“There is in fact no such thing as an instantaneous photograph. All photographs are time exposures, of shorter or longer duration, and each describes a discrete parcel of time.” -John Szarkowski 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 …show more content…
Geryon, called “stupid” and abandoned by his brother on his trip to kindergarten, unsurprisingly agrees because he’s little and doesn’t know any better. He thinks “stupid was correct. But when justice is done the world drops away” (Carson 24) Understanding justice is understanding exclusion, and Geryon does feel excluded, especially when he is standing alone outside a classroom while the snow “silenced all trace of the world” (Carson 25). Geryon’s first justice is an intense isolation, a strangled silence. He was different than everyone else; he was red and had wings, which led to his feelings of alienation and isolation. He grew up feeling like an outsider. It was hard for him to accept his winged nature. After his brother sexually abuses him, Geryon learns the difference between what is within and what is without; “he thought about the difference between outside and inside. Inside is mine, he thought” (Carson 29). He then starts his autobiography. His autobiography was at first a sculpture made out of money and a tomato. He then learns how to write, and his autobiography turns textual. In the beginning of the autobiography, he sets down the total facts known about himself, the first and foremost being “Geryon was a monster everything about him was red” (Carson 37). He knows he is an outsider, and admits it, but can’t accept it. Once Geryon met Herakles, however, not only did his world transform completely, but his autobiography changed from writing to
...pany explains how the use of traces in the photographic can elude to the recording of time and reality, a predominant feature in both artists work. “A photograph is an image that bears the mark of the real. The light that illuminates the world is the light that records its image. In this sense all photographs are traces. However the world itself contains traces or marks…. A photograph of a trace is perhaps the opposite of the ‘decisive moment’. It is the moment after. It records the marks made by the world on the body and the body on the world. Both performance and conceptual art utilized the photograph as a means of recording traces.” (2003:88). The consideration that Campany suggests, of the trace being the “opposite of the ‘decisive moment’” further indicates again the idea of the staged image. In this particular image, it is that exactly that Arnatt appears to
Photography may be seen as a helpful tool in recording history, history itself cannot be based on images. Susan Sontag author of “ Regarding the Pain of Others”, states:
Photography is simple yet versatile. With just the press of a button, any moment in time can be immortalized. Additionally, its ubiquitous nature has made a significant impact on various fields of study as well as our personal lives. Photography is used in academia as a form of reference, in media to tell stories and spread messages; it’s a method of capturing meaningful memories of friends and family and as an art to introduce ideas, pose questions and display emotions. Susan Sontag and Roland Barthes both provide their input on multifaceted and arduous questions, such as: What is the meaning of a photograph? What role do photographs play in our society? How does one look at photographs and proceed to “understand” them? On Photography (by
To fully understand Cartier-Bresson’s pictures, one must first understand his artistic philosophy. Born in 1908 in Chanteloup, near Paris Cartier-Bresson’s passion for photography erupted from his love for the early motion pictures. As he would later say, “From some of the great films, I learned to look, and to see.” Films such as Eisenstein’s Potemkin and Dreyer’s Jeanne d’Arc “impressed [him] deeply”. Cartier-Bresson yearned to capture real life. He believed in order to do this the subject must be oblivious to the photographer. Indeed, he has never in his professional career contrived a setting or arranged a photograph, an outlook that stems from his strong belief that the photographer should blend into the environment and not influence the behavior of his subject. Cartier-Bresson sees photography as, “…a way of shouting, of freeing oneself, not of proving or asserting one’s own originality.”
Susan Sontag has a very strong and interesting take on modern photography. In her essay, “In Plato’s Cave”, she talks about the power of photographs and what they convey about reality. Sontag states that “Strictly speaking, one never understands anything from a photograph.”(23). Sontag argues
Green, David (2006) “Marking Time” in Stillness And Time : Photography and The Moving Image, Brighton : Photoforum
In Szarkowski’s essay ‘The Photographer’s Eye’, he discusses how photography has taught us to see from the unexpected vantage point, as well as how ‘photography’s ability to challenge and reject our schematized notions of reality is still fresh’ (Szarkowski. 1966. Page 11). When thinking about vantage point myself, two very different ideas of this characteristic of photography came to mind, which I will discuss and compare in this essay. Firstly, perhaps the more obvious, was the concept of where a photograph is taken from, for example looking at a subject or scene from a position that allows the photographer a favourable view. A very literal approach.
Postman inserts that the use of new technological devices may make us lose our perception of ourselves because we may try to live in them. Photography is another technological pathway that leads us to play various characters. Photography can capture that character’s moment and then it is preserved in that context forever. Image appeal stimulates our minds and makes us lose our touch within reality so we have to remind ourselves that photography is only a temporary escape from reality.
More than ever the modern-day photographer needs to be able to manifests a transcendental ability to inspire people from all walks of life with a photograph. The actual shot has to have an immediate impact, it has to personify the concept of being audacious yet original, somehow drawing together all relevant elements that seemingly funnel together and coalesce into a highly visual snapshot of the millisecond, a representation that is immediately crisp, punchy and unique, an angle thar culminates in one glorious, exhilarating cadence of colour and imagery.
Before mentioning the stages that led to the development of photography, there is one amazing, quite uncanny prediction made by a man called de la Roche (1729- 1774) in a work called Giphantie. In this imaginary tale, it was possible to capture images from nature, on a canvas which had been coated with a sticky substance. This surface, so the tale goes, would not only provide a mirror image on the sticky canvas, but would remain on it. After it had been dried in the dark the image would remain permanent. The author would not have known how prophetic this tale would be, only a few decades after his death.
Photography is a form of art, the ability to capture moments that we share and experience throughout our life. Moments that we can share and show others, moments that can show the expression, emotion, and history. Photography has literally shaped how we see the world and the people in it. It has given us the opportunity to keep records of historical moments that will forever remember and it has given us the chance to show other how life varied for everyone in this world. That is what photographer Jamie Johnson shows us through her work such as Vices and Irish Travelers.
When going for a walk, a person takes in the beauty around them. On this particular day, the refulgent sun is extra bright, making the sky a perfect blue. White, puffy clouds fill the sky, slowing moving at their own pace. The wind is peacefully calm, making the trees stand tall and proud. There is no humidity in the air. As this person walks down the road, they see a deer with her two fawns. The moment is absolutely beautiful. Moments like this happen only once in a great while, making us wanting to stay in the particular moment forever. Unfortunately, time moves on, but only if there were some way to capture the day’s magnificence. Thanks to Joseph Niépce, we can now capture these moments and others that take our breath away. The invention of the camera and its many makeovers has changed the art of photography.
When you see a well taken photograph you immediately feel something. There is no need of words, no needs of a second look: they only came in a second moment. At first, it's just you, the picture in front of you, and the feelings it creates. We can all think of a picture, famous or not, that makes us feel something: a Russian soldier kissing a cross, a little girl drawing a bed under his brother asleep on the floor, or simply a relative smiling, there, forever on paper. This is the real power of photography: it moves you, somehow, and it also collects instants, crystallizing them as images of a moments existing for the eternity.
A lie is defined as a false statement made with deliberate intent to deceive; an intentional untruth; a falsehood or to convey a false impression. “Art is a lie that brings us nearer to the truth” (Pablo Picasso) could not be any more accurate. Can the intake of untrue information lead to the discovery of a truth? I believe that Picasso was insinuating that art is merely an imitation of life therefore there must be some truth to it. Photography is the art form that is able to depict this ideal the best. The theories of truth are the pragmatic, correspondence, coherence are brought about with a good photograph. A photograph is an image created by light entering a light sensitive surface, film and or in the digital camera age an electronic imager. The lenses of a camera used to focus the image are able to take in visible wavelengths of light into an accurate reproduction. Therefore a camera is a tool in which the artist may chose to capture the world, but also edit it.
The word photography comes from two ancient Greek words: photo, for "light," and graph, for "drawing"(The History of Photography). "Drawing with light" is an apt way of describing the artistic field of photography. According to a world-renowned photographer, Ansel Adams, “You don’t take a photograph, you create it.” Each time a photograph is made, light or some other form of radiant energy, such as x-rays, is used to record an image of an object or scene on a light-sensitive surface at a specific time point (Watson 79). In the infancy of photography these recorded images were called sun pictures or heliograph. This was because sunlight was used to create the image. Mankind has been recording images at since the cave paintings of some 20,000 years ago. With the invention of photography, a realistic image that would have ta...