The Rhetoric of Images - Student Task

The Rhetoric of Images Student Task

I’m going to give you a choice this week, between analysing photographs in relation to the semiotic theories we explored this week, and using these theories to generate photographic images.

You can either

1. Produce a 300 word visual analysis of a work by one of these artists Richard Prince, Jeff Koons, Andy Warhol, Gerhard Richter, David Salle, Sherrie Levine, Peter Doig, Elizabeth Peyton, Richard Hamilton, Wilhelm Sasnal, Luc Tuymans, Vija Celmins. Consider – (1) What images are these pictures created from? (2)Where were they sourced / what sphere of visual culture do they originate from? (3) What has the artist done with / to them? (4) How / where are they presented? (5) How do we interpret these images? (6) How does the context in which these photographs have been situated, influence these interpretations? (7) Do they get us to think in terms of presence or absence?
2. Create a series of photographs that re-produce and re-frame advertising imagery. Your task here is to choose images that appeal to you, and develop ways of photographing them that draw out, and emphasise how they appeal to you. You should draw upon, and investigate techniques used by Richard Prince - cropping, zooming in, contextualising, occluding materialising, and juxtaposing, exploring reflections. You might also look at the typical or unusual places where branding / advertising crops up –clothing, architecture, wasteland, domestic environments, refuse, retail environments. Alternatively you might consider how advertisers construct associations by presenting particular objects or juxtapositions, look at the types of materials or surfaces they use, or consider how they deploy the human body.

Present these images on your blogs and comment upon the process of making them. Say what you were trying to achieve, to what extent you think they are successful, and how you have drawn upon and explored Barthes / Prince’s ideas through them.

Don’t try to create finished works. Think of them as sketches or proposals that are part of a process of investigation.