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

Assignment 2: The Photographer's Eye

 FRAME

 VANTAGE POINT

 DETAIL

 FAST SHUTTER SPEED

 SLOW SHUTTER SPEED + TRIPOD

 HAND HELD NIGHT PHOTOGRAPHY

 NIGHT PHOTOGRAPHY + TRIPOD

 f/3.1 1/6

DEPTH OF FIELD  f/8.0 1.0

 FLASH

THE THING ITSELF

After reading the article from last week, I interpreted that "The Thing Itself" means that no matter how deceiving or confusing a photo may seem, it is not what it appears to be. This part of the assignment was very difficult for me, especially since I was not sure if I had a correct idea of what it meant. After taking this photograph I went and asked my roommates what they thought this was a picture of and luckily they said a blanket. However, it is a napkin. I think this is one example of how something may seem different from what it really is. 

The Photographer's Eye Response

This article, written by John Szarkowski, is a summary of how photography transformed art and how we remember things through time. It doesn't matter who the photographer is and what the purpose of taking the photograph was. Pictures could be creations from knowledge and skill, while some could be created from an accident, misunderstanding, or experiment. But no matter what the photograph was taken of and who saw it- everyone sees the same thing-but no necessarily in the same way. A few reasons photography became a popular form of art was: inexpensive, easy, and it recorded anything- unlike other forms or art such as painting and drawing. 

Later in the article, the author breaks up into sections the five most important parts of photography. The first one is The Thing Itself. He goes on to explain that this means that the photographer must face reality. The world by itself is art, and you can capture it in it's best forms if you pay attention it's movements and are creative with them. The second part is The Detail. One explanation that the author mentions was in the early days of photography. The goal of the photographer was to achieve some sort of narrative- kind of like an explanation of the photos through a sequence of different photos. A good example he states is the documentaries of the American Civil War. The purpose of the series of photographs was to make it seem real, not to make the story clear. A great photograph is one that has a narrative and symbolic view. The Frame was the third part that Szarkowski explains. Not only does a frame make a picture more decorative, but it initially displays the most important part of a piece of art. Achieving a perfect frame was nearly impossibly, and since enlarging a photograph was not practical, a photographer had to decide which fragment of the photograph he had to use. The time and effort it took to make a perfect photograph made people appreciate photographers' work that much more. Time is the essential part of photography. Every picture, no matter what time it was taken or what it was taken of- describes a part of time.What was really unique about photography was that slow lenses and slow films a photograph could actually display a time segment in several seconds. If the object moved, the photograph would suddenly show a blurred subject. Into a deeper aspect of time, a picture could capture the beauty and feeling of the time. The last important part of photography was the Vantage Point, or place where something can be viewed. Since the beginning of photography, artists have been exploring new techniques for shooting such as a bird's eye view and distorting the subject. This article overall explains the influence of photography on art and artists. 

I found this article to be very boring. If I were to write an article about this subject I would have used more modern day examples. I also found the vocabulary he used to be confusing. But, to give him the benefit of the doubt, it was a very informative article. In detail he described the important parts of photography and used good examples. 

Assignment One Photography

I took this photograph outside of the Ovalwood building in the creek. I went under a small tree where the light was shining through. I love this image because of the rich green colors and the shadows. I also think it was kind of creative to sit under the tree and look up at the sky to take the photo in order to get a different perspective.