Documentary Student Task

Research historical and contemporary documentary photography, and prepare a 300 word blog entry comparing and contrasting them.

Consider

(1) How do the photographers you examine exploit the technical possibilities offered by photography, and to  what political ends? What are the aims of the artist? How does mechanical reproduction facilitate their artistic project? How does their work contrast with realist artist's such as Millet, and Courbet?

(2) How do they make their work, and how do they show it? Where do they go to make their photographs, how are they lit? How are they composed? What is their relationship to their subjects? How do they use the darkroom? How are their photographs distributed? Who is their intended audience?

(3) How do they respond to changing social circumstances? How do they respond to the social circumstances of people throughout the world? How do they choose who to photograph? How do they plan particular projects? Do they simply intend to raise awareness, or do they seek to initiate more concrete social change?

(4) How do they deal with the question whether photography is truthful to reality?  How do they overcome or highlight the problems posed by this question? Do they consider that photographic images are indexical? Do they consider how contexts in which their images are used transform their meanings? Do they consider how socially constructed meanings inform the reception of their work?

Benjamin and Documentary Photography

Documentary forms
Documentary photography developed  and came into widespread usage at the of the 20th century at the time when Walter Benjamin was writing?
2) It was widely understood to depict reality, at this time. This was understood as Indexicality.  The photograph was understood to record a passing moment in time.
3) Following Benjamin’s ideas photographers began to use photographic images to draw work events to the attention of mass audiences. Many of these images were distributed to mass audiences.
4) However, people were also aware that a photograph had to be constructed, and certain conventions were established such as leaving a black border,  or only using natural lighting as a way of confirming a photographs truth to reality. 

Reappraising Documentary
1) In the late 1970s Allan Sekula, and Matha Rosler re-appraised the status of the documentary genre. 
2) They criticised the neutrality of documentary photographers such as Walker Evans, who did not consider the actual political frameworks in which their images were going to be used. Along with Matha Rosler, Sekula continuously questioned the extent to which documentary images can initiate social change, in relation to the instituional mechanisms that distribute them, and the socially constructed meanings through which are interpreted.
3) Other artists such as Hito Steyerl focus upon conventions and social codes that infuse documentary. Her film November focuses more upon how documentary images are created in relation other genres.

Panopticisim Task

FD Year 2 Photography Contextual Studies

Surveillance - Student Task

Research artists from the recent exhibition at Tate Modern Exposed - Voyeurism, Surveillance and the Camera (2010). Choose three photographs by artists in the exhibition, and conduct a short visual analysis. Examine the different elements that construct the image. Consider how they are arranged, and how they interact with each other. Think about the intended purpose of the image, and consider the way the image is presented, and how people engage with it. When was the image taken, and what technology was used to create it? How does the photographer interact with the scene that is depicted, and how do they interact with the subject? Is the artist making a comment or criticism through the photograph, and if so how are they doing this. Compare and contrast between the images. In what ways are they similar and in what ways are they different. By contrasting them your task is to consider different modes of photographic presentation, how they are distributed / presented to viewers, and how the image communicates with them.

Choose three artists from the list and use the resources in the library to research them. You might also want to consult the exhibition website http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/exposure

Vito Acconci, Merry Alpern, Nobuyoshi Araki, Brassai, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Sophie Calle Larry Clark, Edgar Degas, Thomas Demand, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Bill Eppridge, Walker Evans, Harun Faroki, Robert Frank, Nan Goldin, Dorothea Lange, Man Ray, Robert Mapplethorpe, Bruce Nauman, Helmut Newton, Thomas Ruff, Andy Warhol.

Structure your research into three 1-200 word statements examining the images. Consider each image and contrast them with one another. Post these on your blogs with the images you are examining as the first entry on their blogs.

Panopticism

A panopticon is a kind of prison building designed by English philosopher and social theorist Jeremy Bentham in 1785. The design allowed the guards to observe prisoners.

In contemporary society advances  in photographic technology have transformed contemporary social spaces  into a giant panopticon. Secret or discretely positioned cameras, the instantaneous transmission of images to remote screens, and digital archiving now mean that our behaviour can be continuously observed via multiple points of access.

Surveillance - close observation, especially of a suspected spy or criminal.  (OED online)

Surveillance relates to and extends acts of observation. For example, we might observe someone in the process of caring for them. In contrast surveillance is motivated by suspicion.

“Surveillance pictures are voyeuristic in anticipation, seeking deviance from what is there”.

Voyeur - a person who gains sexual pleasure from watching  others when they are naked or engaged in sexual activity. (OED online).

Sophie Calle

“On Monday, February 16, 1981 I was hired as a temporary chambermaid for three weeks in a Venetian hotel. I was assigned twelve bedrooms

On the forth floor. In the course of my cleaning duties, I examined the personal belongings of hotel guests and observed through details lives which remained unknown to me”.  (Sophie Calle)

Calle works in the medium of inventories. She records activities within these unitary spaces, and through textual and photographic documentation. She records ephemeral actions. The works capture the process of looking, examining, observing and recording. In this sense her role is similar to a detective. This role is also captured in the factual seemingly disinterested manner in which the photographs are made, and the documents
presented. The mode of presentation subtracts Calle’s motivations, yet the piece remains voyeuristic. We can occasionally see this when she narrates her own responses to the space.

Scheme of Work FD Year 2 Photography Contextual Studies

FD Year 2 Photography Contextual Studies

Scheme of work

1 Surveillance and Society

To examine how different modes of photographic technology facilitate surveillance and how artists have used them as a vehicle for critical art practice.

Reading: Michel Foucault - Panopticism

2 Critical Positions on the Media

To examine the social function of documentary photography, as a form of mechanical reproduction historically and within contemporary globalised culture.

Reading: Walter Benjamin - The work of art in the age of Mechanical Reproduction

3 Film Theory, 'The Gaze' and Psychoanalysis

Consider how the gaze is reconstructed in Cindy Sherman's, and Merry Alpern's photography.

Reading: Rosalind Coward - The Look, and John Berger Ways of Seeing Chapter three.

4 Communication Theory

To examine how meaning is constructed in advertising imagery, and why these modes of representation were appropriated by artists such as Richard Prince and Jeff Koons in the 1980s.

Reading: Malcolm Barnard - The Sign

5 Reality Virtuality, Hyperreality

Objectivity in photography. Bernd and Hiller Becher, Thomas Ruff , and Thomas Demand. Contrasting photograph as index and simulacrum.

Reading: Jean Baudrillard - America

6 The Media Globalisation & Sustainability

The role of documentation in the representation of globalised space. Alan Sekula, Gabriel Orozco and Andreas Gursky.

Reading: David Harvey - Space as a Keyword

7 Review, and submission of blogs

Review themes from the lectures in recent work by Walead Beshty, Marlo Pascual, Jonathan Monk, Darren Almond, and Roe Ethridge. Students submit their completed blogs.