Task 4 - The Rhetoric of Images
Andy Warhol. Printmaker, Film Maker & Painter. He had a heavy and influential part in the Pop Art revolution in the 60’s. He is primarily known for his repetitive style of repeating an object / image several times but changing the colour range of each. The Warhol image of Marilyn Monroe is one of the most over used images of the art world. It is a screen print based on the original work of Gene Korman originally deriving from a promotional image for a film she starred in. Using his style, the work is rather dry & repetitive and could be described as reading 3 or 4 newspapers all from the same day, telling you the same stories just in a slightly different way. Each image in warhols ‘grid’ format, using slightly different colours for each of the images which doesn’t really help make this work anymore visually stimulating to me. Warhol was known for having abit of an attachment to his subject, in this instance, and as such, she became the inspiration for several pieces of his work. There is no doubt that Warhol dramatically impacted on Monroes career through his work, in a highly positive way, and is why even younger people are aware of who Monroe is and have seen the Warol prints of her. I don’t personally feel as though the work has anything to say, although I’m sure you can pull meaning from it. You could say that Warhol put Marilyn on a pedastal and raised her up even further into the public eye, continuing to do so decades after her death.
Task 3 - Photographer Image Construction
Helmut Newton
YSL
Task 2 - Documentary Photographer
Brian Walski
Brian Walski WAS a staff photographer for the LA Times magazine. However on the 31st March 2003, LA Times magazine published his photo of a British soldier directing Iraqi civilians to take cover from Iraqi fire in Basra. After being published, it was noticed that several civilians could be seen twice in the photo which raised suspicions into the images credibility. Walski was telephoned whilst still in Iraq and he admitted to having used computer editing software to blend the two original images together, to create the one final image, taking the two moments apart to combine into an ‘improved’ image. The Times policy states news images cannot be edited and so he was fired.
Real Photos (Below):
Altered image (Below):
Above you can see the two top images are the originals and below the image that was created and published. You can see that on the left side of the COMBINED image you can see two civilians repeated in and around the soldiers legs.
Walski, in my opinion knew completely what he was doing and as you can see chose to create a much more aggressive and confrontational image, where the soldier appears to be warning the man off with his gun, however the man, clutching his child is running to him for help. What is actually happening is the man looks as though he is moving away from the tank that is approaching in the background whilst the soldier is simply directing people out of its way and to sit down and stay still.
Dorothea Lange
The next image I chose to analyze is ‘Migrant Mother’ by Dorothea Lange, a famous image and probably the most well known from the ‘Dust Bowl’ era. The image was shot in Nipomo, California in March 1963 and is a perfect example of how the art of post production has progressed from this to something like the above image of the soldier.
A lot of people are totally unaware that this image has ever been touched in terms of editing and I must admit I didn’t spot the editing at first glance. Heres the edited published image:
And now here is a crop showing the original image and the edited version:
As you can see it hasn’t been completely removed as it is quite hard when using traditional darkroom film processes, but is still removed enough to make it almost invisible. It is of understanding that Lange removed the thumb as it was a distraction to the viewer and she wanted the viewer to focus upon the emotion within the face of the mother and her children.
Task 1 - Surveillance
Image 1 – Jordan Crandall ‘Drive – Track 3’ (video stills)
I chose to look at one of the stills from Jordan Crandall’s ‘Drive – Track 3’. Drive is a seven piece video that contrasts the history of film against the history of war. He deals with traditional ways of seeing and new technology image production. After having watched a few snippets and seen a few stills from the video, I can tell that one of the main issues Crandall goes into is paranoia. This whole big brother world is the modern version of the Panoptic theory of always being watched and controlled we see being used hundreds of years ago.
It covers one or two other emotions such as tension and how the atmosphere makes the viewer feel quite tense and cautious whilst watching it. The video was made using different video camera’s, including night vision.
Image 2 - Barbara Probst - Exposure #11A - N.Y.C., Duane & Church streets, 06.10.02, 3:07 pm
Probst, ‘Exposure’ series breaks up a photographic moment, of a place, person or event, into several different points of view. Using multiple camera’s and triggers, she wirelessly fires the multiple camera’s at the same time, combining these multiple images then together, side by side. These camera’s contain both black and white & colour film.
Probst works challenges what is traditionally thought of as the photographic image by dramatically breaking the frame, and ‘challenges the conventional ideas about photographic truth”. She isn’t bothered about what is represented, but more how it is shown and how the representation affects the viewer. I think that her images show a fluid representation of time, in an almost cinematic style by fragmenting these images.
Image 3 – Shizuka Yokomizo – Stranger No. 1
Yokomizo produced this incredible series of images entitled ‘Strangers’. By sending her subjects anonymous letters, she asks that they stand in front of a certain window of their house on a specified day at a specified time. At this point she will set up her camera and tripod, takes the image and then quickly leaves. The subjects are told to turn all of their lights on, wear their normal clothes and remain stationary. If a subject does not wish to participate they simply had to let Yokomizo know, by closing their curtains.
To preserve her anonymity, Yokomizo shoots at night so that the subject cannot make out who she is or what she looks like. The images really bring out identity and the environment where both the photographer and the subject come it contact anonymously, as strange as that sounds.
The images are truly brilliant, and the night time light and the subjects artificial light, work well to contrast with each other to produce this end image.
Summary:
I think that all three of these images manage to contrast with each other. The first image by Jordan Crandall, is actually the moving picture and show is obviously quite different in comparison to the other two, using night vision and quite sophisticated technology.
The second image by Barbara Probst, is similar in the way that she is using the technology of wirelessly trigger multiple camera’s. It is opposite in the fact that she is showing the exact same moment in time in several images all taken at the same moment in time and is a mix of both colour and black & white.
The final image by Yokomizo, is taken at night using willing participants in their own comfortable environment and have been asked for their permission to take the images.
All three images are similar in the fact that they are all very voyeuristic but are all portrayed so differently from the technology and type of film/camera used, to the medium of moving picture versus still images to, finally, the end result of both posed and candid, participants who are unaware of these images.
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