The Photograph as a Contemporary Art.
This book is first on the recommended essential reading list and also recommended by my tutor. My tutor describes the book as 'An excellent book to help you think about the art of photography which you may or may not like and agree with but which might also enlarge your vision of photography."
There are eight chapters in this book and it's intended to provide an introduction and overview of contemporary art and identifying its characteristic features and themes with nearly 250 photographers. Contemporary photography has strengthened in the new millennium and ways of communicating images has increased as a result of modern media. I will not give my views on each chapter but comment on some particular issues.
Although I have been taking photographs for a long time and am familiar with many of the references to equipment and film and slide photography, I never come across most of the photographers mentioned in the book and the way in which they are today recognised in particular ways for their work. Studying the photography in this book is a new experience! For example, looking at Melanie Manchot's image from Gestures of Demarcation Vi, 2001 (page 26) makes me wonder more about what is described as 'an absurd theatricality here that resonates back to the use of comededic and grotesque performance within the conceptual art of the 1960s." The image is "...open-ended and the viewer must interpret it imaginatively." I am not sure whether some of the images have subconscious led me to thinking about creating questions in my assignment number two where I have introduced parts of people, namely hands, into some of the shots that may encourage people to think beyond just the food images I have been photographing.
There are trends in some of this photography that I see repeated in a similar way by other photographers. For example, I see my tutor illustrating a project involving shooting people through their house windows at dusk, with their permission and I see Shizuka Yokomizo with "Stranger" 1999 photographing people through their windows (page 32). I have come across Shizuka's photo before. It is on the cover of a book my son gave me in 2011 I have discovered called "Train Your Gaze". (Similarly, Anna Fox's photographs features a series of photographs at a location where someone was murdered - "Sweet Fanny Adams" is similar Katy Grannan's locations where dark historic uncomfortable sites are chosen in "Art Photography Now"). What is it that draws photographers to these strange locations? Can we imaging tomorrow's photographers photographing at today's murder locations (like the Leeds school) at some stage in the future? It's weird! I am guessing that by studying the various photographic styles, my mind will be opened, not just to areas of photography I knew nothing about but to new creativity than I can express in my work in the future.
Two questions come to mind - why are some of these photographers so interested in self-portraits? Cindy Sherman crops up in this book, and others, as an example where the photographer and subject are the same. I feel there is a self-indulgence issue here. Maybe the current trend in phone camera 'selfies' will become art - if not already. Secondly there is great emphasis with some of the photographers on nude and/or partially clothed figures that seem to add to their discomfort and appearance rather than enhance it as art. Rineke Dijkstra's photos of a mother with her child described as 'an unsentimental approach' ... with the images showing 'the profound shift in the woman's changing relationships to their bodies and the instinctive protection they demonstrate towards their new born babies.' I find this bizarre and the images denigrate what could be the beauty and relationship between the mother and child.
This is not a book I would have normally bought but I am learning something about photography as an art and hoping that I really can open up my own photographic style to new horizons.
This book is first on the recommended essential reading list and also recommended by my tutor. My tutor describes the book as 'An excellent book to help you think about the art of photography which you may or may not like and agree with but which might also enlarge your vision of photography."
There are eight chapters in this book and it's intended to provide an introduction and overview of contemporary art and identifying its characteristic features and themes with nearly 250 photographers. Contemporary photography has strengthened in the new millennium and ways of communicating images has increased as a result of modern media. I will not give my views on each chapter but comment on some particular issues.
Although I have been taking photographs for a long time and am familiar with many of the references to equipment and film and slide photography, I never come across most of the photographers mentioned in the book and the way in which they are today recognised in particular ways for their work. Studying the photography in this book is a new experience! For example, looking at Melanie Manchot's image from Gestures of Demarcation Vi, 2001 (page 26) makes me wonder more about what is described as 'an absurd theatricality here that resonates back to the use of comededic and grotesque performance within the conceptual art of the 1960s." The image is "...open-ended and the viewer must interpret it imaginatively." I am not sure whether some of the images have subconscious led me to thinking about creating questions in my assignment number two where I have introduced parts of people, namely hands, into some of the shots that may encourage people to think beyond just the food images I have been photographing.
There are trends in some of this photography that I see repeated in a similar way by other photographers. For example, I see my tutor illustrating a project involving shooting people through their house windows at dusk, with their permission and I see Shizuka Yokomizo with "Stranger" 1999 photographing people through their windows (page 32). I have come across Shizuka's photo before. It is on the cover of a book my son gave me in 2011 I have discovered called "Train Your Gaze". (Similarly, Anna Fox's photographs features a series of photographs at a location where someone was murdered - "Sweet Fanny Adams" is similar Katy Grannan's locations where dark historic uncomfortable sites are chosen in "Art Photography Now"). What is it that draws photographers to these strange locations? Can we imaging tomorrow's photographers photographing at today's murder locations (like the Leeds school) at some stage in the future? It's weird! I am guessing that by studying the various photographic styles, my mind will be opened, not just to areas of photography I knew nothing about but to new creativity than I can express in my work in the future.
Two questions come to mind - why are some of these photographers so interested in self-portraits? Cindy Sherman crops up in this book, and others, as an example where the photographer and subject are the same. I feel there is a self-indulgence issue here. Maybe the current trend in phone camera 'selfies' will become art - if not already. Secondly there is great emphasis with some of the photographers on nude and/or partially clothed figures that seem to add to their discomfort and appearance rather than enhance it as art. Rineke Dijkstra's photos of a mother with her child described as 'an unsentimental approach' ... with the images showing 'the profound shift in the woman's changing relationships to their bodies and the instinctive protection they demonstrate towards their new born babies.' I find this bizarre and the images denigrate what could be the beauty and relationship between the mother and child.
This is not a book I would have normally bought but I am learning something about photography as an art and hoping that I really can open up my own photographic style to new horizons.