Hello All,
This is a list of questions that will help you brainstorm for your first essay. There is no need to respond to this post; this will just be a list that you can return to when you are reading the photography essays or constructing your first essay.
What is Art? What are the qualities that would elevate a given object to the status of "art"?
Why do people create art?
Why do audiences want to experience art?
Does art require context? In other words, does an artwork lose anything out of context? Is a Picasso painting the same in person as it is as an image we might use as the screensaver on our desktop computer?
Can photography be art?
How is photography different from other forms of art (like literature and painting)?
How is it similar?
What qualities would a photograph need to possess to be elevated to the status of art?
Why do people take photographs?
What function/purpose/utility do photographs serve for us as individuals? For us as members of a family or community? For anonymous/unknown audiences?
Finally, if anyone is interested, the Bakersfield Museum of Art is hosting an exhibit titled "Photography in Mexico," with some fantastic photographs, including my all-time favorite: "Mujer Angel" by Graciela Iturbide.
Q:What function/purpose/utility do photographs serve for us as individuals?
ReplyDeleteA: A purpose of photographs is to copy and carry on part of the experience beyond that moment. On page 155, Susan Sontag explains that "in its simplest form, we have in a photograph surrogate possession of a cherished person or thing, a possession which gives photographs some of the character of unique objects."
Oops, wrong spot! Transferring to the proper blog post.
DeleteQ: Why do people take photographs?
ReplyDeletePeople take photographs to capture the moment, experience, or event. It creates a meaning that can be recurrent by simple looking at the picture whenever people please. In other words whatever meaning a photograph gives us, we can recycle it, reminisce on it, or even give it a new meaning in future time . Like Susan Sontag mentions, "Photography does not simply reproduce the real, it recycles it...In the form of photographic images, things and events are put to new uses, assigned new meanings, which go beyond the distinctions between the beautiful and the ugly, the true and the false, the useful and the useless, good taste and bad (174)."
i posted it to the correct blog as well
DeleteQ:What function/purpose/utility do photographs serve for us as individuals? For us as members of a family or community? For anonymous/unknown audiences?
ReplyDeletePhotographs serve as memories and experience for us as individuals, as Sontag writes that photographs can evoke memories depending on the quality of the viewer rather than of the photograph. When looking at old photos a photographer who took that picture remembers more about the view or past than whatever was captured in the photograph. For us as member of a family or community, photographs can serve as a reminder of special moments that were shared as family together. We can look at those photographs that were taken at a special occasion with family and remember those special moments. Also, photographs can show the adults or children exactly how their parents and grandparents looked when they were young. For anonymous/unknown audiences photographs can be informative and can serve as an example or resource to explain something a better way by giving a visulization of the past. Photographs give them better understanding of the history.