At first glance, I expected this week’s topic to be a little more straightforward than those we have dealt with thus far. While video, radio, and print media all have an element of direct communication involved (through an actual discourse of words), photography seemed to be to really just be made up of one element: the visual. And while this is somewhat true on the surface, I was amazed to find out how deep something so simple could become right off the bat, with my reading of the Crary piece.
Although Crary touched on photography itself, his writing focused much more closely on his idea of the camera obscura—the tendency of people, after the emergence of photo media, to image real life in the world as looking out into that world through the lens of a camera. I found it interesting that this work looked at the topic by analyzing the observer/recipient of photography rather than the subject of the photo. In fact, Crary seems to argue that over time, the camera obscura has transformed, needing to update itself as our world modernizes.
It has come to be that “the observer is simultaneously the object of knowledge and the object of procedures of stimulation and normalization, which have the essential capacity to produce experience for the subject” (Crary 41). No longer does a photo itself hold a certain meaning; there is no way for a specific meaning to be conveyed clearly and truthfully through that medium. It is up to the observer to give it meaning, calling the truthfulness of photography even more into question: “The issue was not just how does one know what is real, but that new forms of the real were being fabricated and a new truth about the capacities of a human subject as being articulated in these terms” (Crary 40).
So what happens on the part of the subject? Does it even matter what goes on behind the scenes of a photo if its destiny is to be misinterpreted anyway? Sprague and Pinney both discuss the question of whether a photo can convey certain things about a person. I felt that Sprague’s description of photography in the Yoruba tribe in West Africa was almost more relatable to painting. He emphasized the use of different poses and props and settings to convey certain traditional information about the subjects, whether about the holiday they were celebrating, or their social or political status. This left me wondering, though: In modern day America, we are more familiar with photography as an act of capturing a moment. Sprague’s description of Yoruba photography seems very premeditated to me, whereas I think of photography more as reactionary. As soon as I had this realization, I continued reading, and stumbled upon Sprague’s admittance that “many Yoruba would not consciously know, or be able to articulate, how their photographs reflect commonly held values and myths,” but instead, “the actual structure and symbolic meaning of the photographic image are not consciously considered; it serves only to trigger the viewer’s memory of the subject” (Sprague 251). I was glad that he acknowledged the portion of society that does not think of photography as anything more than a way to capture a moment worth capturing.
Finally, Pinney takes Sprague’s view of photography one step further. While Sprague emphasizes the structural formulation of a photo, Pinney draws the personal factor to our attention. The one line that sums up his question is that one “should be able to read a man’s character from his face” (Pinney 90). He seems to decide that there can exist a “disjunction between the external surface and the moral interior” (Pinney 92), and for that reason, it is nearly impossible to accurately depict and assess someone’s true personality through photography. I’d argue that this is true of any visual art or media form, and perhaps even true of other media, such as cinema. The level of honesty that a photographer, can expect from his subjects is definitely worth questioning. And, even if the subject is being completely honest, only so much of that can be portrayed through a two-dimensional image.
We even touched on this in lecture today, and something I’d like to add to our discussion is the possibility that photographers often go into their shoots with an idea of what they’d like the resulting image to be, to show and tell about the subject. The portrait of the Afghan girl, for example, is supposed to show her fear and vulnerability. However, an observer would look at it, know the circumstances of the photo shoot (for National Geographic), see her bright green eyes and luxurious colorful clothing (probably edited for effect), and doubt the intended meaning, giving it a meaning of their own. Going full circle back to Crary, what is reality in this case? Is it what the photographer intended, what each individual observer takes from the resulting photo, or none of the above? I’d argue none of the above, because to accurately depict someone’s personality through photography, especially after reading Sprague and Pinney, is nearly impossible.
Jessica DeBakey
3 comments:
I also agree in the previous posts that I expected photography to include a more interactive meaning like that of video, radio, etc. However I was also pleasantly surprised in the ways that photos are used in different cultures and how they are able to tell something about a person. Last night I was watching The Others with Nicole Kidman, and in a scene was the presentation of pictures of the dead. These pictures were meant to remember the dead and give them the opportunity to stay connected with the living. I thought this completely supported what the Pinney and and Sprague articles in that photographs are used in many different cultures through tradition and remembrance. I specifically found it crazy about what Sprague explained about photography having spiritual powers in the Yoruban culture. I never imagined photos to have that type of significance and power in a culture. However, the more I thought about it the more I identified with photos in my life and how they have the ability to replicate memories and different stages of my life with those around me. Photography definitely impacts life, and as Crary suggests, it has had to conform to the shift of the observer and what is meant by observing implies a process of the senses. However, I also find it important to note that the Sprague also leads to admitting that Yoruba probably uses photos to capture a moment, similar to our modern society, and that it is very difficult to determine character or personality of a subject based on a photograph.
They say a picture is worth a 1000 words. What immediately pops into my mind was the picture we saw in class of the two people kissing on the ground while there was a riot going on in the background. Your mind sees so many different things happening here. What is going on here? Are two people just kissing or is he protecting her from this riot in some way or what? Everyone can have their own interpretation of what or how or why these two people are there but you can get no real explanation just by looking at the picture.
Jessica Debakey mentions in her blog, “No longer does a photo itself hold a certain meaning; there is no way for a specific meaning to be conveyed clearly and truthfully through that medium. It is up to the observer to give it meaning” Like the example the professor used when he took a picture of a person taking a picture of the Mona Lisa. It is not the same as seeing the painting in person, or taking a picture of it does not give you a million dollar photo, but the photo makes the memory more meaningful for you. Taking a photo of another person taking the photo of the painting makes the observer think that there must be value to this painting of the Mona Lisa.
In Sprague’s readings, he states that “the actual structure and symbolic meaning of the photographic image are not consciously considered: it serves only to trigger the view and memory of the subject” (Sprague 251). Referring back to the Mona Lisa, taking a picture of Mona Lisa gives you a very special memory of that action and how awesome it was to be near such a prized piece in history.
Iyan mention in his blog, only the lens "sees" things, but the lens is hidden.” The lens notices things that the eye would not see as clearly. The video clip below shows an example of how we do not really see what is true in the Dove Soap commercial using a model. This shows how “beauty is distorted” due to the changes it makes through the use of Photoshop. Photoshop hides the model under the disguise of “realism.” It constantly changes her until she looks like the perfect image they are looking for and not what she really looks like. It makes it hard to believe that any photo taken is the real thing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omBfg3UwkYM
-Chase Winter
Like Jen, I also found it interesting that Sprague mentioned how photography in the Yoruban culture has spiritual powers. In the Yoruban culture, twins are sacred children with spiritual connections and thus their portraits are taken and hung in the family’s household. However, if a twin died before a portrait was taken, the photographer would take a picture of the surviving twin, develop the photograph twice and place both photographs adjacent to each other, depicting a pair of twins sitting side by side. If the twins were of opposite gender, the surviving female twin would dress up in her brother’s clothes and take a second picture. Similar photographic manipulation was discussed in the Pinney article. In Central India, photographs were redone as portraits to honor the deceased. Nanda Kishor Joshi was one of those photographers. “Whatever a person wants can be put in the photo, make the clothes this colour, even put new clothes in- if no kurta is worn, no coat is worn, then a coat can be given” (Pinney 99). Nanda Kishor Joshi has the ability to change to photograph completely to please the observer. I found it very interesting that Pinney mentioned that Nanda Kishor Joshi’s “artistry is concerned with perfecting the past, rendering the transient flux recorded in photographic emulsion into more permanent more true forms” (Pinney 97). Wouldn’t changing the way the subjects were dressed or even adding a mustache or fixing a lazy eye be the opposite of “perfecting the past” and creating “true forms”? These two examples show that photograph really cannot be a true representation of the world. Crary mentioned that Descartes’ believed that the camera was “compatible with his quest to found knowledge on a purely objective view of the world” (Crary 32). In reality, the photograph is far from objective and is often staged even when its purpose is to capture a moment in history.
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