Sorry for the delay regarding this posting.
Re-reading Edward Weston: Feminism, Photography and Psychoanalysis by Roberta McGrath
Cindy Sherman: Burning Down the House by Jan Avgikos
The Photograph as an Intersection of Gazes the Example of National Geogrphic by Catherine Lutz and Jane Collins
Merrisa Brierly
ReplyDeleteRE-READING EDWARD WESTON: FEMINISM, PHOTOGRAPHY AND PSYCHOANALYSIS – Roberta McGrath
McGrath really gets to the point about nudes and sexuality in this essay. I don't think Edward Weston photographed nude women to get a "thrill". He saw them as canvases, pieces of art that God created. In the beginning, when photography first became noticed, people didn't understand how a photograph could be art, and those who went out and spent the time learning how to make a photograph, had no history to look at to make a better image. Today, we can look at images taken from early years and decide if it was good, and take information such as lighting, poses, etc. and produce a similar image. As photographers, we are often criticized for our work being called art, because we’re not using a paintbrush or pencil, instead we use a mechanical device, which sees and captures a scene faster than our brains can handle. It is in the darkroom, (now computer) that the artwork happens… We must use our brains to get the image the way we saw it when we first took or saw the picture. I also enjoyed reading the points and views on photography as an art form. Photography began as a science, not as an art form, and was used it more as a tool rather than something that would be considered in the same realm of paintings or sculptures. This is drastically different from the world we live in today as photographers. We as image-makers are under a lot of pressure. As time progresses we are also seeing the decline of science within the photographic arts (the darkroom etc.) which makes me think about what photography might be a hundred years from now. The topics in McGrath's paper fall into that perspective of seeing pornography in the male perspective but it takes it a step further by stating that all of photography is male. And all of photography is sexually charged no matter what it is. I do not necessarily agree with this position but I enjoyed that perspective that photography is a male discourse, it's interesting.
Roberta McGrath Biography:
It was hard to find a bio on her but I do know that she has a BA in Fine Art, and a MA in The Social History of Art, and a PhD Visual Culture. He has written a bunch of books including “Seeing Her Sex: medical archives and the female body (Manchester University Press, 2002) focused on issues of sexed subjectivity through visual representations of the reproductive female body made between 1750 - 1910.
Merrisa Brierly
ReplyDeleteCINDY SHERMAN: BURNING DOWN THE HOUSE – Jan Avgikos
This reading hovered around the question, “How/what do we define pornography?” “Is pornography different than nude art/photography?” I think all photographers are criticized in this genre, not just men. We may question why men chose to shoot this vs. why women do, but why are we as a society preconditioned to believe that the intent of most male photographers is perverted in nature? Cindy Sherman may be commenting on this topic through her work, she is one of the most popular and well-respected female photographers of our time, and I think it is worthwhile to take a closer look at her intent rather than subject matter.
Jan Avgikos Biography:
She is an art historian. She is currently a visiting critic at Yale's School of Fine Art. She writes for Art Forum and has interviewed Wolfgang Staehle for lacanian ink 8. Her article "What is a Picture? Times Two" was published in lacanian ink 9 and her article "The Woman Who Filled Up the World..." was published in lacanian ink 11. She contributed a drawing to Written/Spoken/Drawn.
Merrisa Brierly
ReplyDeleteTHE PHOTOGRAPH AS AN INTERSECTION OF GAZES
THE EXAMPLE OF NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC – Catherine Lutz & Jane Collins
There are many ways to look at a photograph. We can look at it through the eyes of the camera and see what the photographer saw, the magazine gaze and the even the educated gaze. These different gazes can bring on different meanings:
1.) Magazine Gaze – We are looking at the image from the point of the editor. That is, how he/she wanted to tell the story. This is done by cropping, and placing the images in a certain order in the spread.
2.) Educational Gaze – We are actually learning something from the image. We decipher what's in the frame, breaking down each piece and taking away the knowledge we might not have known before.
My two favorite gazes however where the non-Western subject's gaze and the refracted gaze. It was quite interesting to hear all the reasons as to why people look at different directions in the picture and that people see himself or herself as others see them. Even after reading about it, it still was weird to me that some people never really see what they look like and how a photograph can act like a mirror. I found this essay interesting because so far, I have only ever really thought about breaking down the way we view photographs from the photographer’s perspective, and the subject’s perspective. I feel the way these categories of “gazes” are set up were really interesting to think about and had a lot of detail and reasoning to help each one. Even so, I felt like they were too specific. Some of these viewpoints I felt really didn’t matter. All of these “gazes” give an image different meaning, and can contradict one another, or give a simple image meaning far more complex than what is seen. I feel like the specificity of the categories mentioned in the essay takes away from viewing an image.
Catherine Lutz Biography:
Catherine Lutz is an anthropologist who is currently Chair of the Anthropology Department at Brown University. She is also a director of the Watson Institute's Costs of War study; an attempt to calculate the financial costs of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. She has received a BA in sociology and anthropology from Swarthmore College. She then received a PhD in social anthropology from Harvard University. Lutz the author of a number of books, including “Homefront: A Military City and the American Twentieth Century”, winner of the 2002 Anthony Leeds Prize in Anthropology. She was also formerly the president of the American Ethnological Society and a founder of the Network of Concerned Anthropologists.
Jane Collins Biography:
Jane Collins is Professor of Theatre and Performance at Wimbledon. She is a writer, director and theatre-maker who works all over the UK and internationally. She has a long association with the continent of Africa; and for The Royal Court. She also co-edited Theatre and Performance Design: a Reader in Scenography, published by Routledge in March 2010. Earlier in 2009, Collins restaged the award-winning Ten Thousand Several Doors for the Brighton International Festival and her essay on this production will be included in the forthcoming collection, Performing Site-Specific: Politics, Place, Practice, edited by Anna Birch and Joanne Tompkins, to be published by Palgrave in 2012.
Re-Reading Edward Weston by Roberta McGrath
ReplyDelete“It is therefore not an accident that in the title of this essay I place feminism before photography and psychoanalysis.” I believe this is probably the most important aspect of this essay. The overall theme of feminism throughout this essay relating to Weston’s work is heavy. I feel that McGrath is constantly explaining how photography and psychoanalysis relate or are a part of feminism. “Psychoanalysis has also been important for feminism in providing evidence that subjects are formed through sexuality.” McGrath goes on to say that sexual preference is formed through social aspects and not biological. Now I don’t really understand how these theories are connected to Weston’s work but I do understand how sexuality is in fact a large part of it. There are multiple instances in the essay where his love for women and sex are brought up, whether in good light or bad. “If the face appears, the picture is inevitably a portrait and the expression of the face will dictate the viewers response to the body.” This reason, however pompous it may seem, holds true. The section Close Encounters starts to get weird. McGrath begins to compare photography to sexual connotations and introducing voyeurism and fetishism. “A physical penetration of the other while the photograph is a penetration of the space of the other.” “The eye was replaced by the penis, making a photograph by making love.” While I understand how Weston and McGrath explain and back this up, I still find it bazaar and a bit ridiculous. The whole “castration” element it way too far fetched for me to buy into it. In the section Honor, power and the love of women, the notion of Weston cannibalizing his models, both female and peppers, is interesting. I understand this more than the castration idea. Overall, this was a strange essay. I’m interested to talk about it in class and try to understand these crazy metaphors better.
Cindy Sherman; Burning down the house by Jan Avgikos
ReplyDeleteI can see why we read these two essays back to back. The theme is feminism is important in both. However, I found this essay far more interesting to read. Not quite sure if it is because I enjoy Sherman’s work or what, but this essay was far more enjoyable and the last. Sherman’s Sex Portraits were the main example for this essay, which I thought was perfect. “Can photos be porn if they don’t pass the ‘wet test; if, indeed, the bodies are plastic?’ This notion is tested throughout the essay. The battle between pornography and art is apparent in Sherman’s series. The Sex Portraits include medical dummies with atomically correct reproductive organs, placed in some sexual positions. But that’s the thing, they are dummies. So is it porn? Art?
The Photograph as an Intersection of Gazes by Luts and Collins
ReplyDeleteAfter reading such a sexual and vulgar essay about Sherman, it was hard to get into this essay. The dissection of Nat Geo images just wasn’t as interesting. However, I did get some interesting info out of it. Unlike the previous two essays, feminism doesn’t hold as much of a upper hand in this essay. It explains all of the different, yet each important, gazes in the photograph. These gazes include the photographers, the magazines, the readers, the non western’s (or outsiders, which I find the most interesting), the westerner’s, ones self (so the subject) and lastly, ours, as academic spectators. I find the photographers, the readers and the non-westerner’s gazes the most interesting. The photographers because it is he who starts and points everyone else’s gaze to what they want. Without this gaze, the rest wouldn’t exist. At the same time, the others from previous experiences influence this gaze. They gaze a certain way because (exp with Nat Geo) they know the reaction they will receive, or at least close to it. As for the non-Westerner, I feel like this is the outside looking in, the spectator or tourist. This is always an interesting gaze. They see what is shown, nothing more, nothing less. Lastly, our gaze, as readers. We, like the photographers, are influences and therefore make our decisions based on those influences. Whether it is personal influences or academic. Overall, this was in interesting look into something I probably would have not have given a second thought.
I POSTED MY RESPONSES ON THE WRONG READINGS & I CAN'T DELETE THEM. THEY ARE ON THE READING BELOW!
ReplyDeleteTHANKS!
HILLARY