The poem “Extended Development” by Sarah Kay explores the ways in which the art of photography has changed throughout time, yet still remains a highly important and influential hobby. More specifically, how photography is an important aspect in each member of the speaker’s family. By using allusions, characterization, and imagery, Kay explores how the art of photography has changed throughout time. The use of allusions in the poem provides the reader with insight about what the art of photography has consisted of in the past, in terms of the equipment required to develop a picture, and the process in which it is developed. By discussing the ways in which one would have to alter a photograph and how much time it used to take, Kay is suggesting …show more content…
The poem begins by exploring how the speaker’s grandfather was a photographer in World War One and how he turned his hobby into his job: “Opened a shop. Turned it into a family affair”. Kay then goes on to introduce the father’s speaker and how he approached photography differently: “His father knew the equipment but not the art. He knew the darks but not the brights, my father learned the magic.” By first introducing the grandfather as a character the reader can better understand the speaker’s father. Since the grandfather took pictures for the war the moments he captured through his lens were much more gruesome, whereas the speaker’s father chooses to stray from this and focus on positivity or as it’s referred to in the poem “light”. Kay then introduces the speaker’s mother, exploring her passion for photography and giving her the title of “artist”. While the grandfather turned photography into his job, the speaker’s father uses photography as a way of capturing noteworthy events, for example: “he travelled across the country to follow a forest fire, hunted it with his camera for a week.” Finally, the speaker’s mother focuses more on the artistry of photography which is seen through her focus on the use of her darkroom. By exploring each of these characters, Kay …show more content…
Firstly, the speaker brings up the fact that “the only two rooms in the house with the walls that reached all the way up to the ceiling and doors that opened and closed, were the bathroom and the darkroom.” Through addressing that the two rooms with the highest walls are the bathroom and darkroom, Kay is emphasizing the fact the darkroom is a private place which is why it is cut off from the rest of the house much like a bathroom. By including these details she is insinuating the fact that it is a sacred space. The bathroom is also a room that is an essential space in the house and so, by comparing the two rooms, Kay is demonstrating that the darkroom is an inherent need. To the speaker’s mother, the darkroom is more than just a hobby, it is an essential part of her life. Furthermore, by describing the darkroom in great detail Kay allows the reader to better visualize what the darkroom looks like, ultimately transforming the space into a main character of the poem. Additionally, by including the fact that the speaker’s mother “built herself a darkroom” and refers to it as her “home” she is once again reiterating the fact that photography used to be much more of an art and those who took part in the hobby put in an abundance of effort to master their
In addition, she always talks about the moonlight during these times of night. When the moonlight is not present, the narrator is not active. Her husband comes to visit and she does not do much. But at night, when her husband is sleeping, the narrator wakes up and starts walking around the room. The protagonist believes that there is a woman trapped by the wall, and that this woman only moves at night with the night light. The allusion to this light is not in the beginning of the story, but in the end. “She begins to strip of the wallpaper at every opportunity in order to free the woman she perceives is trapped inside. Paranoid by now, the narrator attempts to disguise her obsession with the wallpaper.” (Knight, p.81) In the description of the yellow wallpaper and what is seen behind it there are sinister implications that symbolize the closure of the woman. It implies that any intellectual activity is a deviation from their duties as a housewife. Her marriage seems to be claustrophobic as her won life, a stifling confinement for a woman's creativity. As imaginable, such treatment and "solitary confinement"(Knight, p.86) will do nothing but worsen her condition, affecting
Imagery uses five senses such as visual, sound, olfactory, taste and tactile to create a sense of picture in the readers’ mind. In this poem, the speaker uses visual imagination when he wrote, “I took my time in old darkness,” making the reader visualize the past memory of the speaker in “old darkness.” The speaker tries to show the time period he chose to write the poem. The speaker is trying to illustrate one of the imagery tools, which can be used to write a poem and tries to suggest one time period which can be used to write a poem. Imagery becomes important for the reader to imagine the same picture the speaker is trying to convey. Imagery should be speculated too when writing a poem to express the big
Photography consists of a tracing of time; the duration of the photograph’s exposure time determines the resulting image. Photography is fundamentally a time-based medium. Peter Wollen begins his essay “Fire and Ice” by saying that “Photographs appear as devices for stopping time and preserving fragments of the past, like flies in amber.” This is true about the photographs described in Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson. Photography becomes the protagonist, Geryon’s, world once his lover Herakles breaks up with him. The photographs he takes represents
Just as the surroundings would seem different through color slides, he asks the readers to see the world from diverse viewpoints while reading and writing poems. Moreover, by listening to the poem’s hive, dropping a mouse, and walking inside its room, Collins encourages readers to discover the concealed depth of poetry. He comments that the readers should enjoy the poem in a way they would like to water ski.... ... middle of paper ... ...
makes it more personal and gets us more intrigued and makes us think about the unusual question at the start of the poem. This is effective. as it makes the poem feel more realistic to the readers and conveys her feelings for the poem in a more personal manner. Both of the poems are about anonymous people. In 'War Photographer' the main character is identified as a man.
It appears to me that pictures have been over-valued; held up by a blind admiration as ideal things, and almost as standards by which nature is to be judged rather than the reverse; and this false estimate has been sanctioned by the extravagant epithets that have been applied to painters, and "the divine," "the inspired," and so forth. Yet in reality, what are the most sublime productions of the pencil but selections of some of the forms of nature, and copies of a few of her evanescent effects, and this is the result, not of inspiration, but of long and patient study, under the instruction of much good sense…
She starts by bringing a pessimistic view to photographs of nature, by describing what may or may not lie just outside the boundaries of the picture. Mockingly she leads the reader to assume that there are no real nature photos left in the world, but rather only digitaly enhanced photos of nature wit...
The scene neatly encapsulates Edna’s rage at being confined in the domestic sphere and foreshadows her increasingly bold attempts, in subsequent chapters of the novel, to break through its boundaries. At first glance, the room appears to be the model of domestic harmony; “large,” “beautiful,” “rich” and “picturesque,” it would appear to be a welcoming, soothing haven for Edna. However, she is drawn past its obvious comforts to the open window, a familiar image in THE AWAKENING. From her vantage point in the second story of the house, Edna (who at this point in the narrative is still contained by the domestic/maternal sphere – she is “in” and “of” the house) gazes out at the wider world beyond.
A close analysis of Geoffrey Batchen’s Burning With Desire reveals several themes that combine to illustrate the thoughts of the general populace during the time of the proto-photographers. This was the time of Romanticism, where the very idea of Nature moved artists and poets to produce fantastic works that encompassed her beauty. However, this was also the time of the Enlightenment, where progressive thinkers were discovering new truths about the world, and calling into question old theories of how the world works. Further analysis of Chapter 3: Desire allows the reader to understand two very important trends in early photography; that is, the idea that photography and Nature affect and are affected by one another, and that photography enables
She makes remarks about the house they're staying in for the course of the summer. The narrator cannot exactly say what surprises her but finds that “there is something queer” about the house and the wallpaper in her room. She describes the house in romantic terms as a “colonial mansion, a hereditary estate, or even a haunted house” and questioned how they could afford it. As the story goes on, the narrator begins to describe her room. She says her room must’ve been a nursery for young children.
As the story progresses in, The Yellow Wallpaper, it is as if the space of the bedroom turns in on itself, folding in on the body as the walls take hold of it, epitomizing the narrator's growing intimacy with control. Because the narrator experiences the bedroom in terms of John's draconian organization, she relies on her prior experiences of home in an attempt to allay the alienation and isolation the bedroom creates. Recalling her childhood bedroom, she writes, "I remember what a kindly wink the knobs of our big, old bureau used to have, and there was one chair that always seemed like a strong friend . . . I could always hop into that chair and feel safe" (Gilman 17). Ironically, Gilman's narrator cannot retire to the otherwise "personal haven" of the bedroom because she is always already there, enclosed within the attic room of John's desires, bereft of her own voice and personal history. The narrator's imagination is altogether problematic for John, who would prohibit his wife from further fancifulness: "[John] says that with my imaginative power and habit of story-making, a nervous weakness like mine is sure to lead to all manner of excited fancies, and that I ought to use my will and good sense to check the tendency. So I try" (Gilman 15-16). For Gaston Bachelard, who devotes himself to a phenomenological exploration of the home in The Poetics of Space, "imaginative power" is the nucleus of the home, if not the home itself. Memories of prior dwellings are for Bachelard a fundamental aspect of creating new homes based on a continuity with the past and past spaces. "[B]y approaching the house images with care not to break up the solidarity of memory and imagination," writes Bachelard, "we may hope to make others feel all the psychological elasticity of an image that moves us at an unimaginable depth" (6). Bachelard's "elasticity" infers that spatial depth and expansion are contingent upon a psychological flexibility of imagination. Gilman's narrator is notably denied this elasticity when her physician/husband attempts to prevent her from writing. "I did write for a while in spite of them," the narrator explains, "but it does exhaust me a good deal--having to be so sly about it, or else meet with heavy opposition" (Gilman 10).
Sontag, Susan. "Essay | Photography Enhances Our Understanding of the World." BookRags. BookRags. Web. 15 Apr. 2014.
The crockery, meanwhile, crashes together noisily “in celebration”. And... ... middle of paper ... ... “This Room” In the poem our homes and possessions symbolize our lives and ambitions in a limiting sense, while change and new opportunities are likened to space, light and “empty air”, where there is an opportunity to move and grow.
The feeling of detachment would probably be the main emotion in the poem as the photographer does his best not to g...
12. The predominant images in the poem refer to sight and touch somewhat. There is an abundance of description used for nature and summer particularly such as describing the weather which made it easy for the readers to imagine the setting and made the whole poem easier to understand. Another predominant image could be touch as the speaker described the weather constantly such as it being warm and sunny which allowed the readers to be able to make connections and think of a sunny day and the warmth which made the poem more relatable.