The Personal Project

THE PERSONAL PROJECT 

The word document for my personal project can be seen in dropbox here ....

File name ... Personal Project Ass 5

ASSIGNMENT FOUR - THE CRITICAL REVIEW

ASSIGNMENT FOUR - THE CRITICAL REVIEW


IS STREET PHOTOGRAPHY AN INVASION OF PRIVACY ?


Which can be seen here in dropbox in a word document called .... TraceyFieldDocAss4 ..

View here...

ASSIGNMENT FOUR - The Critical Review - PLAN

Assignment 4 - A Plan


Is Street Photography an Invasion of Privacy ?


Ask the question .. for the intro

Compare other styles :

Portraits
Lanscapes
Wedding
photo journalism

The Gaze - permission given or not

Evidence for and against

Other photographer examples :

Bresson
Winogrand
Trent Parke
Paul Reas
Daniel Meadows
Gregory Crewdson
Di Corcia

Balance issues

make your own opinion

Be clear in conclusion

Discuss photos of women on the tube - news re: facebook - is this an invasion

Exercise - Tribal Portraits

Tribal Portraits - Vintage and Contemporary Photographs from the African Continent 


http://www.oca-student.com/resource-type/tribalportraits


I have looked through these numerous Tribal Portraits, a couple of landscape but not many.  They seem of a good quality which is alway surprising due to the age and the life some of these picture must see.
I do quite like Tribal Pictures, I am always fascinated by the lives of these people and some of the dress is so elaborate .. well their head dress, clothes seem a little sparse on many occasion.

There is also along side each one a price varying from a couple of hundred pounds to one, I think the top value was £7000.  I have always struggled with art and its valuations, how someone decided on how much to sell one of these Photographs for and who would buy at these prices.  Why is it worth 'that' much .. a subject for another time.  Also I presume they are to be sold individually but it seems a shame, maybe collections should stay together..

The photographs in the exhibition are very rare, taken by western and African photographers, and documents over 150 years.  This is the first time there has been a selling show devoted to the history of Africa.  Some of these pictures may even be unique.

Its ambitious to exhibit vintage and historical alongside each other with work from both African and western photographers.  Taken in Sudan, Ethiopia and Kenya, taken between 1850's and 2002.

Felix Moulin, 1856, photographs were taken as documentary images, they have survived decades and now found in a different context as portraiture, fine art.

The pictures make interesting viewing, the wonder of their lives.  My favourites from here are The Dinka Girls - George Rodger.  Early Morning Wait ( bit cheeky ), bit I love the shapes, bodies and reflections, its a very still picture.  Masai Bride - beautiful in its own way.  Two Rendille, adjusting jewellery.. it seems quite tender.
Lastly a bit different but I like the sparse Giraffe picture, Tanzania, I am a Giraffe fan and I like the void space, showing the vast emptiness.  Its a good contrast to the others.

Another favourite, The Egyptian Woman by Sebah, Veiled women look mysteriously beautiful.
The group photo made me smile.. it looks like a school photo, they are tightly packed, their shiney bloated bodies stand upright and proud and it has a fun element with the children on shoulders, although not many smiles !

Exercise - BPB 2008

BPB 2008


http://www.oca-student.com/sites/default/files/BPB2008.pdf



The Brighton Biennial is the UKs leading festival of photography offers an ambitious celebration of international photographic practice.  Its stimulates debates on photography in all its forms, new, old, digital, analogue, still and moving.  An extensive education program develops local audiences through which the Biennial aims to reach the widest possible audiences and creates exciting opportunities for the participation and engagement.

The Brighton Photo Biennial 2008 exhibition is entitled 'Memory of Fire' : The war of images and the
images of war.  Exploring how they were made, how they were used and their circulation.

The shows curator is writer Jullian Stallabrass and he will speak at 10 exhibitions.  He will be presenting Photography, films and online material that was produced and circulated at the time of war.
These have been produced by photojournalists, artists and non professionals.

They will look at the conditions of conflict, power and displacement and the radically different perspectives of the opposing sides of various conflicts.  It will also explore collective and individual memory of such images and their rebirth at times of crisis and war.

There will be a total of four exhibition centres extending its boundaries .. offering extensive film programme, talks, workshops and portfolio reviews.

Also the Brighton Photo Biennial will reach a large online audience which will also offer a platform for online discussion on the theme of photography and conflict. You will be able to upload images and post comments.

Jullian Stallabrass lectures in modern and contemporary art, post war British Art and the history of photography, he is a prolific writer and his photography has been exhibited and published internationally.

Exercise - Guerreros Photograph by Claire Cozens

Guerreros Photograph

http://www.theguardian.com/media/2004/mar/12/pressandpublishing.spain


The discussion here is about a photograph that was given to our press to publish, it was a photograph of the Madrid Bombing in March 2004.  The picture was altered by some, and the discussion is whether this is right or wrong.  Print or not to print..

The harrowing image was of the Madrid train bombing which appeared on the front of several newspaper front pages.  The picture had been altered as many had removed a limb which was very visible and its was thought  that it would offend the readers.

Many papers removed the blood soaked limb via photoshop, the bodies were still strewn about but this
limb seemed offensive.  Other papers changed the image to black and white so the colours were not too graphic, this seemed to them as a good alternative.

This extraordinary picture was just within the boundaries of a front page photo, and this body part
put them over this threshold.

Cleaning up this image didn't change the context in any way .. but it didn't add to the picture.  Sometimes you need to see all the horrors and a photograph should remain untouched, but this was a good photograph any way and the alterations made no difference - not in a negative way.

Questions were asked why had the limb been removed .. I would have thought calls would have been made the other way, asking for it to be removed.  They try not to alter an image if possible.
The french papers printed the unaltered picture and also other more horrific pictures of people and the internal shot of the train.  I have seen some of these images on the internet and they are truly awful and although they are making a point i'm sure these people do not want, or would not have wanted these images of themselves blasted to pieces all over the papers.   Im glad we were protected from them by Reuters.  Although I feel a bit sheltered.

Removing items isn't really acceptable.  The Press Complaints Commission bans newspapers from publishing inaccurate, misleading, or distorted material, including pictures.

Celebrated artist David Hockney said of modern photography, that it is now so extensively and easily altered that it can no longer be seen as true or factual.
You cant believe a photograph taken after a certain date because of this.  

Having seen the picture, the limb makes it quite gory and removing it doesn't make a lesser picture so perhaps for the mass media it should be done.  But the truth is that this awful bomb did blow off someones arm and thats a fact.  The truth shows how bad this bomb really was.

I am undecided,  I like to be protected by the alteration, but we need to see the truth to truly understand the horror.














Should you print it ..

http://www.oca-student.com/sites/default/files/ShouldYouPrint.pdf

Exercise - The Ethics of Aesthetics

The Ethics of Aesthetics

http://www.weareoca.com/photography/the-ethics-of-aesthetics/



On looking at the work of Alejandro Chaskielberg, I find the images instantly take my interest.  I don't have that immediate shock or sorrow but they have taken my attention.  I am looking, enjoying the pictures but not instantly knowing what the effect is ... these pictures - although I wouldn't have known without reading, have been taken in the moonlight, and where the light has not been good enough, in fill lights have been added.

I like the effect it gives, and you can tell that the subjects are in on this set up, a more posed photo. The colours are bold and the effect slightly artificial.  The subjects seem confident in their attire.
I feel these pictures are telling me about the people and the place they live rather than me feeling pity for them and reaching for my purse.  So maybe we are not donating because we haven't felt this pity or shock.

But maybe this is the way forward, maybe we have bored a little with the shock tactics and this fresh approach captures new attention.

I do not feel sorry for these people but maybe have a sense of pride that they are proud of their achievements and of the small life improvements and we can donate to promote this further.  Helping them to improve further.

Oxfam and the photographer have worked with the communities who knew they were collaborating to achieve the picture, they welcomed the ideas and see this approach as a positive thing, not to be photographed as victims, and they are being represented in a positive way.

These new style photographs were then shown at an exhibition raising funds and awareness for the charity ..  It may be that these photos need more of an explanation with them as they don't have the impact of shock and sorrow

I like this new approach, its fresh and interesting.








Also ...

To Print or not to print

http://elpais.com/elpaismedia/ultimahora/media/200403/11/espana/20040311elpepunac_1_P_PDF.pdf

Exercise - Imaging Famine

IMAGING FAMINE 

http://www.oca-student.com/sites/default/files/ImagingFamine.pdf


In September 2005 the exhibition  Imaging Famine was held at the newsroom of Guardian and Observer archive and visitor centre, it posed poignant questions of ethical documentary practice.

The G8 summit at Gleneagles in 2005 debated global poverty and disasters.  It came two decades after the Ethiopian famine - time is ripe for reconsideration of the power and purpose of disaster pictures.

We saw many pictures of the Ethiopian disaster with Live Aid.

1984, Mohamed Amin and Michael Buerk drew the worlds attention to Ethiopia with a report, which was said to have been as if each clip was an award winning still photo. 425 TV stations around the world, showed the report, reaching millions.

These images were a watershed for how aid agencies thought about disaster images.  Out of this came
new codes of practice.

The live Aid legacy has been to equate famine with africa - 57 countries, 900 million people and numerous cultures = a single impoverished place !

The aim of the exhibition was to draw the public attention to issues that should animate debate among the producers and consumers of disaster imagery and to encourage further reflection by all concerned.

Oxfam has change its use of images, now trying to represent people with respect and dignity.

Charity appeals are often organised around stereotypical images of victims and raise millions of pounds.
So this demonstrates the power of pictures. But these are short term benefits. These pictures still give cultural / racial stereotypes.

Is it possible for the media to present positive images of people in need? and are negative images necessary for fundraising, or do they breed despair and the feeling nothing can be done.
An alternative method would be to focus on the positive - showing how the funds had helped the people.

Is an image negative if it makes people donate and therefore have a positive outcome ?

I personally have donated on both occasions, when there has been a disaster I have made a donation for an image that saddens me.  Also I have been effected by when seeing women in Africa who have used there money, one was with a bee hive and she progressed and sold honey and got more hives .. etc and I was really touched by this ... and I think I would give more money for positive reasons.

A well chosen picture has an immediate effect but can also be greatly changed by adding captions and text.  But what exactly is the purpose ?
It conveys a message, advertises good work and raise funds, also rouse emotion.  Who is writing the text?

The photographer is the witness so should write the text,  but that isn't always the case once the picture has been passed to the papers.  They may have their own text that could completely conflicting to what the photographer had wanted his message could have been totally different.
Text can also be effected by whether or not its a quiet news day or not !

We may be suffering from 'compassion fatigue'  ( 5 dead english bobbies v 500 africans ) .. the suggestion here is the audiences care most about those with whom they identify. What are the basis of identification.  How can other areas command public attention.  Stories are only newsworthy if they involve death and disaster on a massive scale.

Famine images focus on women and children, children in particular raise strong feelings as they are vulnerable and weak, and stimulate charity giving.
With live aid it was said that people gave because they were angry and outraged, but maybe that was just Bob Geldof.  Maybe some pictures were powerful enough to make change.

Over the years has any of the public controversy changed the governments agenda ? Political issues remain unresolved.
It questions what images would be required to effectively stimulate structural change.

British peoples perceptions of African countries remains dominated by negative stereotypes of famine seeing it as an impoverished place.  On a positive side we see Africa as our long term responsibility.
The discussion goes on about what type of images we need to continue this aid.  Would it be better to have a indigenous photographer to get another type of picture, close to all around him maybe getting a more accurate but maybe more distressing image.

Moving images now dominate but does this mean the still image has lost its importance.  The truth is, in the case that we remember events in terms of a single image as opposed to a video.

New technologies have bought new opportunities - images are now transmitted digitally and immediacy is the key - is the photographers eye being replaced for the need of impact and speed. Tight competition means tight budgets.  So photographers are not sent somewhere for months on end to get a stack of photographs to choose from, but can you get the same effect if a project is rush and items unexplored due to pressures and lack of time.

This again would make sense to have an indigenous image maker, but would they be allowed their own voice? or would we still put a northern perspective to it. It would be nice to have both to see the contrast. That would be interesting.
The change in our lifestyles, serious photo essays are often compressed into one image, leaving space for celebrity features.  Can you tell the whole story with one picture, will this be the future of photography.

Are photographers just image makers or do they have more responsibility ?  for example if they see a child in danger or difficulty, should they take the photo or help the distressed child.. my feeling is that if you are there as a professional then you should concentrate on the image taking, but speaking as a mother I would probably find that impossible.  You are trying to help long term with taking the picture back home and raising awareness but that wont help that child at that moment.  But even if you did help the child that would only be so short term it would have less effect than taking the photo.

If you don't have the images then you don't have the proof of what is happening, so nothing will be done.

Exercise - Walk the Line by Max Houghton and Imaging War by Jonathan Kaplan

http://www.oca-student.com/sites/default/files/Foto823_KaplanHoughton.pdf

Read here ..


Imaging War - Jonathan Kaplan  (war surgeon, author, photographer).

This article talks about turning doctors into surgeons and how it used to be such a hands on learning experience.  21,000 hours of training were required in emergency rooms and theatres.  A very hands on experience of the body and its parts, the instruments and how to use them all planning outcomes and responding to problems.

The first part of the learning was to deal with stab wounds and bullet holes, but it was said 'to learn the art of surgery you had to go to war'.

Perhaps there are similarities in the assimilation of the practice of photojournalism.  A certain amount can be learned by studying images, but in the end you need to take your own photographs.  Go to war !

The problem of being a war surgeon is how not to become a casualty yourself.  War wounds are
particularly awful and gory.  Over the years he discovered that their was an interest for his photographs of the casualties.  Graphic surgical pictures do exist, although not sure whether there is a market. But in reality surgery is hugh entertainment.

Over the past decade surgical training has been cut back to 9,500 hours, and many of these changes have been made possible by introducing imaging technology.  Computer generated digital casualties can give the surgeons a wide range of injuries to treat.. and there is even now remote telepresence surgery, robotically manipulated.

Televised surgery is also booming - so what are the limits on what we might wish to be shown. ?
Once having submitted an amputation for landmine injury for publication, they wouldn't submit incase someone saw it and was put off and so therefore wouldn't make a purchase.  So the question of what kind of images of the human body are considered suitable for publication is one that rightfully persists.


Walk the Line - Max Houghton 

The question of which images are fit for publication on the grounds of taste is one with which picture editors grapple with on a daily basis.
Dead American soldiers are a no no for the US press, yet the image of a war-battered American soldier
sweeps to victory at the world press awards.

Two examples, the first of Saddams sons who were displayed as trophy images, then at a conference one woman declared she couldn't look at the 'falling man' (twin towers), and issued a plea for the family. Yet no plea was issued on behalf of the dead Taliban.

Jonathan Kaplan words, "I usually find that the goriest pictures don't actually tell the story very well'
The gore tends to distract from any emotion or feeling other than basic revulsion at the image rather than the tragedy that is being illustrated.


One picture discussed was that of a bleeding dying mother who's baby son sat beside her distressed. There was question over wether to publish and / or whether to use black and white. A journalist Tracy McVeigh felt this woman should not be a nameless victim of the latest Kenyan violence.  She opened body bag to find this woman and eventually identified her as Grace Mungai.  After that she was able to find her husband and son - this picture was then a story not just an illustration.

Another story was that of the reports of down syndrome suicide bombers, they found themselves looking at the faces, trying to see, anyway that wasn't published, they drew a line.


Obviously there has to be lines, borders, that we don't cross and I think most people will get a gut feeling about something, if it make you wince and feel no way then thats a good sign !

I suppose its more difficult when the picture is less offensive, and some feel it acceptable and other do not.  It would also depend on the report also, if it was meant to shock then the picture would be appropriate.  Clear as mud I feel ..

Also when the reporter knows the person in the picture, or the name is known then that also makes it more personal to every one - I felt myself change about the Kenya picture when the journalist discovered who she was.

Exercise - Don McCullin - Shaped by War

Listen to BBC Radio 4 ..here...



Don McCullin is a professional photographer, best known as a photographer of conflict and combat, in battle zones from Vietnam to the Falklands. Don McCullin has just published his latest book entitled Shaped by War and has a photographic exhibition of the same name at the Imperial War Museum North, in Manchester. Don has also captured on camera the still lives and landscapes in his home county of Somerset, as well as the tranquillity of the ancient ruins on his journeys across the Roman Empire published under the title Southern Frontiers. 


I Listened to the BBC Radio 4 interview, Excess Baggage, Travellers tales from around the world. 

Don McCullin grew up in south London and didn't have a very privileged upbringing.  It was probably this which made him look to leave home.  At that time people left school at 14 or 15 with no education.  He went for national service and applied for the RAF stationed in Oxfordshire.  He wanted to move further afield and was sent to Egypt, however the first year he was behind barbed wire so wasn't that enthralling. Eventually he moved to Nairobi and then his photography and experiences got under way. 

Back in London he was involved with a local discrepancy / altocation and took photographs and he managed to sell them to the Observer newspaper, for a fee of £50.  This is where it started and he was given a contract, for a 2 day week with the paper.  

In 1961 he went to see the Berlin wall being built.. He has been to many a tense and dangerous place.  In the 60/70/80's it was easier to travel, with less security and he was excited to travel, now he dreads the airports and travel.  In these times he travelled light, with three cameras, two light meters and rolls of film.  Also he took breakfast as hated being hungry in the mornings !! 

He said he didn't feel in danger in the war zones, it was his choice to be there and he knew what he was letting himself in for, so he felt like he could complain.  He loved to work alone and took pictures of the starving and dying - sometimes people were asking him for help but he was unable - this still haunts him today. He now doesn't want to see that desperation in peoples eyes.  He travelled some beautiful places and was able to photograph the countries as well as the people in them. 

He loves to photograph landscapes, they are his medication and meditation ... He find landscapes reviving.. 
This is the paradise at the end of his garden at home.
When asked why his landscapes are so often of winter he says, there is a darkness about him, he still uses film and he wants to make shots that are noticeable .... He loves the naked English countryside, just because trees are naked doesn't mean they are dead. 

His book Southern Frontiers ( a journey across the Roman Empire ) .. He was asked if he felt the shadows cast by the past, he says there is always danger in these places, and he can hear the distant cries of others. 
He has taken some beautiful pictures of areas with war and tanks just around the corner, quite surreal.  He still take pictures of people with caution as people can get upset and be aggressive towards him, always be careful.

Sommerset is his sanctuary, his spiritual home and now looks forward to that, he needs comfort and a hot bath and be at peace with himself.

Exercise - The Photograph as an Intersection of Gazes - Catherine Lutz

Read the article which can be found..here..


The National Geographic Magazine is of tremendous potential cultural importance.  Its photographs have voraciously focused on the third world scenes. Its an idealogical practice that powerfully relates to the history and structure of the society in which it has developed.

Some of the issues raised are particular to this specific genre of photography while many others illuminate photographic interpretation more generally.

National Geographic photographs of the non westerner can be seen not simply as captured view of the other but a dynamic site at which gazes or view points intersect.  This intersection creates a complex and multi dimensional object.  It allows viewers to negotiate a number of different identities both for themselves and those pictured.

The article is exploring the significance of the gaze, and the seven kinds of Gaze that can be found in the photograph.  The seven are...

1. The Photographers Gaze
2. The institutional Gaze, magazine gaze.
3. The Readers Gaze.
4. The Non - Westerners Gaze.
5. The Explicit looking done by westerners.
6. The Gaze returned or refracted.
7. Our own academic gaze.

The Gaze and its significance.
The photograph and the non western person share two attributes, they are objects at which we look. The photograph has this quality because its usually for beautiful attraction or documentary interest. The look is necessary to cross the span created by perception.  Some see the gaze as an act of mastery or control. The gaze can be seen by some as masculine.  John Berger points out gender ideologies and envisages men as active doers and women as passive presence.  Men by what they do to others and women by their attitudes towards themselves. (men act and women appear ).
The unique vision of the female spectator is explored, and seen as multiple because it can move between identification with the object and with the spectator.

There is no single masculine spectator position for viewing the ethnic representations in the National Geographic. While the image makers at National Geographic are overwhelmingly white and male.
Lacans view of the Gaze can be helpful as a model for the potential effects of looking.  Lacan speaks of gaze as something distinct from the eye of the beholder.

What can be done in the photograph is to manipulate the gaze of the other - via such a process as photo selection - so that it allows us to see ourselves reflected in their eyes in ways in which are comfortable, familiar and pleasurable. This taming of the gaze occurs when we move and realise that the picture does not change as our gaze changes.

Foucaults analysis of the rise of surveillance in modern society is also relevant to the understanding of the gaze in photography.
The magazines gaze at the Third World operates to represent it to an American audience in ways which can shore up a western cultural identity.  The gaze is not, however, a singular or monolithic - we might say the gaze is meaningless.

Many gazes can be found in any photograph in the National Geographic - this is true whether the photo is of a landscape with no people or a single person looking straight into the camera - the gaze is not simply the looking of a photographed subject.

THE PHOTOGRAPHERS GAZE 
This is represented by the cameras eye and laves its clear mark on the structure and content of the photograph. As photographers give people and imaginary possession of a past that is unreal they also help people to take possession of place in which they are insecure. The photographers gaze and the viewers gaze overlap somewhat.  Photographers feel compelled to put the camera between themselves and whatever remarkable they encounter.  Conventions of photography force us in ways to follow the cameras eye and see the world from its position.

THE MAGAZINE GAZE
This includes the whole institutional process by which some portion of the photographers gaze is chosen for use and emphasis.1. The editors decision, to commission articles - 2.The editors choice - selection of photographs. 3.The editors - layout and design.
The magazine gaze is the most evident and accessible to the National Geographic reader 4. The caption writer - verbal fixing of a vantage on the pictures meaning.

THE MAGAZINE READERS GAZE
The photograph is not only perceived, received, it is read. The public consumes a stock of signs, independent of what the photographer may intend. The reader is invited to dream in the idealogical space of the photograph.  This fact distinguishes the readers gaze from that of the magazine gaze and led them to investigate the former directly by asking a number of people to look at and interpret the pictures.  Anything that draws the readers attention to the fact that a camera ( rather than the readers eye alone ) has been at work - Jarring, un natural colours, off centre angles, photo retouching.
The readers gaze has a history and a future and it is structured by the mental work of inference and imagination .. is the woman smiling or smirking..  The readers gaze is structured by a large number of cultural elements or models.


There is not one readers gaze, each individual looks with a unique personal, cultural and political background or set of interests.
On the one hand, photographs allow participation in the non western scene through vicarious viewing. On the other they an always alienate the reader by first alienating the reader - first they create or require a passive viewer and second they frame much of an actual viewer would see, smell or hear.
The presumed consent of the other to be photographed can give the viewer the illusion of having some relationship with the other.  The viewer doesn't choose where he or she enters the photo, but is forced to take the route of the cameras eye.

The voyeuristic look requires and promotes distance between the reader and the subject, while the narcissistic identification promotes the illusion that the photo is a mirror.
Finally, this gaze is also structured by the context of reading.
Amongst popular magazines, the National Geographic sits near the top of a socially constructed hierarchy of magazine types.. ( ie. High Brow), as a scientific journal presenting facts about the world, as a journal with beautiful / artistic, rather than merely prosaic photos.

NON WESTERNER SUBJECT'S GAZE
The gaze of the other found in National Geographic can be classified in at least four types, he can confront the camera, look at something and someone within the picture frame, look off into the distance, or a gaze can be absent altogether.  The look into the camera in all cases must suggest the acknowledgement of the photographer and the reader. The return of the gaze does not contest the right of the viewer to look and may in fact be read as the subject's assent to being surveyed.  Facial expression is crucial - the local person looks back with a number of faces, friendly smiling, hostile glaring, vacant, curious.  The return of the look is not normally confrontational or challenging. If the other looks back and smiles at the camera, it can be read by the viewers as the subjects assent to be surveyed.

The portrait is a collaboration between subject and photographer, despite the fact that the other is still subjected to an un returnable gaze.  Virtually all the photographers at NG saw the return of the gaze as problematic and used such pictures sparingly. They almost fake intimacy, the use of direct gaze suggest a less gritty value.  Those who are actually or culturally defined as weak - women, children, people of colour, the poor, the tribal, those without technology - are more likely to face the camera.  Historically the frontal portrait has been associated with the rougher classes.  There is a trend for the urban people to look at the camera.

AN EXPLICIT WESTERN GAZE
Through the years NG has been publishing articles on the non western world.  These photographs show the westerners engaged in a variety of activities.  Interacting with a native in conversation work of play.  These pictures form a fascinating set as they represent more explicitly and directly than others the kinds of intercultural relations between the west and its global neighbours.
The pictures of westerners can serve a validating function by proving that the author was there. The reader can be convinced that the account is a first hand one, brought from the field rather then from the archives.

In her analysis of the role of the gaze in the cinema, Mulvey (1985) argues that it takes three forms - the camera, the audience and the characters, the first two forms have to be obscured or invisible.
If the viewer becomes aware of his or her own eye or that of the camera they will develop a distancing awareness rather than an unconscious involvement.

As more and more people travelled to exotic locales of the NG articles, staff saw that the picture of the intrepid traveller no longer look intrepid and so had less interest.

THE REFRACTED GAZE OF THE OTHER
(To see themselves as others see them )
In a small number of NG issues, a native is shown with a camera or mirror.  These are both tools of self reflection.  For many Americans self knowledge is a central life goal.  There is a childish naivety when a native see his reflection.

There have been changes, where the indians may have stood unwillingly for photographs they are now charging 80 cents a person as they pose.   It depicts the act of looking at unwilling subjects, suggesting two things.  The first voyeurism of the photograph of the exotic.  The camera gaze is doubled in this picture, not the native subject as in the photos above where the camera enters the frame in some explicit sense, and this doubling underlines that western gaze.

Success in avoiding boredom is key to retaining readers interest and memberships for NG.

THE ACADEMIC SPECTATOR 
This gaze is simply a sub type of the readers gaze.  We read the NG magazine with a sense of astonishment and wonder, both as children and, in a way that is different only some of the time as adults.

We aim to make pictures tell a different story than they were originally meant to tell, one about their makers and readers, rather than their subjects.
This seventh kind of looking is guided by the idea that an alternative gaze is possible, one which is less dominating, more orientating toward seeing how a scene and its viewer might be changed than toward its imagined essential, unchanging and unsatisfactory form.
As we are invited to dream in the photograph, we are also invited to forget and be lost in it.
Our reading theory has also tutored our gaze at the photographs in distinctive ways, told us how to understand the techniques by which they work.   We are captured by the temptation to view the photographs as more real than the world or at least a comfy substitute for it.

Through attention to the dynamic nature of these intersecting gazes, the photograph becomes less vulnerable to the charge or illusion that it masks or stuffs and mounts the world, freezes the life out of a scene.  While the gaze of the subject of the photograph might be fairly lost in the heavy criss crossing traffic of the often more privileged producers and consumers gazes, very contemporary stories of contestable power are told there nonetheless.

Exercise .. On Foucault: Disciplinary Power and Photography by David Green

Read the article 'On Foucault : Disciplinary Power and Photography by David Green.

http://www.oca-student.com/sites/default/files/OnFoucault.pdf

Which can be read here here ..


Michel Foucault is a French philosopher he explores the elements of control that stem from a correctional application of visibility, that of prisons, using the Panopticon.  The Panopticon was conceived by Jeremy Bentham in1786, it allowed the surveyor to see, control and gaze at a population of surveyed individuals without ever being seen himself.

Writings of the French historian have been widely reviewed in this country, although their reception has not always been favourable.  The consensus is that they merit careful consideration.
His writings are notoriously difficult, he refuses to acknowledge traditional boundaries.

Behind his investigations lie two themes : the development of certain forms of rationality which posit man as the subject and object of knowledge and the second, the complex relations bonding power and knowledge which are implicit to such forms of rationality.

Foucaults work can be best viewed as an attempt to understand how the human and social sciences became historically possible, to map out the conditions that enable their emergence and to indicate the consequences of their existence.

Power must be recognised in its positive forms when it enables the production of knowledge.  Conversely no power can be exercised without the extraction, distribution or retention of knowledge.

The important thing here is to believe the truth isn't outside the power, or lacking in power, contrary to the myth whose history would repay further study, truth isn't the reward for free spirits, the child protected solitude, not the privilege of those who have succeeded in liberating themselves.

Foucault is not necessarily concerned with the correctness or otherwise of the concepts, methods and content of the modern sciences but with the effect of power which is linked to the institution and functioning of an organised scientific disclosure within society.

Foucault most widely read work - Discipline and Punishment - (1975 ), returns to the analysis of a single disclosure / institution relation which had provided the structure of his earlier studies of Madness and Civilisation and the Birth of the Clinic.

The gradual replacement of types of punishment which are violent, replacing them gradually with a more subtle approach.
Amongst the 'technology' of disciplinary power are the mechanisms of surveillance for which Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon provided the ideal model.

The Panopticon was a construction with central tower, enclosed by a circular building whose cellular spaces are open on the inside and their occupants exposed to the unremitting gaze the tower affords.
I this field of uninterrupted visibility in which only the observer remains unseen, it becomes possible to compare individuals to each other and to impose a system of formal equality, thereby exercising a normalising judgement, it was possible to gauge differences between individuals. The Panopticon was the perfect manifestation of disciplinary power and the principles of its functioning.   By virtue of its methods of fixing, dividing, recording, it has been one of the simplest, crudest, and almost concrete, but perhaps most indispensable conditions for the development of the immense activity of examination but has objectified human behaviour.

A constant theme in his work was the analysis of discipline and those at which it has been directed.  These forms of tactics of power are not manifest as physical violence - indeed the body is touched as little as possible.  The function of power lies in its ability to extract knowledge.
Foucaults earlier historical studies cover the period of 18th & 19thC , a series of profound demographic, political, social and cultural changes consequent upon the rise of industrial capitalism.   He is careful to distance himself from a simple casual relation based upon the Marxist principle of economic determination.

Foucault suggests that its is not the exclusion of the criminal and the insane which served the interest of the bourgeoisie but the techniques and procedures themselves of such an exclusion.  It was the actual mechanism of disciplinary power, the apparatuses of surveillance, which become politically useful and lent themselves to economic profit.  In the case of the factory or workshop discipline may have been evoked as a moral incentive but the importance of discipline increasingly become one of maximising productivity and thereby the profitability of labour.

The physical division of space and segregation of individuals, the carefully controlled rhythm of activities and the imposition of rigid temporal sequences, became common features of both the prison and the workplace.
The mechanisms of discipline which Foucault describes at length in Discipline and Punishment, gave rise to a political anatomy of the body, a certain way of rendering the accumulation of the men docile and useful.  The techniques of disciplinary power enabled the improvement of the efficiency and profitability of labour.  In so far that discipline is power which engages and infiltrates the physical capabilities of individuals caught within its mechanisms we can speak of politics of the body.  But disciplinary power also engaged the body as a species body gave rise to a politics populatio, the focus of which was a series of regulatory controls effective at the level of the social.  As the problems caused by the rapid expansion of urban populations became more evident the need for political control and intervention became more necessary.

Foucaults 'History of Sexuality' is not a renunciation of pleasure nor a rejection of the flesh but an intensification of the body through concern for its health and vitality.  The body which became the focus of discipline not only as a means to render it more productive but also more morally and physically healthy.  The effect of this was to subject the body in an ever more derailed way to endless medical and psychological examination and to the mechanisms of surveillance.

The photographic image is regarded as a form of empirical truth, evidence of the real.  The camera has revealed a new kind of knowledge making it possible to measure and compare each individual to another.  Photography therefore was contingent to other methods used in the observation and classification of individuals, forming a part of the mechanisms of surveillance and the exercise of a normalising, disciplinary power.   Photographic records are kept along with writing, measurements, documentation.  The employment of photography in the fields of Anthropology, medicine, and criminology draws together a whole series of discursive operations, along with the axis of race, class, gender.  Subject to the gaze of the camera the body became an object of the closest scrutiny, its surface continually examined for the signs of its innate physical , mental and moral inferiority.

Historical perspectives are only necessary and defendable as a means of helping us to understand the present and allowing us to create the appropriate and effective means of working strategically within the relations of power and knowledge which currently endure.

The force and value of Foucaults ideas are owed to the fact that we continue to live in a society which is characterised by the forms of discipline and mechanisms of surveillance which he has identified.  A criticism of this is to say there is no implausible form of resistance, Foucaults response has been to insist that wherever there is power there is potential for resistance. But the forms of power are localised and specific so so should the forms of resistance.
This means there cannot be an overall strategy for an oppositional cultural politics of photography.  On the contrary it is necessary to develop alternative ways of working with photography, and to develop different photographic forms and devices suitable to the varied contexts in which the photograph is placed and used.

Response to Tutor Report for Assignment 3

Response to Assignment three tutor report... 


I have been thinking about this assignment and I am happy with it.  My intentions with the pictures were to tell a story of how to make a cake, I wasn't really thinking it was illustration but I can see where
the lines cross for the observer. Also with the number of pictures that was because the assignment asked for that many rather than it being my selection, which may have been less.

I have taken a few snapshots, for my own practice and these are of a tree surgeon.  The story being the felling of the tree.  I shall add these to my blog as another example.

I have noted all the comments ad will look through the pictures again and adjust any I feel need it, as per your suggestions.

I think at the time the constant rain just drained me of any enthusiasm but I do look and have been looking at other scenarios of story telling ....