What Does Photography Mean to Me?

Robert Frank was a Swiss documentary photographer. His work was often created when it was night time, creating a grainy film, and blur in his images. He photographed significant and relevant of events in history that he thought was important to be shown. It is stated that his "  pictures were initially considered warped, smudgy, bitter. Popular Photography magazine complained about their “meaningless blur, grain, muddy exposures, drunken horizons, and general sloppiness.” Mr. Frank, the magazine said, was “a joyless man who hates the country of his adoption (The New York Times). People assumed that his photography was stripping away what people was known to be in America, which was perfection. They viewed his work as trying to criticize America but in reality he was trying to honor and show what was try to America from his perspective.  Looking at his work, I would think that he was an American. I get a sense of patriotism looking at his work. Specifically ...

Mark Power is a British Photographer was studied life-drawings and painting who went into photography and is now the most respected documentary photographer. In an interview, he states, " a committed photographer exploring a theme over several months or years is a very different proposition from someone who simply takes pictures for Instagram. Furthermore, I’ve always thought that ‘taking photographs’ is the easy part; making sense of what you’ve collected, and doing something meaningful with all of that material, is far more difficult" (Drakes) and I completely agree. Anyone can take a photo but what makes a photo art is when there is a meaning that can be determined from it and can create multiple different opinions from every peer of eyes that sees it.  I love this image. It represents choice, messiness, relaxation and so much more. The photograph was taken when the pandemic started as the photographer's daughter and son came home from university. His room (son) is sup...

  "The moment an emotion or fact is transformed into a photograph, it is no longer a fact but an opinion. There is no such thing as inaccuracy in a photograph. All photographs are accurate. None of them is the truth." If the statement is saying that before a photo is taken, the emotion that is happening before it will not always be replicated with the same emotion before the picture was taken, I would have to say I agree. Any emotion or feeling that is seen before a moment is capture will not look the same to the person that has taken the photograph to someone looking at the photograph. The interpretation of a photo can easily be changed in anyones eyes and tell them something different about what is happening in the photo. Everything someone says about a photograph they are looking at automatically becomes an opinion. A photo reprints pieces of reality, and people are really just commenting on what they see based on the reality they are livi...

  “Because  each photograph is only a fragment, its moral and emotional weight depends on where it is inserted. A photograph changes according to the context in which it is seen: thus ...  photographs will seem different on a contact sheet, in a gallery, in a political demonstration, in a police file, in a photographic magazine, in a book, on a living-room wall. Each  of  these situations suggest a different use for the photographs but none can secure their meaning .”  -  Susan Sontag , On Photography by Susan Sontag , ISBN: 0385267061 , Page: 10 Photography has the power to express so many different types of emotions. So many things can be communicated through images and send different messages to each person that looks at photos. The fact that photographs can be edited like the one above also goes to show the impact on editing a photo can have. A basic picture of president Obama was turned into a beacon of hope. So much can w...

" Photographs, which fiddle with the scale of the world, themselves get reduced, blown up, cropped, retouched, doctored, tricked out. They age, plagued by the usual ills of paper objects; they disappear; they become valuable, and get bought and sold; they are reproduced. Photographs, which package the world, seem to invite packaging. They are stuck in albums, framed and set on tables, tacked on walls, projected as slides. Newspapers and magazines feature them; cops alphabetize them; museums exhibit them; publishers compile them" pg 2 Photos can last a long time or can be very short lived. I never really thought about how much photographs go through so much within time. The fact the photographs can age faster than humans and easily die out as in disappear or get lost just like humans is crazy. So many things can happen with photos that are printed, but as society has advanced photos are never really lost now or just old and fragile but tucked somewhere in a file. As stated in ...

  Looking back at the Still Life assignment sheet, Chema Madoz image was the one that stood out to me. I really love this picture because I would of never though of putting plates in between the sewage floor. It's like such a creative way of maying a still life picture and is very unique to me. Madoz is known for his surrealist and poetic photographs. Looking over some of his images they look really architectural and has a lot of structure to it. In some of the images I see, instead of taking pictures with people it is mainly of objects. But these look like two objects that were created together. I am curious on how that is possible and yet he could of made the image in the most simplest way.