Commissioned Design Job Paratrooper jumping out of plane.
Poster 18x24
I did not take the photograph.
Wednesday, March 7, 2012
Thursday, January 19, 2012
Explanation of Susan Sontag on Diane Arbus
Reflecting on the photograph A family on their lawn one Sunday in Westchester, 1868 by Diane Arbus in relation to the ideals that Susan Sontag communicates within photography with relevance to humanities, I found particular connections and similarities between the concepts and the items portrayed. Arbus discovers and reveals a side of society that is mundane, commonplace and somewhat controversial and showcases it. It is a very different way of seeing. Sontag ideas on photography in general are much like the work of Arbus
There is evidence of the moral and aesthetic issues raised by the image and what it is saying. Susan Sontag states that “most people in this society have the idea that to take a picture is to say, among other things: ‘this is worth photographing.’” The photograph gives us a glimpse into these people’s lives. The “shock value” is another aspect to be considered, the intrigue of the image. This is an image that is very relatable: sitting in a lawn chair one hot afternoon. Sontag states “ They (people) refer back to the images in order to have a direct experience of the reality because they have been prepared, in some very dissociated way, by the images and not by the real experience.” A photograph is the proof that something truly took place, that it ‘really exists.’
When first looking at the image it appears to be an average suburban middle-class American family. As the viewer dives deeper into the underlying meaning of the image and the statements that it posses, such as the nature and relationship between the people within the photograph certain aspects emerge. Looking at is the aesthetics of the photograph, such as the lawn taking up two-thirds of the space having a relating factor to a sense of emptiness, and disconnection between the family members. The tress poses a looming presence. There is a literal positioning that gives way to the compelling idea of an emotional inner space. The parents and separated and alone, the man is tense and he holds his hands tight. The mother seems to be relaxed but there is a feeling of discuss in her face. The boy plays alone and is turned away. The photograph suggests a condition, which is underlined in the positioning within and of the family.
A family on their lawn one Sunday in Westchester, 1868 by Diane ArbusDiscussion Paper
Informative
A Four-year-old Girl and Her Paint Set
She is a normal lively, energetic, and fascinating 4-year old. However, the art world perceives her as a child prodigy, a master painter on a par with Picasso. Her name is Marla Olmstead a young girl from Binghamton, N.Y., who has gotten a lot of publicity because at her age she is producing abstract paintings that are selling for hundreds and thousands of dollars, are placed in gallery shows, generate a firestorm in the art community, and are the subject of controversy. The documentary My Kid Could Paint That about Marla and her paintings is highly entertaining and it raises interesting questions about media exploitation, the value of art, and its authenticity. Just about every parent of a young child has a priceless collection of their masterpieces; treasured drawings and paintings taped to a closet door, stuck to the refrigerator with magnets or rolled up in a box somewhere in the basement. The value of these artifacts is personal and sentimental, but they can also have an aesthetic power that goes beyond parental pride. On the other hand in the case of young Marla her parents Mark and Laura as well as art critics, gallery owners, and the media have taken that pride farther than what is normal.
Some of the opening imagery in the documentary shows Marla sitting on the kitchen floor in her diaper with a paintbrush in hand, paint tubes spread around and a blank canvas below. This adorable girl who seems to be like any other young inquisitive, precocious child is having an enjoyable time painting touches the viewer’s heart. We watch in awe as she pours paint from the tubes and smears the paint with a brush. As we see Marla painting in her diaper or in her jumper the director of the video appeals to our emotions by showing Marla, in my opinion just like any other young child painting. I think this was a very effective way to appeal to us to show the viewer that Marla is just like any other 4-year-old painting a picture. Other instances where the video appeals to our emotions and where you can see Marla as a regular girl and not this “prodigy” that she is being presented as is when her father asks her if she wants to paint, Marla says “no.” However, Marla’s dad pushes her to paint. The viewer can see that she just does not want to paint; she is a young child that has no interest in it at the time. The documentary does a very good job at calling to attention the emotional appeals of Marla as just a young child.
Are the painting of Marla’s “real” art, that there is a sense of composition and creation and not just the work of a girl who likes to paint putting down colors where she wants, making movements with the brush how she wants? When speaking of ethics (ethos) who is one to decide if these works are to be displayed along with modernists such as Jackson Pollock and Franz Marc? Is it up to the art critics who criticize art in the context of aesthetics or beauty? Art critics know art they have studied what it is about and how it is created. However, in the case of Marla, is she not just a little girl that enjoys painting? Marla’s parents describe her work and how it all started. So in a sense they are the ones who have the ethics to determine if Marla is a true artist. I believe it is up to the people who know art well, who have studied it and who also know Marla and how she paints to determine such things. Others may have varied views about Marla’s creations but ultimately it is up to the ones who know art and Marla.
The film also discusses numbers whether it is in the number of painting she has done, sold or in the price that her paintings are sold for. Marla’s paintings are selling for anything between seven and fifteen thousand dollars, prices at which “real” art is sold. At one gallery in particular Marla had a sell out show and she already has seventy more painting lined up to do for interested buyers. It maybe that numbers should be taken into consideration when determining if something is art.
If one were to look at Marla’s paintings and not know she was a four-year-old girl they probably would think that her work is on a par of Picasso and other artist. The untaught sense of color and composition that Marla seems to possess sometimes gives extraordinary results. Except that these magical finger-paint daubings and crayon scribblings are not really works of art in any consistent sense of the term, but rather the consequence of play, the blissfully unaware sentiment from a little girl named Marla from Binghamton, N.Y.
Analysis of Film
Informative
A Fine Line Between Improving and Altering
Photo manipulation is the process of editing techniques to photographs for the purpose of enhancing or modifying. This could be a mere correction or to the point of even deceiving the viewer. Digital manipulation is becoming increasingly common. It has been impacted by cultural influence, and ethical concerns beyond the technical process and skills involved (Michels). Photo manipulation can be anything from subtle alterations such as color balance or contrast or it may involve overlaying a head onto a different body, size alteration and changing the features on a person.
Today, photo manipulation is widely accepted as an art form. With digital processing, there is almost no limit to what can be done to an image, and many things are done to images with the best intentions. It may be necessary to do slight retouches such as color balance and lighting alterations. Some changes merely improve a photo’s quality or fit the photo into the space available. However, some changes go beyond mere technical requirements and reflect editorial positions. When it works its way into photojournalism and the media, the issue of ethics comes to the forefront. How far can we take digital image manipulation and still maintain photographic integrity? Where is the line crossed between improving and altering?
The growing popularity of image manipulation has raised concern. In Susan Sontag’s book "On Photography,” she discusses the objectivity, or lack thereof, in photography, concluding that "photographs, which fiddle with the scale of the world, themselves get reduced, blown up, cropped, retouched, doctored and tricked out" (Sontag 4). A practice widely used in the magazine industry is the use of Photoshop for photographic manipulation. This process creates a reality that is constructed from an already subjective photograph and it can become difficult to differentiate fact from fiction (Scanlon 7).
As photo manipulation develops this means changes to photographic truth and reality. The question now becomes can we believe what we see? The manipulation of photographs “has come to permeate our visual world” (Exposed). We no longer question the perfection of magazine cover girls who have been artificially gifted with sparkling eyes, flawless skin, shrunk waistlines, elongated legs and an enlarged bust. Newspaper pictures offer color tones that transcend anything in nature and fine detail that no conventional process can convey. Advertising has created a virtual reality world.
Some changes go beyond mere technical requirements and reflect editorial positions (Llewelyn 16). Changes to a photo raise the issue of an author’s moral rights. The author in this paper’s case refers to that of a magazine, editorial, advertising company etc… Manipulating a photo may affect an author’s right to the integrity of the work but those moral rights have important limitations. The author’s right to the “integrity of a work is infringed only if the work is, to the prejudice of the reputation” of the author, distorted, mutilated or otherwise modified photos (Llewelyn 17). Not all changes to a photo are bad because the changes do not prejudice the author’s honor or reputation. Any step taken in good faith to restore a photo by filling in scratches, fixing brightness and contrast or compensating for fading would likely not attract any liability. The changes that alter or distort a photo put an “infringement on the liability qualifying as a potential breach of moral rights” (Llewelyn 17).
The overall question that we come to is what is considered altered and what is improved? I found that in general improving allows for brightness and contrast control, burning and dodging to control tonal range, color correction, cropping a frame to fit the layout as well as retouching of dust and scratches (Llewelyn 15). On the other hand corrections such as adding, moving, or removing objects within the frame, color change other than to restore what the subject looked like, size modification of subjects, cropping a frame in order to alter its meaning crosses the line into alterations (Llewelyn 15).
With the potential to alter body image, debate continues as to whether manipulated images, particularly those in magazines, contribute to self-esteem issues in both men and women. In 2006 Dove promoted a video for its Campaign for Real Beauty, the video title Evolution was to promote Dove’s Self-Esteem Fund. The film opens with a woman entering and sitting down in a studio. Two harsh lights are switched on, and the music starts. The camera then switches to a time-lapse sequence, showing a team of people adding make-up and adjusting the hair of the woman. When the final physical adjustments have been made, the team members all move off-camera and the photographer takes shots of the woman in various poses. One shot is selected from the batch and a series of "Photoshopping" adjustments are made to alter the appearance of the model further, including lengthening the neck, adjusting the curve of the shoulder, altering the hair and skin, and enlarging the eyes and mouth. The final image is transferred to a billboard advertisement. The piece fades to the statement, "No wonder our perception of beauty is distorted." The film ends with an invitation to take part in the "Dove Real Beauty Workshops", the logo for the Dove Self-Esteem Fund (Dove’s Real Beauty). The promotion, launched in 2006, was on the forefront of a current trend in Western culture to abandon the overly idealized images the media portrays of women.
Dove’s objective was to tell the truth about the advertising media, and how they distort our perception of natural beauty (Dove’s Real Beauty). Showing the before and after image of the woman and the amount of photo manipulation that was done reaffirms my statement that photo manipulation may go to far, crossing the line from improving into altering. To alter the content of a photograph “in any way that deceives the public" is wrong, says the digital manipulation code of ethics of the National Press Photographers Association (Llewelyn 15). Ideally, a photograph is the untouched, un-manipulated image. However, in photography, there is a real conflict between an ideology of unedited truth and the reality of editing (Llewelyn 15). In today’s photographic world there is a great emphasis on scrutinizing photographic images for evidence of manipulation.
As computer technology develops, elements in photographs can more easily be rearranged with undetectable changes. With these alterations comes moral complications in determining standards for manipulation that center on a concept of deception and credibility. Recent developments in computer technology make it possible to easily manipulate a photograph. One can change anything from brightness and contrast control, color correction, adding, moving, or removing objects within the frame as well as many other manipulating techniques. Such uses of photo manipulation have created controversy and discussion about their appropriateness in various settings.
- Dove’s ‘Real Beauty’ Is Not The Image Of Transparency.” PR Week. May 19, 2008: 8. Lexis Nexis. Libcat. Ferris State University. 14 April 2009 <www.lexisnexis.com>.
- “Exposed: The Cameras’ White Lies.” Sunday Times (London). June 27, 1999. Lexis Nexis. Libcat. Ferris State University. 14 April 2009
. - Llewelyn, Susan. “Seeing Is No Longer Believing.” Features; Compass. Feb. 01, 2005: 15-18. Lexis Nexis. Libcat. Ferris State University. 14 April 2009 <www.lexisnexis.com>.
- Michels, Christina. “When The Camera Does Lie.” The Times (London). July 20, 2009. Lexis Nexis. Libcat. Ferris State University. 14 April 2009
. - Scanlon, Christopher. “At The Alter Of The Digital Age.” Insight. Sept. 27, 2008: 7. Lexis Nexis. Libcat. Ferris State University. 14 April 2009
. - Sontag, Susan. On Photography. New York: Picador, 1997. Print.
Issue Paper
Argument
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