Wendy Lesser’s “Mulberry Street Café” portrays a young girl that is believably judging the mature men situated on all sides of her (Atwan 240). At Caffe Bella Napoli, an Italian style eatery, the young girl signifies the only adolescent and female in the photo. She has situated herself on the side of the café and seems to be examining all of the activities happening in and around her. With her arm to her mouth as if she is biting her nails, she is seemingly non-existent to the crowd. For instance, she seems to be dejected, wondering to herself, “Am I stuck here forever?” seeing as she is the only female and youngling around (Atwan 240). However, it’s impossible to know what she’s actually feeling but one can concur that she is analyzing those around her based on her posture. On the other hand, Sally Mann concentrated her camera on her daughter Jessie as she gracefully holds a candy cigarette in her hand. In this shot, Jessie is the center of attention, where the young girl in the café is a lone spectator. The selected works diverge into two types, candid and staged photography, candid exhibiting a true appearance and staged portraying simulated appearances, both capturing the initial message that the photographer intended. Both photos and characters contain comparable similarities and differences and one can discuss the improvement that a photographer may make in order to get their point across more thoroughly.
Staged photos diminish the originality of a photo where spontaneous photographs do the exact opposite. When no one is controlling the actions of the main subject, it is staged, and the person photographed shows no true feelings as to how they wish to be presented. Sally Mann’s photograph seems more staged as her daughter l...
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...conceptions about a character in a photograph. This being so, Mann and Lesser both captured the characters of two young girls, similar and different in many ways. In the end, both are seen in their unique lifestyles, one exposed to a provocative world, and one exposed to the emptiness of it. Both photographers use different methods to develop a personality for their main subject, and it is difficult to fully recognize the true messages designed for each photograph.
Works Cited
Atwan, Robert. Convergences: Themes, Texts, and Images for Composition. 3rd. Bedford/St. Martin's, 2009.
Makrakis, Tassos. “Differences Between Candid Photography and Professional Photographic Portraits” Articlesbase. 05 Mar. 2009.
Curtis’s work represents the ideological construction of foreign cultures in the 'way of seeing' that is suitable for the audience of the photograph and the photographer. This illustrates the highly political motives of photograph, carrying multiple meanings in order to craft certain imaginations of the subject (Berger, 1972). As a result of the power that the photographer has on its subjects, certain messages and ‘way of seeing’ are depicted through photographs. For instance, expected gender roles are played out in photographs of the Indian subjects, portraying the expectation of Curtis and his audience of the masculine and feminine behaviour by the subjects conforming to such gender standards (Jackson, 1992). Indian men are captured in what Jackson (1992) describes as ‘active poses’, such as fishing or dancing, juxtaposed with the ‘passive poses’ of female subjects, photographed in more decorative postured of waiting and watching. Though it can be argued that the manipulation and selection of images by Curtis as an artist’s ‘creative manipulation’ of their work, Curtis’ photography was used as a scientific measure, and hence should be devoid of such influences (Jackson,
Being a silent third party to a father screaming at his seven-year-old daughter for putting the inner tube in the wrong place. People watching has for a long time been one of my favorite activities as a third party you are able to see people for what they are, unbiased by already having known the person. Eugene Richards’s book has made me look at my hobby from an artistic vantage point. He’s made me start to think that one day I would like to be one behind a telephoto lens, capturing those moments that people don’t think anyone else saw. Richards photographs have made me realise that photography is more than a point a shoot process.
Photographs capture the essence of a moment because the truth shown in an image cannot be questioned. In her novel, The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold uses the language of rhetoric to liberate Abigail from the façade of being a mother and spouse in a picture taken by her daughter, Susie. On the morning of her eleventh birthday, Susie, awake before the rest of the family, discovers her unwrapped birthday present, an instamatic camera, and finds her mother alone in the backyard. The significance of this scene is that it starts the author’s challenge of the false utopia of suburbia in the novel, particularly, the role of women in it.
Practiced by thousands who shared no common tradition or training from the earliest days of taking photos, the first photographers were disciplined and united by no academy or guild, who considered their medium variously as a trade, a science, an art, or an entertainment, and who often were unaware of each other’s work. Exactly as it sounds photography means photo-graphing. The word photography comes from two Greek words, photo, or “light”, and graphos, or drawing and from the start of photography; the history of the aforementioned has been debated. The idea of taking pictures started some thirty-one thousand years ago when strikingly sophisticated images of bears, rhinoceroses, bison, horses and many other types of creators were painted on the walls of caves found in southern France. Former director of photography at New Yorks museum of modern art says that “The progress of photography has been more like the history of farming, with a continual stream of small discoveries leading to bigger ones, and in turn triggering more experiments, inventions, and applications while the daily work goes along uninterrupted.” ˡ
In many twentieth century photographs, women were portrayed in a domestic and simple way. In Riis’s photograph, Scene on the Roof of the Mott Street Barracks , a woman was
The mass media carries with it unparalleled opportunities to impart information, but also opportunities to deceive the public, by misrepresenting an event. While usually thought of as falsifying or stretching facts and figures, manipulation can just as easily be done in the use of photography and images. These manipulations may be even more serious – and subtle – than written manipulations, since they may not be discovered for years, if ever, and can have an indelible and lasting impact on the viewer, as it is often said, “a picture is worth a thousand words”. One of the most significant images of Twentieth Century America was the photograph of a migrant mother holding her child. The photograph was taken during the Great Depression by photographer Dorothea Lange, and has remained an enduring symbol of the hardship and struggle faced by many families during the Depression Era. This image was also an example of the manipulation of photography, however, for it used two major forms of manipulation that remain a problem in journalistic photography.
No other artist has ever made as extended or complex career of presenting herself to the camera as has Cindy Sherman. Yet, while all of her photographs are taken of Cindy Sherman, it is impossible to class call her works self-portraits. She has transformed and staged herself into as unnamed actresses in undefined B movies, make-believe television characters, pretend porn stars, undifferentiated young women in ambivalent emotional states, fashion mannequins, monsters form fairly tales and those which she has created, bodies with deformities, and numbers of grotesqueries. Her work as been praised and embraced by both feminist political groups and apolitical mainstream art. Essentially, Sherman’s photography is part of the culture and investigation of sexual and racial identity within the visual arts since the 1970’s. It has been said that, “The bulk of her work…has been constructed as a theater of femininity as it is formed and informed by mass culture…(her) pictures insist on the aporia of feminine identity tout court, represented in her pictures as a potentially limitless range of masquerades, roles, projections” (Sobieszek 229).
The camera is presented as a living eye in her work, capable of bending and twisting, contorting reality in its own light. It is at the same time a sensuous device, one that exp...
“The documentary tradition as a continually developing “record” that is made in so many ways, with different voices and vision, intents and concerns, and with each contributor, finally, needing to meet a personal text” (Coles 218). Coles writes “The Tradition: Fact and Fiction” and describes the process of documenting, and what it is to be a documentarian. He clearly explains through many examples and across disciplines that there is no “fact or fiction” but it is intertwined, all in the eye of the maker. The documentarian shows human actuality; they each design their own work to their own standards based on personal opinion, values, interest and whom they want the art to appeal to. Coles uses famous, well-known photographers such as Dorthea Lange and Walker Evans, who show the political angle in their documentations and the method of cropping in the process of making the photo capture exactly what the photographer wants the audience to view. In this paper I will use outside sources that support and expand on Coles ideas with focus on human actuality, the interiority of a photograph, and the emotional impact of cropping.
In our media-driven culture, our views of what women and men should look like are shaped by these unreal images. Older men and women, or people with disabilities, or disfigurements are rarely if ever depicted in these types of publications” (Ballaro 1) Ballaro is saying that what people or dehumanizing themselves for are pretty much fake, plastic surgery airbrush and can not forget the contouring the artist are doing before the flash. Everything is so unreal and natural people are more of the realistic type of humans out there. For example Kim Kardashian has fake everything, the camera and new technology enhances her beauty plus million-dollar plastic surgery done to here. The reader feels as that if she needs to look like to be loved and cherished and spoiled, so she goes back to beating herself up.
So I attempted to use this mentality whilst exploring the Highline, allowed the mindset to fill me with energy and then reflected on what I liked and didn’t like about the limitless attitude once I walked back towards Gansevoort Street. When I saw Kathryn Andrews’ “Sunbathers II” piece, I went inside the piece, and smiled while my cousin took a photo of me. I then continued to roamed through Chelsea while observing the people, billboards, paintings and the skyline, and was struck by the Sleepwalker sculpture. When Zadie Smith comes face-to-face with Corona’s “Find Your Beach” advertisement, she begins to analyze and find possible interpretations of the billboard sign. I then began to examine the Sleepwalker sculpture and discussed several potential inferences towards Manhattan the artwork might have with my cousin Michelle. I then got some stracciatella gelato, and Michelle got a coffee. With my recent purchases in hand, I was taken surprise by Andrews’ “Sunbathers I”. Michelle and I laughed
The contrasts between depth and surface, figure and landscape, promiscuity and modesty, beauty and vulgarity all present themselves in de Kooning’s Woman and Bicycle. Although the figure is a seemingly normal woman out for an afternoon with her bike, she becomes so much more through the artist’s use of color, contrast, and composition. The exotic nature of woman presents itself in her direct stare and slick buxom breasts in spite of a nearly indiscernible figure. It is understood that, on the whole, de Kooning did not paint with a purpose in mind, but rather as an opportunity to create an experience, however, that does not go to say that there isn’t some meaning that can come of this work. Even Willem de Kooning once said that art is not everything that is in it, but what you can take out of it (Hess p.144).
When going for a walk, a person takes in the beauty around them. On this particular day, the refulgent sun is extra bright, making the sky a perfect blue. White, puffy clouds fill the sky, slowing moving at their own pace. The wind is peacefully calm, making the trees stand tall and proud. There is no humidity in the air. As this person walks down the road, they see a deer with her two fawns. The moment is absolutely beautiful. Moments like this happen only once in a great while, making us wanting to stay in the particular moment forever. Unfortunately, time moves on, but only if there were some way to capture the day’s magnificence. Thanks to Joseph Niépce, we can now capture these moments and others that take our breath away. The invention of the camera and its many makeovers has changed the art of photography.
Women desire to become beautiful and powerful, even if they don’t say it in words. And the Photographer plays with that concept and creates that desire, that you can become that person you see in the photograph. And live that lifestyle. Photographers use techniques from the cinema/cinematic, to create the desire of viewers/Buyer/Consumers. The cinematic techniques made it possible the way people lived and the...
In order to understand Joyce’s theory of beauty, the process that occurs must be de-constructed. Beauty can be found in vastly different contexts—the sun setting over the ocean or the Mona Lisa hanging in The Louvre in Paris—yet every experience has been