now unaffected by the shock that these type of images are supposed to send us.  Sontag now believes that it isnt the fact that we are immune to these images but we often times do know what to do or how to help.  Sontag claims that "In a modern life- a life in which there is a superfluity of things to which we are invited to pay attention- it seems normal to turn away from images that simply make us feel bad." and this does not mean that people are responding less nor does it take away the ethical validity of these images.  These images are for us to question who is causing this to happen and is it excusable.  They are a reminder of what the human race is capable of doing.  Sontag then goes into talking about how no matter what these pictures were meant to be or represent if they end up in a gallery setting they merely become art.

I think this transformation that photography (which is supposedly documenting the truth) can do to a image is quite compelling.  One thing that I found to be extremely interesting in the essay by Ariella Azoulay was the story about Captain Jonathan Walker who was caught trying to smuggle slaves and his punishment for this was he would be branded with SS on his hand.  These two letters stood for "Slave Stealer" and would be meant to disgrace him.  Walker then went to a photography studio to photography this branding and the resulting photographs were then distributed to protest this branding.  The meaning of the SS was then transformed from a negative connotation to a more positive meaning of "Slave Savior".  This image, one of the first used for a political agenda completely transformed something that was meant to be a disgrace to a symbol of abolition.

JeffWallJeffWallJeffWall

Michael Fried talks about the changes in photography which he believes started in the 70s that brought photography more towards art.  In the first chapter of "Why Photography Matters Now More Than Ever" Fried splits it up into three different ideas One being three artist who focused on Cinema within their photography.  The Second Fried focused on the "Tableau" form in photography and the third he focuses on three texts in which he thinks focus on imagery and ideas of voyeurism that he then relates to photography.

Fried compares Hiroshi Sugimoto, Cindy Sherman and, Jeff Wall in a discussion about how these artist were working similarly in the fact that they were all three focusing on ideas based around the cinema.  I see the relation between Jeff Wall and Cindy Sherman in the fact that they are both focusing on these looks that occur in films and those in a trance while watching films but his start with Sugimoto I do not relate as much.  Fried claims that he does not want to challenge the veracity of Sugimoto's account but goes on questioning if it didnt have something to do with Wall and Sherman.  I feel these two artist are working in extremly different ways and seem to me to be concerned with very different things then what Sugimoto was concerned with.  That being, seeing a elapsed time in a single moment and the amazing  environment which these pictures portray.

  I am not 100% shooting down Frieds comparison as I can see where you could relate the work through the fascination of the cinema screen which occurs in Sugimotos photographs and then the gaze of the viewers but I do not believe this was Sugimotos original intent.  (That then brings up in my mind at this point is the original intent needed when looking back at movements or comparing works?  This question will take this post far off topic so I will let it lay for now.) Yes I believe that Sugimoto was more concerned with thinking of photography as art but I think that adding him in Sherman and Wall as Fried does and the way he does it just left a bad taste in my mouth.

Next Fried begins to talk about this idea of seeing photography as art and shooting to hang on the wall. Fried once again talks about Wall with his style of displaying photographs with a backlight and the mere act of printing them as large as possible.  He also talks about Thomas Ruffs Portrait series and his use of color.  How Fried talks in this section is that if you want to shoot photography for art bigger is better so go out shoot with a 8x10 and print as large as you possibly can.  There is a notion about the death of street photography and the search of catching a person when they are not putting on a act.  Fried then goes into talking about voyeurism in his third section.

The most interesting part of this chapter to me would be the discussion of Susan Sontag and the exhibition of the black lynching victims.  I thought the transition from why do these images needed to be displayed and what is expected from the viewer into Jeff Walls (what a surprise) Dead Troops Talk was brilliant.  I am thinking I need to reread this chapter and give Fried another chance.  At this point I think I have hit a Wall.