Article Analysis Of The Article Photography's Expanded Field, By George Baker

Photography’s Expanded Field

George Baker is an American art historian who is mainly known for his writings on photography. He is still alive and is employed as a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles and an editor of the journal October. Baker studied his undergrad at Yale and got his Ph.D. from Columbia University. He has five different publications. The article, Photography’s Expanded Field was written in the October journal in 2005 and was published by MIT press. The title of the article gives a clear understanding of what the article is going to be about. It explains the expansion of photography from post modern to the digital age. The author opens up the article with an understanding of how he views photography, this

Baker does not directly paraphrase or quote other works but he does use many talented and well known photographers’ pictures and gives them credit. Baker uses many different photographers in his article illustrating how different works have different meanings and how every artist has style and captures different things. He mentions a few artists like Rineke Dijkstra and Cindy Sherman as two different ends of the spectrum. Rineke Dijkstra includes a video (sometimes) next to her images of the same person and allows the image and video to work as a team. The reason Baker uses those two artists is because their works are extremely different. Dijkstra captures photos that use no static movement or no real meaning while, Sherman uses only static movement. Baker uses many different credible artists with well known works in his article. He compares and contrasts different works and proves his point, that photography has changed so much over the

Often times, a conclusion is a summary of the main points the author conveys in their writings. In George Baker’s, Photography’s Expanded Field, this is not the case. The end of his article where a reader typically finds a conclusion was more of an effort to tie up loose ends versus generally summarizing all he had talked about in preceding paragraphs. He states things that he hinted before in the above paragraphs but never gives a full conclusion. He ends the article abruptly and almost as a cliff hanger, leaving the reader thinking there might be reason for a follow up article. Without an informative conclusion it leaves the readers mind to wander. In my opinion, a good conclusion should consist of an explanation to the reader of what they read and why it was important. Show the reader that the paper was meaningful and useful. A writer should synthesize, and not summarize. It is important not to repeat things that were already stated once, because that sounds repetitive and a reader does not like to read the same thing time and time again. Also a conclusion should create a new meaning. One does not have to give all new information to create a new meaning, by demonstrating how the ideas work together, creates a new picture. Also, bringing the reader back to the theme that is introduced in the introduction. This strategy brings the