"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".