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[OM] Re: composition and how it changes perceived meaning of a photo

Subject: [OM] Re: composition and how it changes perceived meaning of a photo
From: "John H. Wallace" <jhw@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sat, 1 Oct 2005 11:46:02 -0400
(Nothing wrong with long-winded replies!)

Everyone is making interesting points. Here is another. Photography  
is no more objective than that of the photographer and/or viewer. The  
very act of taking a picture represents a point-of-view. The  
viewfinder "crops" the image according to how we, the photographer,  
wants to portray the subject. How is a secondary cropping any  
different? (As I have read with various levels of interest in the  
past month, everyone's subjectivity rears its ugly head in every  
conceivable context... ) When we start mixing concepts like "Truth"  
into a discussion of "Art," we are truly meandering down a twisted  
path. Just a thought.

JHW


On Oct 1, 2005, at 10:50 AM, Andrew Dacey wrote:

>
> On 10/1/05, iddi <iddibhai@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>>
>> http://www.zombietime.com/sf_rally_september_24_2005/ 
>> anatomy_of_a_photograph/
>>
>> interesting point the author makes; for you trekkies, as picard  
>> says, a
>> lie of omission is still a lie. not meaning to be political.
>>
>
> The author makes an interesting point about how the cropping can
> change the context of a photo and how it's perceived. But, he then
> proceeds to make a number of statements that *seem* to be attempting
> to prove how the "left-wing media" manipulate the "truth". But, he
> makes the same mistake he's accusing the media of making. He shows you
> a number of other photos of the same event and uses them to back his
> own agenda without providing any actual facts to back it up.
>
> He shows that the protesters were carrying Palestinian flags and seems
> to suggest this as a negative thing but provides no information about
> what the protesters were saying about Palestine. Were they saying that
> Palestinians have the right to their own state and should achieve that
> through peaceful means or were they saying that they support the
> Palestinian militant groups? He makes the connection with terrorism
> but doesn't really provide any information to back this up.
>
> Then we get the "communist recruiter" who is "manipulating" the young
> "naive" teenagers. This falls apart in so many ways. First, any
> protest always has organisers, he makes this seem like it's something
> particular to this march. Second, most "recruiting" consists of the
> organisers putting up signs about a protest march inviting people to
> attend. Yes, maybe there was more active recruitment in this protest
> march, that's a story, why didn't he present that? And finally, he
> says that the "recruiter" is a communist. Yes, she is wearing a shirt
> with the Vietnamese flag on it. However, having just returned from
> Laos and Vietnam I can tell you that just about every young backpacker
> who travels to those countries buys one of those shirts. There's a
> sort of "communist chic" in young fashion right now. I think a lot of
> that has as much to do with the irony of taking communist imagery and
> applying it to mass market goods rather than the actual politics. Not
> to mention that a lot of the imagery is very interesting from a
> graphic design standpoint. I have a ton of Soviet stuff from when I
> stayed in Russia, it has nothing to do with me supporting Soviet
> politics. I suspect that a large majority of the people you see
> wearing Che Guevara shirts could tell you very little about who he was
> and what his politics were beyond him being a cuban revolutionary.
>
> What I see in the picture is a protest organiser directing the
> protesters. She appears to be positioning the people holding the
> banner to the front of the group so that the banner can be clearly
> seen. That's a pretty common sight at any protest march, there's
> usually 1 big banner they want everyone else to march behind. The
> organisers try to arrange people because they are usually trying to
> keep things relatively orderly so that they don't cause any trouble
> with the police who are usually monitoring the event to make sure
> nothing gets out of control.
>
> The fact that this organiser happens to be wearing a communist shirt
> *may* have some significance but without knowing what group(s)
> organised the events and what their political ideologies are it's not
> possible for me to draw any conclusions from that. The author seems to
> want you to draw the conclusion that she's a communist and of course
> we all know that communism is bad, therefore the protest is bad and
> the media is bad for not telling us it was run by a bunch of no good
> commies.
>
> To get this a little more on-topic, I agree that with news photography
> you have to be very careful with how you present the photos. However,
> I think the biggest responsibility is for the attached story to
> provide the context for the photos and fill in the facts. The mistake
> the author has made is that he's taken a single news photo out of the
> original context of its story and then uses his own photos of the same
> event to try to create a new context, but he doesn't support that with
> proper facts either. He tries to assert that his photos give you the
> "truth" but in both cases I think the "truth" comes from pairing the
> photos with a news story that fills in the facts that you don't get
> from the photos.
>
> Sorry about the long-winded reply.
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