I have a presentation on thursday in which we have to talk about our ideas. I have been collecting a lot of reading and previous projects. Its only 5 minutes and I have a lot to say, so not sure how to cut down all my research. I have also done some more reading, which i'll write here:
Susan Sontang: Regarding the pain of others
"To remember, more and more, is not to recall but to be able to call up a picture"
"photographs have the advantage of uniting two contradictory features. Their credentials of objectivity was inbuilt. They always had a point of view. They were real and they were witness to the real. An objective record and a personal testimony"
When a photo is "less serviced", it gets more "compassion and belief" because people see it as not engineered. In the same strand, "photography is the only major art form that does not give advantage to those who are trained and experienced."
"photographs objectify. They turn an event or a person into something that can be possessed... and this is prized as a transparent account of reality"
COLLECTIVE MEMORY "photographs that everyone recognizes are now a constituent part of society that everyone chooses to think about" "collective memory- that THIS is important, this is how it happened etc... ideologies create sustaining archives of images, representative images, which encapsulate common ideas of significance and trigger predictable thoughts."
"It is felt that there is something morally wrong with the reality of photography"
John Tagg: The Burden of Representation
"The indexical nature of a photograph is highly complex, irreversible and can guarantee nothing at the level of meaning" "Photography is a new and specific reality, it is not a magical enamtion but a material product of a material apparatus set to work in specific contexts by specific forces""Photography is the reality of present discussions and meanings" (even old photos are judged in par with present day ideology)
--> The legal side of photography- who OWNS the photograph? If you take a photo of reality, do you own that space? Do you own what is shown? Do you own a space of time? The real second of captured space? Law has "appropriated the real"= photos are owned by a photographer, but if you are IN the photo, you are then given to the photographer, used by them- is this fair? an "imprint of personality""the camera is never neutral"
--> "photography is a mode of capitalist expansion"- a means of control? (Control societies) "photography is a means of evidence" "it arrives on the scene with a sense of authority to transform, picture and arrest daily life. This power is not the power of the camera but the power of the state which supplies it" -- suggests that we always take a photo in terms of state control and state bias. This links to ideas about surveillance society. The camera to control representation, to document and record and watch, photography as propaganda. photography is used to do this- and to understand this, we must look at photos, at "what they do and don't do, encompass or exclude, resist or include, "-READ.
"photography has a currency. Marx saw that this currency could take force as compulsory action of teh state" "photographs are an essential ingredient to many social rituals. It is difficult to imagine these rituals before photography. It is difficult precisely because the internal stability of society is preserved through the naturalization of beliefs which are historically produced and historically specific. it is through this light we must see photographs" "It is an apparatus of ideological control under the central harmonizing authority of the class which has state power"
For my presentation:
I was thinking of basing my presentation with mainly ideas and theories about representation and the ethics of taking a photo (as above,)
However, I was also thinking about including theories about online representation (if its changed) and if we have more freedom on the internet to change our representation. This could include found photography and fears of control society, and would link by interactive media (as my project is interactive, and self-documenting)
I am writing at the moment.
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