Susan Sontag

One of the topics covered in her book, Sontag discusses how photography has become industrialised.  It is no longer for a few, but widespread social use.
  Photos are used for control- police, passports, identity cards.  They are used for information-archives, spies.  They are used to document everyday situations- the family album-births, weddings, children a possession of the past.  Internet albums- a way of everyone seeing what you get up to.  Tourism- souvenir of your trip, memories, experience of the world.
 "Possession of a camera does not license intrusion, as it does in this society whether people like it or not...we pose where we can and yield when we must."  What she is saying here is very true of todays society, people are not camera shy, photographs have become a visual aid to our lives.  Photography has become mainstream, anyone can do it.

references: Susan Sontag On Photography

The Unconscious

"Unconscious desire, self destruction and despair-the dark impulses that we suppress during our waking hours have long been an inspiration for artists and writers" Darian, sleep of reason. 

Scott Radke is an artist who likes to 'connect with his subconscious' when creating.  His sculptures are dark, mysterious and slightly disturbing.  He says of his own works that he tries not to convey his emotions or feelings into his works, he just takes his "doodles a little further."  Most artists tend to use what they know, or their life experiences to create their pieces of art, but I find it more interesting when we just use our imaginations to create new, wild and exciting pieces of work.  They don't have to make sense, or have a connection to anything.  Working with our subconscious is a great way to create unexpected art.

Ori Gersht

His series 'Blow Up', is a series of photographs showing flowers being blown up.  The arrangement of the flowers is based on still life paintings by Henri Fantin-Latour.  Gersht captures the moment of the explosion using a mixture of high speed camera lenses, stop motion photography and slowmotion film.  Allowing us to see what the human eye alone cannot pick up.
 The photos are amazing, the colours, the movement and the speed of the the essentially still photograph. He references historical periods in his photography, this particular project draws inspiration from the french revolution, and shows the violence and turmoil caused.

 

Sophie Calle

Sophie Calle took on a project titled 'please follow me.'  She picked random people off the street and followed them until they entered a space she could not follow.  I admire her greatly for doing this, there is something fascinating to me about peoples lives and how we all pass each other daily without knowing anything about each other.  Sophie took a job in a hotel at one point in her career to try and gather information about its occupants.

Some argue that work like this isn't art, its stalking.  I agree completely that it is stalking to an extent but she is not doing it to take advantage of the person she's following, she's merely collecting data to create a body of work.  I hope one day i'll be brave enough to do something like this!

references: www.tate.org.uk

Yasumasa Morimura

Yasumasa Morimura takes photos of world famous icons, whether they be paintings or actual people, and recreates them by photographing himself in the same poses.  He has been the Mona Lisa, Marilyn Monroe, Che Guevara and many more.
  Morimura constantly deals with how we perceive images.  Would we have found Marilyn Monroe as attractive if she was japanese....or a man? He plays with boundaries in a simplistic style, and creates very powerful thought provoking images.  He gets to be all these different personas every time he takes a photo, something which many people would love to be able to do.

Semiotics

Semiotics is the study of signs and communication in our culture.  How an image can say one thing but mean another.  For example Saussure wrote about the signifier and the signified.  The signifier is the physical form eg. a rose and the signified is what it refers to eg. love.  They are only understood in reference to each other.

The image of the twin towers just after the planes hit them has become a well known image and shows itself repeatedly when the topic of  terrorism is bought up.  If you were not from this planet, looking at this image would mean nothing to you.  Just two skyscrapers being demolished.  But to everyone on earth this picture is terrorism.  It symbolises terrorism.  The mention of the name 'twin towers' conjures up the word terrorism.  In reference to semiotics, the twin towers are the signifiers.  they are the physical form.  The signified is what the twin towers refers to-terrorism.

references:www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/S4B/sem-gloss.html

Modernism/Post Modernism

Based on social change and technological advancements, modernism/post modernism is never focused on today but on tomorrow.  It speeds up the tempo of life, creates new human environments and destroys old ones.  It is rejecting tradition and being innovative.

Marcel Duchamps' fountain has been amidst controversy since he exhibited it in 1917.  This piece was rejected by the people at the gallery, saying that 'it was not art.'  Duchamp was part of the DADA movement in the New York section, which was unorganised and introduced "ideas of absurdity and anti-art."  They went against what was seen as 'art' at the time and came up with a 'modern' ways of thinking.  Creating new and possibly absurd artworks.  "If only America would realise that the art of Europe is finished-dead-that America is the country of the art of the future, instead of trying to base everything she does on European traditions!"
Who is to say what is or isn't art?  Surely it should be left to the artist themselves?

references: Marcel Duchamp:Artist of the Century
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