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Week nine reading: Steyrl,In defence of the Poor Image

Notes from In defence of the Poor Image, Hito Steyerl

The poor image is a copy in motion, it’s quality is bad, it’s resolution substandard. The poor image is a rag or rip; an AVI or JPEG. 

Low resolution

Focus is a class position, a position of ease and privilege, being out of focus lowers one’s value as an image. The contemporary hierarchy of images, however, is not only based on sharpness, but also resolution. 

Resurrection 

Insisting on rich images has serious consequences. 20 or 30 years ago, the neoliberal restructuring of media production began slowly obscuring non-commeriacial imagery, to the point where experimental and essayistic cinema became almost invisible. Many works of avant-garde, essayistic and non-commercial cinema have been resurrected as poor images, whether they like it or not. 

Privatisation and piracy

The rare prints of militant, experimental and classical works of cinema as well as video art reappear as poor images are significant. Poor images are poor because they are not assigned any value within the class society of images.

Imperfect cinema

The imperfect cinema is one that strives to overcome the divisions of labor within class society. It merges art with life and science, blurring the distinction between consumer and producer, audience and author. Poor images are poor because they are heavily compressed and travel quickly, they lose matter and gain speed. 

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Week nine reading: Culture of connectivity, Jose Van Dijck

Flickr does not simply enable but actively constructs connections between  perspectives,  experiences  and  memories.  The  idea  of  ‘sharing’  presumes  a  conscious, human activity, whereas in the context of social media platforms it has become mostly an unconscious  technological  pursuit.  

The connective turn and the culture of connectivity

Andrew  Hoskins  (2009)  coins  the  term  ‘networked memory’ to account for the intricate tension between individual expressions and collective memory in networked digital environments.

The  ‘technological  unconscious’  is  an  important  condition  of  new  memory:  it  refers  to  the increasingly powerful digital environments that are operated without the knowledge of those who use these environments and upon whom they are taking an affect. 

The ‘continuous present’ of the World-Wide Web manifests itself in the constant connectivity of people and digital networks.

We can distinguish two major theoretical approaches to the culture of connectivity. Drawing on the constructivist idea of socio-technical ensembles, we may analyze the social shaping of technology and regard Web 2.0 platforms as mediators – rather than intermediaries – of social action (Latour, 2005).

Flickr as a platform for connecting views

Flickr’s metadata and statistical analyses are not simply meant to track users’ preferences, but this information may be used in turn to stimulate users into engaging in particular group behavior or group formation. 

A personal network indicates  a  social  structure  between  actors,  either  individuals  or  organizations,  through  various social  bonds,  which  can  be  any  kind  of  relationship  (kinship,  social,  professional,  affective),  a material exchange, a common behavior, etc.

Huang and Hsu (2006) conclude: ‘The digital imaging revolution has not only changed our personal experience in photography but also offered a new perspectiveon our social life.’ In other words, by tracking shared information between people, events, activity, expressed interests and locations in time, patterns of social interaction are not merely reconstructions but active con-structions of social behavior shaped by the ‘technological unconscious’.

Flickr as connective experience

Notions such as ‘shar-ing pictures’ are used interchangeably with ‘sharing experiences’ and are often mentioned in one and the same breath as ‘telling (life) stories’. For instance, information scientists Huang and Hsu (2006) argue: ‘While doing experience sharing, photos are indeed the most popular and convenient media we use today to translate daily happenings and tell life stories’. 

The anthropocentric concept of sharing photographs as a collective community experience is smoothly transposed to the digital age where it translates into interface features.

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Week eight reading: Analog to digital: the indexical function of photographic images

Week 8 reading, notes from Analog to digital: the indexical function of photographic images 

“Digital technology allows for greater ease in editing than analog photography, because it transforms photographs from objects into data. […]digital imaging technology theoretically disrupts previous notions of the indexical connection between photographic images and “reality”.“

The lack of physical connection between a digital photograph’s subject and image suggests digital images function as pure iconicity. 

Damian Sutton argues digital photography destroyed the photograph’s privileged connection to the object. 

Kember argues, photography is much more than a particular technology of image-making, it is also a social and cultural practice embedded into history and human agency. 

Whatever happens in the larger cultural context of photography, as Fontcuberta notes, will apply to both analog and digital photographs because digital images have assumed some of the functions of their analog forerunners.

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Week seven practice: playing with flash

This photo was taken with no flash and highlights why flash is needed, in a dark room flash is needed to brighten up the background as the light from the room only lights up her face.

This photo was taken in a dim room with flash, both the subject and background are lit.

This photo was taken on accident but I liked the effect it produced, it was created by moving the camera before the shutter shuts.

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Week seven reading: Representation, Stuart Hall

Week 7 reading, notes from The work of representation, Stuart Hall

Representation can be defined as ‘using language to say something meaningful about, or to represent, the world meaningfully, to other people.’

‘system  of  representation’

Different ways of organizing, clustering, arranging and classifying concepts, and of establishing complex relations between them.

Each of us probably does understand and interpret the world in a unique and individual way. However, we are able to communicate because we share broadly the same conceptual maps and thus make sense of or interpret the world in roughly similar ways. 

Language  is  therefore  the  second  system  of  representation.

The  general  term  we  use  for  words,  sounds  or  images  which  carry  meaning is signs. These signs stand for or represent the concepts and the conceptual relations between  them  which  we  carry  around  in  our  heads  and  together  they  make  up  the  meaning-systems of our culture.

The relation between ‘things’, concepts and signs lies at the heart of the production of meaning in language. The process which links these three elements together is what we call ‘representation’.

Language and representation

Visual signs are what are called iconic signs. 

Written or spoken signs, on the other hand, are what is called indexical. They bear no obvious relationship at all to the things to which they refer. The letters T, R, E, E do not look anything like trees in nature, nor does the word ‘tree’ in English sound like ‘real’ trees.

The relationship in these systems of representation between the sign, the concept and the object to which they might be used to refer is entirely arbitrary.

Sharing the codes

It is we who fix the meaning so firmly that, after a while, it comes to seem natural and inevitable. The meaning is constructed by the system of representation. It is constructed and fixed by the code, which sets up the cor-relation between our conceptual system and our language system in such a way that, every time we think of a tree, the code tells us to use the English word TREE.

Codes fix the relationships between concepts and signs. They stabilize meaning within different languages and cultures. They tell us which language to use to convey which idea. 

Theories of representation

The reflective approach, meaning is thought to lie in the object, person, idea or event in the real world, and language functions like a mirror, to reflect the true meaning as it already exists in the world.

The intentional approach,  holds  that  it  is  the  speaker,  the  author,  who  imposes  his  or  her  unique  meaning  on  the  world  through  language.  Words mean what the author intends they should mean.

The constructionist approach, recognizes this public, social character of language. It acknowledges that neither things in themselves nor the individual users of language can fix meaning in language. Things don’t mean:  we  construct meaning,  using  representational  systems  –  concepts  and  signs.  

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Week seven reading: Photography Lighting

Week 7 reading, notes from Basics Photography 02, David Prakel

Flash

The light can be bounced of diffused just like any other light. Automatic flashguns are more powerful and can be used automatically, the camera will interact with the flash to fire a metering pre-flash and use flash for auto focus illumination in the dark.

Guide numbers

from p.90

Flash synchronisation

Is the correct timing of the flash to illuminate the whole film frame.

from p.91

A splash of lime, Anton Heiberg

from p.92

Newly wheelers, Phil McCann

from p.93

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Week six: test shoot

Whilst walking about I came across this bridge over the A27 and this sign acts as one last barrier to stop someone committing suicide, the number is the samaritans number. Whilst I don’t like the composition and the lighting is too dark the symbolism of the sign is important. 

This is a picture of my friends tattoo. A semi colon represents mental health struggles and the importance of suicide prevention. Mental illness is often invisible and this tattoo helps bring awareness to the struggles of millions of people. I used auto focus to ensure I could focus on the tattoo.

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Week six: elevator pitch

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Week five: Reading week

To help generate ideas I created a initial mindmap to come up with possible ideas. 

I quite liked the idea of mental health so decided to further explore that theme. 

Mental health and photography

Some articles I found interesting

https://mymodernmet.com/depression-photography/

https://www.acitymadebypeople.com/journal/made-by-people-lab-photography-mental-health-exhibition-amsterdam

Tayaeb - Psychosis Photographer: Kevin Rijnders Subject: Tayaeb

“We came up with the idea of making my inner experiences into a picture, in a figurative way. This photo represents ‘a new life’. By covering part of my face, I’m saying goodbye to the old side of me. I am deciding to focus on the new me, the new phase I’m going into”.

Into the Light Photographer: Dawnie Brown Subject: Nicole

“The model is actually one of my close friends. The image shows how she feels about anxiety and panic. It’s not only about doom and gloom. You can also take positives from it”.

Twisted Elegance Photographer: Tarona Leonora Subject: Dominick Tavares

“When I look at this picture I think about duality, being stuck in between two worlds. The idea of having two emotions happening at the same time. It could be joy, but also sadness. So, I think that duality really fits here, and it was also my intention in this shooting: to depict it. The photo is part of a series.”

Self-Portrait Photographer: Jan Arsenović Subject: Jan Arsenović

“This photo is about anxiety and being stuck in your defence mechanism. Although it is supposed to protect you, it can also obscure your vision and disable your movement.”

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Week four reading: Photography and it’s actants, John Roberts

Week 4 reading, notes from Photography and it’s actants, John Roberts

Photography and documentary practice is an objection of the ‘other’ (Azoulay). Photography should protect the spectator from the violence of the world (Linfield) and photography is a failed or corrupt or unreliable historical witness (Morris-Suzuki).

Azoulay argues photography is ‘actually deeply embedded in the active life; it attests to action and continues to take part in it, always engaged in an ongoing present that challenges the very distinction between contemplation and action., The photograph always includes a supplement that makes it possible to show that ‘was there’ wasn’t necessarily in the way.’

Photography establishes a constellation of places between photographer, photographed and spectator that is never sable. The image is never ‘possessed’ by the photographer, photographed or spectator. The truth of the photograph always exceeds places of social exchange, it participates at all points in an unfinished process of truth-disclosure.

John Tagg’s The Burden of Representation (1988), states that certain images represents the conflation of the documentary tradition with the state control of the working-class body as victim or deserving poor, and therefore is repressive. By constructing  a monological position based on the conflation of the actant position of the social historian (the meaning of the image is ultimately in the hands of those who control its reception and distribution) with that of the actant position of the photographed subject (“this doesn’t not represent me!”). Subjects of documentary photographs are fixed in their “otherness”.

If we look at the reception of the Migrant Mother photograph—the producer (photo history and art history), the editor (popular journalism), the historian (social history), or the subject (first person reminiscence)—speaks for the truth of the photography. Each of these actant positions may participate individually in shaping the truth-discourse of the photograph, but in the final analysis, they cannot control the image. 

“The widespread use of cameras by people around the world has created more than a mass of images; it has created a new form of encounter between people who take, watch, and show other people’s photographs, with or without consent, thus opening new possibilities of political action and forming new conditions for its validity.”

Photography is not the story of the subject’s, it is the encounter between producers and spectators

The production and reception of the photograph are two of the few practices where anyone, in taking and looking at and talking about photographs, can establish a critical distance between themselves and commodity relations. 

Walter Benjamin recognized and developed this function of photography in the 1930s in his essay “The Author as Producer.” 

“The civil contract of photography organizes political relations in the form ofan open and dynamic framework among individuals, without regulation and mediation by a sovereign.”

The everyday photograph is not the ease with which it is subject to state control, patterns of political exclusion and censorship, and the strictures of commodity relations generally, but, on the contrary, how it consistently outruns these. Photography cannot be censored and thus is very powerful. 

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Week three practice: Stanmer park

This week we explored the relation between portrait and landscape photography     during a field trip to Stanmer park. 

These are my two favourite photos.

I like this photo because it merges elements of both landscape and portrait photography and shows my subject interacting with the environment. I used aperture priority mode to ensure I had a large depth of field so both my subject and the environment are in focus, I used f/11.

Again this photo merges elements of both landscape and portrait photography and shows my subject interacting with the environment. However this time the focal point is the flower rather than the background or my subject. To achieve this I used a f/2.

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Week three reading: Ways of seeing, Berger

Week 3 reading notes from Ways of Seeing, John Berger

‘Seeing comes before words. The child looks and recognises before it can speak.’

The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled. The Surrealist painter Magritte explained this always-present gap between words and seeing in a painting called The Key of Dreams.

We never look at just one thing, we are always looking at the relation between things and ourselves. Vision is continually active, continually moving things in a circle around itself, constituting what is present to us as we are.

An image is a sight which has been recreated or reproduced, it is an appearance, or set of appearances, which has been detached from the place and time.

The photographer’s way of seeing is reflected in his choice of subject. An image can outlast what it represents, an image became a record of how x had seen y. In this respect images are more precise and richer than literature.

When an image is presented as a work of art, the way people look at it is affected by a whole series of learn assumption about art. Many of these assumptions no longer accord with the world as it it, they obscure the past, they mystify rather clarify.

The camera isolated momentary appearances and destroyed the idea that images were timeless. The invention of the camera changed the way men saw.

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Week two practice: street photography

To practise using my camera I took my camera to Cambridge this weekend to take some street photographs. 

I took this picture to show Cambridge’s identity as a city, cycles and buses are the main form of transport for many people. 

I took this picture to show Cambridge in a different light, often we focus on the historical beauty of the city rather than the mundane day to day things.

This photo happened entirely by chance, I was trying to take a photo of my former work and this pigeon happened to make the shot. 

I took this to show how much bikes are a part of day to day life in the city.

I liked the lines in the image and thought it makes an usual composition. 

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Week two practice: depth of field control

I used a camera simulator on my phone to create these images.

This photo is a example of a small depth of field. 

While the red bull is in focus, the background is blurry, so that it is not distracting. The aperture for this photograph was set to f6.7.

This photo is an example of a large depth of field.

Using a high aperture setting ensures that everything within the depth of field is in focus. In this case, the aperture was set to f11.

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Week two reading: How to read a photograph

Notes from The Photograph Clarke Graham

A photograph has many complex readings which relate to expectations and assumptions as well as the subject itself.

We need to read a photograph as a text not an image.

‘photographs are texts inscribed in terms of what we may call photographic discourse’ - Victor Burgin

Identical twins Diane Arbus

This image is deceptively simple yet complex. It reflects Arbus’ concern with identity, but is also about difference and the act of looking. It can viewed as a visual essay on the nature of photographic meaning. 

Reading a photograph

At every level the photograph involves a saturated ideological context. It reflects the re-presentation of the world. The photograph is one of the most complex and problematic forms of representation.

To read a photograph is to enter a series of relationships which are 'hidden’ by the illusory power of our eyes. First we must remember that the photograph is a product of the photographer. It reflects the a specific point of view, the photographer imposes, steals, recreates according to cultural discourse.

Every photograph is surrounded by a historical, aesthetic and cultural frame of reference and an invisible set of relationships and meanings relating to the photographer.

The image is as much a reflection of the 'I’ of the photographer as it is the 'eye’ of the camera.

Barthes suggested a distinction between the relative meaning of different elements within the photographic frame, distinguishing between 'denotative’ and 'connotative’. 'Denotative’ is meant the literal meaning, but beyond this moment the reader moves to a second level of meaning, the 'connotative’ elements. 'Connotative’ is 'the imposition of second meaning on the photographic message proper’

Barthes established a further distinction in how we read photographs, the 'studium’ 'a kind of general, enthusiastic commitment’ the 'punctum’ is a 'sting, speck, cut, little hole’. 'Studium’ suggests a passive response to a photograph’s appeal, 'punctum’ allows for the formation of a critical reading.

General Robert Potter and Staff Matthew Brady

A portrait from the American Civil War. The central aspect of the photograph is the presence of the photographer to the right of the military group, this questions the terms of photographic meaning, and the vales of the system and the subjects photographed. 

John Henry, A Well-Remembered Servant, 1865 Matthew Brady

The reverse of the official portrait, it takes place within a hierarchy of representation. It questions terms of reference addressed in other images and draws attention to the position of the black figure. The objects around him (rubbish, cans, a fence, his clothes) reflects his social position. Every detail signifies something beyond its literal meaning. 

Route 9W New York, 1969 Lee Friedlander

A self reflexive image typical of Friedlander’s style. The single unified space of the photograph has been broken up into a series of different perspectives and meanings. The image is full of signs and symbols which remain enigmatic all de centred as park of a larger meaning. 

Albuquerque, 1972 Lee Friedlander

This simple image is deceptively complex, all the elements of the image remain on the edge of meaning. The atmosphere is emptiness. The photo is a statement about contemporary America. 

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Week 2 reading

Basic Photo Composition

Notes from Basic Photography: Composition, David Prakel

Composition

Involves everything that goes into creating an image. It starts with consideration and exploration and continues with selection.

Composition is an expression of personality.

’Rules’ of composition

Give photographers an organisation, but can inhibit creativity.

Tiago Estima, Just stairs

‘Simplicity is best’

Organised around a strong, symmetrically placed diagonal line

Explores texture, has a limited palette of colours, and interesting variations in a repeating pattern.

The case for composition

The eye and the camera don’t see the same things. The brain cuts out unwanted information, whereas the camera doesn’t.

'You had to be there’ - This is said when the camera is being used to record the un recordable, the shutter is released to capture a thought or personal reflection, the image hasn’t been composed.

Boy Sailor David Prakel

The cadet is not sufficiently differentiated from the other sailors, there are too many distracting elements.

Composed, a shift of viewpoint and use of zoom, enables the image to be cropped in camera, the aperture was prioritised, to restore the depth of field lost by the increase in focal length.

'What you see in the photograph isn’t what you saw at the time. The real skill of photography is organised visual lying.’ - Terence Donovan

Giving form to the image

We react to objects in photographs much as we do the real thing, the stronger our reaction the better the image.

To better understand composition, the image should be broken down into line, shape, form texture, pattern and colour, composition is the process of combining them.

'Geometry is to the visual arts what grammar is to the art of the write’ - Guillaume Apollinaire

Plate Jim Allen

Black and white exaggerates shape, tone and form. The hand mirror points on the plate, this 'moment’ creates a quirky touch for the subject.

Selection and arrangement

Photos 'stop the clock’ by their static nature, and draw attention to one framed part of the world. The dynamic becomes static.

Photographers are tempted to put as much 'subject’ as possible into their images, a better approach is to edit the scene, considering what can be left out.

The rules

In the past photographers borrowed ideas from the fine arts.

The photographer cannot decide to not photograph something that is already in the frame, painting and drawing is constructing an image, photography is the art of selection.

'The significant difference between photography and other art forms is its unique ability to record simply and in unbiased detail, something that is there.’

Simplify, simplify

A common mistake is to think about what to 'put into a picture’ instead think about 'what can be left out’.

Simplification, getting rid of unwanted visual clutter, leaves only the important elements.

In camera cropping is often an overlooked solution, a zoom lens can crop the image without changing perspective, moving in closer fills the frame, emphasises the subject, and cuts out the background.

Photographic techniques such as selective focus or shallow depth of field (wider lens aperture)

Images can be simplified tonally by reducing or taking out the colour.

'Our life is fritted away by detail… simplify, simplify’ - Henry David Thoreau

Shadow portrait

In this shot the subject has been removed, despite the silhouette, the image conveys the mood and character of the sitter.

The Golden Selection

Leonardo Pisano, 12th Century Italian mathematician who discovered Fibonacci numbers: 0,1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21,34,55,89,144 ect.

The ratio of each successive pair of numbers in the series approximates to the 'Golden Number’ (1.6) identified by the Greek Letter Phi.

Nature is closely linked with mathematics of sequences such as Fibonacci’s and it complies with our sense of harmony and proportion.

The Golden Selection is a division based on the Golden Number proportion and can be used as a method for placing the subject in an image or of dividing a composition into pleasing proportions.

Sunflower (Above) Nina Indset Andersen

Spirals based on the Fibonacci sequence underpin the distribution of seeds.

Alentejo Tiago Estima

The tree the centre of the cloud and horizon line, places in line with geometric principles.

The rule of thirds

Interest must be placed at the intersection of lines that divide the frame into thirds.

Dynamic symmetry

Determines the best place for the point of interest using diagonals, draw a diagonal from one corner of the frame to the other, then picture a line that runs at right angles to the first.  

(Taken from Basic Photography Composition p. 24-25)

Viewpoint

Same scene can look very different from a high vs low viewpoint.

Low viewpoint can emphasise the foreground, viewer can gaze into the image from the bottom.

High viewpoints can detach the viewer from the action as the gaze is forced to look downwards into the image.

Spiral Tiago Estima

Viewpoint directly centre emphasises perspective, depth and its repeating pattern.

Burner David Prakel

This viewpoint was taken lying on the ground, strong diagonals add greater dynamism to the 'lift off’.

Perspective

The 'varnishing point’ is the point in the far distance where lines appear to meet.

The closer the viewpoint is to the subject the larger it will appear.

Smoky mountain sunset Cindy Quinn

Aerial perspective is where distant hills are seen as lighter tones through the depths of a misty atmosphere, and overlying foreground shapes are much darker, a technique used by Chinese artist to build depth into images.

Perspective and lenses

Development of formal perspective gave artists a way to represent depth in their images.

A standard lens is the focal length that offers the closest perspective to 'normal’ vision, 50mm is the normal 'standard’ lens for 35mm cameras

A telephoto lens will flatten perspective and appear to bring foreground and background closer together.

A wide angle lens makes foreground objects appear much bigger than they are.

(Taken from Basic Photography composition p.30-31)

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Week one reading: Photography  , Ingledew

Notes from chapter Loading...

‘Photography is a magical thing’ - Jacques-Henri Lartigue

The mix that makes photography

Different elements are mixed- chemistry, physics, optics, computers and electronics, and creativity. 

Photography in the digital age

Involves combining digitised images with the power of the computer. Digital images can be edited and manipulated on the computer.

Why do we like photographs

They have the power to evoke, inspire and inform. We live our live through photographs, they markocasions like birth, graduation, marriage and even death. The camera is omnipresent, it parallels the way we remember things. It preserves things that are now past, allowing us to see the unseeable.

The power of photographs

Photographs can melt taboos, sway public options and even impact governments to cause real change. Photos get straight to the heart of an issue, a great photograph can be worth 10s of 1000s of words. We are empowered by the camera, photography is a universal language everyone can understand.

How does digital photography work

Digital pictures remade up of millions of pixels which form a believable image when eye merge them. Every single pixel’s individual colours recorded as a number or digit hence ‘digital photography’. 

The eye and the camera

Our eyes and the camera have a lens that focuses the light reflected from objects, the eye has a shutter -the eyelid and a variable aperture- the pupil. Both the eye and the camera work with light-sensitive surfaces, while the camera uses film or a CCD sensor. Photographs are 2D versions of what we see through the camera. We see selectively, our eyes focus on it to the exclusion everything else. The camera can focus like this but can also give a view with everything in focus. Closest distant the human eye can focus is 20cm, the focusing range of a camera has no lower limit. The pupil of our eye reacts instantly to maintain the level of light falling onto the retina, the photographer must manually or automatically vary the aperture.

Where has photography come from

Cameras today use exactly the same ingredigents as the pioneers, a black box with a hole in it to let the light in, a lens and material that are sedative tonight. Over 500 years ago, a small hole in the wall of a darkened room would act as a lens and project images outside onto the opposite wall, named ‘camera obscura’. 

The world’s first photograph

French lithographer and inventor Joseph Nicephore Niepce tried coating sheets of pewter with bitumen of Judea, a substance known to harden when exposure to light. In 1826he slotted a pewter ‘plate’ into his camera obscura, afterleaying it on his window for 8 hours he washed the plate, and was able to remove the soft areas that had receives less light. He created a direct positive image.