Family photography isn’t necessarily your immediate family. It could be about a specific lifestyle or a group that you are involved in everyday. Family photography doesn’t limit you to only being able to explore your own family but as an insider the shots may come out more natural and real as the people in them will be more comfortable with you and won’t be phased by the snap of the camera. You have complete access to your own family all of the time and you are able to make images whenever you want, at an event or even when you are just hanging out with one another and sharing normal everyday experiences’.
Richard Billingham [Ray’s A Laugh]
Richard Billingham [Ray’s A Laugh]
Laia Abril [The Epilogue]
A film: The Genius of Photography Episode: We Are Your Family
– images are more raw and real to grab spectators reactions making them think more widely
– photographs in the 1930s were about making celebrities look ‘devine’. Here some photographers rebelled against this, it was becoming outdated. Tony Vaccaro, an American photographer, took photos to show his own opinions and not to express the thoughts or opinions of the celebrity or the model he photographs. 0
– photographs should be about the person’s personality and characteristics not the face or visual aspects of a person.
– photographs are made to tell a story, true to the person’s life
Tony Vaccaro
Tony Vaccaro [born 1922 in Greensburg, Pennsylvania]Vaccaro is an American war photographer during the Second World War and between the years of 1944 and 1945, shortly after becoming a renowned fashion and lifestyle photographer for US magazines. He spent the early years of his life living in Italy.
Vaccaro tended to take action shots while doing documentary photography as he saw them to be the most raw. He did not like when subjects would try to pose for him essentially staging who they actually are. Only when the wall has gone and the subject actually allows Vaccaro in to a piece of who they actually are will he make a photograph. All of his documentary images were made using a film camera as at the time of when he did documentary photography digital cameras had not been invented yet.
“I’m gonna buy a camera, learn how to use it, and show the world the real pictures of the war.” -Tony Vaccaro
This film is about what Vaccaro went through during the war. It is a documentary film with guest appearances who comment on what he went through. The film itself has not been released yet.
Larry Clark
Larry Clark [born 1943 in Tulsa, Oklahoma]Clark is an American photographer. His photographs are natural. He does documentary photographer as an insider and is part of the community he is photographing and so has an insight to reality within their group of people and those in his images wouldn’t shy away from the camera or try to be anything other than themselves. His book ‘Tulsa’ was very personal and showed his community of friends and family as who they truly were and did not fabricate a lie of who they all wanted to be portrayed as.
“Once the needle goes in, it never comes out” – Larry Clark
Nan Goldin [born 1953 in Washington, D.C.]Goldin is best known for her images of her friends and her self portraits. She would often make images with herself in them showing her life as a victim of physical harm from her partner as well as making images of a lot of her transvestite friends. Goldin only ever makes images of her dear friends as she knows them and allows them to pick which images they like and those that aren’t so good. Photography is very personal to her and having an insight to her friends lives, as well as her own, is one of the best ways to make real images. Goldin does confession photography, photographing real people within her community of friends. She calls trans people the “third gender”, they are treated as outcasts in the way they are treated and by the way they act.
“You can only really photograph your own tribe” – Nan Goldin
Family photography becomes more like a diary and is very personal. Goldin was inspired by film with how she presents her work, which she does through slide shows of her images put together with music in the background. She believes in being “fully present in the moment” but at the same time to “be there and get lost at the same time”. She also used film cameras to make her photographs making the images raw and real to the time and the actual events.
[Nobuyoshi] Araki
Araki [born 1940 in Tokyo. Japan]Araki is a Japanese photographer and contemporary artist. He has created over 350 books and is still going. Araki often created work of a very sexual nature with some even calling it pornography. He made a book called Sentimental Journey while on his honeymoon with his wife, this is now a very famous book.
“taking these photos does help me to remember” – Araki
“The very private became the very public” – anonymous
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Sally Mann
Sally Mann [born 1951 in Lexington, Virginia, VA]Sally Mann is a documentary photographer that focuses on her family and often collaborates with family members in order to make her images. Here they will pose for her and allow her to make images of them whenever she needs to. She would large black and white photographs of her young children and then later making images of landscapes representing decay and death within the environment.
“unless you photograph what you love, you are not going to make good art.” – Sally Mann
Larry Sultan [born 1946 in Brooklyn, New York City]Larry Sultan is an American photographer with exhibits of his work across the U.S. making images of his family. A lot of his work is very personal but is also staged as he would often ask the subject to dress in a certain way and look at the camera in a specific way to portray them in the way that he wants them to be portrayed.
” photography is instrumental in creating family” – Larry Sultan
Often images reflect the photographer rather than the person being photographed. It tells the spectator more of their own personal views and experiences allowing them into more of who the photographer actually is themselves. I like the idea of documentary photography as it brings more of a real experience to the spectator, as humans I think that we are naturally curious especially to see what everyone else is doing. I think that I would want to photograph my sister and the life of being a new mum and working at the same time. I want to show the more difficult side of bringing up a small child rather than the glamorized perfect lifestyle people are let to believe mothers and fathers have shown of TV and films.
Tom’s new solo exhibition, I Am Not Tom Pope, You Are All Tom Pope, taking place at The Old Town Police Station, 11 Royal Square, St Helier, Jersey. There will be a private view 6 pm Thursday 17th September.
A participatory performance will take place in the exhibition space at 6 pm Thursday 24th September: Terminating Martin Parr’s Liberation Photographs: a collaborative project between Tom Pope, Martin Parr and Archisle.
The performance offers you the chance to destroy a Martin Parr photograph and potentially save one! If you’re interested in destroying a Parr photograph, for more details please visit:
Task: Write a review of Tom’s exhibition where you describe your own feelings and opinions.
Try and choose 1 or 2 specific works that you either like or dislike and provide reasons for critique.
Your analysis must be both an emotional and intellectual response to his work in the exhibition.
Include information and context from Tom’s talk about his work at the exhibition space. Research and theory is central to Tom’s practice. Make links to some of the artists that Tom mentioned such as John Baldessari, Marcel Duchamp and Yves Klein
For further context you must also read the exhibition text written by Gareth Syvret, Curator and Programme Leader at Archisle.
Include direct quotes from this text in your own analysis and provide further commentary.
Street Photography relates to study of people in public places, usually, but not always in an urban environment. The person is usually photographed without any awareness, or only half-awareness of such. Street photography is a form of social documentary which aims to capture interesting moments of people, in ordinary settings. Because street photography is spontaneous and candid, it is very difficult to properly frame a photograph. Therefore street photography takes a great deal of patience and practice, because the photographer must develop an intuitive sense of knowing exactly when to take a photograph.
Street Photography began in the 1950s and 1960s. During this period of history there were great social and political changes around the world as a result of the end of WWII, triggering Cold War and accelerating the collapse of Empire around the world, leading to many people changing and questioning the outdated conservative views of societies all around the world. During this period technology was also greatly advancing, and people’s perspective of the world was rapidly changing as a result. The lives of everyday people was altering rapidly and photographers needed a way to reflect this. Photographers such as Henri Cartier-Bresson and Robert Frank took to the streets during this time, exploring how ordinary people went about their everyday life, undisrupted. Street Photography was a protest against the belief that photographing people had to have a particular focus or genre (War Photography had dominated Documentary Photography during the time). Instead, street photographers would literally photograph anything that interested them on the street, and so would work very spontaneously.
Street photography can be seen as quite controversial due to the fact that the people being photographed usually do not consent to the image being taken, regardless of whether the subject is happy with it or not. In the UK photographers have a legal right to photograph members of the general public, permission is however needed to publish photographs. Nevertheless many people view this as an invasion of personal privacy. I find it interesting how over time this idea has become more extreme, as the possibilities technology and social media has grown to an extent that people are often fearful of being photographed by complete strangers.
Finding the right moment to take a photograph is a common ambition and theme that many street photographers strive to achieve. Street photography is very much about the element of luck and chance, being in the right place at the right time. I addition to this, street photographers are also required to know exactly how to frame the photograph right, as an effective street photograph is the balance of effective mood ad composition.Henri Cartier Bresson termed this as the ‘decisive moment’
This YouTube video is a tutorial by Magnum Photographer Bruce Gilden, himself a famous and suucesful street photographer. It is a very honest and blunt insight into Gilden’s opinions of what makes a good street photograph
“The media’s the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that’s power. Because they control the minds of the masses.” – Malcom X
The rise of technology has greatly advanced the way news is spread. 50 years ago, people had far less options than today concerning where to receive news information. In 1960 for example, the majority of people simply had a choice of a few newspapers, a radio station, and if lucky, a television set. The role of being a journalist and a member of the public could be separated easily. Nowadays however, people have greater options, exposure and access to the media. The power of social media means that literally anyone with smartphone, tablet, or laptop can report on what they choose, and so defining journalist is almost impossible.
Technology has given people more power than ever before, but are we using this to empower ourselves?
My personal opinion is that a proper journalist must be a trustworthy individual, someone who puts their own interests aside to report fairly, with well justified facts and information. All information is to some degree partial, and everything does to some extent display bias. As long as an clear attempt at reporting fairly and honestly is made, then I would argue a news article is credible.
The Sun’s headline in the aftermath of the Hillsborough disaster of 1989 made extreme accusations about Liverpool supporters. These reports were proven to be falsifications and lies. The Sun settled for a sensationalist headline instead of reporting on the truth.
One of the most powerful means of swaying public opinion in the last 100 years is the use of propaganda. Such a means is an act of public deception, designed to champion a particular cause or demonize another, ranging from the campaigns of Joseph Goebbels in the 1930s and 1940s to gain mass support for Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Government, to daily influxes of political propaganda videos designed to scare individuals into joining and supporting small often nationalist organisations.
Nazi Propaganda campaigns were designed to gain support for Adolf Hitler and his Government
Far-right extremist group, Britain First, edited and put out a propaganda recruitment film, claiming with no substantiating evidence that Islam ‘will take over the Europe by 2050’, as a result of ‘Islamic Immigration’ into Europe at a rate of 90% (untrue), along with high birth-rates of 8.1 (also untrue). The video is clearly designed to scare ill-informed people to join a violent, racist organisation that does nothing but build further ignorance and intolerance against Islamic people, the overwhelming majority of whom are moderate individuals, putting them in the same category as extremists, who make up less than 1% of the worldwide Muslim population. The leader, Paul Golding, is an ex-member of the notorious British National Party (BNP), who has been convicted of harassment, and arrested numerous times for inciting violence and hate. Golding is a hypocrite, denouncing extremism whilst at the same time a member of an extremist organisation in its own right. The video takes the issue of Islamic Extremist completely out of context using falsification to create fear and incite hate.
Examples like this severely taint the credibility of modern journalism, and are dangerous as they scare ordinary people who don’t know any better.
It is not just small scale extremists who abuse this right of information. Mainstream popular organisations can in some cases be equally as guilty of spreading propaganda and falsification.
For example, the Daily Mail, a politicallyaligned organisation, were seen to vilify the actions of newly elected Labour Leader Jeremy Cobryn for refusing to sing the national anthem at a recent memorial service for British Armed Force Vetrans. An article full of statements such as ‘Veterans today turned on Jeremy Corbyn and called him ‘bigoted and small minded’ after his refusal to sing the national anthem’ and uncomplimentary statements such as ‘Mr Corbyn, who was dressed in non-matching jacket and trousers and had failed to properly button his shirt’, implied that he is a disgraceful, cold-hearted individual who does not respect the service veterans gave to his country. In actual fact, Corbyn’s refusal to sing was based on his anti-monarchist views, and he in fact stated his support for the armed forces, “The heroism of the Royal Air Force in the Battle of Britain is something to which we all owe an enormous debt of gratitude”.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/
Is this man being demonised for his actions, or for his political views?
Regardless of whether you view Corbyn and right or wrong for what he did, it cannot however be denied that the Daily Mail used this event, and took it out of context to shame a rival of the Conversation Party, as unpatriotic. Is this journalism? or an untrustworthy and biased view of events? I would argue to the extent that this is an abuse of influence and power.
Journalists, and therefore Photojournalists have an moral duty not to deceive or exaggerate. An opinion is acceptable as long as the actual reporting does not reflect this. It is important that people don’t just settle with what they read, watch or view, instead people must interrogate every piece of information given to them to make up their own minds.
