Assignment 4 planning (part 1) - options

PART 1 - Write a 2,000 word critical essay on one of the many debates you've explored so far in this course. 

The aim of the critical review is to demonstrate your awareness and understanding of how your own and other photographers' work and ideas relate to the wider cultural picture. 

This is an opportunity to:

• Explore in depth a topic or theme that has informed your journey throughout this course

• Engage with some of the theoretical issues explored in the course

• Demonstrate that you've developed academically.

PART 2 - Write a 250 word proposal for a project with enough scope for you to work on it while you study part four and five.


Initial thoughts for part 1:
Thought 1:
The transparency of pictures by Kendall L Walton, this article still irritates me. Feedback from my tutor (some time ago) mentioned about our changing attitudes towards subjects as we developed on our journey through the course - I guess in this particular stretch of the journey I haven't developed very far.... Nonetheless, Walton did enable me to take a strong viewpoint on a subject (that until that point) I had no previous knowledge about. In terms of additional reading, Walton also irritated me enough to read more about Bazin and Barthes - this would have happened as part of this course, but it enabled me to be a step ahead by the time the exercises arrived.

I also wonder if my newly acquired understanding of people like Sontag and Foucault may be rooted in my irritation of Walton? Perhaps this even extends to my acceptance and use of the "language" to communicate my thoughts in my blog?


Thought 2:
The responsibility (moral obligation) of the photographer; yes or no to image manipulation; the camera never lies; ... the list is endless! This should be a relatively simple subject to put to bed, but the debate rages on and on. Basically we all have a moral compass and we all know right from wrong, its just my wrong might be a little further down the wrong path than yours. The first time we break a rule we wait in trepidation for the sky to cave in; when this doesn't happen the next we break the rule it becomes easier until it becomes normal practise. With photography, this does not just apply to the photographer, but also to all the other people in the chain until we get to the final 'published' format of the image - so a minor tweak by each person may well result in a grossly altered image.

To compound the matter further, there are no clear guidelines as to what constitutes acceptable manipulation. Let us take sharpening as an example.

Basically we all sharpen images, unless of course we're in fashion or portraiture - then we soften images. Is this just harmless 'tweaking'? How can it be harmless tweaking if it sells millions of copies of fashion magazines? I suppose the concern here is, what happens if we sharpen the celebrity images? In this day and age it's likely to sell even more magazines!
In our media saturated environment, soft has lots of additional meanings such as sensitive, feminine, relaxed and romantic; whereas sharp means edgy, dynamic, aggressive and even dangerous. So this harmless tweak, not only changes the look of the image but also changes the atmosphere and therefore the narrative of the image.

Add to this another standard form of manipulation - straightening (horizons and verticals) - and you have all the makings of a real cinematic photo-shoot. Look at the way Hitchcock uses jarring angles to create tension and suspense! Think back to TAOP and the importance of perfectly flat horizons so it didn't feel like your image was going to slide off the page - the entire point of these frustrating pieces of tutor feedback was to ensure you engaged with your audience rather than making them feel sick!

Thought 3: 
Internalising thought 2 - photographic objectivity. If we ignore the deliberate manipulation of the image via the dark room or with software and look at the subjective (or subconscious) manipulation of the image before and as we take it! As with thought 2, add to this the subjectivity of the others in the production chain and then relate this back to Bazin "for the first time an image of the world is formed automatically, without the creative intervention of man."

But did Bazin go far enough? Let us add further to this layering of subjectivity - the viewer is not an innocent party in this scenario. We will assume for the purposes of discussion, that all parties involved in the 'publication' are attempting to work objectively towards a common goal. The viewer on the other hand can come to this work tangentially and take it wholly out of context! This brings me back to the very first exercise of this course and Miranda Gavin's concerns as to how we manage "the impact on the relationships between the photograph and the audience in this new age of digital technology". This undoubtedly remains a fair question, eight months later I find myself asking - have we ever successfully managed this relationship, did we really manage the relationship when it was just a black and white picture in a newspaper?


Initial thoughts for part 2:
Nothing distilled enough to write about currently...


References: 
Bazin, A (~1945) ‘The Ontology of the Photographic Image’ OCA download