[updated] My first assignment was to find five photographs I like, and five I dislike, which we then discussed in class. It helped us start thinking creatively and critically about photography.
LIKE:
I just found this photo during a Google search. The black-and-white-shot-of-someone-walking-in-the-rain is a little cliche, I know, but the flipped perspective makes it unique. It reminded me of a scene in Malick’s Tree of Life, when the upside-down camera follows the shadows of playing children.
This is a portrait of Philip Glass (my favorite composer) by Chuck Close (one of my favorite artists). The composition, in conjunction with my emotional attachment to the subject, makes this one of my favorite photographs. I particularly like the shallow depth-of-field that brings attention to details in Glass’s face.
This is a Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of the Kent State shootings in the 60s. It sums up a lot of [what I perceive was] the emotional turmoil of that decade, so the value for me is journalistic more than artistic [although the careful composition done in such a chaotic moment is to be appreciated].
I found this photograph of a young Paul McCartney in the sleeve of his album Chaos and Creation in the Backyard. It is a pre-Beatlemania era, and I love how the camera — presumably operated by a family member sitting inside the house — captures the iconic figure without any awareness of the camera (as opposed to the cliche, highly-aware photographs taken of the band in the following decade). Actually, the framing of Paul between the curtains and window lines is pretty perfect.
Another Pulitzer Prize winner. Again, I like the candid nature of the shot and (as my professor pointed out), the circle formed by the positions of the boy and cop.
DISLIKE:
A crime to photography everywhere: The Facebook-Duckface-Self-Portrait. Of no interest to anyone except the picture-taker, with hyper awareness of the camera.
(+anything by tyler shields) Photographs by Tyler Shields usually just make me cringe. This is a series that has garnered a lot of criticism lately, with the glamorization of domestic abuse being pretty clear. Generally, any photographs he takes either sexualizes women or glorifies sexual/physical abuse.
This photograph isn’t particularly “bad,” but it represents the whole of the Instagram phenomenon. The automatic filters on the iPhone app are, to me, lazy and force drama on otherwise boring photographs. To be fair, I do think Instagram can be appropriated by people taking good photographs, but generally I’ve only seen it as trying to make the Facebook-Duckface dramatic through the use of an automatic graduated filter. Boring!
Paparazzi photographs. No composition or technique, it’s simply taken for the sake of spectacle.
This photograph raises a lot of the ethical issues surrounding photojournalism in extreme conditions, and is an example of development pornography (I term I learned while studying in Uganda). It’s extremely exploitative, and when Western society is the intended audience, the starving man becomes an object — a cathartic release — through which Western audiences feel emotionally satisfied. It is also so extreme, and the man portrayed as subhuman, that the situation becomes removed from reality. There is little to no potential for true relationship between the audience and subject, and has the potential to stifle necessary action. Awareness is vitally important but should be a result of true understanding, not shocking objectification of suffering individuals.
