Connective Images (Barthes, cont.)

All of the images below were taken from my personal collection, most photographed by friends or myself, creating family portraits outside of the "scientific" family.

Negative Exchange Response

With the photo remake/negative exchange portion of the source to self project, I remade Charlie’s photo of a stormy beach while he remade my photo of a guy being a murderer. Some of the differences between my original photo and the remake that Charlie made of mine are very evident, but there are a lot of similar things as well. For example, my photograph was part of my “death series,” where I basically wanted to show a crazed murderer with blood smeared all over his clothes and weapon. When Charlie re-made my photo, he said that he wanted it to just be really scary and realistic, so he put a ken doll with a gun in front of my original photo, which he had smeared with a new mixture of “bloody goo” all over. The result was an almost too realistic photograph of a guy (ken doll) shooting his own brains out (which was supposed to be represented by my original photograph.) Although it was more realistic, it honestly captured what I was trying to portray in the original photograph from the start; a crazed killer. Also, with my original photo I had wanted to make it almost like a film strip, due to the number of photographs I had in the death series. Surprisingly enough, without even knowing my original intentions, Charlie said that he used the ken doll to make the photograph seem almost like a movie scene. One other factor that I thought was interesting between our photographs was that on my model, I used fake blood on the shirt to represent the “killer” aspect while in Charlie’s re-make, he used an entirely new mixture of food coloring, bacon fat and cornstarch to symbolize the “bloody goo.” Overall, with my original photograph, I wanted to simple invoke a sense of uneasiness within the viewer, which is exactly what Charlie wanted to do with his re-make. In the end, both photographs basically ended up portraying the same similar idea of “murder scene/crazy killer,” which I thought was really fun, since neither of us had any idea what the original photograph even looked like.

James Nachtwey video response

The film on James Nachtwey was one of the most interesting and personal photography interview’s I’ve ever seen. You really get to dive into Nachtwey’s life and personality, which gives the viewer an understanding of the true meaning and driving force behind his work. Nachtwey is a photojournalist for TIME magazine, and has been taking photographs at some of the most dangerous places on earth, at the most dangerous time. In the beginning of the film, you see the editors for a specific magazine, going over Nachtwey’s photographs, and trying to decide which ones are suitable for entering the magazine. One of the main things that the editor’s were looking for was “grief and sorrow” in the photographs, so anything that made them feel horrible, was a great picture. For example, the editors decided to pick the photo of the pile of dead bodies being dumped, over the image of a disaster-stricken community. Nachtwey likes to go right into the action with his photography, which means that he actually goes into villages during war, places of extreme illness and death and many more. From this Nachtwey says that he has had Malaria over 12 times, and has been injured several times as well. Even photojournalist’s right next to him have gotten killed during some of his photo trips. One point of the film that I found interesting was how a friend photographer of his said something along the lines of “for this type of photography, it’s really only a small fraction of what you’ve seen, so I wonder what he does with all that emotion?” With this though, Nachtwey said that he thinks’ that no one else should have to witness the tragedies and hardships that he’s witnessed, and that he’s literally become so conditioned to it that he wants his photographs to help change those hardships. I think that for a photojournalist, or any photographer at that matter, this is a beautiful way to look at and explore photography, but also a really dangerous way. Every trip that Nachtwey takes to different places, like Afghanistan, Bosnia, India, Israel, Pakistan, even New York with 9-11-01, is a trip that could be his last. He documents things like AIDS, war times, Rwanda, even Heroin addicts and famines. One other statement that I thought was interesting was when Nachtwey said that photographing some of these events was like “taking the express elevator to hell.” That’s a pretty strong statement for photographs, but very understandable with the situations that he puts himself into. I also liked how Nachtwey said that the only way he’s even able to photograph these people is because the people have accepted him, in whatever way it was, through conversation or just personal encounter in general, the people have accepted him at that moment, and his photographs are a way of telling that story. I don’t think anyone else could have photographs like James Nachtwey’s. The fact that he goes so deep into the lives and realms of these people and events, and tells that story through photographs, may even sound a bit exploitative to some. Is it right or wrong to go into villages and towns, and showcase the famine and disaster that has gone on there? I think that Nachtwey’s photographs are a way of being able to tell people who won’t ever have the chance to go into the situations and events that he put’s himself into, a story of the disaster and tragedy that’s going on there.

War Photographer: James Nachtwey

Photography can change the world or at least make a difference. Photographs of war and suffering have initiated changes in perception and action. James Nachtwey uses photography to communicate with the world, not as art. He provides an outlet for people who are suffering to tell the world what they have been through. He said the only satisfaction he gets out of his work is that he may be able to bring attention and relief to the people who are suffering.

He does not just watch and take pictures, but sometimes he becomes part of the action and he experiences their pain. The movie showed him coughing in a cloud of poison gas, running through city streets and dodging bullets, and helping to move the injured in war zones. He has had many horrible diseases from traveling to so many parts of the world. He has seen others killed and even tried to talk a mob out of killing a man. It is not possible for him to stand there and photograph like most photographers. He has to move or he could be killed. His work is very unselfish because he is risking his life with the hope that someone might see his pictures and bring relief to the suffering.

I find it amazing that he is able to control his emotions and endure watching so much human pain and injustice. He has dedicated his life to photography and bringing stories of human suffering to the world and all he has are frightening and sad pictures. I can barely look at some of his pictures, let alone try go into the world and take these photographs. I also admire his patience for publishers and popular media. If his photographs were published in popular magazines and newspapers or shown on television, they could be seen by more people and bring more relief. However, publishers only want what will sell - happy, trendy, idealized views of the world. As Nachtwey says, they do not give people enough credit. People like helping other people, it is human. They want to know when injustice and suffering exist in the world. They cannot see suffering for themselves, so Nachtwey and other photographers show them the pictures.

Nachtwey said that to cave in to his emotions would be useless. He says he channels them into his photographs and I think this gives his pictures a sense of deep sadness and pain that is almost unbearable to look at. What he sees is horrible and then, all of his emotional reactions - fear, despair, discomfort, anger - heighten the impact of the photograph on the viewer. The photograph is only a fragment of what the photographer sees. Nachtwey's pictures are only moments, but this one moment of suffering is unacceptable to people. One moment is all it takes to start a change in the world.

Negative Exchange

Jenny's original, Courtney's remix

This pair is a good example of how much process can affect the look and meaning of a photograph. Courtney used a very different process than Jenny to develop the picture, and this radically changed the content and meaning. When I first saw the pictures next to each other, I thought they were completely different photographs.

Jenny's original photograph looks like it could have been taken a hundred years ago. When I look at it, I am taken to a different time, place and feeling. The darkness and sepia coloring create a very quiet and mysterious mood. The flowers seem very still and they droop downward as if they were sad. The print is negative, which makes the flowers very dark and gloomy. They are not bright and open with the sunlight shining through them, like most pictures of flowers I have seen.

When I looked closer at the photographs, I saw the flower in the remix was from the original. Courtney has taken the flower from its context and transformed it. Her picture focuses on the form and beauty of this one flower. By making the positive of the original, she has made the flower more visible. It is now bright and open, and I can see the gently curving lines of the petals and how the light makes the flower glow. While the original is visually beautiful overall, the formal qualities of the flower were draped in darkness and mystery.

This project also shows how differently two people can see and interpret the same image. Jenny uses the contrast and darkness of the flowers to create a specific mood in her picture, and Courtney saw the potential of one flower's formal qualities to make an interesting photograph. No two people see something the exact same way and if we had distributed one negative to the whole class to interpret, we would have gotten 10 very different prints.

Artist Lecture reflection - Karly Klopfenstein

     Karly's lecture stood out to me as unique from other artist lectures I’ve attended in the past. Her art work quite different from anything I’ve ever seen; but what I appreciated most was the fact that she gave the audience a real sense of the practical side to being a young working artist, which is something I have not really had the chance of listening to before. Since she is a St. Mary’s alum who is now out in the world actively producing art work and living as an artist, I found it easy to relate to her and begin to think more realistically about my own life after graduation. I enjoyed the way that she organized the lecture by first giving a brief overview of her previous works, or things that she has done since graduating from SMCM, and then focusing more on a detailed synopsis of her efforts towards finishing her most recent project: creating a huge, half-scale size tank made of cardboard and other lightweight items, covered in her own hand-woven rugs on which different patterns and symbols of traditional middle-Eastern culture are displayed. The rug tank acts as an ironic political commentary about wars in the middle-East. She also creates a deliberate dialogue between the viewer and the work about tanks as symbols of war, and what it means to create a tank and take it completely out of any war context and cover it with something beautiful and hand-made. Both Karly and her work embodied a slight sense of humor, which is something that I really enjoy in an artist.



      Although her sculptural works are quite different from my own work as a photographer, I think that it is always interesting and necessary to get some insight into how other artists work. As she discussed details about the work she is currently doing towards finishing the rug tank even as she is in residency here at the college, I really appreciated how she was able to give the audience an honest sense of exactly how much time it takes to finish a work, as well as how much money, effort, and dedication it takes to do studio work on your own. She mentioned that she has been constructing the tank and weaving the rugs for almost 2 years now, and that she is still pushing herself pretty hard in hopes of finishing it by the time she leaves at the end of this semester. To me, this really puts things in perspective. As someone who has no idea what it is like to live and make art, and figure out how to keep making art, this was tremendously helpful in making me start to think about what my life will be like in the future. During her studio visit to my SMP studio, she told me that she lives to be an artist, and that she’ll do whatever she needs to do to keep making art. She also said that each of her projects leads to the next, and that this is how she progresses in her work. These comments really resonated with me and inspired me to keep at it, and really focus on photographing and doing whatever it takes to keep doing it.

I'll Show You Mine...

If you show me yours..

I enjoyed working on this project and was glad to have it as an introduction for the class. I liked working and manipulating Sam’s image, as I tried to mix it by incorporating my artistic vision/style. The original image was in color, and I worked on various versions of the image but finally decided on using a sepia color, and having the image darken by increasing the contrast and then cropping the image to bring the subject closer to the edge/frame. I decided on these aesthetics because I wanted the light on the subject’s eyes to be more brighter and illuminated whilst the rest of the image was slightly shadowy. This is because I wanted to project more of a mysterious and menacing character, which I believe I was able to achieve. For my image, I liked how Sam cropped it so the sunglasses framing was less visible, making it harder for the viewer to really know how the image was taken. Along with that, Sam then decided to completely turn the image into an animated/comic looking image, adding more distortion to the image.
The rest of the class also produced fascinating remixes to the negatives they receives such as, reducing the contrast, boosting up the saturation, cropping the image to show/not show something in the image, or incorporating props to provide an additional story. As a result, we were all able to get a sense of what appeals to each individual.