SolaresLarrave
My M5s need red dots!
CLICK HERE for an article about the value of snapshots. It's a very interesting piece, kinda pertinent to what we sometimes do. 
Not that there's anything wrong with that!
Not that there's anything wrong with that!
mfunnell
Shaken, so blurred
"the devious lie of the snapshot" is a great turn of phrase. I can think of more than a few, and more than a few ways a snapshot can be a devious lie that weren't covered in the article.
But I don't think the phrase covers all, or even most, of what snapshots are. "the guileless truth of the snapshot" would be more descriptive of many.
Yet neither nor both phrases can encompass the snapshot in all its aspects.
I also came away feeling that the article was somehow more slippery than necessary or desirable in the way it danced around what might class as a "snapshot".
Worth pondering some more, methinks...
...Mike
But I don't think the phrase covers all, or even most, of what snapshots are. "the guileless truth of the snapshot" would be more descriptive of many.
Yet neither nor both phrases can encompass the snapshot in all its aspects.
I also came away feeling that the article was somehow more slippery than necessary or desirable in the way it danced around what might class as a "snapshot".
Worth pondering some more, methinks...
...Mike
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Morca007
Matt
Interesting article, thanks for the link.
I'm far, far too young to think of a time without photography, but I wonder how much the snapshot has altered the way we think about the past...
I'm far, far too young to think of a time without photography, but I wonder how much the snapshot has altered the way we think about the past...
noimmunity
scratch my niche
capture or flash? images in the age of general overexposure
capture or flash? images in the age of general overexposure
My thanks go to SolaresLavarre for the interesting reference, and, more significantly beyond that, asking us to talk about the meaning of snapshots. I myself wouldn't pretend to shoot anything but.
But on to this essay (I hope we can do another thread where the value of snapshots is discussed without reference to this article but to our own experiences). It is as much a review of an exhibition (and an event with which Americans are obsessed) as an essay on the practice and theory of snapshots. This is what frames the discussion of "snapshots" in this instance
The discussion of the everyday (= snapshots) juxtaposed against the lengthy discussion of political catastrophe certainly falls within the problem noted by Walter Benjamin 70 years ago: we are faced generally with a ubiquitous aestheticization of politics. What Benjamin could not have foreseen was not just the wild proliferation of images we witness today (cited by the exhibition's curator), but also the fact that the very concept of "image" itself has been profoundly and fundamentally displaced or challenged by the advent of digital and virtual technologies. I think it was sitemistic who reminded us in another thread that the fundamental constitutive element of an image is that it must have a frame. In other words, the frame marks a line between the image and the reality it is supposed to be drawn from. Of course this line has always been subject to intense debate and conflict. But today are we not in the unprecedented situation in which the line itself can no longer be recognized as such? In fact, outside the frame of the image is just another image.
This idea of the "image outside the image" may be dangerous but it contains still a possibility for collective compassion and action. I think this is exactly what the author of the article, Dr. Louis Masur, has in mind by asking us to consider the potential behind "the devious lie of the snapshot."
For that reason, it is so much more disappointing to read how he chooses to focus our attention nevertheless on a *moral* question in the relation (he calls it capture, a word I really think needs to be rejected) between the catastrophic event and the image rather than a rich and complex site of where the flash of politics, economy, aesthetics and individual singularities are all exposed. This moral turn is typical of the overwhelming tendency to overexposure that we find in images today.
More and more, this is what images are being used for: to mobilize people around "depoliticized humanitarian" causes that are really pretexts for intervention on behalf of the imperial coalition. The function invariably is to mask something (not a "truth" but a possibility for the collective invention of a compassionate future) by means of overexposure. Problems such as the legacy of colonial violence and its political and economic consequences are problems that coalesced over decades, if not centuries. Yet when the British and American press turn to discussion of contemporary Iraq, the problems are always reduced to a time frame and a story line that invariably excludes this history and its contemporary prolongation: there is only talk about the brutal Hussein regime and ethnic conflict. No mention of the very precise and detailed history of British colonial techniques of government and their prolongation into the postcolonial period. That cropping out of the picture is also one of the "catastrophes" that should be included under the sign of 9/11. A responsible response to these sorts of problems cannot be formulated exclusively in the moralizing temporality of "911 emergency response".
Snapshots usually show best a certain relationship in which the photographer herself is involved. That seems to me a fundamental clue...
capture or flash? images in the age of general overexposure
My thanks go to SolaresLavarre for the interesting reference, and, more significantly beyond that, asking us to talk about the meaning of snapshots. I myself wouldn't pretend to shoot anything but.
But on to this essay (I hope we can do another thread where the value of snapshots is discussed without reference to this article but to our own experiences). It is as much a review of an exhibition (and an event with which Americans are obsessed) as an essay on the practice and theory of snapshots. This is what frames the discussion of "snapshots" in this instance
The discussion of the everyday (= snapshots) juxtaposed against the lengthy discussion of political catastrophe certainly falls within the problem noted by Walter Benjamin 70 years ago: we are faced generally with a ubiquitous aestheticization of politics. What Benjamin could not have foreseen was not just the wild proliferation of images we witness today (cited by the exhibition's curator), but also the fact that the very concept of "image" itself has been profoundly and fundamentally displaced or challenged by the advent of digital and virtual technologies. I think it was sitemistic who reminded us in another thread that the fundamental constitutive element of an image is that it must have a frame. In other words, the frame marks a line between the image and the reality it is supposed to be drawn from. Of course this line has always been subject to intense debate and conflict. But today are we not in the unprecedented situation in which the line itself can no longer be recognized as such? In fact, outside the frame of the image is just another image.
This idea of the "image outside the image" may be dangerous but it contains still a possibility for collective compassion and action. I think this is exactly what the author of the article, Dr. Louis Masur, has in mind by asking us to consider the potential behind "the devious lie of the snapshot."
For that reason, it is so much more disappointing to read how he chooses to focus our attention nevertheless on a *moral* question in the relation (he calls it capture, a word I really think needs to be rejected) between the catastrophic event and the image rather than a rich and complex site of where the flash of politics, economy, aesthetics and individual singularities are all exposed. This moral turn is typical of the overwhelming tendency to overexposure that we find in images today.
More and more, this is what images are being used for: to mobilize people around "depoliticized humanitarian" causes that are really pretexts for intervention on behalf of the imperial coalition. The function invariably is to mask something (not a "truth" but a possibility for the collective invention of a compassionate future) by means of overexposure. Problems such as the legacy of colonial violence and its political and economic consequences are problems that coalesced over decades, if not centuries. Yet when the British and American press turn to discussion of contemporary Iraq, the problems are always reduced to a time frame and a story line that invariably excludes this history and its contemporary prolongation: there is only talk about the brutal Hussein regime and ethnic conflict. No mention of the very precise and detailed history of British colonial techniques of government and their prolongation into the postcolonial period. That cropping out of the picture is also one of the "catastrophes" that should be included under the sign of 9/11. A responsible response to these sorts of problems cannot be formulated exclusively in the moralizing temporality of "911 emergency response".
Snapshots usually show best a certain relationship in which the photographer herself is involved. That seems to me a fundamental clue...
Louis Masur said:
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zuikologist
.........................
sitemistic said:
it is the lack of context that sometimes turns "snapshots" into what some would term "art". Turning the everyday into something detached, alienated and surreal.
edlake
The "Glory" Days
Here is a snapshot of my mother. I don't know when it was taken, but I can assume it was sometime in the late 1930's or early 40's when she was in her early 20's. I found it amoung other photos taken during WWII both before and after my mother joined the Army.
She was very proud of her service, and I have a photo of her in uniform in 1944, two years before I was born. Without these snapshots a large portion of her life would be denied to us, since we (my siblings and I) never saw these photos during her lifetime. Of course, they don't show all aspects of her life which would be impossible, but they give us a bit more insight into someone, without whom we would not exist.
Cheers.
Ed
She was very proud of her service, and I have a photo of her in uniform in 1944, two years before I was born. Without these snapshots a large portion of her life would be denied to us, since we (my siblings and I) never saw these photos during her lifetime. Of course, they don't show all aspects of her life which would be impossible, but they give us a bit more insight into someone, without whom we would not exist.
Cheers.
Ed
Attachments
JoeV
Thin Air, Bright Sun
This discussion of the viability of the snapshot reminds me of the mysterious musician known only as 'Jandek', who has published a sizable but obscure collection of odd, atonal music. Many of the album covers of Jandek have photos that look very 'snapshot-like'; and there's a continuity to some of the scenes and persons on these covers that could suggest these were once family snapshots that have been appropriated for another use. But, the beauty in all of it lies in the fact that we don't really know for sure. There's left for us a sense of mystery about the man, the band and the images we know as Jandek.
~Joe
~Joe
Terao
Kiloran
Morca007 said:
Search out the Poliakoff TV drama "Shooting the Past" for an exploration of that. Or for a movie perspective read Theodore Roszak's Flicker...
Terao
Kiloran
edlake said:
I have two snapshots of my maternal grandfather that have a similar impact - one taken in uniform when he joined up in 1940, and one taken probably less than a year later in North Africa. The difference in him is remarkable - fresh-faced slightly chubby innocent youth in one, and a much older worldly-wise man in the other. Barely the same man...