the heroism of vision - carrie acosta
TRANSCRIPT
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THE HEROISM OF VISIONSusan Sontag
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NOBODY DISCOVERED UGLINESS THROUGH
PHOTOGRAPHY...
• ...but many have discovered beauty
• People take photographs because something is beautiful
• Photographs have become the standard for determining what is beautiful
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CLAIMS TO TRUTH
• A photograph that has been altered or gives a false caption lies about reality
• The history of photography can be seen as a struggle between the need to beautify and the need to tell the truth
• The need to beautify comes from fine arts
• The need for truth, from science and journalism
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PAINTING VS. PHOTOGRAPHY
• Paintings take time
• Photography is quick, so anything can be photographed
• By trying to see everything, photography hoped to accommodate both beauty and truth
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PHOTOGRAPHY & REALITY
• Photography has changed our idea of reality by establishing the way things should look
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AN IMPERSONAL DEPICTION OF REALITY
• Henry Fox Talbot conceived photography as an impersonal way for nature to record itself
• He published a book of photographs entitled “Pencil of Nature” in 1844
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HENRY FOX TALBOTPhotograph of haystack from Pencil of Nature, 1844
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AN INTERPRETED DEPICTION OF REALITY
• Though many others shared his view, it became apparent that different people took pictures of the same things in different ways
• The photography was not only recordings of the scene, but interpretations of how the photographer saw it
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HEROISM OF VISION
•With the advent of travel photography, people began photographing not only beauty but ordinary things
• Individuals were expressing their unique vision in finding beauty in ordinary things
• Going to extremes to capture an image were what the heroic photographer was perceived to do
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PAUL STRANDAbstraction, 1916
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PAUL STRANDWire Wheel, 1917
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ALBERT RENGER- PATZSCH
Cactus, 1928
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SUBJECT IS OF PRIMARY IMPORTANCE
•While the painter constructs, the photographer discloses
• Therefore, the subject of a photograph always dominates our perception of it
• Unlike painting, formal qualities are second, while the subject matter comes first
• In photography, we assume that the subject is a piece of the world and we only know how to react when we know what it is
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EDWARD WESTONCabbage Leaf, 1931
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DR. HAROLD EDGERTON
Coronet, 1936
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PHOTOGRAPHIC SEEING
• Sontag calls photographic seeing a ‘kind of dissociative seeing’
• The difference between the way an eye and a camera focus and judge perspective are different
• People used to comment on the difference, but have since begun to “see photographically”
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PHOTOGRAPHIC SEEING
• Photography has been particularly successful at turning people into things, and things into people
• Sontag uses Weston’s nudes and peppers series as examples:
•Nudes are de-sensualized
• Peppers are photographed to suggest a touchable form
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EDWARD WESTONNude 1925
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EDWARD WESTONNude 1927
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EDWARD WESTONNude 1936
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EDWARD WESTON
Pepper, 1930
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EDWARD WESTON
Pepper, 1930
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EDWARD WESTON
Pepper, 1929
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REINVENTING CONVENTIONAL WAYS
OF SEEING
• Photographers like Strand saw photography as “an intelligent new way of seeing,” but this also eventually became a standard which had to be broken
•Modernist subjects like leaves and shells became clichéd
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BEAUTY IN ORDER
• Sontag sees the modernists notions of beauty as revolving around order
• She sees this as contrary to the “truth of disorder”
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BEAUTIFYING THE WORLD• In photography, the beautifying of the world is as
legitimate as exposing it
• Portrait photographers take great care to make beautiful people more beautiful
• Less glamorous people are traditionally photographed in a more harsh way
• It is the crueler side of photography that is more highly regarded as art
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RICHARD AVEDONJacob Israel Avedon, in 1969 & 1971
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RICHARD AVEDONJacob Israel Avedon, in 1973 & 1972
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BEAUTIFYING THE WORLD• Compassionate journalism must meet two different
criteria:
•Our surrealist way of viewing photographs
•Our belief that photographs can give us truthful information about events
• Sontag feels our indignation is aroused by the suffering shown, but is distanced “because they are superb photographs of Agony confirming to surrealist standards of beauty.”
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W. EUGENE SMITHMercury Poisoning of a Japanese Fishing Village
Minamata, 1972
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PHOTOGRAPHS AS FRAGMENTS
• Sontag states that photographs are fragments, and because of this their context changes them
• Each context suggests a different use for the photograph, therefore the meaning is the use
•Making the truth relative erodes the idea of meaning
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A PHOTOGRAPH’S MEANING
• For Sontag, a photograph can never speak, it’s voice is the caption
• Captions can override the evidence of the eyes, and captions can be easily changed
• Therefore they cannot give a permanent meaning
• Beauty outlasts the relevance of the meaning
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PHOTOGRAPHS AS FRAGMENTS
• Sontag states that the more unforgettable the image, the greater the chance of becoming both timeless and depoliticized
• Inhabitants of the richer part of the world tend to learn of troubles through photography
• By transforming history into a spectacle, it anesthetized the morals and stimulates the senses
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LEWIS HINEChild Labor in America,
1908-1912
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LEWIS HINEChild Labor in America, 1908-1912
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LEWIS HINEChild Labor in America, 1908-1912
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LEWIS HINEChild Labor in America, 1908-1912
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LEWIS HINEChild Labor in America, 1908-1912
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LEWIS HINEChild Labor in America, 1908-1912
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SUMMARY
• Sontag claims that photographic seeing is dissociative, alienates and replaces the real by the photographic
•Moreover, due to the wide-spread availability of cameras, accessible to all
• Captions cannot save the truth from reality in photographic translation