Photography.

I would like to preface this blog by saying that I was unable to attend Tuesday’s lecture, thus I cannot talk about what Craig Hickman had to say. I will attempt to write this as best as I can.

This week’s topic was photography. Photography has always been an interest of mine. Being able to view objects from another perspective and manipulating other people’s views of that same object is very interesting to me. I enjoy the challenge of taking an interesting photograph. I also enjoy editing those pictures to make them even more aesthetically pleasing. This week’s reading was a blog post by Errol Morris, titled “Photography as a Weapon.” In this, he discusses the Iranian missiles photograph, and the topic of manipulating photographs. The main idea is that the validity of photographs should be questioned before believed. When the Iranian missile picture was released, many newspapers published the picture. Everyone believed that there were four missiles that were launched. Later, it was found out that the photo had been doctored and in reality, only three of the missiles were launched. This was interesting to me. In all honesty, I would have never questioned it. I am one that falls victim to believing that reported pictures are true. I realize that politicians and reporters lie, but I had never thought about questioning pictures that were reported.

In class we discussed if our generation is savvier to this type of manipulation than previous generations, based on the fact that we grew up surrounded by these distortions. Some people said that they were savvier to it because it is everywhere. It is in magazines all the time. Advertisements are ridiculously manipulated, as are models and many other pictures. I disagree. First of all, I believe the context in which the picture is presented matters greatly. Obviously things in a magazine (referring to entertainment and fashion type magazines) have been doctored to be aesthetically pleasing. If they were not aesthetically pleasing, they would not be successful and would not likely be used again. If the photo was in a newspaper or an informative or scholarly type of magazine, I would be more apt to believe that it was unedited, purely because of it’s setting. The second reason as to why I disagree is simply because we have grown up surrounded by it. It is the norm, and people often believe what they see. This is proven by all the women who starve themselves because they want to look like the people in magazines. Because we are surrounded by this deception, we are oblivious as to what is true and what is false.

We also looked at works by Alfredo Jaar. His work was eerie, but interesting. I could never do work like he has done. I am incredibly impressed by his ability to travel to countries where terrible things happen to document these events. I particularly liked his work “Let One Hundred Flowers Bloom.” At first glance, I didn’t understand what he was going for. There are flowers in a room with fans blowing at them. That’s cool I guess. I had a new found appreciation for it when I read the interview “The Gramsci Trilogy.” In it he says, “Intellectuals may die—they may be suppressed—but ideas never die.” I was very impressed with this. I completely understood the significance of the flowers living and dying in this cell-like room with fans blowing them in every which direction. His piece “The Silence of Nduwayezu” was also very interesting. I liked the idea of the pile of slides all of the boy’s eyes. His sadness was expressed through his eyes, which is the only way to portray something of that magnitude.

Don’t believe everything you see.