People Pictures

Forgive me for my lateness. It’s been a ROUGH couple of days.

This week I’ve been trying to focus my photography on taking pictures of the human body, which is a topic we started covering in class. The photographers we’ve been discussing are Robert Mapplethorpe and Cindy Sherman. Although they’re vastly different in many, many ways, these two photographers have the same kind of general idea when presenting the human body. They want to glorify their subjects in their totality. That is, they want to show you a person, and make that person a piece of art (whatever that means considering the subjectivity of the term “art”). I think that in his pictures, Mapplethorpe is trying to manipulate the human body in order to create new ways in which we perceive people on a physical level. Sherman also works with the idea of perception, but her photographs tend to focus on the psychological or emotional complications which her images present. However, both of these artists are characterized (if that’s the right word) by their reliance on the audience’s interpretations and perspectives, and I don’t think every photograph needs that interaction (which is another argument for another time).

Anyway, when I was taking photographs for my blog this week, I wanted to do something different with the way I constructed the human body in the image. What I wanted to do with the above images was isolate different parts of the body. Once they were disconnected, I wanted to try and re-negotiate them as art, but almost in a way which imagine these parts as alien or unfamiliar. I guess, What I wanted was to take the human body, or parts of it, and try to incorporate it within the artistic image rather than making those parts the artistic image. BY accomplishing that kind of human body photograph, the photographer is challenging not only how we look at beauty and anatomy, but how we perceive humanity’s relationship with art. When you single out the person, you’re saying “this a human, and he is art”. When you isolate part of that person and immerse it within a picture, you’re saying, “this is art, and the human presence is relative”.

I don’t know If I was successful in doing that, because all I really have is a simple digital camera and really basic accommodations in which to work. But, I guess that’s not the point of this blog. I’m not trying to be a big deal photographer, I’m just trying to analyze the pictures I take, and that’s where there purpose is involved. However, it has been SUPER frustrating trying to talk about the pictures I end up with, when the images I’m trying to take seem like they’re so much more sophisticated. In, uh, my head they seem more sophisticated.

I think that the most important theme that we talked about in class this week was the idea that photography functions as an ethical form of art. It is my philosophy that photography is the process of capturing actuality; as photographers we, (or, in this case, I) try to present life as it is, or as it was at one time. What we are trying to “get” is reality as it happens. However, the topics we covered this week dealt with the malleability of photography and the manipulation of actuality. I think that the Highsmith story and Rear Window were trying to emphasize the complications of photographing subjects which aren’t prepared or don’t know that they’re being photographed.
What I wanted to do this week was try and photograph unsuspecting subjects. Most of my photographs were taken at a hospital near my home in New Brunswick (it was pretty convenient, because the bus would drop me off right across the street from the kid’s wing). I ended up taking pictures of the rooms, and the people who stood around outside waiting.
The first image I took was the one of what looks like a nurse in the front office of the children’s wing. I have to admit that I was really uncomfortable taking the first couple of pictures this week, as I was really afraid of confrontation. Luckily, no one really approached me. I would stand across the street and take pictures with my zoom, because I thought that might be more inconspicuous than going right up to the window. The second image is of a Valentine’s balloon in one of the Hospital’s windows. Each night I took pictures, I tried to look for people in windows to photograph, but I never really saw anyone anywhere outside of that main office in the first photograph. I really like the image of the balloon, because it suggests that human presence that I was trying to capture. The third image is of one of the statues outside of the hospital. I ended up posting that photo because it portrayed action, and because the image of humanity it imitates through the photograph was much more intriguing and questionable than the pictures of real people that I took (they were mostly just smoking and standing around quietly. Also, I was afraid someone would find out about this blog and come after me. Does fear count as ethics?)
What these pictures helped me to understand was the way anonymous subjects functioned in the realm of photographic art. Photographing strangers is a complicated facet of this art not because of permission, but because of perspective. That is, while pictures of strangers are indeed images reality, the narrative of the photo is marginalized. Strangers are an ethical gray area because we don’t know how this moment of their reality fits into the grand scheme of existence. Who are they? Where are they going? What do they want? All of these questions go unanswered, and the audience leaves the photo unsatisfied. I guess that leaves me wondering why we, as an audience, want to feel this kind of isolation. Is it even our choice?

Nameless Faceless Photos

In my last picture this week, I really wanted to work with a live subject. I was trying to accomplish the deadpan, natural look discussed in chapter three of The Photograph as Contemporary Art. However, constructing that kind of image is so incredibly difficult, especially considering that I was photographing my roommate.

It seemed impossible to catch that almost sterile, but natural, expression needed for a photograph like this when shooting a subject who is completely aware that someone is trying to take their picture. I don’t know how many times I found myself saying something like, “You don’t need to smile - no one that cares about you will see this image.” I really wanted the subject to make eye contact in the photograph, but as I continued to shoot, that result seemed like a more and more unlikely. The image I ended up positing is an extreme compromise: there’s no eye contact and the subject’s eyes are virtually closed. I think the end result is more “detached” rather than “natural” or “deadpan”.

This particular exercise, more so than any other I tried to execute, really began to emphasize the voyeuristic sensibilities which are inherent to photography. If I was to end up with a shoot that I would have been happy with, I would have needed my subject to take herself to a place where she was completely isolated: I was trying to get something really raw out of her. When the task got really difficult, I kept wondering why someone would be interested in “deadpan” photographs; is it about the desire to relate? Do these kinds of photos show us that all of humanity can be reduced to a single apparently apathetic state? If so, what does that need say about us as an audience? About us as a society of social beings?

Making Pictures 2

For my next photograph, I tried to construct an image on a larger scale. I worked with the empty bottles and trash on my living room table, because the space was big and everything was pretty much completely set-up for the shoot.

The final image that I’m posting is only one of 43. What I really wanted to consider was the intricacies which define the final photograph. I really wanted to experiment with camera angles and perspective and how those factors contribute to a picture. I really wanted to have something to capture attention in the foreground, but be out of center focus in the larger image, and I wanted the background structures to mimic each other in form, which I think I kinda did. Once the image was constructed physically, I began to play around with the perspective of the shoot. Perspective is such a tricky factor in the make up of a photograph, because emphasis is totally dependent on how you’re seeing the image while you’re taking it.

It took me awhile before settling on the appropriate angle from which to shoot. However, once you accomplish that perfect perspective, you’re establishing that necessary relationship with the image – the photographer grants himself authority through his use of perspective. As some one who never really practiced photography before, these factors are very important, but subtle, facets of this art that aren’t really considered. As someone who mostly only views photos, I used to tend to place importance on the relationship between the image and the audience. Although, without considering perspective and the relationship intertwined within it, your resulting image doesn’t get the substance it needs.

Making Pictures

I’ve been having a lot of problems with this blog, and a lot of problems with Photography. I’m having problems getting passed Photography’s relationship with deliberation.

I think it’s impossible to come into a project like this and not have a bunch of preconceived notions about this style of art, and what it means to produced that art. For me, it’s been this need to take pictures spontaneously – to capture an image in order to recreate this idea of actuality. Isn’t reality the very thing a photographic image is trying to achieve?

Just finding something that looks nice and taking its picture is not photography, and I’m finding that out. There is something deliberate in every photograph taken, the more I take pictures, the more I’m figuring that out. This is not an organic art that one lucks into – Subject is imperative, but it’s not everything. The truth of that fact is a litter frustrating, because aesthetically, what is a photograph but content in its most basic and consolidated form?