In Plato's Cave

1. I think she means that no matter how much you try to capture just the reality of the photograph, they are haunted by their truth and story. An example she uses is the Farm Security Administration photo project. The photographers would capture hundreds of photographers until satisfied. Many of these photographs included a  subject that supported their own belief about poverty, light, dignity, texture, exploitation, and geometry. I do agree with her statement. Everyone can interpret photos differently and form different opinions no matter how "right" or "wrong" the message in the photograph is. However, the photographs she is referring to are just trying to capture reality, which could be taken away because of peoples' beliefs or opinions.

2. I think she Sontag means that taking photographs on vacation can certify your experience and in a way could be a souvenir because you can always have that together to remember your trip. However a photographer can only limit the experience, especially if the viewer of the photograph was not there with you. A photograph cannot capture your entire experience, only a fragment of it. I also agree with this statement. No one can truly understand and experience all you encountered. A photograph can only get a snip it of time. An example Sontag uses to back up her statement is tourists who are on vacation. Most tourists feel obligated to take a picture of whatever exciting thing they see. Whenever I go on vacation, I take a bunch of pictures then post them on Instagram or Facebook. Our generation especially has a tendency of flaunting our lives on a social media website. Whether we want to look cooler or more interesting, we want people to see where we have been and who we were with. But on a more positive note, the pictures may capture an enjoyable time for us and remind us of happy things. Even though people looking at the pictures might not know the background story, they still see a moment in time that makes us happy, whether we were at an interesting place or just looked really good in the photograph.

The Portrait

The theme of my project was to portray that it does not matter who you are, everyone has been labeled  or called names. No matter how much you hide your feelings, everyone is slightly affected by what they are called. Whether someone means it or not, words can cut deeply. Everyone feels pain, and those labels can be a burden we carry around for the rest of our lives. I once heard a phrase that said "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but only words will leave me psychologically damaged". This phrase is beyond true. It's completely human nature to remember all the bad things people say about us, but forget the compliments we receive. We dwell on our flaws people point out and think about all the characteristics that are wrong with us. It's cliche, but we should only treat people the way we would want to be treated.

In order to create a somber and striking mood, I turned off all the lights and waited for it to get dark outside. Then I should a desk lamp and shined it at different angels in order to get differently lighting on peoples' faces. I asked everyone to write down on a piece of paper everything they remember being called throughout their lives. I wrote it on their faces in black with eyeliner in order to make it really stick out. Almost every single person wore a black or white shirt because I didn't want any colors or design to take away from their faces. One of the portraits is blurry on purpose because I liked how crazy and confused it looked, but you can still slightly make out what it says on her face. I think it kind of symbolizes how messed up insults can make people. I also choose to change the lighting for some of the pictures to make the people look lonely and depressed.

If I were to do this project again there would be a few things I would change. I would have rather taken pictures of people out in public with the names still written on their faces. I feel like this would have been better because it would've made the project more interesting to look at and it would've shown everyday people doing regular activities without knowing they have been labeled. It was kind of depressing during this photo shoot because all my roommates sat there and dwelled on what they wrote down. It made me realize that no matter how happy or "normal" someone may seem, we all have stuff bottled up inside of us that bothers us.

Documentary Photographs

The place I choose to document for this project was my family's restaurant in downtown Cleveland. The formal name of the restaurant is Sokolowski's University Inn. It was established by my great grandparents and started off as a bar. As the years went on my grandmother and grandfather took over the business and turned it into a European style restaurant, but also has American food to accommodate to everyone's taste buds. I am very proud to say that this establishment is part of my family and our history. The restaurant is known for giving off a family type of vibe, and our cooking is compared to "something your grandmother would make". My goal for this project was to give off a friendly, kind of "home" feeling of the place.

Trying my best to capture photographs that give off this vibe, I took around 100 photos. I felt like these met my expectations the best and hopefully the viewer can also see why I choose these photos. I decided to take most of my photographs without using a flash to create a more relaxing, natural looking picture. I did not want them to be really bright because I felt like it would take away from the calm and homey vibe that I was trying to communicate.

In a way it was hard to communicate photography's formal elements in order to communicate the ideas I had. For the photo of the man's feet, I know I wanted to incorporate frame. I only took a picture of the man's feet so the viewer could focus on what I was really trying to communicate. I feel like if the picture included the whole man's body, they would not pick up on what I was trying to say.

Old News Interpretation

One picture I really enjoyed was the Best (Men's) Legs Contest photograph. The work was photographed on August 5, 1985 using a digital camera. The photo was printed on silver gelatin paper. The picture is taken in black and white and you can detect a lot of shapes in the picture. The women who are the judges are in a line formation while the shot of the man's legs form a triangle. The photograph was displayed horizontally and from what I can remember it was basically the size of piece of computer paper- 8x11. The photograph does not display any biological information about the article or the location where it was taken. 

The meaning of the work is to show reverse sexism. The photographer mentions that in the explanation of his photographs. Even though I think this photograph is to be taken on a lighter scale, it does raise awareness to an important issue that is always taking place in our society-sexism. The photo shows a mans legs walking down a cat walk while a row of female judges are laughing and smiling at him. Very rarely to we see this, since women are usually the ones being objectified and judge more on their appearance. I feel like some people may take this photograph the wrong way, in that it is very unorthodox and it was dumb to have a contest like this, but I also find it pretty sad that there is competitions on women's body parts and appearances. Also, I hope the men in the contest had a good time, while learning a valuable lesson on what it is like to be a woman in society. I'm sure there had to be at least one man who felt uncomfortable walking in front of all those people, and even worse maybe he felt self-conscious about his body. I am not saying that every man is completely comfortable with who they are and how they look, everyone has something about themselves they do not like, but much of the male society is oblivious to the pressures and expectations that are inflicted on women today. 

Three questions I have for the photographer would be 1) What image of his does he think is the most powerful, or means the most to him 2) When did he start taking photographs 3) Has he been working on any collections lately and he plans to eventually display