Common sense seems to dictate that photographs, especially of children, are a part of our daily lives. In a recent study: “the Department of Information and Communications of the Photo Marketing Association puts the number of photographs made each year in the United States alone at 25 billion, about 12 ½ billions new American pictures of children appear each year” (Higonnet 87). Every day photographs of children are taken by amateur and professional photographers with different intentions and their viewers have their own interpretations. Photographs of children do not capture the truth because they are what the photographer wants everyone else to see. This is important because our image of children greatly depends on photographs even though we only see what is chosen to be produced. Anne Higonnet’s Pictures of Innocence provides the details of Lewis Carroll and Julia Margaret Cameron’s opinions of whether or not photographs of children display the truth.
In Pictures of Innocence, Anne Higonnet raises the discussion of whether photography of children reveals the truth or is a form of art. Higonnet’s Picture of Innocence raises the argument between the nineteenth century photography of Lewis Carroll’s truth-seeking photographs and Cameron’s intentional works of art. Both artists clearly had the ability to create meaningful pictures of children, with almost no training, but how and why they capture these images differ. Undoubtedly, photography is an art which provokes thought, and “[i]nterpretation attributes meanings to photographs of childhood” (Higonnet 109). The essence of her argument is that photographs of children are up for interpretation, just like any other form of art. All types of art have different meanings depending on...
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...ewis Carroll’s photographs of children as evidence, she provides her readers the opportunity to see the control in these images. Anne Higonnet reflects on their work which shows that Cameron is right when she used photography as a form of art, while Carroll incorrectly believed that his photographs captured the truth in regards to children. For this reason, I have reflected on my personal photographs of my childhood. I can clearly see that the adults in my life controlled almost everything about the photographs. The most obvious control, that was only a recent realization, is the fact that the photographer says, say cheese. When children say cheese it forces a smile that the adults want to see in their image that they can share with others. The realization of the photographer’s control proves that any photographs of children do not display the truth, only the ideal.
In the great tradition of classical art, nudity and death have been two main themes of the masters. Sally Mann’s photographs twist this tradition when the nudes are her prepubescent children and the corpses are real people. The issue is that her photographs are a lens into unfiltered actuality, and consumers question the morality of the images based on the fact that children and corpses are unable to give legal consent. Her work feels too personal and too private. Mainly, people question whether or not Mann meant to cause an uproar with her work or if the results were completely unintentional. After looking through what Sally Mann herself has said, it can be determined that both options have a grain of truth. She wanted to provoke thought,
The idea of childhood innocence is one that could be interpreted in many different ways. Yusef Komunyakaa’s “English”, Kurt Vonnegut’s “Harrison Bergeron”, Peter Tait’s “Too much information destroys childhood innocence”, and Cormac McCarthy’s The Road are all pieces that demonstrate how childhood innocence is preserved. In “English”, Komunyakaa describes a boy who sees an airstrike during a war and thinks it is a celebration because no one has ever explained the concept of war to him. “Harrison Bergeron” demonstrates a society that is very conservative about the knowledge they allow its civilians to obtain. Peter Tait’s article on preserving childhood innocence exposes the truths about social media and the easy access kids
Innocence is a glorified trait in nearly any culture around the world. Many strive to keep the innocence they are born with, and plenty others spend a lifetime attempting to regain the innocence they have lost with age. In the following photos, innocence is a common theme, which each photographer approaches in a unique way. The one common aspect of innocence in the
Susan Sontag discusses the reality of the modern person’s addiction with “needing to have reality confirmed” by photos. Sontag says “we accept it as the camera records it” then goes to say “this is the opposite of understanding.” I agree with her wholeheartedly, as accepting photos as they are limits ones understanding of the world. The trust in photography led to the rise of pictures hoaxes, in which people take pictures out of context and assign it a new background; as well as Photoshop, which becomes increasingly popular as the years go by. Photoshop allows one to manipulate a photo to portray what they desire it to.
Many viewers from Cassatt’s time would expect that not only is she painting an everyday scene (as did many other impressionists), but that she is also painting from her experience – the female artist as mother. However, the gaze Cassatt casts on her subject is not nurturing, as a result of her color and compositional choices. Instead, her lens is cold, frank and straight to the point. Cassatt’s Little Girl lives on to explicitly oppose her era’s principles on how a female artist sees and treats their subject. If this piece were painted by a male, with his gaze, it would be completely different – more idyllic. How does he interpret what she sees? The child would be curled up with a smile on her face and the dog in her arms. He would illuminate the child through bright, warm colors. He would emphasize the domesticity of the moment. But Cassatt throws those images away and provides the viewer with her fresh take on a familiar scene. She renders the slack little girl with lots of blue, taking away from the painting’s potential homeliness, but makes up for it with her skill and talent. By projecting her gaze onto the subject, Cassatt articulates and asserts her own ideology: images of domesticity, the woman’s maternal role and beauty are not interdependent. Little Girl shows the viewer just how. The
Throughout history the concept of innocence in literature has been a topic in which author’s have held an obsession with. According to Harold Bloom, the loss of innocence has played a large role in western literature since the Enlightenment when man was said to be initially good and then corrupted only by his institutions. (Bloom 6) The institution in which Bloom speaks of is nothing more then society. Society is what is believed to be the cause for the loss of innocence in children. Bloom has stated that a return to the childhood mindset would eliminate the social problems in which people suffer. This is unerringly why the cause of many physiological problems can be traced back to a problem or unsettlement in one’s childhood. (Bloom 7) The history of innocence continues further back in history as it is said that the first encounter of loss of innocence or “original sin” was from Adam and Eve when they ate the fruit of the forbidden tree. (Bloom 7) These historical events and ideas are what influence the works of authors from the 19th century to modern day.
In modern day society images play a fundamental role in how people communicate with one another. Images are mass-produced and distributed for all of society to enjoy. Do these images impact society in a positive way? In Christine Rosen’s article “The Image Culture” she argues that images impact society in a negative way. Rosen argues that the mass production of images unconsciously impacts society; people view these images without knowing the negative impacts they have. Kay Hymowitz the author of “Scenes from the Exhibitionists” shares a supporting argument; she discusses how women are exposed far too often because of these mass-produced
She captured moments in these children’s lives that in some way seem magical and unreal, especially to adults living in the 21st century. But in fact these dreamlike instances happened all the time – or that’s what her work would have us believe – she simply took the image at the right moment.
‘Some idea of a child or childhood motivates writers and determines both the form and content of what they write.’ -- Hunt The above statement is incomplete, as Hunt not only states that the writer has an idea of a child but in the concluding part, he states that the reader also has their own assumptions and perceptions of a child and childhood. Therefore, in order to consider Hunt’s statement, this essay will look at the different ideologies surrounding the concept of a child and childhood, the form and content in which writers inform the reader about their ideas of childhood concluding with what the selected set books state about childhood in particular gender. The set books used are Voices In The Park by Browne, Mortal Engines by Reeve and Little Women by Alcott to illustrate different formats, authorial craft and concepts about childhood. For clarity, the page numbers used in Voices In The Park are ordinal (1-30) starting at Voice 1.
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…
Since the beginning of civilisation the question can art have the capacity to transform the world politically and morally has invariably haunted the philosophers and social scientists alike. This paper makes an attempt to address two different but interrelated questions in the light of photography by primarily focusing on Abu Ghraib pictures. First, I intend to look critically at Butler’s claim that framing of reality in a certain way imposes constraints on what can be heard, seen and read during the times of war. And second, I propose to consider the various ways in which the relationship between photography and ethical responsiveness can be explored by invoking the idea of face propounded by Levinas in one of his interviews.
Schwartz, Donna. “Objective Representation: Photographs as Facts.” Picturing the Past: Media History & Photography. Ed. Bonnie Brennen, Hanno Hardt. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1999. 158-181.
My thesis statement is that children’s innocence enables them to cope in difficult situations. Children generally have a tendency to lighten the mood in sad situations because of their innocent nature. They turn even the saddest situations to mild, innocent situations. This is evident when Marjane says “these stories had given me new ideas for games”, (Satrapi, 55). By saying this she refers to her uncle’s stories of how he and other prisoners were tortured in prison. Stories of torture have never been easy to hear even for adults but Marjane so innocentl...
In Sontag’s On Photography, she claims photography limits our understanding of the world. Though Sontag acknowledges “photographs fill in blanks in our mental pictures”, she believes “the camera’s rendering of reality must always hide more than it discloses.” She argues photographs offer merely “a semblance of knowledge” on the real world.
Ultimately, Romanticism is responsible for transforming the purpose of children’s literature and, as a result, society's image of children. Thus, helping to establish the importance of the imagination. Through its themes of romanticism, Carroll crafts a story that is anti-didactic by its very nature. The innocence and imagination of childhood offers redemption to fallen adulthood.