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
                  Wikipedia

Nan Goldin

Nan Goldin is famous for the intimate photographs she takes of her 'family'.  When she was eleven years old her older sister committed suicide and this event affected her deeply.  She moved between various foster families and attended a free school.  There she met two people who would become life long friends.
  Goldin has said that her photographs are her memory.  It is her way of remembering everything.  The Ballad of Sexual Dependancy shows hundreds of photos of her daily encounters, many of the people she photographs pop up again and again.  She had manny transvestite friends who only went out at night so for many years Nan was essentially a nocturnal being.
 She documents her relationships with brutal honesty. One of the images shown is of her face after she was beaten by her boyfriend.  Another image is of a friend crying.  Goldin was not afraid to photograph everything, and was lucky to have such friends who allowed her to do so.

    references: V&A museum
                       Ballad of Sexual Dependancy

Feminism

In John Bergers' 'Ways Of Seeing', he comments on patriarchy, religion and european paintings- he refers to power relations in which women's interests are subordinate to the interests of men.  

'You painted a naked woman because you enjoyed looking at her, you put a mirror in her hand and you called the painting Vanity, thus morally condemning the woman whose nakedness you had depicted for your own pleasure.
The real function of the mirror was otherwise. It was to make the woman connive in treating herself as, first and foremost, a sight.'


Andrea Dworkin is a right wing feminists who wrote a very powerful book 'Pornography, men possessing women.'  The book has interviews with various women who have experienced some form of abuse wether whilst in relationships or simply caught unawares by those around them.  Dworkin regards pornography as a form of rape and after reading some of the examples from her book you cant help but feel that way too.  Just as John Bergers said, woman are regarded as less important than men, looked at as objects of desire wether this be in art, film, photography or real life.

John Stezaker

John Stezaker uses collage to create his powerful, sometimes disturbing images.  He uses found images from magazines, postcards and books and re arranges them in such a way, so that it gives the image a new meaning.  The content and the context has now been changed into something new.

This image is one of many taken from the 'Marriage' series, where Stezaker used famous faces showing the male and female faces as one whole image.  It creates a disjointed harmony between male and female, each one struggling to be seen over the other.

reference: saatchi gallery

What Is Photography?

'I see, I feel, hence I notice, I observe and I think' Roland Barthes

In his book 'Camera Lucida' Barthes talks about the 'studium' and the 'punctum'.  The studium being a 'contact between creator and consumer' and the punctum being that accident which pricks me.'  There are many images that I like but cannot really explain why.  After reading about the punctum of a photograph it became clear to me that there does not necessarily have to be a reason behind liking or loving an image.  It is simply something in that image which catches your attention and holds it there.
  For example at the beginning of the year I became aware of Bill Hensons' photography and was immediately drawn to it.  All of his images have the same dream like atmosphere, which referring back to the punctum, is what I think attracts me to his images.  There is a freeness about them and a feeling of letting go.  The lighting used adds to the drama of the photo and a whole story can be thought up just by looking at one image.

references: Bill Henson Images
                  Camera Lucida, Roland Barthes

The Fame Game

Hello magazine is synonymous with gossip and the latest celebrity news.  It is a magazine that allows you into the homes of certain celebrities, dishes the dirt on their relationships, and apparently gives out free bars of chocolate.
  On this edition the fact that they have placed Kate Moss in the middle of royalty suggests that the editors don't really have a hierarchal system of celebrity, they are as important or unimportant as each other depending on how you look at it.
  The photographs themselves are nothing special, glossy and in Zara Phillips case unflattering.  To me Hello magazine appeals to housewives, or ladies on their lunchbreaks at work needing a quick fix of something not important.  I do not know of any young people wanting to read about Kate Middleton or Zara Phillips, but the free chocolate bar would be an attraction.