Photography theory

[Sejanus.Aelianus]

maybe TV has just made it easier to remain ignorant

I think that's something of a non sequitur. It seems to me that TV is the great educator. Even if you consume a diet of game shows and soaps you can learn an awful lot. Not all of it is accurate but then, neither is the average school history book.

 

[kbg32]

Adams wrote this mid century.
"Not everybody trusts paintings but people believe photographs." - Ansel Adams

I always felt that was one of his most ridiculous egotistical quotes.

Rich, you hit the nail squarely on the head. Sejanus, you hit the head on the wall. :bang:

 

[airfrogusmc]

I think that's something of a non sequitur. It seems to me that TV is the great educator. Even if you consume a diet of game shows and soaps you can learn an awful lot. Not all of it is accurate but then, neither is the average school history book.

It can educate PBS rocks but thats not where the masses choose to go. Big Brother, The Bachelor, Storage Wars, Jerry Springer and the who's the daddy test. Yeah real educational LoL. What people are learning form those shows is how to behave badly and it's creeping into all parts of our society. It still doesn't change that Springer lost ratings to Maury because Maury's show is more shocking. In fact in the advertising they use the word SHOCKING. Just take a look at popular shows from the 70s when the essays were written and look at the change in popular TV in 14. What was considered shocking in film in the 70s is now TV today.

 

[airfrogusmc]

I always felt that was one of his most ridiculous egotistical quotes.

Rich, you hit the nail squarely on the head. Sejanus, you hit the head on the wall. :bang:

I just see it as him stating what most feel. Adams clearly believed that photographs are manipulations. In fact thats the entire basis of the zone system. It's not to capture the world as it actually looks but as how it looks to the photographer in his minds eye and the zone system is the tool to help him/her to do that consistently.

 

[Sejanus.Aelianus]

Yeah real educational LoL.

It would be very rude of me to say that comes accross as elitist snobbery, so I won't say it... :angel:

 

[airfrogusmc]

Yep the return to cave can be brutal...

So now you can learn from who's your daddy DNA tests and if you don't think you can learn useful information from that you are now a snob LoL...

 

[Sparrow]

Flicker certainly isn't my barometer. But have you seen the media in general. My wife's aunt won't even turn on TV for the violence. So you have become desensitized just as she said would happen LoL....

I have read it, several times. BTW. You should be able to tell if I have or not by my comments.

If you are talking stills (she was at times was referring to all image related media, Witkin comes to mind and all the video and multi-media imagery that he inspired certainly supports the need to keep getting bigger shocks (see the NIN Witkin inspired videos) and the fact the more of that we see the more desensitized we become as a society and that has happened. You need to look no farther than the ultra violent lyrics in Rap and the video games our kids and grandkids play.

... except that isn't the case is it, we still find that which is shocking a shock ... otherwise why was there such an outcry at the Abu Ghraib photos, why are we locking up RMC Sgt Blackman on the evidence of a tactical camera?

It was Ms Sontag who restricted her view to still-photos saying "Movies and television programs light up walls, flicker, and go out"

 

[airfrogusmc]

So TV and media haven't become more shocking and the violence isn't more real than in the 1970s?

 

[__--]

It can educate PBS rocks but thats not where the masses choose to go. Big Brother, The Bachelor, Storage Wars, Jerry Springer and the who's the daddy test. Yeah real educational LoL. What people are learning form those shows is how to behave badly and it's creeping into all parts of our society. It still doesn't change that Springer lost ratings to Maury because Maury's show is more shocking. In fact in the advertising they use the word SHOCKING. Just take a look at popular shows from the 70s when the essays were written and look at the change in popular TV in 14. What was considered shocking in film in the 70s is now TV today.

All you're saying is that the Romans knew what they were about with bread and circuses, panem et circenses in Latin. I remember some years ago visiting the town of Orange in Vaucluse in the Provence (Occitan in Provençal), where there is a Roman amphitheater that is supposed to be the most impressive one still exiting in Europe. The audioguide for the visit to the amphitheater explained that, in the period of Roman decadence, plays shown at the amphitheater almost invariably contained scenes with fellatio or copulation on stage. Let's face it, art or high culture is inherently an elitist thing.

MITCH ALLAND/Potomac, MD
Download links for book project pdf files
Chiang Tung Days
Tristes Tropiques
Bangkok Hysteria
Paris au rythme de Basquiat and Other Poems

 

[Sparrow]

So TV and media haven't become more shocking and the violence isn't more real than in the 1970s?

I don't know ... but that isn't what the essays are about or what the rest of us are discussing

In common with Ms Sontag I was shocked when I saw film of the german concentration camps on All Our Yesterdays in 1969 ... I was still shocked 25 years on by that iconic image of Michael Burke holding one of the Ethiopian children affected by the famine 25 years later ... do you no longer care about such things?

 

[airfrogusmc]

Her point about society to continue to keep needing bigger and better shocks and the evolution of that to main stream media certainly has come true. Just turn on the tube.

 

[Sparrow]

... as I said I don't know, but your Aunty not liking the telly or me abandoning radio 4 for daytime TV is hardly proof positive is it? and that assertion is not what she said, she said still photography was unique in that respect

 

[airfrogusmc]

... as I said I don't know, but your Aunty not liking the telly or me abandoning radio 4 for daytime TV is hardly proof positive is it? and that assertion is not what she said, she said still photography was unique in that respect

IIRC she was making a point that photography influenced all media and have you seen Witkins work? It is certainly is a lot more shocking than Arbus. And they have both influenced all kinds of media.

And to think that main stream media and images aren't more shocking than they were in the 70s just shows how hard it is to have any kind of real discussion on the internet. If you turn on the TV now and look at the TV from 1976 there is a huge difference in shock value. And look at the work of Arbus and go to galleries and exhibits today and what was once shocking is now the everyday. Even Witkins work has less a shock impact over the years and looks tame compared to some of the things we now see on say CSI or the French detective series Spiral.

But again per usual this is running in a big circle and not going anywhere but to talk of snobbery and elitism which has nothing to do with whether Sontag got something right or not or the more important topic that the OP should read it and evaluate it for himself. And if it were not a relevant topic this conversation wouldn't still be taking place about a book of essays from the late 1970s. I agree with some of what she wrote and I think that history itself has proven some to be right and some to not be right. But I am pretty convinced that this kind of discussion is indeed just one intent of the book.

And if you read it was not my aunty....

And the likes of shock TV like Jerry Springer, Maury and the endless DNA tests and graphic violence didn't exist on TV in the 1970s. Midnight Cowboy got an X rating in movie theaters and there are TV shows, minus the 5 words you can't say on TV, (George Carlin) now that are just as shocking.

But hey we will keep arguing right or wrong just to prove something that has actually taken place so with that I have said all I am going to say on the topic. I have images to make. BTW if you are in New York on July 1 please stop by..

One of my photographs was selected for this exhibit at the Soho Gallery in New York. It was a juried show and only 40 images were chosen from over 2000. The opening is July 1.

Heres the info..
http://www.sohophoto.com/participate/competitions/national/

One of the judges is the daughter of Joel Meyerowitz., Ariel Meyerowitz.

And here is the photograph that they selected.

And again, I am outta here, (this time of sure LoL) but PMs to those really interested in discussion always welcome.

 

[nongfuspring]

Her point about society to continue to keep needing bigger and better shocks and the evolution of that to main stream media certainly has come true. Just turn on the tube.

I'm unsure if things have gotten more or less violent over the last few decades. I think arguments for and against will have difficulty quantifying themselves beyond personal anecdotes and untangling themselves from developments in technology, shifting social mores, or even the communially agreed definition of what violence is.

Regardless, I'm wondering if Sontag's notion of shock is a little simplistic here. I think many of the most horrifying images/films aren't just about parading around the abject in full view but are instead about suggestion and evocation. If we talk about this from the point of view of modern psychoanalysis, the most shocking thing you can be confronted with is your own repressed desire. Photography can make a situation for this due to the fact they're so reductive (a still frame in a fluid narrative) and so we end up unconsciously imagining a chain of causality, which can end up being a product of our desires.

In other words, shock isn't just about showing violence, the most radically shocking images are the ones are relatively pedestrian but reflect our own violence back at us.

 

[Sparrow]

IIRC she was making a point that photography influenced all media and have you seen Witkins work? It is certainly is a lot more shocking than Arbus. And they have both influenced all kinds of media.

You think Witkins' photos inform the mainstream media?

 

[airfrogusmc]

JEESE I just keep gett'n sucked back in. The influence may or may not be in a direct way. But his work in 1980s was considered very shocking. I went to a lecture and a show and everyone was effected in some way. That then creeped into music videos NINs and more and more artists of all types kept getting more and more shocking moving the bar and thus affecting all of society in some way by slowly being the new norm thus proving Sontags point about once society sees something shocking that will eventually becomes the norm and the bar shifts and what was once unacceptable in now acceptable. It has shifted since the 1970s. Arbus, Witkin and others have all be part of the shift. Once you step out of the cave you have been exposed to something. Once you see something it can't been unseen. Those experiences over time will shift the bar for good or bad.

To nongfuspring I should have just stuck to shocking but violence can be shocking. IIRC Sontag was referring to shock in general not necessarily only violence though that is part of it all. Witkins work isn't violent. My advice is, if you haven't, read the book and search out some of the artists were have been discussing.

Now I'm out... SORRY LoL...

 

[nongfuspring]

To nongfuspring I should have just stuck to shocking but violence can be shocking. IIRC Sontag was referring to shock in general not necessarily only violence though that is part of it all. Witkins work isn't violent. My advice is, if you haven't, read the book and search out some of the artists were have been discussing.

I've read the book and know the artists. See you.

 

[Sejanus.Aelianus]

JEESE I just keep gett'n sucked back in. They influence nay or may not be in a direct way. But his work in 1980s was considered very shocking.

Who did he shock? I only ask, because I recall seeing his work in various magazines during the 'eighties and the general response appeared to be that, while he was clearly trying to shock people, in Britain at least, they just laughed at him.

On mainland western Europe, I doubt he even caused a raised eyebrow.

Anyway, I thought you weren't talking to us. :angel:

 

[Sparrow]

IIRC she was making a point that photography influenced all media and have you seen Witkins work? It is certainly is a lot more shocking than Arbus. And they have both influenced all kinds of media.

And to think that main stream media and images aren't more shocking than they were in the 70s just shows how hard it is to have any kind of real discussion on the internet. If you turn on the TV now and look at the TV from 1976 there is a huge difference in shock value. And look at the work of Arbus and go to galleries and exhibits today and what was once shocking is now the everyday. Even Witkins work has less a shock impact over the years and looks tame compared to some of the things we now see on say CSI or the French detective series Spiral.

But again per usual this is running in a big circle and not going anywhere but to talk of snobbery and elitism which has nothing to do with whether Sontag got something right or not or the more important topic that the OP should read it and evaluate it for himself. And if it were not a relevant topic this conversation wouldn't still be taking place about a book of essays from the late 1970s. I agree with some of what she wrote and I think that history itself has proven some to be right and some to not be right. But I am pretty convinced that this kind of discussion is indeed just one intent of the book.

And if you read it was not my aunty....

And the likes of shock TV like Jerry Springer, Maury and the endless DNA tests and graphic violence didn't exist on TV in the 1970s. Midnight Cowboy got an X rating in movie theaters and there are TV shows, minus the 5 words you can't say on TV, (George Carlin) now that are just as shocking.

But hey we will keep arguing right or wrong just to prove something that has actually taken place so with that I have said all I am going to say on the topic. I have images to make. BTW if you are in New York on July 1 please stop by..

One of my photographs was selected for this exhibit at the Soho Gallery in New York. It was a juried show and only 40 images were chosen from over 2000. The opening is July 1.

Heres the info..
http://www.sohophoto.com/participate/competitions/national/

One of the judges is the daughter of Joel Meyerowitz., Ariel Meyerowitz.

And here is the photograph that they selected.

And again, I am outta here, (this time of sure LoL) but PMs to those really interested in discussion always welcome.

I'm sorry if you think I am attacking you in any way, I am not, I am testing the arguments and my assessment of the work

I think I congratulated you at the time, but if I did not please accept my congratulations now ... as I have said in the past I admire your photography and contribution here very much.

Kind regards