Photography and Fetish by Christian Metz
Winning the Game when the Rules have been Changed: Art Photography and Postmodernism by Abigail Solomon-Godeau
The Crisis of the Real: Photography and Postmodernism by Andy Grundberg
On-going work on Peer Review project due CLASS SIX.
Photography & Fetish
ReplyDeleteBy Christian Metz
In Christian Metz’s “Photography and Fetish”, he discusses the two primary difference between film and photography – 1) moment and 2) movement. Essentially, film is an assemblage of photos with sound and movement. In terms of being a “fetish”, film is too difficult to characterize due to the fact that films are “too big, it lasts too long, and it addresses too many sensorial channels at the same time.” Also, film is extremely from beginning to end. When watching a film, little is left to the imagination because they are so blunt – we seen what should be seen and we hear what should be heard. They also appeal to our senses and emotions, but only temporarily. In opposition, photography has a timeless, nostalgic quality. Photographs are moments that can never be duplicated with memories that will live forever. Having such sentimental value is what contributes to the allure of photography. Photography is linked to positive sentimentality, however, it also as a sentiment of death. This idea of death contributes to the fetish of a photograph because it preserves the inevitability of death. We become so fixated and obsessed with photographs because they are tangible memories – memories that can never be altered or forgotten… all thanks to that split-second snapshot.
Bio…
Christian Metz (December 12, 1931 – September 7, 1993) was a French film theorist. He was best known for pioneering the application of semiotics to films. . During the 1970s, his work had a major impact on film theory in France, Britain, Latin America and the United States. He applied Sigmund Freud’s psychology and Jacques Lacan’s mirror theory to the cinema, proposing the idea that the popularity of film is because it has the ability to show the imperfect reflection of reality and a method to investigate the unconscious dream state.
Winning the Game When The Rules Have Been Changed: Art Photography and Post-Modernism
ReplyDeleteBy Abigail Solomon-Godeau
In the essay “Winning the Game When the Rules Have Been Changed: Art Photography and Post-modernism”, Abigail Solomon-Godeau discusses the reproduction of photography. What is the difference between a photograph and a re-photographed photograph? The originality of art is such an ambiguous topic. Honestly, what is original? Some people can say the original is the first actual image or print created by the artist and that a reproduction is a copy of an original. However, it can be argued that a reproduction can be original because it was either the first copy or the first copy by that particular personal… the arguments can go on. The example of Sherri Levine photographing the photograph “Neil” taken by Edward Weston and using it has her own image was a good illustration of this idea of what is real and what is not. We can call Weston the “author” and Levine the “confiscator” but like Solomon-Godeau says, those labels are so obvious and transparent. The definition of “real” or “original” is not so cut and dry as we might think sometime!
Bio…
Abigail Solomon-Godeau is professor of art history and architecture at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She writes widely on postmodernism, feminist theory, and contemporary art. Also, she is the author of Photography at the Dock: Essays on Photographic History, Institutions and Practices, Male Trouble: A Crisis in Representation and The Face of Gender, Race and the Politics of Self-Representation. Her essays have appeared in publications including Art in America and Artforum.
The Crisis of the Real: Photography & Post-Modernism
ReplyDeleteBy Andy Grundberg
In “The Crisis of the Real: Photography & Post-Modernism” Andy Grundberg is searching for the definition of post-modernism. Although post-modernism is the result of the opposing tradition/modernism, every artistic medium has their own form of what they deem “post-modern” - “ I hope I have made clear so far that the postmodernism means something different to architects and dancers and painters, and that it also has different meanings and applications depending on which architect or dancer or painter one is listening to.” (pg.173)
“The inability to have a pure, unembellished meaning or experience at all,’ is, I would submit, exactly the premise of the art we call postmodernist. And, I would add, it is the theme which characterizes most contemporary photography, explicitly or implicitly. Calling it a ‘theme’ is perhaps to bland: it is the crisis which photography and all other forms of art face in the late twentieth century.”
Bio…
Andy Grundberg is a critic, curator, and teacher.
Merrisa Brierly
ReplyDeletePHOTOGRAPHY AND FETISH – Christian Metz
I actually liked this reading. I’m not sure if it was just because it was the first out of the three we had to do or because it was interesting. I liked how Metz described the difference between photography and film by explaining why photography resembles death more film does. Photography is like death in the sense that it is a frozen, never changing. Photography can be used to document of life after it is lost. Film can also do the same thing, in reference to family films, but for the most part it doesn’t really have the same connection to death. Film is always moving, people walking in and out of frames that represent someone who is alive. I also liked how he talked about how people may say a mirror is like a photograph. In reality however, the mirror changes with us, unlike the photograph (which is frozen in time) where we can witness our own age changing. I somewhat understood what he was talking about with the castration and cutting things out of the frame, but it was hard to understand. Maybe when people go in and out of the frame your killing them? Or that people can't help but imagine what’s outside the frame and the anxiety it gives us not knowing… Film has a spirit, the magical ability to show people, of past and present, in motion. Photographs on the other hand are more worshiped for the fact that they represent a life, they capture that object in a specific moment and it is then immortalized.
Christian Metz Biography:
He was born on Dec. 12, 1931 and died on Sept. 7, 1993. He was a French film theorist that had tremendous influence on the American branch of film studies. His two-volume Film Language: A Semiotics of the Cinema is considered a seminal study into the inner meaning of films by the outward symbolism of their images. His book Language and Cinema (1974) took a broader approach to the cultural and historical influence of film. By 1977, Metz incorporated psychoanalytic theory into his work with The Imaginary Signifier.
Merrisa Brierly
ReplyDeleteWINNING THE GAME WHEN THE RULES HAVE BEEN CHANGED: ART PHOTOGRAPHY AND POSTMODERNISM – Abigail Solomon-Godeau
This reading probably will stir up a lot of emotions. I’m not sure if I liked it or hated it. I get the point about the concept behind her work but I don’t necessarily agree with it in a way. We all get inspiration from artists but the fun part is finding a way to make it our own, at least it is for me… I think it’s good that she made this series of work and really got her point across but with that said, I think her point has been made and I’m not so sure as to why she has continued this project for so long… I’m not sure if I’d be honored or pissed off to have my work photographed and represented as her own? Maybe if she posted somewhere that the work she has photographed was created by me, I think that I’d like it. Authorship and originality is always going to be a battle… There has to be something no body has done before, but no one has thought of it yet, hence why everyone believes there's nothing more to do but copy and get "inspired" from.
Abigail Solomon-Godeau Biography:
She is a professor at The University of California in Santa Barbara teaching art history and architecture. She writes about contemporary art, postmodernism, and feminist theory. She’s also the author of many essays that have appeared in publications including “Art in America,” and “Artforum.”
Merrisa Brierly
ReplyDeleteTHE CRISIS OF REAL; PHOTOGRAPHY AND POSTMODERISM – Andy Grundberg
This article was about how photography reflects and helps shape the contemporary art world. Grundberg perceives Ansel Adams as "one of the last romantic artists, whose way of representing the world through pristine, sharp images of virginal nature has become obsolete when describing today's world.” Postmodernism is confusing and can be irritating. It’s problematic since we always try to define it using questions of intention when we really need to question how one conceives the world. Andy Grundberg talks about how photography and art in particular can take on different meanings. We need to look at how it is displayed, how it is made, etc. One thing he mentions is that “art of the postmodernist style should consist of a mixture of media”. (pg 166). The basics of postmodernism for me is everything from artwork looking like anything except modernist art, using multiple mediums to create originality, and how there is no "way to arrive at the 'ultimate' meaning of anything". I can see why this movement came about "It is the crisis which photography and all other forms of art face in the late twentieth century.”
Andy Grundberg Biography:
It was hard to find a bio on him… All I know is that he’s a critic, and a teacher.
(Hillary)
ReplyDeleteRe-Reading Edward Weston
Roberta McGrath
Roberta McGrath’s essay “Re-Reading Edward Weston” is an extremely different, (almost bizarre) deconstruction of Edward Weston’s nude photography and seeing photography as a form of voyeurism, fetishism and eroticism.
Photographs allow the voyeur to look without fear of retribution. This statement holds true especially when looking at a nude photograph, like Weston’s. Looking at photograph of a nude person and looking at an actual nude person has very different affects on viewer. In a way, it is more acceptable to look at a nude stranger in a photograph and much less awkward.
I found truth McGrath’s Marxism reference. “Marxism takes no account of the sexual division of labour. The Marxist subject is a genderless and universal one. For psychoanalysis the problem is that the Marxist subject is alienated only in a capitalist society. I also agree with McGrath’s statement that sexual difference, masculinity, and femininity are not biologically determined but socially, psychologically and culturally constructed. Furthering the psychoanalysis aspect, photography has the ability for photographers to produce idealist psychoanalytic interpretations. Photography helps us express our suppressed and hidden emotions/thoughts from our subconscious mind.
Group f/64
• The heightening of visual qualities which excite and involve the sense of touch, which is fully a part of pleasure.
• The gloss of the paper mimicked the glassy quality of the plate negative, but shine also connotates a moistness which is associated with sex, and similarly, glossy paper seemed to adhere, bind with the image. It fused with the image in an imaginary moment of pleasure.
• Between the negative and the print, between the subject’s own body and the other’s body, ultimately the phantasy moment of orgasm.
• Daguerreotypes – “birth” of photography
I am not sure if Weston’s photographs of nude women are motivation by sexual needs ( in a vulgar way), as referred by Roberta McGrath. To me, his photographs of women (and landscapes, objects, etc.) come from adoration and fascination of form and natural beauty.
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