Photo Project Description, Summary, and What I Learned

The main objective of this project, “Photography as Documentation: Mapping Time and Space,” was to produce a photomontage or collage of a person, place, or thing that showed movement through time and space, and to grasp the concept of converting a three-dimensional space onto a two-dimensional plane.  This project also helped us manipulate one’s perspective by condensing, expanding, and modifying reality with the use of photography.

            For this project, we were first assigned to find inspiration though photographers that used their talent to create a whole new view of the world.  Such artists included David Hockney, Serge Mendjisky, and Mark Klett and Byron Wolfe.  The three artists all provide different photography and collage methods.  For example, David Hockney uses a tiling method in some of this work to describe movement through a short period of time.  Serge Mendijisky cuts his photos into strips to bring together a collage to show space.  Mark Klett and Byron Wolfe create seamless collages of landscapes, while adding in one photo from history of the same location to show change over an extended period of time.  We were then assigned to find and photograph different locations while considering how we would like our final project to look.  We then began shooting ideas for our collages.  We were able to experiment with perspective, shape, and form.  Out of these images, we created miniature collages using five to seven images. Before printing my photographs, I pieced them together on Adobe Illustrator to see what images and ideas were successful.  I then printed out my desired images to cut out and tape together.  During a classroom critique on our miniature collages, we were able to decide which ideas were most effective, so we could continue expanding that specific idea.  We then went back to shooting at our locations to develop our ideas, keeping in mind on how to manipulate time and space.  These images went towards another test college.  However, instead of five to seven images, they would be made up of fifteen to twenty images.  After another critique in class over these larger collages, we went to either reshoot our photos or refine our collage for the final product.  The final product was made up of seventy-five images or more.  I had my photographs developed with a matte finish.  I organized my photos to form my collage.  I temporarily taped them together, so the images could be easily adjusted.  After I was happy with the placement of each photo, I glued them together.  I mounted my final product on foam board.

“Photography as Documentation: Mapping Time and Space” helped me open up the box of photography.  Photos aren’t just two-dimensional images, but much, much more.   They are a piece of time, they hold space, and they create a new reality that no one has ever seen before.  Each photograph holds meaning and importance.  However, they may not hold truth.  Like Errol Morris says in his video on photography, there is always a big elephant right outside the photographs frame.  This project helped me understand the bigger picture on photography (no pun intended).  It opened up my eyes to how I can manipulate images to create my very own world.  This project gave me the power to expand space, and even slow down time to see movement.  I had a feeling of control during this project, because I was able to alter these things.  I liked the fact that our collage wasn’t supposed to be seamless, but was supposed to have some inconsistency to express movement.  This project was not only enjoyable, but it also helped me gain a whole new impression on photography.

Response to Errol Morris on Photography

Much like Roland Barthes in his writing, Camera Lucida, Errol Morris also has many thoughts and theories about photography.  Morris first explains that many people today view photographs as ‘social icons,’ because we have forgotten the physical connection they have with the world itself. Morris is simply trying to recapture that certain connection in his own work.  In this short video, he states that it is not what you think you see in a photograph that is important, but the fact that the image is a true examination into a world the photo was taken.  The photo is a representation of a different perspective onto the world.  Morris also discusses the truth behind a photograph.  There have been many debates on what makes a photo honest.  Many people argue that photos shouldn’t be posed and the photographer shouldn’t touch anything.  However, Morris believes that photos are neither true nor false.  He also states that all photos are posed.  Every photograph that is taken excludes the space outside of the frame.  That space may contain many different things that could change the entire context of the photo.  Morris concludes his video with a piece of advice.  The best way to understand photography is to research small details and try to understand them.  

Response to Masters of Illusion with James Burke

In the short film, Masters of Illusion, James Burke describes the importance of the Renaissance artist’s on today’s film industry.  We see movies all the time that use visual tricks to make the supposed scene believable.  However, many people don’t know that these special effects are basic techniques originated in the Renaissance.  Instead of a movie screen, many Renaissance artist’s worked on flat surfaces, such as a canvas, or even a wall.  Their use of optic and visual perception became basic building blocks for visual art for centuries.  One of the first and most important illusions used was linear perspective.  It created depth to the flat surface of a piece.  Depth is created when parallel lines converge at a point, called the vanishing point.  This powerful new tool showed up not only in paintings, but also in sculpture.  The video showed a palace in Florence that used this technique.  The flat images painted on the walls can easily be mistaken as tangible objects, because of the incredible use of optical illusion. Along with being artists, the Renaissance masters were also scientists.  Many of them did studies to discover new techniques and rules on optical illusion.  These studies were so precise and clean; they often looked as if a computer generated them.  As well as linear perspective, artists also experimented with light and shadow, atmospheric perspective, and anamorphic art. These artists’ were extremely intelligent and determined.  They were the founders of the basics of visual arts for centuries.  

Response to Camera Lucida by Roland Barthes

Everyone experiences photographs differently, whether it is how they are viewed, or even interpreted.  In Camera Lucida, Roland Barthes explains not only how he sees photography, but the impact it has had on him.  Since photography is one of the newer forms of art, he begins with comparing it to a more traditional style of art, such as painting.  Some think that painters were the ones who invented photography, because they initially captured many things we photograph today in their work.  However, Barthes claims that chemists were the real founders.  Photography was discovered when scientists found “that silver halogens were sensitive to light.”  The Latin meaning of photograph, “image revealed by the actions of light,” describes this result.  Along with this belief, Roland Barthes has a theory about every aspect of photography.   For example, he couldn’t care less about color on photography.  He says that, “color is a coating applied later on to the original truth of the black-and-white photograph.”  He thinks adding color can be superficial and causes deception.  Barthes also believes that photography shouldn’t be used for summoning history.  Photographs are used more as evidence for what actually happened or existed.  Barthes also brings up a good point: “The photograph does not necessarily say what is no longer, but only and for certain what has been.”  They are part of only a specific time and don’t create, but validate a story.  Barthes talks about the first photographs that were taken.  Nicéphore Niepce took them of a dinner table.  Barthes explains that the photographs probably looked like a painting to him, even though he was looking through an extremely foreign, and new instrument.  Like a “martian can resemble a man,” the camera was able to resemble aspects of a painting.  The invention of photography made it easier for many to believe events from the past.  A moment in reality that can be viewed as well as held defies all doubt.