I'm pretty sure I had already previously seen all three episodes of 'Genius of Photography' that we watched in class, but it was just as enlightening to watch them the second time as it was the first. Together, they portray the progression of photography throughout history until modern times, different forms and methods of achieving an image, and where photography has taken us digitally.
Photography has changed the way the people view the world. It reveals to us the secrets of ordinary life, describing it exactly as it is, exposing things that we may ordinarily overlook on a day to day basis; photography is also capable of portraying things in a ways that seemingly defy reality completely. Regardless though of how an image is captured and then later rendered, it directs us in how we view the subject matter of the photograph through intentional decisions in exposure and framing. And no matter how close to real the subject of a photograph may seem, it is still vastly different because of the border, the edges created by its square or rectangular frame. However, photography's greatest strength is also its greatest weakness. Because of its accessibility to the masses, it almost seems that photographs are losing their meaning - there is literally no photograph that hasn't already been taken. But at the same time, people still greatly appreciate the ability to capture the moment and be able to preserve a physical fraction of that experience captured in a certain place or time.
There are many different thoughts on why people photograph what they photograph and what they are trying to reveal. Some of the artists covered in the Genius of Photography documentaries, like Diane Arbus, Richard Avedon, Nan Goldin, and Nobyoshi Araki whose intents were to reveal the inner essence of a person. Arbus wanted to expose in people what they themselves didn't want you to see. Avedon, who is known for his celebrity portraiture, was all about taking the control away from the subject and placing it firmly behind the camera. In Goldin's work, she was trying to show us the normality of people that we usually treat as weird. Araki described his mindset when he photographs as really trying to reveal the inner person - he feels he can capture the past, present, and future of someone in just one shot. But there are others, like Duane Michals that believe that photos offer us false portrayals. Regardless of whether or not a photo gives a false impression, or reveals one's inner self, or even a little bit of both, it remains a practice whose legitimacy as an art form has been widely debated.
In the third documentary that we watched, I was very shocked to see just how much a photograph can be worth. There were photos that were priced in the millions and I guess since I have never had experience of having that much money, I just couldn't even wrap my mind around the concept that a photograph could mean that much to someone. I don't mean to discount photography in any way. I, for one, am a huge proponent of photography as an art form. I was simply completely and utterly baffled by how much people were willing to pay for a piece of paper with an image on it. I guess what made them so valuable was that not only did the photographers make a very limited amount of prints, a lot of the photographers were also deceased. And for some reason, you are always more famous when you are dead. But the whole time I was watching that, I was just thinking to myself, there's no reason my photographs can't be worth as much as the others. I know it's hard, especially nowadays to make a name for yourself in the world of photography. But I want a print of mine to one day be at least worth in the hundreds of thousands range. That would be incredible! I mean, I doubt that will ever happen, but it'd totally be really cool if it did!
Anyways, the 'After Photography' reading was very stimulating as well. Its starts out talking about how the digital changes in the media have shifted our perceptions of the world, changed the way we experience things, and our also expectations of them. The world has gone from being believed to be physically flat, and then to be round, but now it is back to flat again - flat on the screen of the TV or computer. We use terms from nature - "apple, web, blackberry" - to describe an environment that lacks the sensations of taste and smell, and its version of touch is limited to clicking and scrolling, and its sight is framed by a rectangle. Photography has become a medium that embodies a very similar idea to this in that a photograph can depict something that may or can never occur - it is like a "menu that can be touched, clicked, or simulated". Through technological advancements, pictures can now provide us with pseudo-experiences of places where we have never been to, introduce us to people we have never actually seen or met. And a place's or person's ability to be photogenic is all it takes for us to form an opinion of them, whether the opinion is justified or not. Even if we are the person who takes the picture, we still spend most of our time viewing what we came to see through the lens of the camera instead of seeing with the totality of our perceptions what is actually there. I personally like to photograph lacrosse games because a lot of my good guy friends are lacrosse players. Before coming to America for college, I had never before seen or even really heard of lacrosse. So when I do go to the games, I really enjoy capturing nice action shots of all my friends (and I secretly think that I am the lacrosse team's good luck charm because every game that I photographed last semester, they won), but since I spend the entirety of the time looking through the camera lens, I lose the complete essence of the game. Even though I photographed a good number of their games, I still hardly know what lacrosse is about. I get so focused on being able to simulate an experience for the people who see my photos, that I completely miss out on the experience all together.
Through the media, our society has transformed objects into desire and necessity, and this mindset fuels the capitalist system that keeps us chained to the ideology of consumerism that is now taking serious tolls on our environment and also ourselves. We feel bad for the "other" - the poverty-ridden survivor of a catastrophic natural disaster in a third world country. It is these people, who are the least responsible for the environmental degradation that is occurring, who are receiving the blunt of its effects. We see images of these people in conditions that we would never want to wish upon ourselves or loved ones, and we feel sorry for them - which is the point of taking the photograph in the first place - but the problem with our media and society is that we are exposed to these heart-wrenching images, but we don't understand that our daily lives and habits contribute more to their degraded living conditions than their own.
The reading really made me wonder about the future of photography - how it will evolve, where it will take us, what it will offer or even take away from us? "By 2010, it is expected that we will produce half a trillion images annually." Does this number not shock you?? And of all of these images, how do we separate the talented photographers from the rest? If all that is required in photography in this digital age is the push of a button for an immediate, flawless image, then how will individuals be able to spark recognition amongst the millions, or billions of people who have cameras? Especially since literally every photo you can imagine taking has already been photographed hundreds, probably even thousands of times. And also since it seems that amateurs are receiving more credit than the professionals because professionals are bound by the limitations of their assignments.
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