ITAP Part 2-Genius of Photography Questions Part 6

Genius of Photography Questions Part 6

1.How many photographs are taken in a year?

80 billion photographs will be taken this year alone. Today photography is not only worth bidding for, it’s worth fighting for. It’s also worth faking for, the medium has never been more widely appreciated or more eagerly exploited and questions how much a photograph is worth these days.

2.What is Gregory Crewdsons modus operandi?

It looks like a movie sounds like a movie and smells like a movie but it isn’t, all the activity portrayed in Gregory Crewdson work is to make a single photograph, Crewdson uses cinematic lighting to create one single perfect moment, and he is his own camera operator and director of photography. He has a strange disconnection to photography, he doesn’t like holding a camera and he doesn’t take the actual picture images Is what he is truly interested in and that the camera is just a necessary instrument. Over an eleven day shoot in a variety of locations, Crewdson team will make a series of multiple exposures which will be digitally combined to make 6 final images; he’ll produce an addition of 6 final prints of each image priced at approximately 60 thousand dollars.

3.Which prints command the highest price & what are they called?

Prints that command the highest price tags are usually the ones made the photographer themselves; closest to the times the actual picture was taken. Like fine wines these prints are known as vintage.

4.What is a Fake photograph? Give an example and explain how & why it is fake.

The image of John Kerry and Jane Fonda at a anti-war rally is an example of a fake photograph, the photograph shows john Kerry and Jane Fonda standing together at a podium during a 1970’s anti- war rally was a hoax. As the original unaltered photo of Kerry taken In June 13 1970 documents the Vietnam war, veteran was sitting alone prior to giving a speech at an outdoor rally, and Fonda was photo shopped in at a later date tells about the troublesome combination of Photoshop and the internet than it does about the prospective  democratic candidate for president.

5.Who is Li Zhensheng and what is he famous for?

Li Zhensheng was red army news soldier, he was a photojournalist who in the 1960’s and early 70’s found himself covering the Cultural Revolution.

 6.What is the photographers “holy of holies”?

In 1994 British photographer Martin Parr applied to join photojournalism agency Magnum, a prestigious agency, but Parr had to battle long and hard to bring his distinctive brand of photography into photojournalism’s holy of holies. Parr’s work was very different to Magnum, his photo’s have been said to be meaningless but Magnum has developed a reputation which has become known as the holy of holies of famous photographers such as Ansel Adams and Henri Cartier Bresson.

7.How does Ben Lewis see Jeff Walls photography?

Ben Lewis thinks that Jeff Wall didn’t invent photography but he took photography back to the 19^th century to painting where everything is creative everything is constructed for a meaning, He fed in a lot of contemporary theoretical concerns , concerns about gender, about how men and women look at each other concerns about racial stereotyping.

8.Which famous photograph was taken by “Frank Mustard”?

French photographer Camille Silvy created the seemingly realistic photograph called ‘The River France’; it offers master class in 19^th century photographic manipulation. Silvy arranged where the people should stand so the working class people were in the common land on the right of the picture with an artificial sky that he added. But the actual photograph was not taken by Silvy it was taken by Frank Mustard.

ITAP Part 2-Genius of Photography Questions Part 5

Genius of Photography Questions Part 5

1.Who said “ The camera gave me the license to strip away what you want people to know about you, to reveal what you can’t help people knowing about you”, and when was it said?

In the early 60’s Dianne Arbus roamed the streets although charming and quietly spoken, Arbus quoted this statement. She spoke openly of photography’s power both to steal and exploit other people’s faces and lives, but in taking her pictures she tried in her own words, to be good. Arbus was drawn to society’s marginal characters prowling the side streets and the back alleys of the city in search of the fantastic.

2.Do photographers tend to prey on vulnerable people?

Photographers have always sought out some kind of marginalized subjects; it has been a controversy in recent years of the scholarship of photography whether or not photographers tend to prey on vulnerable people, people who are exposed socially, economically, culturally in some way because photographers could get access to these people if they were out on the streets. Their faces reveal the emotions that we feel when someone wants to take our picture. However the person behind the camera can either feel compassion for the subject or are simply driven by their hungry eye.

3.Who is Colin Wood?

In 1962, Arbus took a picture of a skinny 7 year old boy Colin Wood in Central Park, an image that is once funny, tragic and ghastly, she took many pictures of him that day but chose the one shot in which he clutches a toy hand grenade in one of his tense claw like hands as if seeming to have answered a decade of crazed violence in America. He was a curiosity for her, and captured an aspect of his life when his parents had divorced, but for Arbus she was merely seeking a reflection of herself in the pictures which was her genius.

4.Why do you think Diane Arbus committed suicide?

 Arbus photographed those who showed a genuine awe of those she often referred to as freaks but sometimes called them aristocrats people who in her estimation had already passed their test in life. She was not threatening she was curious her real native curiosity, or her awe of their original individuality that loosened them up to be present for her. She was articulate and poetic her work is unique and is all about her, her work tied into her mood which came along later, and she desperately wanted to be anybody but herself by trying on everybody else’s skin emphasizing the degree of empathy which was rare in any art and described that there was seriously something wrong with our culture. But I think Arbus had gotten too involved with the subject and who she was photographing that her work had portrayed her anxieties and vulnerabilities in her life .Arbus was herself connected to the many of the cities important tastemakers at the time but not everyone was behind her or agreed with her which could have had an effect on her death as well.

5.Why and how did Larry Clark shoot “Tulsa”?

Larry Clark first published his book ‘Tulsa’ in 1971; his took pictures of his own life which involved drugs, sex and violence of his life in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He was an insider kind of like a photojournalist, in his hands photography became personal as confessional as a written diary because he was one of them not one of us he had opened up a whole new impolite genre.

6.Try to explain the concept of “confessional photography”, and what is the “impolite genre”?

Confessional photography is about the truth of real life and the misunderstandings of the world, intimate scenes that people ignore and don’t want to know about. Whereas impolite genre relates to photographs that are rude, descriptive and exposing that not everyone feels comfortable looking at as well as taking a photograph in that light and in that certain way. That is often disturbing and shocking at times.

7.What will Araki not photograph, and why?

Araki is a promiscuous photographer snapping everything around him, exploiting intimate detailed pictures of his daily life. Araki shoots photography to remember things as it helps you remember, he has come to use photography only to photograph things he wants to remember.

8.What is the premise of Postmodernism?

The premise of postmodernism is that we now live in a culture so saturated with media imagery and media models of how people live that our initial idea of how one lives one’s life and who one is, is made up of that kind of media myth. In a sense it contradicts the idea of portraiture because the idea that you can dress up and go to a studio and somehow reveal your strength of character or your inherent humanity when that’s not the case. As we don’t have an inherent humanity in the post- modernist analysis of things as we are all these composites of a lot of myths or in other words narratives that are written by other people.

ITAP Part 2-Genius of Photography Questions Part 4

Genius of Photography Questions Part 4

1.Why did Garry Winogrand take photographs?

American photographer Gary Winogrand took photographs to see what the world looked liked photographed. As well as many other photographers believe, they have always had this as their mission statement.

2.Why did “citizens evolve from blurs to solid flesh”?

The street had always been an interesting place for photographers but approved to be surreal and was able to record the architecture/landscape because it kept still, where as the life of the street moved too fast for the long exposure times. The first street scenes showed artfully staged setups, but eventually the technology caught up citizens evolved from blurs to all to solid flesh and gradually a visual language left a blurs and grains that is unique to photography.

3.What was/is the “much misunderstood theory”?

Henri Cartier Bresson’s much misunderstood theory was the decisive moment it was explored in photography that once you get the drift of it, the feel the energy of it you want to go back again and again because it’s where life seems to be going. Out on the street being in this river of humanity and seeing unexpected incidents occur makes you grab the moment and put meaning behind it.

4.Who was the godfather of street photography in the USA?

Gary Winogrand became a pack leader of hungry young street photographers he was driven and he was a nervous energy and things responded to this energy, things were always happening when he was around.

5.Who was Paul Martin and what did he do?

Paul Martin was a British photographer, in 1896 he went to Great Yarmouth seaside using a camera that he disguised as a brown paper parcel the pictures he took show the magic of the beach at work. 

6.Who said “When I was growing up photographers were either nerds or pornographers”?

Edward Ruseha had stated that photographers were nerds or pornographers as there was no redeeming social value to somebody who has a camera who takes pictures. They were about things rather than people, surface rather than soul and not the human drama of the street but the taken for granted backdrop against which the drama plays out.

7.Why does William Eggleston photograph in colour?

Eggleston took color at face down, because pictures need to be structured but structuring a colored picture is different because color is more dominant. Color can twist the whole content of the picture. 

8.What is William Eggleston about?

William Eggleston’s pictures contain all the acute observation of a mater street photographer like Winogrand but the brightly colored surfaces made them unreadable. Eggleston was a man of few words; he called his pictures democratic adding that he was at war with the obvious. Wherever he goes the world travels with him.

ITAP Part 2-Genius of Moving Image Questions Part 3

Genius of Moving Image Questions Part 3

The Work of Director Chris Cunningham

Portishead video – Only You

Bjork – All is full of love

Then Making All is full of love featuring interviews with Bjork and Chris Cunningham

1. How did Bjork and Chris collaborate on the All is full of love video?

Bjork originally gave Chris Cunningham a specific concept requirement for the feel and the look of the video, then after showing her the storyboard idea Chris did the production process himself before the end so she could see the results before the release.

2. What techniques were used on the portishead video to create the unusual slow motion effects.? Research this.

To create the ‘Other Worldly’ look of the video, the actors and musician were shot in water tanks, it was in post-production when the careful process of removing the air bubbles took place. Then the footage was taken into the shot of the ‘dark alley’.

3. What other music video directors have gone on to direct feature films? Name two and the feature films they have made.

 Film Director and producer Michael Bay had worked at ‘Propaganda Films’ directing commercials and music videos, Bay’s  success in music video’s gained a lot of attention which eventually led to him directing his first feature film ‘Bad Boys’ and went onto becoming a famous director with well known feature films like ‘Transformers’ and ‘Armageddon’.

Another music director is David Fincher, who was set on a directing career also joined the video production company ‘Propaganda Films’ ,and started off directing music videos and commercials which also led to his feature Debut ‘Alien 3’  and other successful movies such as ‘The Panic Room’ and The’ Social Network’.

4. Which famous sci - fi film did Chris Cunningham’s work on before he became a director?

Cunningham had worked for over a year on the film A.I. before leaving to pursue  a career as a director working under the name of Chris Halls.

5. What makes his work different or original compared to other similar directors?

I believe his background in the film industry as a special effects artist gives him an option on things when it comes to creating ideas, he said that after being in the industry he wanted to improve on his drawing which led to graphic novels which came useful when creating storyboards and planning. The most major quality that he has is that he creates his visual imagery from listening to the music rather than the other way of approaching the music with a fresh new idea.