week 1

“Understanding a Photograph” by John Berger

“…a photographs bears witness to a human choice being exercised…”

From watching the video, I thought it was interesting to think of the difference of a painting vs photo in that a painting was usually meant to go in a specific place. It was to go in a specific room, building, wall and would live in specific space with specific lighting and be a specific size. Not so the photograph. The photo can live anywhere and be modified in any number of ways to fit where we want it to go. It’s meaning can likewise be modified.

I spent too much of the first read focusing on the thought that photographs could not be high art and then came back to focus on the argument itself: That “high art” is an artifice essentially, and based on whether people consider it something worth owning. With photographs, they are too easy to replicate. There is no “original” per se, like a painting or a sculpture. It’s infinite ability to be owned in the same way but any number of people remove its property value.

This is not a negative about photography or an indictment against its artistic merits. In fact, Berger attributes power to the photograph and notes it can be a weapon. The reproduction of an image allows us to put it into our own experience

When Berger notes in the video that language in a book about art can serve to actually separate us from the art itself, it made me think of our second reading: “The Society of the Spectacle” by Guy Debord covers many of the same themes as Berger however, he seems to talk in circles and complicated language actually serving to distance me from what he is trying to say.

Debord writes, “The spectacle is capital to such a degree of accumulation that it becomes an image.” Much of what Debold writes about seems to be more about the power that images can have and its possible negative uses. It also can be said of our present day “selfie” cultural and how many accuse social media on being a fabricated version of life. Images can make people feel that they have to work towards something that is attainable and they hold a power that can be used to subjugate people.

My problem with the piece is more that the positive aspects of photographs or the fact that photographs can be used to uncover what was unseen previously. Photos can be truth as well as fiction and cannot only be seen as an advertisement or as representations of the spectacle and commodity driven world. I am only partially as cynical.

Watching vs reading… I prefer the watching. I like the visual evidence presented especially since we are discussing a visual medium. Also, the conversational tone in the video is easier to digest than the overly complicated language in the text.