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photography & new media notities
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Photography & new mediaLes 1: 14/02: introduction
What is photography?
Embedded in what we daily do
An exercise in imagination, to realise what the every day things do and mean to us?
Photography in the larger picture of art history
Approach from art history: an other way to look at photography
Interesting: to think about the di erence, or maybe more the relationship
The uses of photography
What we do with the images is for example someting else
What kinds of photography and new media will we deal with here
Wa cannot deal with all kinds of photography unfortunately
End of class: practical arrangements
What we can use to study the class and what we can expect from the classes
Lewis Hine, Empire State Building, 1932
Lets look at this photograph
Try to understand what you are seeing:
- men sitting in new york on a steel thing
- Construction workers
- Eating lunch, having a break
Very speci c period in history
Context: construction of empire state building
At that time the highest building (not anymore
But still impressive)
its historical
But also something that you as a person,
unless you are a construction worker, will not
see
It available only to some people in that work
We got used to seeing picturs of people and places we will never see
In a very broad and fundamental way this is something we will never see, only maybe
from the street but never from this perspective
Showing pride: look we’re building the highest building in the world and we’re proud of it
Function: expanding our perspective of the world
= something to really think about
Because when we forget the pictures we see all the time we realise how little we have actually
seen with our own eyes
David Wrobel, Fangtooth Fish, SeaPics, The National
Geographic
What is it?
A deep sea sh
fi fi ff
, Something we de nately will never see
Pressure in deep sea is too high for us or something
= a particular thing photography can do for us
Photograph places that are not available because the conditions are not possible for us to visit
Its just a machine that was opperated by a human, but no human has been here
Its something very scary and horror like because we’re not used to seeing this in our daily life
Early photography of deep sea sh was actually very cruel
They had to be caught
First pictures of sh like this u see are actually dead sh, they can only live in these high pressure
conditions
Very important dus that this technollogy has been developed
= also something, that social aspect of photography
That comes with in uencing the original conditions ?
Solar eclipse, 1919, wich the English astronomer Arthur
Eddington used as evidence for Albert’s Einstein’s
general theory of relativity. Niels Bohr Insitute
It is something we see regularly (in some places in the
world)
But this is very spesicif
Scientist wanted proof of the general theory of relativity of
Einstein
Scienti c proof: it shows light going around a large object
such as a planet
So its projectory changed because of the mass of this
object
Very di cult theory in physics wich was proposed by Einstein wich could be calculated but
couldnt yet be shown so this photograph was the rst material proof that shows the e ect of the
relativity theory
This was also a particular solar eclipse where we could see this
The behaviour of light when it goes around a massive object (?)
An animal making a photograph (a sel e)
A macaque monkey on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi
took a attering sel e with a British nature photographer’s
camera (AP David Slater)
lives only in Indonesia
Was a subject of a legal dispute about copyrights
Monkey stole the camera of a photographer who was doing a
shooting and started playing with the camera
So the monkey is the author
Wikipedia: posted it on their website assuming its in public
domain, becaus a non human animal cant be a holder of
wopyright
The owner of the camera sued wikipedia, claimiing he lost
income because the picture is circulating free, now that it is in
free domain
Normally they take photographs and then sell them
Complicated story
ffi
fifl fi fi fl fi fi fi fi fi ff
, Animal right orginastion peta claimed copyright in name of the animal, because the animal has no
voice and cant speak for itself so they said we will take care of it so then they can support this
almost instinct species
There was an agreement at some point between peta and the camera owner, the court didnt
agree at frist or something but it resolved at some point
It brings to mind this issue of photography as being made by using a machine, introduces the
problem of who ownes this image
What happens with authorship when an image is made by a machine
Its really just clicking on a button and the image is made
The machine can be author of the image, but also animals (their legal rights is something else)
We will see how this issue evolves further to a discussion of ownership
With the maker of the animals that are in the image enzovoort
Not the same discussion as who can have copyright in circling of the image (?)
Making the picture is one part of it but what you do with it is something else
That lazy eye is always such a bother, Olivia muus/museum of
sel es
What could this be?
Taken in front of a painting: something put his arm in front of it, its
a trick
Its an art project by Olivia muus
She made several of these images in historical painting galleries
If you position the phone in a certain way it looks like she is making
a sel e
Applying a very recent phenomenon to this historical painting
Makes you see this painting di erently
A new experience of images from before photography
To put these examples together
They somehow land in this artistic context
Important theme in the nineteenth and twentieth century
What is the relation between art and photography
Photog seems to cover a lot of other themes in di erent context
Many of these transfer or land in an artistic context
Lewis hine made them for books and magazines but he ended up being a key gure in art
photography, landing in moma in new york showing modern and contemporary art
To give u a sence that these photographs, even if they were made outside of an artistic context,
they are included and places in a prominent place in the artistic context
Macaque monkey: became one of the items that were used by an artistic project of matthys, an
artist who deals with legal disputes and legal issues (because of that whole story we were told
just now)
Museum of sel es?
What is photography?
We have to think of a way of describing wich would allow all of these di erent uses of
photography
Etymology:
If you translate it: you wille have to understand it as “writing with light”
Phootos, from:
Phoos = light
Graphoo = writing
Similar to other abstract terms with greek origin (fe. Biography = life writing)
fi fi fi ff ff ff fi
, How we call it is not insigni cant (?)
Most words are all ancient (like democracy enz)
But photography was invented in the nineteenth century, but somebody wanted to make it sound
like it was also ancient
It gives the sence that it has always been here
The need to have a term that sounds like it was already there, to have that importance
So how we name things matters
Why writing with light? Light is essential when taking photographs
Thomas Ru , Night 7 I, 1992
Used nightvision equipment wich was developped by the
military
Enhances the minimal amount of light that is present at night in
order to make this image
The prices is that it has this green tint
Registering something, writing something, with the help of light
Talbot, the pencil of nature
U need tools but its nature that does it
That was the idea of the people in the nineteenth century
at some point this idea was suppresed
Because the photographer wanted to be the artist, wanted full control
But the image made itself, you only need to know the technology
Walter bejamin, reproducibility
also essential, the reproducibility
You can have many images of exactly the same thing
An artwork is unique, a photograph is not
= essential quality of photography
Formulated by w. Benjamin
Why is this important? It makes it a very accessible medium
It can be viewed by anybody
A historical painting in the early in times, It would be available to aristocraty and such
A photograph is something anyone can have at home
(Just like the press, de drukpers, but here an artist is still needed, someone has
to make the rst design and then you can copy it, this is the di erence with
photography, but the circulation is comparable)
Very rst images, rst technique: daguerrotypy
= not reproducible
Unique images
So not all photographs are reproducible
Portrait of Johanna Elisabeth van Eijk-Bunk, (1806-1860), daguerreotypy,
Stadsarchief Amsterdam, collection Croockewit. Daguerreobase
A possible de nition
= a camera image / lens-based media
Also lm will fall under this de nition
The di erence between still and moving images is very vague, very blur
Problem: you can make photographs without a camera
For example photograms
Just photo paper and light and objects
Your skin could be a photographic surface
fi ff fffifi fi fi fi ff
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