Wednesday, March 5, 2008
Photographic Activity
This essay seemed to me like it would be a supplement to the Jeff Wall reading. Crimp is interested in the idea of presence, explaining three kinds : being there, presence through absence, (kind of like that image we saw of man walking on grass) and lastly, that extra presence, beyond just being there. I was a little confused and it was hard to keep up with him, but it makes sense. In the typical sense that I first interpreted Benjamin's "aura", i would have defined the last presence as aura. That extra sense of ..well, sensual experience. That presence is what makes photographs postmodernist. However, i got a little lost when Crimp explained that Benjamin thought the opposite: the aura was lost in postmodernist photos, because it had to do with the original (the presence of the original)? I initially said this essay was a supplement to the Jeff Wall because the artists idea and presence was what was important. Here, it is not the photographer, but rather the subject's presence and the idea. In the Jeff Wall, artists were in the photograph. The artisit is the creator and actor in both essays, and they carry the presence.
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I thought this reading was really interesting and helped me to understand Benjamin's argument on a deeper level. The most unique part of this reading to me what when Crimp described the difference between presence and the presence of a person, the presence (or lack there of) of a person, and the preence put forth by someone. I thought it was very new to look at photography in this way and the way Crimp analyzed the way photography is gaining back the idea of an aura. I didnt think i'd be hearing the words aura after Benjamins essay but it made Benjamin's argument even more apparent when he compared them together. Benjamin wants the original becasue only that can have true significance. Crimp says that in the age of post modernism that photography is gaining an idea of aura with the ability of the photographer to show the world around him and use his own style to take a photograph. I thought it was also a new way of looking at photography when he described Levine and her choice to take pictures of other pictures and the way they make you want to see the original. I also agree, however, with the example of the Mona Lisa, I have been to see it and it really did not instil in me much emotion becasue I had seen it so many times before. It was rewarding to know that this was the one that had actually been touched by the artist but I appreciated it just as much as on a poster in America. I thought this was a really good reading for us because it did help me to better understand the arguments of other authors or photographers when it comes to reproduction. But it does seem to suggest that the debate will never end.
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