Genius of Photography

November 13, 2012

Snap Judgments

This episode of the series, “Genius of Photography,” focused on the evolution of the value of photographic work and photography’s place in the art world. Aside from its uses and the motivations behind the works, one aspect in determining the value of a photographic image or print was its reproducibility. It’s an interesting consideration—is a print unique enough to garner high demand and thus be assigned a greater value? This question adds great controversy to the discussion, “Is photography art?” And there may not be any one answer. If there is one thing to be taken away from a course in photography and the history of the process, it is that photography is many things in one. One must consider the number of print editions, the date printed, the subject of the image, even the photographer him or herself, and more, in order to determine the value of an image. I feel that even so, in the present day, the value of any one image weighs heavily on a great deal of variables.

November 15, 2012 

We Are Family

In this episode of the series, one observed more closely the photographer’s fascination with the familiar—including, in some cases, the familial. Diane Arbus thought that photographs revealed what you couldn’t help people knowing about you. In her images,  she (as well as the other artists mentioned) sought to show what people failed to see. Photography was—and is—a portal through which one might take the time to actually see with one’s eyes, as one should normally. It had/has the ability to highlight that which is in plain sight yet often overlooked. For Duane Michals, this was the delusion of portraiture. The discussion of the reality of intimacy was opened, for one had to realize that what appears concrete in a photograph could be an illusion. And as such, the thought shifts from truth in physical appearance to the opposite—untruth in photographic evidence. Again, this highlights the fluidity of the photographic medium.

November 20, 2012

Right Time, Right Place

This episode focused on war photographers’ works produced during World War II, during which photography was heavily utilized for the first time to document history during the event and afterwards, and reproduced for the public’s viewing. At the time, smaller, portable cameras were gaining popularity in use with photographers. This allowed them to capture images much more quickly than earlier formats had been able to. The reach of photography was going beyond studio portraits and nature photography. One could now capture images on a handheld device that required little else in terms of heavy equipment or long exposure times. At that point, the majority of human history has been documented in photographic images. Images came out of the battlefields of World War II and the aftermath of the nuclear devastation in Nagasaki. People could see first hand the effects of war; all romantic notions about war were then relinquished. Photography singlehandedly could change the public’s view on a subject or event, as no other medium could before.