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In Ectoplasm, Geoffrey Bathen says, “Photography is faced with two apparent crises, one technological (the introduction of computerized images) and one epistemological (having to do with broader changes in ethics, knowledge, and culture)” (351). He is referring to the advent of digital technologies and its subsequent influence on the photographic medium. The technological crises is rather straightforward—people began to question whether an image produced or manipulated on a computer can be considered photographic—so I am choosing to focus my discussion on the epistemological crises brought about by advancements in digital medias. Bathen makes the argument that although all forms of photography involve intervention from the artist and some manipulation, “…digitization abandons even the rhetoric of truth that has been such an important part of photography’s cultural success” (353). Digital images are received with intense skepticism. There is no doubt that the newness of the art form contributes to this skepticism. However, Bathen also makes the argument that digitization loses credibility because it strips an image of its indexicality. There can be no guarantee that the digital image existed in a real time and space. Photography has had huge success in claiming objectivity because it is an index. No matter how much manipulation went into the taking or development of the picture, the viewer feels assured that the photograph documents a truth. In How To Do Things with Pictures, William Mitchell says that “the fact that what is represented on paper undeniably existed, if only for a moment, is the ultimate source of the medium’s extraordinary powers of persuasion” (320). Bathen theorizes that the perceived manipulability of digital photography will upset photography’s association with objectivity. For the first time, the issue of a “fake,” a non-authentic, photograph is discussed. Bathen describes the following epistemological challenge: “The prospect is that, unable to spot the ‘fake’ from the ‘real,’ viewers will increasingly discard their faith in the photograph’s ability to deliver objective truth” (351). I was caught off guard by this part of the essay. What exactly is the real photograph? And what separates the real from the fake? We came to the conclusion after reading Benjamin’s article that if all photographs are copies of a negative, than the reproduced photo is no less real than the original copy (yes, this is an oxymoron)? In this sense, there is no fake photograph. Bathen’s proposes that digital technologies pose the threat of fake photographs, ones in which the original idea of a photo is manipulated. The digital image is having to fight to be seen as real and authentic. Like other artists that we have read before, Bathen argues that photography-as-we-know-it is inevitably going to change as a result of digitalization. He even goes so far as to say that old style photography will die. But he is not sad or pessimistic. Instead, he says “Photography’s passing must necessarily entail the inscription of another way of seeing—and of being” (357). I appreciate Bathen’s careful attention to avoid technological determinism. He calls digital media the “manifestations of our culture’s latest worldview.” Digitization is the result of an increasing acceptance of a cyborg, part nature part machine, way of life. The author makes the brilliant point that “digitization, cosmetic surgery, cloning, genetic engineering…” share a common trend. All are revealing our “desire to attempt immorality” (355) by accepting the alteration, manipulation, and enhancement of nature by technology.

Ectoplasm: Photography in the Digital Age

Batchen’s essay deals with the transformation of photography in the digital age. Ironically, despite being titled “Ectoplasm: Photography in the Digital Age,” the word ectoplasm is neither used nor defined in the essay. To Batchen, photography itself has always been tied with the concept of preservation and death. His description of process of primitive portraits requiring the subject to play dead was reminiscent of the psychoanalytical view of photography as product of the “mummy complex.” Moreover, I find these notions of preservation and death seems to highlight what Batchen cites as one of the primary concerns with digital photography –that photographs may no longer be viewed as indexical evidence for one’s presence or being. However, while others debate the effect of digitization on “image integrity,” Batchen argues that, from its inception, photography has never been free of manipulation. He cites that examples manipulated magazine covers and contends that the mere act of adjusting the lighting and exposure to take a photograph challenges the photographic film’s indexical fidelity. It seems to me then that the efforts of artists ranging from Cindy Sherman to Lorna Simpson serve a similar function as digital photography by questioning our presumptions of photographs and truth. Despite being heralded as an objective medium free from human involvement (pencil of nature) and thus accurate account of reality, photographs have been shown by artists and now the photographic medium itself to be simply an unreliable method of preservation. In his essay, Batchen actively tries to undermine this notion of photography as a accurate reflection of truth. He describes photography as more something that is more akin to a network of indexes a collection of ghosts. While looking up “ectoplasm” on the internet, I found it interesting that digital photographs often listed as evidence of its existence along with text that offer scientific explanations to the optical effect. It then seems that photographs (especially digital photographs) are in many ways analogous to ectoplasm united by their existence as things that are both physical and the supernatural and their ability to incite controversy.

Ectoplasm

So this essay was really interesting to me because it followed my train of thought of how to approach photography. Relating photography to death, space and time is somewhat natural when thinking about photographs of past relatives or historical figures. "In stopping or turning back time, photography appeared to be once again playing with life and death." It plays with life and death because it shows you something that is gone, and can never be captured in the same way again. "photography has already enabled us to hand down to future ages a picture of the sunshine of yesterday." Batchen talks about two ways that photography will no longer portray objective truth: the first is through computers digitizing images so that they no longer can be trusted to portray reality, and the second is that the viewer cannot differentiate the original from copies or simulations. Benjamin brought up this topic of mechanical reproduction and how the aura will be lost due to photography, however, now not only is the aura lost, but so is the foundation on which photography was based: the portrayal of reality and truth of the surroundings.

Batchen mentions how portraits were reversed in concept because in order for the subject to be able to look alive, they would first have to constrain themselves like they were dead. Without this temporary embalming to take the photograph, the subjects actually appeared dead, like corpses. "Every photograph is therefore a chilling reminder of human mortality." Every photography reminds us that those in it will die or already have, which leads the viewer to ponder their own end.

"computer visualization, on the other hand, allows photographic-style images to be made in which there is potentially no direct referent to an outside world." At first, this makes you think that the entire basis of photography is shattered, but this is just another way to show the evolution of photography and how the artworld is currently being shaped. Soon there will be a new diagram to draw that has "not digital and not photography" written on one of the sides of the diamond.

Ectoplasm: Photography in the Digital Age

I really enjoyed Geoffrey Batchens' essay, I thought it was the perfect essay to conclude our discussion on photography with.  I found myself thinking about digital photography differently after I read Batchens' essay.  Because I have grown up in a digital age I take it for granted that pictures are probably altered in some way.  It seems everywhere images are photoshopped or airbrushed: magazine covers, images of nature, even personal photos can be altered to eliminate red-eye.  But I had always thought that anything being presented as photographic art would not be digitally altered, unless it was intentional.  Reading Batchens' essay made me realize the impact that digital enhancement had on photography, making people loose faith in what had previously been thought of as a medium that captured truth.

I enjoyed the way that Batchens' dealt with this seeming loss of faith.  He writes that digital photography allows human creativity to flourish because it provides a hands-on approach in all the different steps.  I thought this was a very interesting way of dealing with what many people consider a detachment from artistic principles.  Although I am not wholly convinced of his argument because I feel like digital photography, to a large extent, cheapens photographs, allowing anyone access to the photos.  Overall I appreciated Batchens' treatment of the difficult anomaly that digital photography presents to the art world.  

Ectoplasm: Photography in the Digital Age

I found this essay by Geoffrey Batchen to be one of the most interesting essays that we have read all semester. I believe it to be the most interesting because it deals with the recent changes and advancements in photography which made it highly relatable. Today there is much speculation over the concept of traditional photography. Is it dead? Alive? Where is it going and what will be seen of photography in the future?

Batchen speaks of the “widespread introduction of computer driven imaging processes that allows “fake” photos to be passed off as real ones.” This statement is very relatable to what is taking place with photography today as seen with magazines, tabloids, newsstands and photos released on the internet. Digitally altering photographs cause the images to lose their power as reliable sources of information and will quickly lead to just about everything being turned to “artificial nature.”

Digital imaging has become an overly fictional process which relies solely on technology and has taken over the traditional objection and art of photo taking. This statement only leads to the idea that if it is an “overly” fictional process already, there will be new and improved ways of altering photos in the future. This thought is a little frightening only because there are numerous possibilities of how photography can be altered and it could be possible that the natural art is destroyed altogether. Given the entire context of this situation, it seems as if only time will tell what is in store for the future of photography.

Ectoplasm

In this essay, there were many really intriguing statements about photography that we haven't ever discussed before. One in particular I'd like to talk about: "Whatever its nominal subject, photography was a visual inscription of the passing of time and therefore also an intimation of every viewer's own inevitable passing" (352 of R). We see photographs from decades ago that are records of time passed and people who have passed and it is true: they reveal the transitivity of our own lives and everything in our lives. It reminds me of the scene in Dead Poet's Society where Robin Williams is telling his class to seize the day. He says this as they look at old black and white pictures of boys who went to the school who knows how many years ago. That scene has always stuck with me and I think it's because of how powerful looking at old photographs or even recent photographs can be. Pictures from our childhoods reveal how much we've grown and how fast the time goes. Even looking at pictures from my parent's childhoods brings a sadness of how gone those days are and how fast my days are going to go. Photography can be a morbid subject, revealing some truths we'd rather not accept. Some might say thats one of the best things about it.

I also thought some statements about digital photography were interesting: "...digital images are actually closer in spirit to the creative processes of art than they are to the truth values of documentary" (353) The reason the author says this, I think, is because of all work that goes into "touching up" or refinishing a digital work, or maybe even manipulating it, whether its the color, format, or contrast. I would tend to disagree, although I do agree that it takes a skilled person to make a great digital picture. I think that film photography needs a lot of patience and work that is different but still "using the digits" and creates photographs that are just as impressive as some digital pictures. I am sad that film is becoming obselete and the dark room is becoming something of the past.

Ectoplasm: Photography in the Digital Age

I really enjoyed Geoffrey Batchens essay on the photography in the digital age. I found it remarkable to read that “in 1989 photography was dead,” which I find really hard to understand but if though about it makes complete sense. Individuals in the past relied on photography to display the truth and used to documents. And since the development of the computer, image processing has taken of the medium and people have lost faith in the truthfulness of photography. Another important concept that I found interesting and easier to understand was that it was “no longer possible to tell any original from its simulations.” Which goes back to the Benjamin’s constant argument of the loss of the aura in reproductions, there are so many multiples in the world that are so accessible it loses its value. One example was the “After Sherrie Levine” website that was discovered, the website was a reproduction of Levine’s reproduction of Evan’s work. At the website there could have been infinite amount of reproductions made with certificate of proof also.
As the essay continues I found the idea of photography being a vision of life and death very compelling. Initially, I though photography as to a medium to capture life but I was wrong, in the beginning with the start of daguerreotypes being associated with “black magic”. It continues with the explanation of the slowness of exposure times and the creation of corpse like images. However, to contradict with the idea of photography being related to the idea of death Benjamin again inputs the idea of the aura and its death that is often represented in photography is a result of “authentic social relations” that “could be brought back to life”. Because the sacrifice of the spiritual authenticity within a photography it allows relations to develop, and on a deeper level, the development of capitalism.

The Digital

The concept of digital photography, to me, is both beneficial and detrimental to the medium of photography. It gives the photographer the ability to combine two images or ideas and “present a possible world rather than an actual one” (325). However, it also has the ability to trick the viewer into believing an untruth and can take away from the pureness associated with photography. Digital photography can make the viewer question whether what appears in the image is actually real. Both essays address the concept of manipulating image without the viewer being aware. Mitchell states, “[digital photography] provides an opportunity for the photographic fakers to take advantage of us” (320). Batchen writes, “newspapers and magazines have…manipulated their images in one way or another” (353-4). The idea of a digitally altered image being presented as a pure photograph is disconcerting. I feel that if the observer understood the original had been tampered with, there would be no conflict surrounding this new technological development. However, producing these images without notifying the viewer is somewhat of a lie. Overall, I do not like the fact that photographs are no longer seen with a sense of purity. If an image has an astounding appearance the initial reaction is no longer awe, but the repetitive question of “was that photo-shopped?”
Batchen’s essay ended with the statement, “Photography will cease to be a dominant element of modern life only when the desire to photograph…is refigured as another social and cultural reformation” (357). I agree with this claim, for I do not believe digitalization will cause the death of photography. I think it will just alter its path a bit; changes have been seen throughout the history of photography and the medium itself has evolved with these variations. Some might not be particularly enthralled with the introduction of this new process, but, no matter what, there always seems to be some disgruntled people when a new technological development is introduced. Photography is a way of life for some and it is not going to disappear any time soon.

How to Do Things with Pictures

The article How to Do Things with Pictures presents an interesting peculiarity of photographs resulting from their perceived reliability as a means of objective representation. The view of the role of the photograph in this article is as a tool of communication that doesn't stand alone, but is akin to a part of speech used in a broader narrative. Emphasis is placed on the context of the image as a signifier as to the message that is being conveyed. For example, in a world where natural forms are repetitive and ubiquitous, the caption of image is greatly influential as a definition of what is being seen in particular. Furthermore, the type of publication in which an image is found can have effects for the viewer, ranging from credibility if found in a newspaper, but can arouse skepticism if found in a tabloid magazine or propaganda material. This view of the photograph is consistent with Roland Barthes' structuralist interpretation of authorship and viewership, where the literary importance of a work is dependent on its relation to the viewer's historical and existential personal experience.

The article also deals extensively with the subject of falsehood within photography. One of the stipulations of photography's dependence on context to be understood is that a photograph with false context can be misleading by means of portraying something different than what is described, though the photograph may be unaltered in any way. Conversely, photographs that have been altered are also misleading if they are placed in a context that implies factual accuracy, such as a news program. Political propaganda most frequently operates in this way for purposes of ideological expediency or orthodoxy, and the author necessarily intends to deceive since he has knowledge of it's falsehood. On the other hand, altered photographs placed in a context where they are known to be false (such as being accompanied by a disclaimer) serve as works of fiction instead of forgery, and become useful for their allegorical or thematic qualities outside of the bounds of reportage.

How to do things with Pictures

This reading was cool because it demonstrated the possibilities that photography possesses. I was amazed that the altering of different photos, some taken years apart, could be combined to create a convincing new image. The use of this technique in politics is pretty remarkable as well. Even if the image is fake and, the reputation of the person being slandered is ruined.

The idea that if you show someone one of these altered pictures and that they appear real forces us to question what we think is real and what we believe is real. Each of the example images shown in the reading appears genuine, and I would consider them so if I did not know that I was reading about how to do things with pictures. To show these images to someone without the information that they are altered is as good as lying to someone. The belief that 'a photograph is fact' reinforces truth in whoever they are shown to. It is kind of like hearing a rumor from someone who ALWAYS tells the truth - you just believe them instantly. This kind of power is incredible and dangerous at the same time. Photographic images can no longer be trusted, as they may or may not display something that does or does not exist or did or did not happen.

I also like the discussion about how music is traveling down the same path. Sampling can hardly be considered a musical art. It seems like anyone could just 'garageband' a one hit wonder and make millions as long as they have the right connections and can sort of rhyme. There is a lesser appreciation for the days of old, when singers sung, and there was no digital alteration of pitch and sound. Both the butchering of music with digital technology and the alteration of photographic images discussed in this essay, I think can be contributed to the consumer culture that America has developed, but that is another discussion all-together.

“Ectoplasm: Photography in the Digital Age” - Lauren

Although William Mitchell’s “How To Do Things With Pictures” was undeniably quite entertaining, I found Geoffrey Batchen’s “Ectoplasm: Photography in the Digital Age” to be a perfect last reading. There has been quite a bit of controversy surrounding digitally altered photography—for obvious reasons—but Batchen puts it in an ironically positive light surround that of death and deals with the matter in a fashion similar to how Walter Benjamin handles the situation in his time.

Aside from Batchen’s discussion of the effects of the digital era on photography, especially concerning its very existence, what was very interesting to me was his point about how “digital imaging is an overtly fictional process” (15). Batchen essentially suggests the return of the aura to photography as an art from because of digital processing: “digital processes actually return the production of photographic images to the whim of the creative human hand” (15). So what is so negatively viewed as the destroyer of photography’s ability to convey the truth is actually its aide in fulfilling what the medium has longed to obtain since Benjamin argued that it had itself eliminated in art—that of the aura.

I also found it quite entertaining, after having learned about the various ways photographs could be manipulated prior to digital processing, to read about how people considered these “pseudo-photographs” so detrimental to the reality of photography. It is interesting that most people do not know the history of photographic doctoring and do not realize that photography has survived these alterations and evolutions thus far. So why should it suddenly disappear? Like Batchen says, as long as there is a desire to take photographs, photography will remain.

How to do Things with Pictures

A really interesting way to kind of come full circle with all the images we've seen and to really start thinking about what photographs do, from their captions, to the way they've been played around with and "photoshopped". I especially liked the part concerning captions, since we've been dealing with that in class. I think a part that kind of falls under this category is Author as well (Sherri Levine after Walker Evans: did we see or interpret or get a different feeling from her images versus Walker Evans? despite the fact that they were the same photograph?) Also it this concept tied in with the images we looked at by Greg L. ( i forget his name..) that were labelled this photograph empasizes my black features vs the white features. Just the captioning alone led us so start understanding the pictures differently, despite the fact that they were the same photograph again. This article reminded me of a recent movie called Vantage Point where it is once incident of the US president getting shot but then you view the movie from different people's vantage point. There is ultimately one truth but the "author's" vantage point, or belief, or collection of ideas and goals leads to different understandings of an image or incident in the movie's case. I found it interesting that despite all of this photo's still become our frame of reference for somethings, where we find truth in them and trust them. "Just as pointing the finger indicates something real out there, so does the pointing camera... so a photograph ALWAYS tells us that something was actually out there", that something happened, that what is shown is truth. I wanted to put that quote next to cindy sherman's photographs where she titles them untitled film stills, indicating that yes, these ARE from a movie, yet we know that that never happened, there is no movie.. but the photograph shows somehting happening, there's an actress, there's a set, there's an untitled movie title, and there's a film still! Yet, there is no film. I thought the paradox of both of them placed side by side was interesting. 

Lorna Simpson

Lorna Simpson's art school background is interesting because it contained the two photographic countercurrents of photojournalistic documentary photography as well as the critical and iconic photography of defamiliarization. Photojournalism strives for objectivity as a way of understanding the world, and its "concerned photography" tries to examine social problems from an impartial point of view. Defamiliarization on the other hand attempts to challenge conceptions of objectivity by providing critical analysis in the form of subjective personal experience. Simpson, while gaining some of the photojournalist tradition was influenced by the trend of defamiliarization and "rather than just recording reality, she wanted to investigate it, to unravel it, to interrogate it, and if possible to re-envision reality."

The way she set out to do this was through deconstruction of documentary photography, avoiding stereotypes and cliches through a critical reexamining that discarded many of its conventions. Instead, she turned to techniques used in performance art such as repetition, dialogues and monologues in order to make the images more of a work of narrative. In this way she was able to explore her personal reality, and most of her work revolves around the subject of African American identity. With the subjective techniques of narrative, she is able to challenge the limiting characterizations of African Americans imposed on them by the larger society. For example, in Gestures/Reenactments she is able to expose and critique society's views of black masculinity as being either powerless, or threatening, or both, by the inclusion of a short narrative that gives personal insight into how the subject is perceived.

Lorna Simpson

What initially struck me about Lorna Simpson was how the images of her travels were not just casual snapshots, but photographs that “exhibited a sense of great visual control” (286). These images demonstrate that her talent was not just taught; she was naturally successful when it came to taking photographs. I really admire the fact that she used her innate talent to tell stories and create interesting art. Simpson’s transition from documentary to conceptual photography both intrigued and confused me. She based her evolution from documentary to conceptual photography on the idea that “she needed to demonstrate to herself that the camera was not just an instrument to probe into the depths of truth…she wanted to reveal it also as a machine that spewed all manner of conventions and clichés…that had to be overcome if the camera was truly to become ‘a wholly philosophical product’” (292). This seems, to me, like an odd goal. By revealing the camera as a machine that spews stereotypes does not seem like it would benefit her intentions. However, overall, this statement confused me and I hope to talk about it in class tomorrow.
By focusing on this goal, Simpson led herself to conceptual photography. I find her journey to getting to film stills roundabout, for she wanted to defamiliarize her self with the documentary image and find a new type of photography. I understand her desire to find her niche in the photography world, but I just feel that the path she created for herself was filled with many obstacles. However, this process obviously beneficial because it led her to create some phenomenal photographs.

Lorna Simpson

In this essay about the photography of Lorna Simpson, Enwezor describes how Simpson grapples with the ideas of racism, poverty, civil rights, and politics. Her images are unique because they aim to restore historical truth. I thought it was interesting that Simpson denotes the cliche " a picture is worth a thousand words" by incorporating the sense of "language" into her photography and attempting to "erase captions that was so necessary for the denotative aspect of documentary practice." Her photography became similar to that of Cindy Sherman because of the feeling of a behind the scenes narrative, like the picture was a piece of a larger film, and not just a singular work.

Race and gender were a large part of the ideas Simpson hoped to evoke in her photography. Simpson "fell in love with photography so to speak with photorapgy as a shaper of subjectivity," meaning that she lost the need for photographic realism, much like her contemporary artists. The subjectivity was also known as the "crisis of representation" or the essentialist views of race and gender of the time.

"Simpson reworks the ethical paradigm of the documentary, ctritically questionning the maudlin sentimentality introduced in the early photography of the face as a window to the soul of the subject." Simpson instead makes the subject not the main focus of the image, but one has to extract their personality and "soul" from not their eyes, but their surroundigns, or race, or gender.

Lorna Simpson

When I first started reading this piece and looked at some of the pictures in the reader I had no idea that Lorna Simpson was a Black woman. I don't know if that was the intention of the writer or if it should have been obvious to me, but it is interesting to me that I assumed otherwise, or that the writer didn't make it obvious--probably because it is important to the essay that we recognize her struggle with interpreting race, gender, etc. in her photography. I thought the first part about the two Morrocan women thought provoking because we have never really discussed the idea of how a photo is affected when the subject disapproves of the photographer. For me it seems the photographer has always been behind the scenes, or creating works of fiction where they would automatically be allowed to take theses pictures. It rivals the confusing feelings when we see works of Sherrie Levine, where we wonder if this photograph "should've" been taken. The picture of the Morrocan women also makes me wonder about the truth of a photo, because when we look at this picture the look of "I don't want my picture taken" could be mistaken for "I'm not happy with my life." Or they could be one and the same. Most people probably take for granted that the photographer was an intermediate in creating that image, but reading this and examining the photo makes us think about that.

The writer talks about how Lorna Simpson wanted to "detach" herself from the camera. This is an idea I haven't thought about and is particularly confusing to me. The early writers that we read seemed to whole heartedly believe that we were detached from the camera, stating it was a machine that replicated nature with absolutely no subjectivity. Simpson, and most others, seemed to feel differently. This probably goes hand in hand with her wanting to get away from "documentary photography." She wanted the camera to "...betray its clandestine undermining of the body..."(301 of R) I am confused as to what she means by this. In this section the writer discusses her piece Wigs, in which there are individual photographs of wigs printed on felt, and a sense of the lack of a body. A detachment of race and gender from something personal. Perhaps these two detachments go together. She wanted to detach her race and gender from her photographer-self. Maybe she felt that documentary photography was too subjective even when it was trying to express human truths. By detaching herself from the camera she felt could reveal more truth.

Lorna Simpson

This writing by Okwui Enwezor was my favorite piece thus far.  I especially enjoyed the discussion of race and gender issues that Lorna Simpson complicates in her artwork.  Throughout this class I have been hoping for an article that deals with a photographer who can tackle these two difficult issues and I think Simpson does so in a very appropriate way, especially considering the historical moment in which she was operating.  In the post-civil rights and post-women's liberation era I think that a lot of the issues that Simpson confronts with her artwork were slipping through the cracks.  She deals specifically with what it meant to be a black woman during this crucial moment.  

Her artwork is an amazing reflection of the identity politics that black (and minority) women were, and still are, struggling with.  Because the subject of the civil rights movement was often assumed to be a black man and the women's liberation was primarily targeting white women, black women were left with no one to champion for their rights.  Simpson's art clearly is directed at raising awareness of the anonymity that black women felt at this time; the faceless, distorted, pieced together bodies represent how black women were overlooked in all the civil rights movements.  

I was less interested in her methods of photographs as I was in her overall message.  I really connected with this piece and loved that it discussed the social issues that Simpson was highlighting.

Lorna Simpson

I found Okwui Enwezor’s essay on Lorna Simpson to be very informative and interesting. Even though some concepts of Lorna’s art I did not quite understand completely I got the just of her ideas. Throughout the essay I felt that there was constant upbringing about racial issues that were analyzed through her work which distracte from her original motifs and motives in her work.
In the first passage I was relieved to read that Simpson “embarked on a trip of discovery” because during that era I felt that not many photographers were going out and taking photographic moments, instead majority of the professional field was more interested in creating their own image than searching for it. By traveling all over the world Simpson was able to capture culture without necessarily being involved or as Enwezor said “working around the edges of her subject”. Because of her acceptance of worldly knowledge she was able to adapt to different cultures see an image in everyday traditions.
Another concept of Simpson’s work that I found very interesting was not of her images but her use of language and words to influence. Enwezor’s describes the different sensations of seeing and speaking as contradictions. Anyone one could look at an image and create their own subtitles or story of what is being presented but then looking at the text that is given provides a different perspective and conflicts what one wants to believe. They are “separate forms of knowing “that can trigger a memory that will make one relate to the image.

Lorna Simpson

Lorna Simpson has a different approach to photography, which is why we are probably reading about her. It seems that most of the photographers we read about did something very great, interesting, or controversial. Anyway, what she does different is kind of protest/photojournalism approach. It seems as though she is arguing about political topics through her photography. She seems to have a strong belief in civil rights, a respectable thing to defend, but her message is not obvious. In "Easy for who to Say", the A-E-I-O-U, Amnesia, Error, Indifference, Omission, and Uncivil posted on the faces of African American females is not specifically clear, but present none-the-less. Also in her photos, "Sicily", Eastern Parkway Brooklyn, NY", and "Flushing Meadows Park", there is no central subject, but rather, they look like a picture someone might take with a modern Kodak at a gathering somewhere. The text says to "notice that she has completely avoided the cliche of urban strife, poverty, and dilapitated neighborhoods in which the black subjects are normally portrayed." This feels as if they events are natural, unstaged, and fluid. It also allows for some strength in the African American community. As commited as her work shows she is to the cause of civil rights, she does not choose a composition showing disgrace or drawing sympathy. I think is a good depiction because it shows the progress that had been made in this area over the last 30 years or so. Overall, this was a good writing and explanation of Simpson's work, but it got a little too much into the issue of rascism and left the field of photography at times.

Lorna Simpson

In this essay, Okwui Enwezor, gets into an in-depth description and analysis of Lorna Simpson’s work. She was most concerned with “historical” truth in which the Enwezor says, “those images calcified like plaque in the social unconscious.” This is a great statement because it allows for an abstract concept to be understood through the process of correlation (“…calcified like plaque…”). Enwezor then gets into a lengthy discussion about race in her photography, in which I lost some interest.

Although there are many elements of Simpsons work to be considered, I found it most interesting that Simpson connected language with her photography. The purpose this serves is to get across a specific idea to the reader, and help to encode how the author meant for the message to be interpreted, triggering a memory, and yet still leaving the completion of the interpretation to the viewer. By using this technique, her images are regarded as a conceptual framework for photography. I really liked that she used this technique of “linguistic signs” in her work, because not only are the photographs interesting in enough, there is also more to look for in figuring out what a photo represents.

It is interesting to see that during the 1960s photography was one of the main methods for recording, documenting, and witnessing the subjective realm of art in which the products thereof served as a reminder. This method of recording of oneself brought about a philosophical journey of self-knowledge. The work of Simpson is something that I have not seen before and for me, reaches beyond the common artistic purpose of photography.

Lorna Simpson

Once you get past Enwezor’s lengthy and elaborate discussions of race in his essay “Lorna Simpson”, some key elements regarding Simpson’s work and techniques begin to surface that, in my opinion, significantly contribute to the understanding of photography in today’s world culture and society.

First of all, one striking element was how in all of Simpson’s photographs “the subject is never fully visible” (119). Enwezor’s point that this “underline[s] the hypocrisy of the camera as it presumes to invent truth” got me thinking about what can the camera claim to say if it cannot see (119)? In other words, when we see a portrait of a person, we instinctually look to the subject’s eyes first in order to understand the emotion of the image. But when their eyes cannot be seen, what can the photograph tell us? We understand no emotion from seeing someone’s back, although the way they’re standing—their body language, that is—can tell us quite a bit. Essentially this goes back to the question of the photograph’s ability to portray reality. How can we understand reality when we cannot see it?

Another interesting point that Enwezor brings up is Simpson’s use of text. Her erasure of “the caption that was so necessary for the denotative aspect of documentary practice” and use, instead, of poetic, abstract phrases, definitively displays her transition from street photography to essentially story-telling (109). From what I understand, in Gestures/Reenactments, Simpson alternates between text and image, creating something like a silent still film, where we are visually stimulated and are allowed to create our own stories, but then are re-guided in the subjectively “right” direction by her text. I consider this to be a form of multi-media art, but one that is far more graceful and poetic than, say, a collage.

Lorna Simpson

In Enwezor’s discussion of Lorna Simpson’s work, he traces Simpson’s development and interpretation of photographic theory. A hallmark of her theory appears to be the realization that photography is inherently subjective, enabling her to abandon documentary forms of photography and allow her to explore gender and race identities. The conflicting views that photographs are inherently objective or subjective have played an important role since its invention. In Talbot’s essay, photography was interpreted as an objective mechanical and chemical method devoid of human involvement. On the other hand, the numerous conceptual artists we have seen in class use photography to reflect ideas that are inherently their own. More troubling are straight photographers such as Evans, who produced documentary photographs of the tenant farmers’ plight. Although these are supposed to be objective documents that accurately reflects a historical moment, I can see how these photographs might viewed as subjective. By mere act of accepting an assignment to “document” the plight of tenant farmers, Evans is already predisposed to sympathizing with them and feeling the need to tell their story. Regardless, the objectivity and subjectivity of photographs seems to be essential to the ontology of photography and type of art artists produce. Another interesting discussion focuses on the relationship between language and image. In her work Easy for Who to Say, Enwezor contends that by replacing the portrait’s faces with letters that subsequently stands for Amnesia, Error, Indifference, Omission, and Uncivil, Simpson is able to produce a subjective photograph to inform the viewer of Simpson’s own views. This is interesting for me as photographs traditionally viewed as a better medium for story-telling, i.e. a picture is worth a thousand words. Instead Simpson seems to turn this notion upside down by using the letters themselves as indices as photographs are indices to their subject. As a result, it can be argued that the letters themselves contribute much more to the photograph than the faces that they cover.

Lorna Simpson

This Essay was by far my favorite. I dreaded the fact that it was a million pages long but once I started reading I couldn't stop. I really enjoyed the descriptions and study of all the images however I got fixated on the portion of the Negation of portraiture. Hiding the face in her portraits was my favorite aspect of Lorna Simpson. It adds that other dimension to the image in its ability to "abolish the facade and the distraction of the gaze". This was an exact complement to the argument I was making in my second essay about Distortion No.6. It is crucial that the face it cut out, adding that other element of excitement. You don't have to look the person, the naked woman in this case , in the eye. You are in her personal space, you are up close, in the image with the subject, and it allows you to be free and roam the photograph without feeling uncomfortable as though you are harassing the woman. You don't know who the naked woman is in Distortion No.6 neither do you know the Woman in Simpson's Twenty Questions. Also the notion of interference comes up again in the description of her photo Twenty Questions. The image is followed by a series of questions asking you to examine the phtograph and define the subject as either pretty, clear, pure or black. She does not have a name: she is merely a description or a number titled by her looks."This is the function of the negated portrait, to open us up to the original sin fundamental to the miasma of racial hysteria".

Jeff Wall- Liquid Intelligence

In the introduction to his essay Liquid Intelligence, Jeff Wall puts forward a theory of photographic ontology as a confrontation between the "dry" and the "liquid". The liquid represents the unpredictable and infinitely varied forms occuring in nature, and for Wall "connects photography to the past, to time, in an important way." The dry on the other hand is the mechanical, scientific, and objective, which can be seen as a strong influence on the photojournalistic straight photographic style. To Wall, though photography is scientfically a triumph of the dry, and becomes even more so with the advent of digital photography, the liquid intelligence still plays a large part to make photography aesthetically interesting.

Jeff Wall recounts how in his early career he was faced with the contradiction between a sincere respect for the masters of straight photography and the neo avant-garde spirit of the age that considered them obsolete. Not fully satisfied with either pure photojournalistic photography or pure avant-garde abandonment of aesthetic criteria, Wall decided to search for what was interesting in photography by comparing and contrasting distinctly different, but related artforms. From examining painting, he derived the importance of scale, pictorialism and immediacy. From film he derived an appreciation for the proliferation of techniques that were frequently employed, in addition to the straight documentary style which was the film equivalent of photojournalism. However, he concludes that the intellectually stimulating aspect of photography lies not in one particular form or technique, but relating back to the concept of liquid memory, in the push and pull in the conceptual space between dry and liquid.

Wall's Liquid Intelligence and Frames of Reference

In his essay, Wall discusses his idea of photography as “liquid intelligence.” Through his discussion, Wall separated photography into the dry, the mechanical and optical components, and the wet, the chemicals used to develop the image. Wall considered this liquid component of photography as one which both connects photographs to the past, through the use of similar development processes as those during its invention. In what is the first discussion that we have regarding the digitization of photography, he mentions that this process as a process that displaced this liquid component to a more distant horizon, giving hydroelectricity that powers the camera as an example of its involvement. This short discussion was interesting for me not only because it provided a unique view into the how photographers and artists regard the photographic medium, as the general viewership is not often involved with this liquid development process. It also reminded me, once again, or Benjamin’s notion of mechanical production and aura. As mechanical reproduction removed the aura of the photograph, digitization, which further removed the liquid component of photography connecting the photograph to the past and the artist, represents yet another level of displacement in its representation. In his essay, Wall also his aversion to looking at photography when they were hung on walls. Instead, he prefers to see them in books or leaf through them in an album. Through this notion, wall seems to echo his metaphor of a photograph as a “liquid intelligence” that is characterized by its ability to bring its viewers a unique personal experience at every viewing. It seems that, to Wall, this personal experience is uniquely photographic, emphasized by its ability to be placed in books and albums, to be held up close in a way that paintings and sculptures cannot. Overall both” Liquid Intelligence” and “Frames of Reference” provided interesting insights into how a photographer regard his evolving medium and how he view himself in the context of other artists. Both of these discussions shed light on new ways for me to view and interpret photographs.

Liquid Intelligence

While Jeff Wall talks about his views on photography growing up during the 60s and 70s and what was believed to be the obsoletion of photography, his discussion on the aesthetics of viewing art is what caught my attention. On page 176 of "Frames of Reference" he talks about viewing photography in an art gallery versus in a book, and that they are much more pleasing up close. Paintings, however, that take up a wall very nicely are better viewed from a reasonable distance and that there is a separation between the two.

I agree that viewing the art from two different angles can change the feeling or appearance of some art, but to imply that all photography is 'too small for the format' of the wall and that paintings are to be viewed further away is not realistic. Photographs are better viewed in books or albums only because most film is quite small, but that is not to say that an image can't be blown up large enough to compete with the scale of these paintings Wall is so fond of. Likewise, paintings are quite interesting when studied very close. To see how an effect was achieved or study a detail in magnification is just as important to the viewing process as it is to take in the painting in its entirety. What is also interesting is that most people can relate to what Wall is saying when he expresses the need to view photographs in albums. It is the most common and efficient way to store and view photographic art, thus reinforcing his point.

Later, Wall explains that all film is is a series of photographs shown one after another. I would like for him to see the modern Imax and see how he feels about photographs being viewed on hundred foot screens by millions of people every day. The broadening of the painting, photographic, and cinematic fields in scale, quantity, and ingenuity will continue to expand the possibilities of viewing art. The perspective, emotion, and viewing experience may forever grow and expand to unknown territory and cannot be restricted to a simple method of examination.

Jeff Wall

I didn't enjoy this piece as much as some of the other pieces we've read recently.  I enjoyed that it was easier to read and comprehend and was more personable than the other pieces.  But I also thought it was a bit too personal both in the writing style and the fact that he discussed his own work quite a lot.  While these two aspects can be good styles in writing, Wall's diction did not seem to match the subject matter.  

I also did not like how the piece focused on theoretical issues associated with photography and the development process.  I did not quite understand the idea of liquid intelligence because I felt he did not accurately describe what he meant.  I think I became accustomed to Wall's more academic pieces and was surprised by his casual tone in this piece. 

I also think that I could not relate to this piece as well as the others because it seemed to be targeted towards more experienced  photographers, or even amateur photographers.  I have never developed a picture and therefore do not understand the importance of the process.  I could relate to what Wall termed the dry process, a more mechanical process of developing pictures because that is how I experience the process of developing pictures.

Overall, I felt that the readings were interesting but not what I expected from Wall.  

Jeff Wall

I found the Liquid Intelligence section and Frames of Reference section to be quite interesting and surprisingly comprehensible. I have never developed photo pictures, although I have been told of how hard it is because of all the details that have to be perfect: the temperature of the room, the lighting, the temperature of the chemicals, including water, etc. Like Wall states, if anything is out of their range or correct value, the photos could be ruined. I have developed black and white photos, which can be extremely frustrating or extremely rewarding. Mostly for me it was rewarding because I did all the work and I developed this picture exactly how I wanted. I'm sure they didn't turn out perfect, but to create of a photograph from the negative to the paper is no small feat, and Jeff Walls take on water and the still was very enlightening. Even when I developed pictures the thought never occured to me how controlled the chemicals had to be incomparison to what they photographed, and in comparison to their "flowy" nature. To be honest, the high school seniors were probably pretty careless with the chemicals and they often times would spill over the edges, or wouldn't be agitated properly; however, most people were pretty careful and took their developing seriously, no matter how many times it took to get the photograph right.

I really like the photographs mentioned in the second piece by the husband and wife who took years to compile these "typologies." I could be wrong, but I think one that we saw in class was of water towers, which relates to Walls piece. Photography really does have a liquid intelligence that pops up everywhere. Although the subject matter of that piece is quite dry, (or it looks dry) they present these objects in a way that displays their architectural beauty, and of course it was developed in these liquids that allowed them to display it. The developer literally allows the picture to come reveal itself.

Jeff Wall- Photography and Liquid Intelligence

I found Jeff Wall’s essay on Photography and Liquid Intelligence very interesting and easier to read than past essays. The start of essay begins with his some of his pictures and the complicated natural forms that play a part in his work. One natural form his discusses is liquid and its movement in relation to its representation in the photograph. Its as though it is a contained tactic that if released could destroy photographs, metaphorically and literally.
Jeff continues his essay with the mention of conceptual photography and the rise of the famous topic of the ontology of photography or more less what this medium proves. I thought Jeff Wall’s interpretation of Sherrie Levine work of Evans’s pictures nailed it. He interpreted her work as an awakening to other photographers trying to reinvent photograph when all they need to do is “study the masters”. Wall explains that in order to recreate photography it is key to learn from the masters and that there is no middle or intermediate art form. Photography has standards that determine whether the criterion in a photo represents photography. I felt this correlated very closely to what Walter Benjamin’s element of the aura in photography. Jeff Wall explains that the some photography that is combined with new innovations often lose its aesthetic quality and are reduced in value or presence in a sense. I also enjoy Jeff Wall’s description of his journey through different eras of photography and what they brought to the realm of photographic art. He derives away from conceptual art in the 60’s and 70’s and brings up Pollocks work during the 50’s. I found rather eccentric how Wall prefers photography not hung on walls. Its interesting that he feels that way because when I think of photography I think of picture frames seen in the halls of homes or galleries.

Jeff Wall

In our reading, Jeff Wall tackled two topics: liquid intelligence and frames of reference. It was nice to read about an artist talking about their own work, revealing their inspirations, dislikes, and fascinations.

Wall talks about water having a deep effect on photography primarily because of its integral part of the developing process, and also because it connects photography to the passage of time. This element that we know as water has been around since the beginning of the history of our planet. "This archaism of water, of liquid chemicals, connects photography to the past, to time, in an important way. .. it embodies a memory - trace of very ancient produciton processes - washing, bleaching, dissolving...." Water connects photography to other media of art, as well as the passage of time. Wall also contrasts photography with the description of it being "dry," mostly because of its mechanical qualities. Man has no effect on the photograph being produced because it is a mechanical process, much like many of the previous debates in essays we have read this semester. "This dry part I identify with optics and mechanics." The photographer cannot create his subject from his imagination like a painter or a sculptor, the subject must be real, physical, and tangible. this makes photography dry according to Wall.

In "Frames of Reference," Wall further reveals his opinions about his art as well as others. He narrates his change of mind about what a "master" constitutes. He wanted to study photography and its relation to other art forms. "I realized I had to study other masters whose work, either in photography or in other art forms, didn't violate the criteria of photography but either respected them explicitly or had some affinity with them. "

Wall had a special interest in life size photographs and paintings. "That sense of scale is something I believe is one of the most precious gifts given to us by Western painting." Wall also studied film stills and their characteristics because a film is really just a bunch of film stills viewed in a specific order. He used these characteristics in his regular photography.

Jeff Wall – Photography and Liquid Intelligence

Jeff Wall’s essay was interesting to read and had a somewhat lighter feel to it than the various essays we have read in these past couple of weeks. He mentions in the start of the essay how within his work he likes to provoke many associations of complicated natural forms. This is a technique we probably see every day with our naked eye without realizing it. We most likely don’t realize that we are associating a shape of an object with another object, idea, or preconceived thought.

Wall also focuses on developing this idea of a “logical relation of necessity between the phenomenon of the movement of a liquid, and the means of representation. “ His idea of “liquid intelligence” is still a bit hard for me to fully comprehend. It seems as if he is very into the theoretical aspect of photography and what exactly each aspect of photography represents and how that characteristic can relate to other areas and hypothetical ideas. At first, this sounded a little crazy but reading it over a few times I actually found that Wall has an interesting and very respectable perspective of photography. I think it is pretty clear where he receives his inspiration for his photographic products. For him, nature and all things natural are of a “liquid” representation and the institution of photography and the mechanics itself contain a more or less “dry” character. On the other hand, with the essay considered in its entirety, it would be safer to say that this was not as light of a read as I had first thought it was. Reading it a few times brought out new perspectives and images that weren’t see the first time. This has a lot to do with his simple wording he uses to introduce complex ideas. This was a tricky task he accomplished in this essay and I’m sure there is much more to be said about its literal meaning, if there is one.

Jeff Wall - Maya

Jeff Wall's "Liquid Intelligence" seemed very pros-ey to me. It was a very artistically written piece about an idea he has of the relationship between water and photography. This is a relationship i have never really thought about, but as Wall points out, the two are complete opposites. He says that "the mechanical character of the action of opening and closing the shutter...is the concrete opposite kind of movement from the flow of a liquid." Because opposites serve to emphasize what the contrast, Wall states that he believes photography is the ideal medium to represent a liquid. Another relationship between water and photography is film's dependency on water to develop. There is much precision involved in development however, and the water aspect must be carefully controlled. Water, therefore, becomes the archaism of photography. This is a very creative relationship Wall has come up with, and i never would have even considered such a thing before reading his article.
After reading "Liquid Intelligence" The Galassi article was pretty hard to get into... it was very long and dry, more of a factual account photographical history. But i did enjoy looking at the pictures, which emphasized architecture, included with the article.

Jeff Wall and "Gursky's World"

Jeff Wall’s “Liquid Intelligence” introduces concepts about water and its relationship to photography that would never have occurred to me. The importance and relevance of the presence of water in a photograph is very surprising. Wall states, “…but it has to be controlled exactly and cannot be permitted to spill over spaces and mapped out for it in the process, or the picture is ruined” (223). I found this idea a bit ironic because he essentially wants to control something that is virtually uncontrollable. This idea is not just centered in photography. It expands into the “real world” in that levies, and other forms of water control, are built to restrict water’s movement, yet it is known the water will eventually overcome these boundaries and destroy them. I feel like Wall and many others feel they have the ability to control this liquid, yet, no matter how determined, they can never direct it exactly where they want it to go. This uncontrollable nature might appeal to photographers because when they photograph water it will always be in a natural form that embodies the characteristics of a liquid. These characteristics, in turn, connect the photograph to its rich history that, apparently, greatly relates to water.
Not to just tack this onto the end, but when reading “Gursky’s World” I, for some reason, found myself fascinated with the German schooling system. I thought the concept of the diploma being given at the discretion of the teacher is a bit subjective and does not benefit the student if there are bad “student-teacher” relations. The length of Gursky’s schooling also intrigued me, but for an unknown reason, for in comparison to present day schooling six years is not very long. For no apparent reason, this interested me.

"Liquid Intelligence" & "Frames of Reference" - Lauren

Jeff Wall’s essays, “Photography and Liquid Intelligence” and “Frames of Reference”, were starkly different from any of the other essays we’ve read thus far by artists or photographers. Previously, photographers have written about the debates of their respective time circulating photography and/or art. Jeff Wall, on the other hand, does something quite intriguing. He discusses his own views of his own line of work and that of the world of art and photography. I found it interesting to read about what a professional likes and dislikes about the understandings and presentations of photography.

In “Photography and Liquid Intelligence”, Wall writes in a very poetic style. Putting photography in the frame of reference of “liquid” and “dry” is incredibly unique. He then points out the progression of photography to a continually dry process, where the water aspect (i.e. the development process of film) is evermore forgotten as “electronic and digital information systems” become more prevalent. Not only is this a fantastic was to represent the direction in which photography (and film/cinema, etc.) is moving, but Wall also goes on to say that, to him, “this is neither good nor bad necessarily, but if this happens there will be a new displacement of water in photography” (110). Fantastic!

In “Frames of Reference”, on the other hand, what I found particularly interesting was Wall’s discussion of multimedia and the presentation of photographs. Wall effectively devalues the collage in the sense of artistic worth, but at the same time questions whether or not there are any rules or guidelines to define photography in the art world. He then says, “Even while I loved photography, I often didn’t love looking at photographs, particularly when they were hung on walls” (176). Not only do I find it rather bizarre to think that an artist doesn’t like to look at his own creations, but Wall also speaks of this love-hate relationship in the past tense, as though he no longer has anything to do with photography. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t like to look at photography or even claims to dislike the concept of photography itself. Wall seems to be torn, then, between photography as a pastime and photography as an art form – in what way is photography to be appreciated?

Liquid Intelligence

Jeff Wall seemed to be a bit passive in this essay. He makes subtle claims but they all are really important. He describes the more traditional forms of photography with water and liquid, in relation to nature and the use of it as a material in the production of a photograph. This reminded me of "The Pencil of Nature" where photography and nature and man controlling nature (water in this case: he explains how precise you had to be with the water, so as not to destroy anything) were all related closely. Not only do we have a great impact on the photograph but " in photography, the liquids study us, even from a great distance". It is a back and forth relationship that goes both ways. He then moved on to the dry aspect, which would be the more modern techniques : the optics and mechanics. I feel like that is how everyone really perceives photography today with digital photography, like it is not the same raw act it used to be, but rather it is just a click of the button that does all the work for you. For example, what we talked about in the museum with the older camera's and their focus versus the limitations of digital cameras. Lastly, I enjoyed his twist on cinematography, describes his images as that. He says that it is really the same thing since the collaboration and technique and equipment are all the same.

Jeff Wall

Like George Baker, Jeff Wall responds to the changes in photography that were taking place at the end of the twentieth century. He is referring specifically to the trend in post-modern and conceptual photography to incorporate new-age techniques into the established photograph medium. In Photography and Liquid Intelligence, he asserts that these changes are presenting a “confrontation of what you might call the ‘liquid intelligence’ of nature with the glassed-in and relatively ‘dry’ character of the institution of photography” (223). Wall employs water and liquidity as a metaphor for the more conservative photographic techniques, in which nature’s infinite knowledge and beauty guides the formation of the image. I cannot help but to think back to Henry Fox Talbot and his description of photography as “The Pencil of Nature.” Talbot’s description that the presentation of the object (the thing being photographed) is directed by an assertive force of nature, similar to what Wall calls the “liquid intelligence.” Wall describes New-age photography as relying more on advanced and complicated techniques to construct images. Photography has become less about what the image is and more about how and why it was formed. Unlike Baker, who has a clear opinion on the direction that future photography should take, Wall claims apathy. He says, “To me, this is neither good nor bad necessarily, but if this happens, there will be a new displacement of water in photography” (224). It seems as if Jeff Wall fears that new-age photography re-appropriates the power of nature to the photographer. What was once a “liquid intelligence” will become the firm, authorial intelligence of the photographer. Wall says, “The historical consciousness of the medium is altered” (224). The statement is bold, but because Wall refuses to make an opinion on the changing medium, the phrase is vague and powerless.
However, it seems safe to assume that because Wall uses new technologies in his own photographs, he must not see the changes as being altogether bad. He calls his use of life-size images and backlighting cinematography—the combination of photographic and cinematic techniques to “make pictures with a kind of literal presence” (230). He comments that backlighting allows for the “preservation of some aspect of literalism in the construction of the picture” (230). Similarly, life size-photographs are effective not because of their scale, but rather, because they occupy and bring attention to the “present time and present space” (229). Baker discusses cinematography as one of the art forms that should be recognized as photography by adopting an “extended field.” Wall adopts a similar, but not identical argument. He say, “the techniques we normally identify with film are in fact just photographic techniques and therefore, are at least theoretically available to any photographer” (231). Instead of arguing that cinematography falls under the umbrella of photography, he says that all cinemagraphic techniques are just offshoots of photographic techniques. It’s a subtle difference, but could have huge implications.

Narrative and Stasis

George Baker's Photography's Expanded Field is in essence the after effects of photography on the art world. There were many things that led to the invention and expansion of photography, and photography was also a key factor to the invention and expansion of other media. Baker argues that photography was not deconstructed to form film, but was expanded, meaning both media can exist together. However, with the new expansion, photography is no longer simply a snapshot of reality, an index to the tangible, it is turned into a still frame of a larger story, a moving story otherwise known as a film. Film, on the other hand, cannot exist without a reference to photography because each frame can be stilled to become a picture, or a representation of a tiny portion of a whole. Therefore, both photography and film coexist and exhibit components of each other. Photography can be talked about in film terminology, or solely photographic terminology, or both. "What would it mean to invert this exclusion, to locate a project not as the photographic suspension between the not-narrative and the not-stasis, but as some new combination of both terms, involving both narrative and stasis at the same time?" All this talk of expansion led to the thought of photography expanding to more than one field. Photography has potential to be the basis of more than one form of modern art besides cinema, just like sculpture was the founder of much of art.

i really liked how Baker talked about photography no longer being an isolated middle man between media, but a part of the whole experience of art. "Photography is no longer the priveleged middle term between two things that it isn't. Photography is rather only one term in the periphery of a field in which there are other, differently structured possibilities."

Photography's Expanded Field

I really struggled comprehending the diction and terms in this article which detracted from my understanding of the overall message.  From what I understood Barker is explaining the postmodernist movement in photography.  The defining characteristic of photographs during this movement is that they are part of a longer or larger story or scene.  Photographs represent a single still in a story that let the viewer construct a narrative.  

I thought it was interesting that Barker describes this as a characteristic of postmodernism because this did not feel like a new observation.  Many of the photographs we have looked at in class seem to be just a fraction of a story.  For example, Cindy Sherman's photographs where she purposely positions herself to look as though she is in a movie.  She even titles her photographs film stills.  Also, I felt that straight and documentary photography was, in a way, attempting to create a narrative of rural American life.  The photographs taken by Lange and Evans seem to tell stories about the lives of the people they are photographing.  Especially Evan's pictures of the tenant farmers families.  

Postmodernism might have been the emergence of photographers taking pictures with the intent of trying to allude to a longer story, but I feel like all along photographers have been telling stories with their pictures.  Therefore I felt confused by Barker's message for two reasons: first because his writing was unclear to an inexperienced photographer and second because I disagree with his argument.

George Baker

This piece reminds me of the first Jeff Wall piece we read because I could hardly understand it at all. I'm going to take the phrase "photography between narrative and stasis" and describe what I think it means. It is described in the essay as "...photographic language between the movements of narrative and the stoppage of stasis..." and this might become the structuring condition for modernist photography.

To me, all photographs have a narrative and a stasis because they are snap shot with a story. One cannot look at a photograph without feeling something or making up a story behind it, if there isn't one already (in a caption, for example). Perhaps it is because film is such a big part of our lives now, photographs are becoming one of many shots in a moving picture. When we look at a photo we wonder what came before and what will come after. This idea reminds me of the picture we saw of the couple on the bed and the caption read something about "this is a time I know she loved me." When we see that, we wonder what their relationship was like, if they are still together now, even if they weren't even a real couple. At the same time, this photograph is one small moment, and it will always be frozen--therefore it is static and unmoving, forever.

So the fact that Baker is saying modernist photographs will have this title is a bit confusing to me because it seems that most, if not all, photographs have this mantra behind them. The only ones that might not are the strange conceptual photographs which invoke little to no emotion, in my opinion. Even they, though, have some sort of narrative which are probably more important than the actual photograph. The picture of the photographer getting shot by his friend is a good example of this. It obviously has a statis because the bullet or the "shot" of the gun gets captured on film, but the narrative behind it stays with the person as well.

Barker's Photography's Expanded Field

As almost everyone who had posted on the blog expressed, Barker’s essay was quite a challenging read. To me, the central message conveyed by Barker was that, in postmodern era, photography has extended beyond merely depicting a scene or constructing a narrative, has also expanded spatially to challenge traditional notions of photographs as pure representations of reality. In this expanded field, photographs such as those by Cindy Sherman neither depict an unaltered scene nor construct a real narrative. Barker describes this postmodern condition of the photograph as a state between “narrativity and stasis.” In this condition, a series of documentary portraits is both a chronological narration of the subject and also static representations of the subject at different points in time. However, I fail to see how these characteristics exactly make a photograph postmodern as all photographs are able to invite the viewer into constructing his own narrative and also are static representations of a subject or event. Throughout his essay, Barker also seems to dispel the notion that the photographic medium has been “decentered” (219) by breaking with the traditional representative notion of photography. In its new form, photographs such as those by Orozco and or Sherman occupy a space that is beyond mere representational reality. It is through their incorporation of elements that are both simultaneously real -the reflections in “Extension of a Reflection,” the stone in “Yielding Stone,” and Cindy Sherman as the actress- as well as constructed -the objects in the reflections in “Extension of a Reflection,” the narrative or the stone rolling over the vent covering in “Yielding Stone,” and the many personas invented by Cindy Sherman- that photography is not merely decentered from its representative form, but expanded to construct its cinematic narrative. Barker also seems to possess an optimistic attitude regarding this expansion of the role of photography in contemporary art. To him, these new methods freed the photography from its mere documentary role and provided new ways through which the photograph can interact with its viewers.

Photography’s Expanded Field

There was much information offered in this essay on contemporary photography, yet the information was not easy to interpret. George Barker makes the vivid point that contemporary photography and art of today always seem to “focus on an object in crisis, or in severe transformation.” This idea goes along with the conceptual topic of postmodernism and how photography was changing during this time and continues to change today. I find the exact definition of postmodernism hard to comprehend because there are many elements that make it complete. The basic meaning I receive from postmodernism is that the focus and purpose of a photograph is continually being altered as time goes on, and postmodernism is a common stage for photography. Barker claims that traces of traditional photography are no longer apparent as evidence of it once being a popular artistic practice.

Barker brings up an interesting and very important topic concerning photography in which he argues that if the exact object and purpose of photography today is getting blurred, it is our job to discover what this field of photography means in order to understand why it is important today. Why do we care about photography at all? This topic is again jumping back to earlier discussions that we have semi-covered in class but didn’t necessarily resolve. These topics covered and related to the meaning of photography and basic but often boring questions of why it is important and subjects similar to this. Overall, I think Barker has a very interesting perspective and take on contemporary photography. At certain moments in the text although, the tone of the essay seems a little angry about the fact that photography has come to this point and has succumbed to this stage in art. This was a difficult essay to get through and I made my best attempt to understand Barker’s message.

Photography's Expanded Field

I would have to agree with my classmates that George Baker’s Photography’s Expanded Field was and extremely challenging piece to read. I find art historical writing to be the most difficult type of discourse to comprehend; it uses extremely sophisticated diction and requires a prior familiarity of the topics discussed. I felt that each time I was starting to understand an argument the author was making, the rest of the paragraph would drift off into the land of fancy art words and I would lose track of the point of the passage. I was constantly finishing a paragraph and then asking myself, “What did I just read?” I did not understand all the points the author presented, but I think that after several re-readings, I have caught on to the overall point. I found the main message of the paper to be that photography has not come to end! Baker seems to be addressing some art critics’ claim that photography has been replaced by newer, more complex mediums. He says, “Critical consensus would have it that the problem today is not that just about anything image-based can now be considered photographic, but rather that photography itself has been…outmoded technologically and displaced aesthetically” (203). Baker pleads that although modern photography produces works of art that look very different than the early photographs, “something like a photographic effect still remains—survives, perhaps, in a new, altered form” (204). Even though Rineke Dijkstra puts video camera recordings of her subjects next to their portraits and Sam Taylor-Wood supplements his photographs with audio soundtracks, the medium is still photography. He asks his audience, and the art world in general, to accept this “expanded field of operation” of new photography (205). Baker argues that the expanded field of operation in photography has followed a general trend to put images in motion, to make them less static and more narrative. He says, “The world of contemporary art seems to have moved on, quite literally, to a turn that we would now have to call cinematic rather than photographic” (203). Photographers like Philip-Lorca diCorcia and Cindy Sherman create photos that resemble film stills. Baker makes an argument similar to Walter Benjamin when he says that cinematic photography has called for the “expansion of its terms into a more fully cultural arena” (213). Walter Benjamin proposes in The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction that films are a powerful way to mobilize the masses. Likewise, Baker is optimistic that cinematic photographs will travel to the public and effect popular culture. Contemporary, modernist, and post-modernist "cinematic photography" moved so far away from original photography that people began to question whether it should even be considered the same medium. But George Baker makes the argument that recognizing the new photography as photography is possible, and will be beneficial to the world, if one is flexible enough to accept the “expanded field.”

“Photography’s Expanded Field” - Lauren

I found George Baker’s “Photography’s Expanded Field” particularly difficult to read. There were many terms that he used that I was completely unfamiliar with, and he never explained them, which was rather frustrating. Plus, Baker’s two main terms, “narrative” and “stasis”, seemed to remain not only vague, but also completely undistinguishable from one another and their respective reversed opposites (“not-narrative” and “not-stasis”) by the end of the essay. It was almost as if Baker stepped further away from establishing these terms and explaining their relation to photography instead of developing these ideas through his essay.

What is “stasis” anyways? I understand the narrative aspect(s) of photography, not only in regards to the idea that a picture is worth a thousand words, but also like what Cindy Sherman does, where her images suggest a further story or film that the still is taken from. But I just do not understand what “stasis” refers to, or even a photographer whose work exemplifies this. Although, perhaps I just missed that in Baker’s essay because I was distracted by my own attempts to make what I could of his selected images and diagrams. What really threw me was Baker’s discussion of “Klein groups and semiotic squares” (128). As far as I understand, he was displaying the polar opposites of various ideas pertaining to photography and/or art. But that was as much as I got out of that.

This essay definitely required prior knowledge, the lack of which had severely detrimental effects on my understanding of Baker’s argument and ideas. I think his approach to explaining contemporary art would be quite interesting and applicable to our discussions had I been able to understand what he was actually talking about….

"Photography's Expanded Field" - Sierra

George Baker’s “Photography’s Expanded Field” was a very difficult article to get through. He writes with such complex diction that I found myself having to read certain sections repeatedly. Even after rereading, I still do not feel that I completely understood the article. However, I do agree with Baker’s statement “the world of contemporary art seems rather to have moved on, quite literally, to a turn that we would now have to call cinematic rather than photographic” (203). Cinematic elements can be detected in many postmodern photographs. Cindy Sherman’s “Untitled Film Stills” series provides evidence to back up Baker’s statement. I believe that photographers began photographing from a cinematic point of view because a greater story can be told this way. This seems to be because the viewer associates the images with a film, and, in doing so, becomes aware of the idea that the image does not stand alone, but is surrounded by other elements that help portray its story. This allows the photographer to convey a stronger message through the image.
Baker also writes about the concept of mounting speakers near an image so the photo becomes “a picture where the condition of ‘talking’ has been taken as far as it can go” (217). I understand this might assist in conveying the photographer’s message and idea, but the idea of viewing a photograph while speakers are generating background noise is a bit odd. I feel that this would almost detract from the image because I find it easier to view images when it is quiet, for staring at a picture in complete silence stimulates more thought and is free from distractions. Overall, I felt this article was talking about many concepts that I could not fully understand.

"Photography's Expanded Field"

I found myself again and again having to reread sections throughout this piece. Maybe it was too long or that I was not interested, but I was simply not able to grasp what I was reading and so would like to instead talk about the photographs that accompany the writeup.

Jeff Wall's "The Storyteller" has a playful double meaning as it seems there is a story being told in a circle of people near the left side of the photograph. The picture itself is telling a story; the viewer can interpret it how they please but there is someone left out of the circle off on his own. There could be many stories behind this situation but the subtle location underneath an overpass on a hill draws the attention towards the story-telling aspect. The other similar photograph is located near the end of the reader entitled "In the News" showing the location of where a truck driver was killed. While the event is not shown, the location and result is, allowing the viewer to draw any conclusions they want to about what happened. The setting of the 'story' is again, under an overpass except there was a lot more going on in "In the News". It was a strong contrast to the nonchalant storytelling going on in Jeff Wall's photograph.

"Young Farmers" and "Streetworkers" are so similar that it is kind of creepy. The two sets of three men from different eras and demographics doing almost the exact same thing makes me wonder whether or not this was a staged similarity.

Photography from film seems quite interesting because the subjects aren't staging their appearance for a single moment in time, but rather for a longer time period. This makes the photographs taken from the film show true human expression and body language. Their 'being caught on tape' reveals an honest depiction of how they feel about a situation. It is also intriguing that all film is is photographs run one after another, begging the question, "What is film and what is film photography?" Where do you draw the line?

Finally, I liked "Extension of a Reflection" and "Yielding Stone" because they are photographs of the ground. Almost all photographs are of a subject at ground level or higher up, but the angle of these two pictures is straight down. I think the attention to detail in the composition is pretty great in each of these two works. Places we would not normally pay attention to or study in detail are depicted in interesting compositions. I really REALLY want to know what that ball like figure is in "Yielding Stone".

Louise Lawler

In Rosalind Krauss's essay "Louise Lawler: Souvenir Memories," the concept of spectacle is explored and related to concepts introduced in Walter Benjamin's "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction." Whereas Benjamin hypothesized that photography and mechanical reproduction would revolutionize art by diminishing the cult-value, or the spectacle, of the work of art, Krauss proposes that "Benjamin could not know what it would be like for these effects to have become the totality of one's experience." In the contemporary period, painting is no longer strictly opaque, and photography is not strictly transparent, but because of the spectacle's permeation into everyday life, the roles have been reversed. Media images have become opaque because of commodification, and the proliferation of such media images has permeated all parts of life, leading to the construstion of the spectacle in life.
Louise Lawler's works are related to the concept of spectacle in the sense that they consciously capture the spectacle in life by forcing a specific point of view towards works of art in their natural surrounding. The photographs are of other works of art in galleries, but taken in such a way that the fixed point of view puts another layer between the observer and the spectacle of the original. Lawler recontextualizes images in terms of spectacle and commodity, similarly to how Sherrie Levine recontextualized images in terms of gender. The observer is forced to acknowledge that the work of art is "a function of public space" rather than just admiring it's aura. Once the commodification of the art has been realized, it can be seen more clearly how art interacts with society.

Louise Lawler's interview provided new insight and added to my understanding of photography as a form of art.  Reading the artist's intent as said by the artist herself gave me a new appreciation for this particular form of art.  I had trouble understanding and seeing Levine's work as art because I could not get over the idea that she is famous for uncropping and reprinting another photographers work.  I agreed with her critics, she was not producing art but replicas.  However, reading Krauss and Lawler's interview the meta-artistic aspect of the photograph struck me as a new dimension that we, as a class, have not yet explored.

I really liked Lawler's idea of the reproduction of a photo adding an index or a new layer of meaning to distort the original.  Taking a picture of a picture or a work of art does not seem conventionally difficult to do, I take pictures of works of art and I do not consider myself anything close to an artist.  Lawler plays with human memory in her photographs and our ability to recognize a work of art although it has been distorted.  Her photographs imply the emotions which viewers infuse into works of art making an interaction with art an individual experience.

Reading this piece helped me understand the Levine piece slightly better as well.  I misunderstood Levine as being almost sarcastic about Walker Evans' photos.  However, what I now realize is that she was bringing a new perspective, showing that each viewer interacts with photographs differently bringing different emotions.  An image should not be regarded as proof of anything because the context and frame (including the gender of the photographer) change the emotions of the photo.

In the beginning of the interviewLouise Lawler says something that immediately clicked with something Walter Benjamin said in his piece, "The work works in the process of its reception. I don't want the work to be accompanied by anything that doesn't accompany it in the real world" (192). Here, Lawler is referring to reservations about doing an interview. She doesn't want to reveal too much about the work, or interpret the work, because it has a certain context where it is displayed. This context helps interpret the work, along with the sentiment of the viewer. Benjamin would relate this to his "aura" he frequently references. A work of art in its environment has a certain aura, an authenticity, and it seems that Lawlers works have that aura in the museum, or the gallery, or wherever. In their place, they are most effective and affective to the viewer.

This point is extremely interesting because Lawler is still a photographer, but her pictures seem to work differently than most other photos. Like Benjamin points out, photography is mechanically reproduced and makes its way to the viewer in many different ways. In any case, it lacks authenticity and an aura because it doesn't have that "home" that a painting or sculpture or whatever does. There isn't an original or even only one copy that was created for one space. From this quote of Lawlers, though, we can infer that she is saying her pieces work best in that space, and the viewer needs to come there to interpret it.

Lawler's work confuses me. Most of her parts of the interview confuse me. However I enjoy looking at some of her pieces because they truly are fascinating. We looked at the piece with the tourine and Pollack in the beginning and after reading this interview and seeing how different her artwork is, I have a better appreciation for that piece. Showing us the Pollack in that new environment is puzzling at first, and we do need to contemplate it for a while before we can feel satisfied. At least that is how it was for me. Trying to look at the Pollack piece within her piece is impossible, so we must then step back and veiw the entire photograph for what it is. I am still not sure what that is, but I know that her photos weren't necessarily supposed to be straight forward. I imagine that the concepts behind it were more important than the composition or color in the actual photograph itself. On page 194 she says "A gallery generates meaning through the type of work it chooses to show." To me, this reiterates the fact that the actual subject matter isn't as important as the meaning behind it (plus others) when looking at a piece by Lawler.

Louise Lawler

It was very interesting to read about Louise Lawler and learn about another artist’s perspective on art. The interview was very informative and allowed the readers to understand her concepts and ideas behind her works. It gives off the sensation of being the artist. The first reading however I enjoyed slightly more because I wouldn’t have ever imagined a paperweight every being a form of photography.
Once again the Walter Benjamin is the determinant factor in all of photography’s aspects, which is probably the mention of his “aura” is brought up. Lawler strongly believes in reproduction, as seen by the multitude of paperweight series she produced. Benjamin’s concept of the aura is corrupted because of the constant reproduction of Lawler’s images but yet does not oppose Benjamin’s idea of the photographic image bringing closeness to its audience. The paper weight like photography brings “far away things close to us, miniaturizing them for us so as to give us a sense of possessing them.” The paperweight becomes a commodity and is available for anyone to get sucked into its own little world of vision. I never envisioned a paperweight to be such a respected form of art. Also in lawler’s explanation of the paperweight, there are different worlds of vision that are developed. There is the first the viewer looking into the lens who is engulfed in the situation within the space provided where one is either watching the situation with the feeling of being watched. On the other side of the lens, or the side where the objects are contained, we can refer back to emotion that Benjamin describes as a sense of closeness and possession.

Louise Lawler and Perception

In “Louise Lawler: Souvenir Memories,” Krauss discusses Lawler’s particular style of changing the viewer’s perspective by photographing art installations and introducing distorting lenses. This reminds me of the efforts by Levine where she focuses art on the viewer’s response and the photographer’s gaze by photographing the works of Evans. The obvious difference is that Levine’s works are nearly identical replicas of Evan’s while Lawler photographs other works in a new time and space. Both, however, directs the viewer to analyze the role of perspective by adding an additional layer of indexical distance between him and the actual event. To me, the effects of this extra distance in Lawler and Levine’s works are completely different. While Levine’s work invites the viewer to investigate the different meanings that might result from a feminine or masculine gaze, as Krauss suggests, Lawler’s indexical distortions are a reflection on workings of human memory. As the act of creating and retrieving a memory would distort an event, Lawler’s photographs distort their objects through the use of a distorting lens. Similarly, as each viewer might perceive the exact same event differently through his prejudices and focus, the same scene can be photographed differently if a different camera or lens is used. To me, this distortive aspect of memory is made even more significant due to the traditional view of photograph as evidence and proof. While an individual’s personal recollection of an event is often questioned based on his history, photographic evidence is almost always perceived as undisputable proof. Lawler’s photographs work against this notion by literally distorting their subjects, reminding viewers that the photograph can be an imperfect index. Thus, her work also adds a new dimension to the concept of the optical unconscious. In light of Lawler’s work, the optical unconscious is not just about the details which can be captured by the camera and missed by the unaided eye. It also includes details that can be added by the camera by the simple act of creating an index. These distortions are all the more fascinating as falsified images, through either camerawork or digital manipulation, are more commonplace than ever before.

Louise Lawler

It was really interesting reading about Louise Lawler's interesting perspective on photography and how her eccentric personality affected her artwork. An interview is such a great way to captivate the reader amost instantaneously. However, although Crimp's interview was interesting, I found the first reading to be fun also.

I really like how this whole class is wrapping together. Photography seems to be a world of its own where all artists are intertwined. However, I tend to see Walter Benjamin as the father of the analysis of photography. The classic debate over the validity of photography as an art was addressed by him as well as many other issues and predictions. Lawler takes on the aspect of how art becomes a commodity in the setting of its residence. Many times its abode is shared with a tureen or old wooden furniture. This makes the artwork a commodity, just like any other thing you could buy in the store. Rosaline Krauss talks about how the image has an original and a sign. The sign of the original is the second version that is identical to the original....but not really. The sign represents the many ways the original can function in places outside of museums. "The gleams and reflections that itnerest Lawler, as she photographs works of modernist art within their present conditions of commodification- ... are avatars of this pervasive condition of the sign."

Lawler tries to recapture Walter Benjamin's aura in her works of art, especially her paperweights. The paperweights are very much like photographic rerepresentations of works that have already been made. However, they recapture the aura, unlike other photographs, because they are placed under a tiny glass dome. The dome functions as the lens, focusing the eye on this tiny point of the room that would not be focused on if it werent for the picture. In untitled (Salon Hodler), the room's natural focus would be either the furiture or the pictures separately; however, the photo combines the two, but neither the furniture nor the pictures are completley shown. This picture "enacts the relationship to photography" beacuse "each crystal half-sphere presents itself as a lens, one through which one peers as through a camera's viewfinder." Lawler's work is both art and photography combined, and brings back Walter Benjamin's aura that so few photographs are able to capture.