Modernism and Postmodernism

This lecture was about modernism and postmodernism in terms of photography.

Modernism occured in the late 19th and early 20th century and focused on different ways of expression in order to progress on shaping the world. Modernists believed that traditional culture was becoming outdated and wasnt moving on to anything better. The distinction between high and low culture (high culture for example being the theatre or galleries, low culture being the cinema or local showing of work) wasnt as clear as it was before. Before modernism, it was only work in galleries that could be classed as art, but this began to change when different things could be called art. The arts were beginning to improve, which was helped somewhat by the interest that artwork could be collectable, with emphasis on original pieces.

Walter Benjamin was all in favour of this idea of artwork. In his book 'A short history of photography', he argued that the original piece was important in the fact that its uniqueness creates an aura and atmosphere. This aura then forms a connection with the viewer. He also states that the aura deminishes every time we see it, so the more copies we see deminishes the artwork itself.

Benjamin also stated that the magic of the image can be lost due to the photographer trying to imitate a painting. Photography is about the 'spark of chance' i.e. capturing events that can possably only last for a second, and that may be totally random. Without this spark of chance, the aura is lost.

Douglas Crimp argues that a particular art piece has a universal importance, not just a local one. He said that painters seek to preserve their work as a high art culutre, as opposed to local significance.

Alfred Steiglitz - The Steerage 1907

This image shows the documentary expression style of the 1930s, which involves the view of the photographer on the event. This image sends a social message with the upper and lower deck.

Postmodernism occurred in the 1960s. It was the collapse of ideas of history and certainty. Anyone writing a history was thought to just be expressing their point of view. There was a lot of reproduction and circulation, so issues of authorship and the distinction between original and copy were raised.

Three key figures in postmodernism are Jean-Francois Lyotard, Frederic Jameson, and Jean Baudrillard.
Lyotard stated that postmodernism occurred because society had become so fragmented that theories explaining how society works cant easily be applied. He also believed that society had lost faith in big ideas: despite advances or promises, no progress had been made.

Jameson believed that the world was saturated with global capitalism and consumerism, and that older art works were just being made reference to.

Baudrillard also believed that the world was saturated with endless recycling and reproduction of images. Social and cultural processes were being represented, but we had no way of knowing the truth of those representations.

(Probert. D. AQA Advanced Media Studies, 2008, Phillip Allan Publishing)

Christian Boltanski French is a photographer who feels like a recycler. He admits there is a distance between creator and audience, and that the audience bring their own experiences to the work in order to interpret it.

Light, Magic, Chemicals - Photography and the emergence of the modern world

 In this lecture, the main discussion points were the history of photography and the processes used to enhance particular photographs.


We first need to define the terms 'history' and 'culture' and how they relate to photography.
History - continuous records of past events, or the study of past events. So photography can be part of history as a photograph can represent a certain time and place.
Culture - Intellectual and artistic achievement or expression, or customs and civilisations of a particular time and people. Photography can portray these cultures, or can be part of universal culture in every day life.


According to Steve Bezencanet: "We are locked into a limited and traditional perception of a medium developing from one master to another, marginally influenced by technical factors and with a minimal relation to anything else: the key point of analysis being the individual photograph…
(Stevie Bezencanet, „What a History of Photography‟, Creative Camera, April 1982).
I interpret this to mean that Bezencanet believed a photographer isn't as original as they first thought, that they only reproduce images from other photographers without bringing much to it themselves. I feel this statement is very pessimistic because photography should be seen as a creative outlet that is different for every photographer.

Joseph Nicephore Niepce, View from his window at Le Gras, c1827

This image is known as the first photograph to be made, created by Joseph Nicephore Niepce. It is a heliograph, with direct bitumen positive on a pewter plate.

Alternative Processes

Dageurretype - A silver plate process. Method = coat a silver plate, add iodine vapour, which forms silver iodide. Expose to light, which forms a latent image (cant see but can be developed). It is then developed in mercury vapour and fixed in sodium thiosulphate. A dageurretype produces a sharp, dark image, but cant be reproduced.

Calotype -  Fox Talbot created this negative / positive process. Method = coat paper with silver nitrate and silver iodide. Dry and expose to light. The latent image is developed in gallo nitrate of silver and fixed in hypo. The texture of the paper can be seen on calotypes.

Cyanotype - Ferric based not silver based process. Method = coat paper with an ammonium iron and potassium ferricyanide solution. Expose to natural or ultraviolet light which, when rinsed, produces a high blue image when oxidised.

Photography As Evidence

This lecture was about how photography can be used as evidence and how itcan provide knowledge of certain events. I have elaborated the key points of the lecture with my own knowledge and research.

John Tagg is a key figure in this topic because he looked at how the 19th century changed, and the ways in which photography was part of that change. He stated that photography became an instrument of surveillance and control. He also stated that "knowledge is power, and photography a crucial form of information".
(Vicki Goldberg, „The Power of Photography‟, Abbeville Press, 1991, p. 61)

Photography has a representational task, in that the photographer, viewed as a special seer, chose to make a particular photograph. This gives authority and credibility to the image. According to Umberto Eco, the camera is like an eye.

One example of how photography can be used as evidence is the work of Lewis Hine. He worked with a labour board of child employment, and photographed the children working as a form of evidence. Hine said:
"I had to show what it was really like…The photograph has an added realism of its own…the average person believes that the camera cannot falsify."

Lewis Hine, a New York City schoolteacher and photographer, believed that a picture could tell a powerful story. He felt so strongly about the abuse of children as workers that he quit his teaching job and became an investigative photographer for the National Child Labor Committee. Hine traveled around the country photographing the working conditions of children in all types of industries. He photographed children in coal mines, in meatpacking houses, in textile mills, and in canneries. He took pictures of children working in the streets as shoe shiners, newsboys, and hawkers. In many instances he tricked his way into factories to take the pictures that factory managers did not want the public to see. He was careful to document every photograph with precise facts and figures. To obtain captions for his pictures, he interviewed the children on some pretext and then scribbled his notes with his hand hidden inside his pocket.

http://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/hine-photos/

 

Other ways photography can be used as evidence:

• Surveillance
• Identification, however not always good for detection
• Mug shot
• Police photographs

Problems with photography as evidence:

• Kozloff developed the idea of the photograph as a witness with possibilities of misinterpretation, false witness and partial information
• It is time based. Barthes - "it was made there but it is here now"
• Truth
• Different meanings can be generated

Advertisements

Since the development of computer manipulation tecnology, there have been issues raised as to whether advertisements can be classed as 'truthful'. Editors can now reach into the guts of the photograph and can manipulate any part of it.

"The reader cannot rely upon his or her experience, and sense of what is real, based upon photography‟s similarity to human sight, to decipher the veracity of these kinds of composites because they are too well done. A government will be able to deny the veracity of images of torture… and it may be difficult to prove otherwise", (Fred Ritchin, „Photojournalism in the Age of Computers‟. In Carol Squires (Ed), „the Critical Image‟, Wisehart, London, 1990, p. 28 –38).

Advertising creates an atmosphere and makes the product different to others, even though it is probably very similar.

Before and after images of Kiera Knightley, showing photo editing

Codes - Intertextuality. Portraiture

Definitions

Intertextuality - referring to other texts within a text. For example homage and parody.
Julia Kristeva, (1941-) Intertextuality - reference to other texts, borrow from allude to other art works. Narratives woven from echoes of other texts a ‘mosaic of quotations’

Homage -  making reference to a text intended for respect
Parody -  making reference to a text intended for humour

Appropriation -  using material from sources other than the artist's own: extracting, reproducing, recontextualisation, using 'ready mades', copying, simulation, quotation, parody, forging.

Authorship - past view of the artist having a 'contact' with the work resulting in the original and unique work of art. Foucault and Barthes argue 'death of the author' was part of a system of meaning.

Portrait - express the character of a person and beyond details of their appearance.

Arnold Newman's parody of Salvador Dali's Mona Lisa



Photography as Communication

The key points of this lecture were:

• Photography as communication
• Structuralism
• Binary oppositions / divides
• Process model of communication
• Codes

Anthrapologist Claude Levi-Strauss was the first to study the concept of myths, taboos and totems. He discovered the unconscious foundations in primitive societies including cooking, manners and other forms of social practice.


Communication has an effect on both the sender and the receiver, it doesnt take place in isolation.

Structuralism - Binary Oppositions - Structuring oppositions in myth systems defined in terms of opposition. For example black and white, hot and cold, primitive and modern.

Eikoh Hosoe #28,Embrace1969

Structure and language

‘aims at revealing how we understand each other by… (following) conventional rules – how we ‘signify’ to each other… Sim and

‘ language organises and constructs our sense of reality – different languages in effect produce different mappings of the real’ Storey (2006) p88Van Loon (2004) p63

Process Model of Communication

A photographer makes or takes a photograph in a particular way (using a series of signs) with a particular purpose in mind, the photograph is viewed in a context (newspaper, exhibition, family album) by a viewer who perceives and understands the codes used, and responds to the message.

Noise – disruption of signal between transmission and reception between sender to receiver. Problems with model – efficiency of communication not content or meaning. No account of feedback or context (where, when) or other forms of classification.

Photographic Codes

Cultural - Details that determine style or genre

Intertextuality -  Refers to other images e.g homage and parody

Aesthetic -  Treatment, what to include / leave out, composition

Technical - Lighting, camera angle, black/white, colour, darkroom techniques, quality

Reading the Signs - Semiotics

The key points of this essay were:

• signs and signification: signifier and signified

• iconic and arbitrary (or symbolic)

• denotation, connotation, myth

• paradigm and syntagm

Definitions

Signification - the process of signs being noticed and understood

Sign - combines both the signifier (the object) and the signified (the meaning)

Iconic - how close a sign is to the real thing, how restricted it is by the thing it represents. For example a portrait.

Arbitrary (symbolic) - how far away a sign is to the real thing, how unrestricted it is by the thing it represents. For example a person's name.

Iconic is one extreme, arbitrary is another extreme.

Denotation - what the sign is

Connotation - what the sign suggests

Myth - the ideological or political meaning of the thing

Paradigm - a set of signs available to be used in a context. For example, a paradigm of landscape.

Syntagm - the particular selection of signs (from the paradigms) which are available. For example a coastal landscape in the afternoon.

My Response to the Lecture

I wanted to find out more about these terms, so I read Daniel Chandler's Semiotics for beginners website: http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/S4B/sem06.html

Distinctively we make meanings through our creation and interpretation of 'signs'. According to Peirce 'nothing is a sign unless it is interpreted as a sign'. Anything can be a sign as long as someone interprets it as 'signifying' something - referring to or standing for something other than itself.

 The sign is the whole that results from the association of the signifier and the signified. The relationship between them is called signification, which is shown in Saussure's diagram opposite.




A paradigm is a set of associated signifiers or signifieds which are all members of some defining category, but in which each is significantly different.The use of one signifier (e.g. a particular word or a garment) rather than another from the same paradigm set (e.g. respectively, adjectives or hats) shapes the preferred meaning of a text.

A syntagm is an orderly combination of interacting signifiers which forms a meaningful whole within a text - sometimes, following Saussure, called a 'chain'. Such combinations are made within a framework of conventions. Syntagms are created by the linking of signifiers from paradigm sets which are chosen on the basis of whether they are conventionally regarded as appropriate.

Barthes gave a good example of explaining paradigm and syntagm. He said that paradigmatic elements are the items which cannot be worn at the same time on the same part of the body (such as hats, trousers, shoes). The syntagm is the combination of different items worn.

Photographs and Analysis - Why?

The main key points of this lecture were:

• John Szarkowski - The Thing Itself, The Detail, Time, The Frame, The Vantage Point
• Structuralism - Sign Semiotics / Signification - Structure and Language (Denotation and Connotation)

John Szarkowski

Szarkowski's theory comes from the idea that, different from paintings that are made, photographs are taken. This then raised the question of how photographs are 'taken' to produce a meaningful image.

The Thing Itself - This is the object in front of the camera, the thing the photographer has to recognise in order to capture a permanent image of it. The image of the object will be more remembered than the object itself. As William M. Ivins, Jr said "at any given moment the accepted report of an event is of greater importance than the event, for what we think about and act upon is the symbolic report and not the concrete event itself". (Wells. L, The Photography Reader, London, Routledge, 2003, page 99/100)

The Detail - It is hard for photographs to tell stories, so they are often used as symbols. By isolating a particular part of 'reality', a photograph is a part representing a whole.

Time - "Photograph was made there but it is here now, subject was there but is here now" Roland Barthes.
Photographs allow us to see subjects that we wouldn't normally be able to see, and subjects in the past. They describe the period of time in which they were made, including exposures of different duration.

The Frame - It is not just the inside of the frame that we need to consider when generating a meaning of an image. We often need knowledge of outside the frame to entirely know what is going on in the photograph. Photographers can now choose and eliminate what the viewer sees in order to obtain different interpretations.

The Vantage Point - The position of the camera is a useful technique as it postitions the viewer. Images from angles such as bird's eye view, worm's eye view etc can effectively manipulate the meaning of them.

(Wells. L, The Photograhy Reader, London, Routledge, 2003)


Structuralism - Sign Semiotics / Signification

Sign - 'A gesture expressing a meaning; a signal; a mark with a meaning; a symbol...' (Chambers Dictionary page 1422)

Semiotics - 'the study of signs, signalss, and symbols, esp. in language and communication' (Chambers Dictionary page 1391)

Photographs contain various signs that we learn to decode, generating interpretations based on our own experiences.

Roland Barthes then created the denotation and connotation process:

1. Denotatrion - The first level of signification. It is the visual images that describe what is there.
2. Connotation - The second level of signification. It is the meanings/feelings that are recollected by the signs. They are based on personal experiences and are often subjective.

Images are nearly always seen with captions. This anchors the image, restricting interpretations and even changes the meaning.

• Content Signs - The objects seen in the image
• Position Signs - The position of the camera
• Treatment Signs - Black and white/colour, lighting

My Response to the Lecture - Semiotic Analysis

Diane Arbus – A family on their lawn one Sunday in Winchester, N.Y., 1968

Denotation

Content Signs: White mother, father and child. Mother and father are in the foreground while the child is in the background playing on his own. A large garden with child’s toys.

Position Signs: Camera is above the family, making the viewer look down at them. The view of the large open space can make the viewer envious of the family.

Treatment Signs: Black and white. Lighting from the front illuminates the parents, making them more noticeable than the child.

Connotations

Meanings generated: The image is a representation of a typical family at the time, showing how there can be an emotional distance between parents and children. It shows how a family can be spending time together but not engaging with each other. The large garden suggests that the family are wealthy and have the time to sunbathe.