Hello All,
For this post, read Susan Sontag's "The Image World," which you can find on the class Blackboard page. Then find one quote that provides an answer to one of the questions from the list on the previous post. Finally, provide a brief explanation (a couple of sentences) of why you found that quote meaningful.
Note: Do not repeat a quote someone has already posted; you must find a new quote to discuss if "your" quote is taken.
How is photography different from other forms of art (like literature and painting)?
ReplyDeleteAccording to Susan Sontag “a painting, even one that meets photographic standards of resemblance, is never more than the stating of an interpretation, a photograph is never less than the registering of an emanation (light waves reflected by objects)—a material vestige of its subject in a way than no painting can be.” In my interpretation I found it meaningful because photography enhances our perspective of the world and allows a to experience a deeper understanding of the things around us. It gives us the ability to see the visual history of the world, as a window into the actuality of the real world. Sontag claims photography can depict its “subject in a way that no painting can be.” Photography has a different societal value than painting or other forms of art. It is a social activity that has been ingrained within families and society. With just the click of a button one can easily reminiscence and record certain events in life, that the interpretation of a painting cannot easily accomplish.
Is a Picasso painting the same in person as it is as an image we might use as the screensaver on our desktop computer?
ReplyDelete"But if photographs demean, paintings distort in the opposite way: they make grandiose" (166).
Based on my interpretation, this quote conveys the idea that an original painting is more grand and superior in comparison to an image copy, or photograph, of the painting. Simply seeing a photograph of a Picasso painting on a computer desktop will not have the same affect as seeing an original Picasso painting in person. In my opinion, being able to see the original artwork in a gallery allows the observer to connect with the artist in a way that they would not be able to when observing a photograph of the painting in a different setting. When observing a painting in person, we are able to explore the detail and the different types of medium the artist used, as opposed to seeing the painting digitialized on a computer screen.
How is photography different from other forms of art (like literature and painting)?
ReplyDelete"Photography has powers that no other image-system has ever enjoyed because, unlike the earlier ones, it is not dependent on an image maker.” (158)
Based on my interpretation, this quote is stating that photograph is different from other forms because you are not just seeing the object how the writer or artist see it, but the object itself free from their interpretation.
What function/purpose/utility do photographs serve for us as individuals? For us as members of a family or community?
ReplyDelete"Few people in this society share the primitive dread of cameras that comes from thinking of the photograph as a material part of themselves. But some trace of the magic remains: for example, in our reluctance to tear up or throw away the photograph of a loved one, especially of someone dead or far away. To do so is a ruthless gesture of rejection."
I think that this quote is meaningful because it makes a valid point. I treasure the photographs that my parents, brothers, sisters, family members, and friends appear in. As the quote explains that by throwing or tearing the photograph of a person you care about is like rejecting or even abandoning them. Looking at a photograph can make a person light up with happiness, laugh, or cry. The photographs have a powerful impact that acts like an anchor or a special symbol to an individual.
How is photography different from other forms of art (like literature and painting)?
ReplyDeleteBut a photograph is not only like its subject, a homage to the subject. It is part of, an extension of that subject; and a potent means of acquiring it, of gaining control over it." I think that this is a meaningful quote because a picture can say a thousand words about a subject. A picture can show emotion and feeling which makes it a part of the subject and lets people relate to the subject just by looking at the photograph. A photograph can be an extension of someone because it shows you how they were feeling at the time the picture was taken which can help people relate to the picture and feel what they were feeling.
How is photography different from other forms of art (like literature and painting)?
ReplyDelete"The photographic exploration and duplication of the world fragments continuities and feeds the pieces into an interminable dossier, thereby providing possibilities of control that could not even be dreamed of under the earlier system of recording information: writing."
I found this quote meaningful because of age we live in. Where there are applications for your phone designed specifically for taking and sending pictures. We as a society do not write letters anymore but we do Snapchat and Instagram. Instead of describing a wonderful sunset a person can take a picture of that sunset and it will be a replica but still almost as beautiful. It is an improvement because with writing one risks describing it too poorly or too greatly. With a picture the beauty will have been captured exactly, although it can still be open to interpretation.
What function/purpose/utility do photographs serve for us as individuals?
ReplyDelete"Such images are indeed able to usurp reality because first of all a photograph is not only an image (as a painting is an image), an interpretation of the real; it is also a trace, something directly stenciled off the real, like a footprint or a death mask." (154)
I found this quote meaningful because it not only answers the question but it interprets what a photograph really is. Photographs in many cases are not just simple pictures taken, but many have sentimental value to people. The quote says that they are like a "footprint", pictures are like that moment you experienced stopped in time which you can always relive by looking at that picture. Pictures don't just serve the purpose of decoration but also as memories. They exert emotion to our lives because its not a drawing its a real image which was captured to its exact details and behind it is a story to that image.
What function/purpose/utility do photographs serve for us as individuals?
ReplyDelete"Cameras are the antidote and the disease, a means of appropriating reality and a means of making it obsolete"(pg. 179).
I found this quote very interesting, insightful, and I feel it goes along with the question above perfectly. The consumption of photographs, especially in today's society, are constantly used to represent a reality or experience. As individuals, we view these realities/experiences based on our interests. For example, I am interested in marine biology, more specifically Great White Shark behavior. A photo that I constantly see is one of them jumping up in the air to attack their prey. Based on this photo it is evident to me that this is a normal behavior of the shark so I do not feel the need to witness it first hand. Moreover, what this quote is aiming at is the continuous flow of new photos portraying realities that are not well known are insightful but also can take away the need for people to see things in reality or for what really occurs first hand. In other words, if a picture is enough for individuals, reality is essentially no longer needed.
Does art require context?
ReplyDelete"But images are not a treasure for which the world must be ransacked; they are precisely what it is at hand wherever the eye falls." (pg.179)
I found this quote to make me more open-minded to the meaning of art.I always try and find a reason for photographs. However, after reading this quote, it changed my view dramatically.It allowed me to realize I can accept the art for "precisely" what it is. Thus, I do not have to spend my time thinking what the photo is trying to express. Rather, I can accept the art at face value and be grounded with accepting the photo for what it is. Conclusively,art does not need context but does need acceptance.
Why do people take photographs?
ReplyDelete"The feeling of being exempt from calamity stimulates interest in looking at painful pictures, and looking at them suggests and strengthens the feeling that one is exempt. Partly it is because one is "here," not "there," and partly it is the character of inevitability that all events acquire when they are transmuted into images. In the real world, something is happening and no one knows what is going to happen. In the image-world, it has happened, and it will forever happen in that way."
The quote is meaningful because photographs are proof that an event or disaster happened. People want to be able to see photographs to understand the depth of the event. If a disaster occurred, such as September 11th, photographs can capture the pain a person experience. The event doesn’t always have to be painful, but people just want to feel included and photographs give people that feeling.
Can a photograph be art? "While a painting, even one that meets photographic standards of resemblance, is never more than stating of an interpretation, a photograph is never less than the registering of an emanation (light waves reflected by objects) - a material vestige of its subject in a way that no painting can be" This quote is meaningful to me because i use to think that a photograph was just like a piece of art but after reading this I learn otherwise. I learned that no matter how much a painting can look like something else, it will never compare to a real picture of that same object.
ReplyDeleteWhat function/purpose/utility do photographs serve for us as individuals?
ReplyDelete“In the real world, something is happening and no one knows what is going to happen. In the image-world, it has happened, and it will forever happen in that way.” (pg.168)
This quote spoke to me because of the depth of the statement. I view photographs as art, as a catalog of event in history. Images are everywhere and they have the power to transport us in an instant. Photographs translate so much information to the viewer without saying a word. There is no other medium, in my opinion, that has as much power and complexity to tell a story as photography.
Can photography be art?
ReplyDelete"But what photography supplies is not only a record of the past but a new way of dealing with the present, as the effects of the countless billions of contemporary photograph-documents attest."
This quote shows that photography is a type of art that is being used today. It shows people the past in different views of who each photograph were taken. Many people today find photographs easier to manage the present because it allows them to easily document everything in their lives. The people use photographs as a type of art when they want to document a major discover that will allow the world to see their point of view. Overall, my opinion is that photographs are art because they open our eyes to see the past and present in our lives. Without these photographs we will not be able to see many beautiful landscapes or paintings around the world.
Q:What function/purpose/utility do photographs serve for us as individuals? For us as members of a family or community? For anonymous/unknown audiences?
ReplyDelete"Photographs do more than redefine the stuff of ordinary experience (people, things, events, whatever we see -- albeit differently, often inattentively -- with natural vision) and add vast amounts of material that we never see at all" (156).
This quote is meaningful because it explains how photographs can redefine an experience, evens, things, and refresh memories. Also, photographs helps us to keep memories of people. Photographs can take us back to our past and refresh old memories or experiences.
Photographs serve as a mark of memories and experiences 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 memory of special moments that were shared as a 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.
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 says 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."
I never realized my fallacious thinking when I looked at pictures. Yes, I viewed photos with a small dose of skepticism, but often I would unintentionally accept what the photo showed as "what happened". Pictures only capture some of the unique characteristics of the whole event and I never thought about: "what went on before/after?", "what else is the picture missing?", or "why only photograph this specific area?". This seems rather simple, but I have never had any considerable interest in photography or something to nudge me into looking at photographs differently.
I enjoyed reading this interesting and detailed paper from Sontag and I developed a bigger perspective of photography from it.
Q: 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)."
How does a photograph's essence or identity change?
ReplyDelete“The problem with Feuerbach’s contrast of “original” with “copy” is its static definitions of reality and image. It assumes that what is real persists, unchanged and intact, while only images have changed: shored up by the most tenuous claims to credibility, they have somehow become more seductive. But the notion of the image and reality are complementary. When the notion of reality changes, so does that of the image, and vice versa.”
I found this quote very meaningful because I agree with what they say. I agree that a photograph looses its essence/identity when it is copied. It is because the copy does not have the same value. A photograph’s identity is changed when someone changes the reality.
What function/ purpose/ utility do photographs serve for us as individuals?
ReplyDelete"...we can acquire something as information (rather than experience)." I can describe for you what many landmarks look like, not because I've seen them in person, but because I've seen them in photographs. I think it's probably worth it to travel and experience things in person, but it's just not always possible. Photographs give us a way to experience things that we can't be a part of physically.
Can photography be art?
ReplyDelete"Images are always compatible, or can be made compatible, even when the realities they depict are not."
I believe this quotes holds meaning to this question because a photo can hold a different purpose/function/utility for each one of us. A photo taken by someone of a house on the beach could remind the photographer of his childhood home but to me it can imply a relaxing getaway. A photograph can be made compatible to your likings versus what the photo actually means to the photographer, which I think is art.
Q: What function/purpose/utility do photographs serve for us as individuals?
ReplyDelete“A capitalist society requires a culture based on images. It needs to furnish vast amounts of entertainment in order to stimulate buying and anesthetize the injuring of class, race, and sex. And it needs to gather unlimited amounts of information, the better to exploit natural resources, increase productivity, keep order, make war, give jobs to bureaucrats. The camera’s twin capacities, to subjectivize reality and to objectify it, ideally serve these needs and strengthen them” (p.g. 178).
I find this quote meaningful because with photographs we only see what the photographer wanted us to see; it does not show the whole truth. People can be manipulated into believing something is true because it is seen in a photograph. This is something that I believe is leading people into making decisions they might not have made if they would not have seen the photograph. Seeing a picture of an advertisement for a hamburger and seeing the hamburger in person is a great example of this because the advertised hamburger might have looked bigger or tastier than that of the real one.
How is photography different from other forms of art (like literature and painting)?
ReplyDelete"Paintings invariably sum up; photographs usually do not. Photographic images are pieces of evidence in an ongoing biography or history. And one photograph, unlike one painting, implies that there will be others" (Sontag 166).
How is it similar?
"For us, there are historical processes with awesomely complex and sometimes contradictory meanings; and arts which draw much of their value from our consciousness of time as history, like photography" (Sontag 174).
From my understanding, photographs and pieces of art are different because when there is an image, it usually provides information or evidence of the past. It shares with a person a vision of reality, and we can infer from a photograph that there are more images that can provide meaning to something that has already happened. A piece of art or literature can be imagined and does not necessarily implicate that what is provided in context is real. However, there are similarities between artwork and photographs, such as the meanings behind portraits of literature. Because in our society we accept different values and we acknowledge our history, there are many different interpretations behind different artworks whether it is a photograph or piece of literature. Not all societies share the same views as us, so the flexibility of photography is not in their best interest.
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DeleteWhat function/purpose/utility do photographs serve for us as individuals? For us as members of a family or community?
ReplyDelete"Having a photograph of Shakespeare would be like having a nail from the True Cross." (Pg 154)
Sontag is illustrating how precious and valuable a photograph of Shakespeare would be to her, to the world. This artifact, a photograph of a specific time, day, person, is a way to hold a piece of history in your hand. A time that can forever be cherished, studied, remembered. A photograph is not just an interpretation of the past, it's a real live piece of the past.
On page 156 of Sontag’s The Image World, she states “The importance of photographic images as the medium through which more and more enters our experience is finally, only a by-product of their effectiveness in furnishing knowledge dissociated from and independent of experience.”
ReplyDeleteI found this quote meaningful because it expresses how a photograph is an instrument used to share an experience. A photograph is a single experience lived by the photographer that can then be lived again and again by its audience. This is very important because it allows the observer to feel the experience that couldn’t otherwise be lived. This answers the questions, what function/purpose/utility do photographs serve for us as individuals?
Does art require context? In other words, does an artwork lose anything out of context?
ReplyDelete"Knowing a great deal about what is in the world (art, catastrophe, the beauties of nature) through photographic images, people are frequently disappointed, surprised, unmoved when they see the real thing." (pg. 168)
A good example of real life not measuring up to what we see in photographs can be illustrated through people's relationship with Instagram. There are a variety of lists on Buzzfeed.com that compare situations and subjects in real life to how they are presented on Instagram. We sometimes value slick, filtered, perfectly staged images over reality. I took my daughter to San Francisco recently. Before the trip she had viewed photos online, including some of my own from past trips. During our ferry ride through the bay I pointed out the Golden Gate bridge, Alcatraz prison, and other sights I found beautiful and her response was "hmm, I'm going inside to get hot cocoa". She simply wasn't that impressed with actually experiencing these things. She did take a few pictures that she subsequently cropped, filtered, and posted to Instagram.
Why do people take photographs?
ReplyDelete“Photographs are a way of imprisoning reality, understood as recalcitrant, inaccessible; of making it stand still. Or they can enlarge a reality that is felt to be shrunk, hollowed out, perishable, remote. One can’t possess reality, one can possess (and be possessed by) images-as according to Proust, most ambitious of voluntary prisoners, one can’t possess the present but one can possess the past.”
This quote is meaningful because it gives a reason as to why people take photographs. Taking photographs is a way of preserving the past, even when it is not meant to be preserved.