RR1

Written by bellalanci

Applied vernaculars: documentary, reportage, fashion, advertising, architecture, portraiture         

Multivalence: having or susceptible of many applications, interpretations, meanings or values

Photopath, Victor Burgin; “the most literal things are often the most open-ended and mysterious”

  • “fighting to be accepted”; “it was accepted by being art and not being art”
    •  Photography has been looked down upon historically as not a true artistic practice and method of artmaking. Critics viewed photography as a tool for other artistic practices. Some view photography as an art form where, whereas others did not, claiming that “capturing reality is not artistic”; many people invalidated and devalued the idea of photography as fine art.
  • Photo vs picture -> purposeful how and why
    • What separates a photograph from a picture? Is the idea of contextualized purpose the separation? Doesn’t every photo and picture have a
    purpose behind it? Perhaps the difference is that a photograph has more artistic and specific, whereas a picture can be an umbrella term for anything. It’s the same concept as ‘a square is a rectangle, but a rectangle isn’t a square’
    • Picture originally was derived from pictura, which is a latin term that means “painting”. How did picture begin to overarch all artistic practices? Was it just a natural bleed of vocabulary, or the use of photography in reference for other art? (Think about the idea that pictures and photographs were originally viewed not as art but for tools to be used to further media like paintings)If we go further into this, we can see that the camera obscura was invented in 1021 but the “first photograph” was not taken until 1826 (https://www.thesprucecrafts.com/brief-history-of-photography-2688527)
    • How does the “picture generation” then fit into this argument? “the pictures generation was a loose affiliation of artists influenced by conceptual and pop art, who utilized appropriation and montage to reveal the constructed nature of images” (https://www.theartstory.org/movement/the-pictures-generation/)
  • Idea of gaze – gaze in photography
    • The idea of gaze in photography is something that comes up in almost every discussion about photography. John Berger’s book Ways of Looking is a constant reference, along with Foucault’s analysis of the gaze a means of surveillance. Gaze when utilized in photography can be seen as a form of reflection, self and other, surveillance, and more. It can separate the viewer and also draw them in closer. Gaze in photography is different from gaze in other art mediums, as it is a more realistic act of pathos. When the gaze is used in a painting, it’s not as layered as a photographic gaze. In photography, the camera’s gaze is an added layer of realistic looking, active or passive, whereas, in a painting, each form of gaze is an imagined device used to enhance the overall concept or idea.