BLOG OF THE WEEK

A Little Bit of Blogging by Gemma Williams

http://gemmaaar89.tumblr.com/

This blog is easy on the eye and reads well. The design is simple and the layout really helps you want to stay on the page. This is important when it is so easy to move onto the next page or be diverted by one of the links. Gemma's blog is also visual and her posts reference these images and her experiences/discoveries during the course of this module, keeping the posts fresh and engaging. They are well researched and well written - we can see all her sources at the bottom of each blog! This is one to follow

Week 8 - Identity, Gender, Race

                                                        Jeff Wall

Identity gives us a sense of who we are but it is not stable and can change over time as it responds to events and experiences. Your identity may change while you at University as the context of your life may be different from that in the past and your understanding of photography from doing this blog may also change how you see the world in the context of its cultural influences. We may also experience clashing identitities: religious, community, national or cultural and sexual identity. During this lecture we looked at the affect of history and colonialism on racial identity. As part of semiotics we saw that meaning could often be more clearly understood by looking at differences: man/women, culture/nature, black/white. However this does not show the complexities of differences where there are often overlaps. Also how racism and also sexism functions within our society. This has been documented within photograph, on film and within the history of painting. Many artists have looked at it within their work. Above is an example of Jeff Walls work, shown as massive billboard sized light box. He is commenting on an everyday observation of racism in the street - for us to understand difference in terms that do not replicate concepts of dominance or superiority.

If you missed this lecture on one of your core subjects then look at your two free books for this module:

L & Sturken, M (2001) Practices of Looking : An Introduction to Visual Culture, Oxford: Oxford University Press

Berger, J. (1972) Ways of Seeing, London; Harmondsworth : British Broadcasting Corporation: Penguin.



Week 7 - Realism, Ethics, Aesthetics

                                                        Philip Lorca Di-Corcia


Is it OK to photograph and use images of people without their permission? Is it OK to take other peoples images and reuse them for your own interpretation. Susan Sontag discusses the grammar and ethics of seeing in 'On Photography'. She says that as photographers we select and communicate what we think is worth looking at and create a world as an anthology of images. When we collect photos, we are in fact collecting the world! But is it really the world as it truely is or have some important photos actually been constructed either by art direction , or in a studio or just had the meaning changed by the use of text and/or headlines. (Not to mention editing, retouching and image manipulation). Increasing photographers and artists are using the internet or at found images as a source of imagery for their work. Michael Wolf, Joachim Schmid and the Photographers Gallery Deutsche Borse 2013 prize winners Broomberg and Chanarin are some contemporary examples. We also looked at photographs of death, poverty and misery and the affect that these have had both on the public and on the photographers themselves.  Associated press photographer, Richard Drew, took a photo of one of the people who jumped from the twin towers in 9/11. This was soon removed from the public eye as too upsetting for people to see.  A documentary has been made of this image, trying to find out who this person was and why this may be important or not. It is a great documentary on just one photo and available on you tube.

Research

Sontag, S, 2008 (1979) On Photography, Penguin Modern Classics

http://thephotographersgallery.org.uk/deutsche-bo-rse-photography-prize-2013

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130425/11554022838/appeals-court-overturns-richard-prince-ruling-victory-fair-use-appropriation-art.shtml

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/17/arts/17iht-lorca.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/911-the-falling-man

Week 6 ROBERT FRANK

This week we looked at Robert Frank for the whole session. We considered his life, his relationships, the people he knew, beat poetry, the Rolling Stones attitude to publicity, being true to yourself and seeking out truth in the world. You really need to understand Robert Frank the man and what happened in his life to really understand his work as a photographer, as an artist and as a film maker. He took 20 000 images for the Americans, and the resulting edit was so powerful that they refused to publish it in America. It was some time before they could really except what he said in it and appreciate this body of work. It is said to be one of the most important books ever published. If you missed this lecture then look at the documentary made on Roberts Franks life for the South Bank Show. Its in the library. It is the only interview he has ever agreed to do.

WEEK 5 - SEMIOTICS

                                                        Robert Frank


Signs are all around us and exist in many different forms - gestures, typography, language, images, architecture, design. It is how we understand the world. Signs in different cultures and what they mean can vary but they are all there to tell stories. For example high heels are considered very strange attire in some countries as they are very impractical but in Western society they have become sexual symbols. Look at this photograph by Robert Frank - it contains many signs that allow us to place it in history but also to understand the gestures and attitudes of this group of five women sitting in from of some typography that we understand to be signs of a rather ordinary cafe or in this case a diner. The women are confident and at ease (their body language shows us this), possibly on their lunch break from work, they are aware of their attractiveness (their lipstick, clothing and hair are signs of this) and we can imagine that they are probably all wearing high heels. They are looking at the photographer - Robert Frank and we can see that he has hardly disturbed this scene. They are sitting perhaps in a window watching the world, they are also prepared to be looked at and in this case quite relaxed about being photographed. Photographs and films are especially good at using our understanding of signs to create narrative and suspense.

These are the books to look at:

Barthes, R. (1972) Mythologies, London: Cape.



Jansz  L & P. (2004) Introducing Semiotics, Icon Books ltd

Hall, S. (2007) This Means This This Means That, A Users Guide to Semiotics: Lawrence King
 

WEEK FOUR - Stephen Shore and Roland Barthes

                                                              Alexander Gardener: Portrait of Lewis Payne, 1865

Analysing and looking at images. First we looked at Stephen Shores "The Nature of Photographs' in which he explains how to 'read' images. Stephen Shore is one of the photographers on your list and he has been working with photography for a long time. MOMA (Museum of Modern Art) is spending a large part of their photography budget this year to buy up his work for their collection. He is now in his 60's but is still commissioned to do work: he teaches, exhibits internationally, makes books and recently had a series of very short moving image pieces published with Phaidon as an app. If you haven't already, look at this book on your reading list and see how a working photographer analyses images. (It's in the library and so is the next book). Roland Barthes, on the other hand, is a French philosopher and comes from another direction. He asks what is special about photography and why should he (or we) be interested it? His book - Camera Lucida, also on your reading, considers the different ways you can understand images and how they affect individual understanding and interpretation. Roland Barthes explains two very different ways in 'the studium' and 'the punctum'. I suggested that everyone should use this approach to reading images somewhere in their blogs. Look at the above photograph and try to understand what it is of and how you feel about it. If anything.

http://seesawmagazine.com/shore_pages/shore_interview.html

Shore, S. (2007) The Nature of Photographs by Stephen Shore, Phaidon

Barthes, R (2000, 1981) Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography, Vintage


WEEK THREE - Independent Field Work

                                         Alan Warburton

This week was free for you to either go and see an exhibition or explore the magazines in the UEL library. I suggested that you should look at the January edition of BJP which has a large feature on ' Ones to Watch' where you could perhaps blog on one of the many photographers featured. It is interesting that some of these are working collaboratively and funding projects in various ways. There is also a lot of photography related exhibitions - many that focus on collage and representing or remaking work. The Photographers Galley includes Andy Warhol's black and white repeated photographs that are actually sticthed together using a sewing machine as opposed to Alan Warburton images made using CGI and billions of pixels. Richard Hamilton is on at both the ICA and the Tate Modern - compare and contrast. Hannah Hock has a retrospective at the Whitechapel Gallery has had many great reviews. Any of these would make a great first blog for anybody that hasn't yet begun blogging. This should be weekly and alive with personal experiences. Tonight is First Thursday (started by the Whitechapel Gallery) - most of the gallerys in East London open their doors and the whole of the east end is alive with private views that largely operate an open door policy. I am going to Minna Kanotonen's Landscape Exhibition on Landscape (UEL photography tutor). Come along!


http://www.bjp-online.com/
http://thephotographersgallery.org.uk/exhibitions-6
https://www.ica.org.uk/whats-on
http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/exhibition/richard-hamilton
http://www.whitechapelgallery.org/exhibitions/hannah-hch
www.guestprojects.com/programme/on-landscape/‎

WEEK TWO

                                          Jonas Pfeil - inventor of the Panomo

We looked at how far photography had come from the invention of photography. With Google Glass on the horizon and the 360 panoramic ball - Panonono just around the corner (funded by Indiegogo). We began looking at different writers on photography especially Gerry Badgers discourse on photography in the Genius of Photography. There is no one single view of photography! Is photography a window onto the world or perhaps a reflection of it? The Genius of Photography was released both as a book and a Channel 4 DVD - both available in the library and a must read/watch. You looked at other writing on photography and considered its context. This included text from The Americans by Walker Evans, The Nature of Photography by Stephen Shore, Annie Leibovitch At Work and Januarys issue of Hotshoe magazine.

I emphasised the importance of a variety of research sources and how our own UEL library research engines are much superior to Google. Here are the key ones. Take a look and use them:

Ebsco – full text articles
Artbiographies Modern– art orientated but only abstracts
Nexis – newspapers
Jstor – art, philosophy, literature
Film and Sound Online

http://www.rsvlts.com/2013/11/18/take-full-panoramic-photos-with-panono-video/

THE FAME GAME

Helmet Newton

Hopefully you have all picked up your free book: Practices of Looking, An Introduction to Visual Culture by Marita Sturken and Lisa Cartwright. It looks at a number of theories of how we understand visual images.

In the first week we considered fame and its relationship to photography and contemporary culture. For anybody that missed this then you could consider Lady Gaga and her relationship with Polaroid, Juergen Teller working with William Eggleston and Charlotte Rampling in and advertising campaign for Marc Jacobs, Annie Leibovitz and her work with Vanity Fair or even the value of famous peoples baby photos to Hello Magazine. Helmet Newton hired a paparazzi photographer for this fashion shoot - part of a series. Clever nod to this controversial 

Please begin blogging from the list of subjects on the brief - see blog below. This should be a weekly practice. Send me your blogs so we can post them up here and share.

THE BRIEF

DV1101 Discourse Module

Julie Cook

j.r.cook@uel.ac.uk

http://uelphotography.blogspot.com/

Discourse Fridays:WB 1.01 - 11.00AM – 1.PM

Assignment

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Students will produce an online blog that will have 12 entries, each about 200 words. (One blog should be completed each week and should ideally respond to a live event or experience ( for example a book, a magazine article, a journal or an exhibition or film. ) Each entry will have credited images and weblinks to research material. It might also use video or other media.

All Blog options are suitable. Students can use Blogspot, Blogger, Myspace, Facebook Notes, Bebo or any other solution.

It is very important that you tutor knows your BLOG address or your tutor will not be able to give feedback or will not be able to mark your work

OF the 12 entries 3 must be from the CORE topics

Photography Core Topics

Semiotics

Identity (Gender/Race)

Modernism / Postmodernism

3 must be selected from the BIOGRAPHIES topics

August Sanders

Lee Miller

William Eggleston

Richard Avedon

Hannah Hock

Robert Frank

Stephen Shore

Sam Taylor Wood

Andreas Gursky

Tim Hetherington

Martin Parr

Annie Liebovitz

JR

Helmet Newton

Joel Sternfeld

Cindy Sherman

Barbara Kruger

Robert Mapplethorpe

Richard Hamilton

Alan Warburton

6 Topics must be defined by the student.

These should be of personal interest for your own research and, ideally, should relate to the ‘discourse’ of your chosen degree programme.