Title page drafts

I don't know how I am going to choose. I've only explored one basic idea and I have too many options.

Revised spreads for Dieter Rams book

The two spreads below are both options for my second spread, I haven't yet decided on one permanently, so I continue to edit them both.

Errol Morris video response

Errol Morris notes that we have forgotten that photos are connected to the physical word. This is shown in the title of the video. He goes on to talk about how separate from reality these photos are. There is a strange duality in how he approaches the idea of photography that is not quite contradictory, but close. Morris talks about how photos are cropped and decontextualized, making that which is not in the photo just as important as what is included in it. He notes that photos are often framed to give a certain effect, using the example of the early Crimean war photos of the “Valley of the Shadow of Death.” The connection he draws between photos and the physical world is actually people.

            With photography being a more recent art form, many more of the photographers, and people included are still available to ask questions. Morris notes this in the example of Abu Ghraib prison and how much information is assumed about photos without inquiring about the people involved. Photos are often far separated from the real world, but they represent aspects of it through, through the medium of the photographer and the people being photographed. This is an interesting way to approach the subject of truth in a photo. Morris notes that searching for honesty in a photo is useless since they idea of truth is set in words and not in art. However, a representation through a photograph may be very far from “reality,” but to the person formatting the photo this false representation may carry a tone or emotion that closer matches their own perception of the reality of that moment.

Photography Changes Everything Response

Reading essays like this often make me nod my head in agreement, but then what? I hit the last page and I find myself saying “aaand?...” “Photography Changes Everything” notes some important things, but in my opinion they are arguments that hardly even needed to be noted, unless it was being read by someone who truly believed photography wasn’t an expansive, ever-changing, process which affects all manners of life. Heiferman discusses how big and important photography is, but just because it is big and important doesn’t make those thoughts original or even necessarily interesting. Ask a freshman in high school to think of all the ways photography is used and how it affects them and I think you’ll get a less eloquent version of this essay.

            Maybe I am being callous, but I do not find much to respond to in this essay other than a bland general agreement with its statements. If this were a preface for a longer work than informed the reader of all the oddities of specific photography jobs—like the example of the thermal parking lot images—or the areas of photography pushing the limits of technology, I am sure I would be more positive. However, just providing a couple examples to illustrate things I already know leaves me a little rant-y. Maybe I’ve been made harsh by expectations of clear and original arguments from Art History essays and persuasive papers being graded by persnickety English professors, or maybe I am just looking at it in the wrong light, but I don’t feel like my knowledge or mindfulness has been broadened by Heifermans work.

Viewers Guide to Looking at Photos Response

“A Viewers Guide to Looking at Photos” is something everyone should read before conducting a formal analysis. It provides both a checklist-like explanation of steps toward a holistic analysis but also a more in depth discussion of what the major chunks really mean. My first couple of formal analysis were primarily a regurgitation of words I had heard in class, and were subsequently not as successful as they could have been. This paper helps to outline a mode of thinking more than anything. The subject of photos is important, because unlike a renaissance painting or Helenic sculpture, photographs are often not seen as fine art due to the ease with which we can now take a photo (whether or not that photo has any merit). The act of listing all of the ways that photos can be seen and understood illustrates both how much the choices of the photographer matter, and just how much a well-structured photograph can express.

The atmosphere presented by a photo was the topic that interested me the most. Many photos can be arranged on a way that forms are interesting, but this often amounts to finding the right angle to shoot the right form. The ability for a photographer to set up their equipment in a manner that captures a specific tone, atmosphere, or emotional response is baffling to me. Just like using any artistic tool, I am sure that using a camera becomes second nature, but the fact that the resulting image is so far removed from physical actions makes it all the more mysterious. A painter hones his touch, his eye for color, how he pulls and pushes his brush. A Photographer, on the other hand, must arranged a machine on the fly so that when it’s eye opens it sees a reality predesigned by the photographer.

Ways of Seeing Response

The “Ways of Seeing” video reminded me of the preface that I have received at the beginning of every Art History class I have ever taken. It is always instilled that even as we view and discuss works of art, they are many degrees of separation from the original. Despite our best efforts, our images are projections of incorrect scale, produced from photographs of incorrect scale, of works that are a tiny selection from all of Art History, selected in order to illustrate that professor’s impression of a given Art Historical subtopic. All of this separation is then ultimately balanced on the tumultuous science of Art History, wherein conjecture and acute observation are the strongest tools in understanding the purpose of an object, since the artists are almost never available for comment themselves.

            Ultimately every image is a biased interpretation of the world or an idea that is then secondarily interpreted under the individual bias of any given person. Photographs especially started with an air of universal truth, just as many modes of art making have, but without the strict, algorithmic rules seen in math and science, meaning can only be created in the viewer. It can be prefaced, explained, and framed in a context, but just as the old adage suggests, beauty is ultimately in the eye of the beholder. The idea of this subjectivity in art is not terribly complex; the issue becomes making viewers aware of their entirely unique perspective on meaning, and letting them question themselves and others in order to free themselves from misconception and undue connotation.

            We are all just a blur in other people’s lives, and each of us have our own cone of vision through which other blurs pass. Increased time in contact with one another gives us a clearer picture of certain people but we never experience their reality. Art is a way to leave a vivid piece of personal experience, to see a thought or idea stand still even long after it’s maker’s death, but the act of viewing itself edits this thought or idea for it’s new home in our mind. Created images are relatively recent in the evolutionary development of consciousness, and as a result they are a terribly imperfect (albeit powerful) method of representation.