The definition of a community is a group of people living in the same place or having a particular characteristic in common. I think this explanation is some what vague, in my opinion a community is also a sense of togetherness, it is a support network. When looking at the theme of community it is important to point out community can be approached as a value. It brings together several elements for example, trust, commitment and mutuality. Socialists for example William Morris tend to relate the term community to fellowship. ‘Fellowship is heaven, and lack of fellowship is hell.’ I think when considering the theme of community it is vital to focus on the reliance people feel or the need of community that is lacked in certain societies. To begin I shall research the idea of place, geographical elements may form territorial or place community. Secondly, the idea of interest communities is when individuals share a similar characteristic. They can be linked together by religious belief, ethnic origin, occupation, interests or sexual orientation.
You can also find it here in the TO DO folder on Silverstore
M:\Departments\Photography\Students\Resources\Documentary & Narrative\TO DO
Use following colour code: GREEN = all complete YELLOW = incomplete and write what you need to do to improve RED = not done at all
Some of you are doing really well at staying on task with work and others are falling too far behind. For those of you who only have done a few blog posts your Study Periods will be used for extra lessons. I WILL COME AND FIND YOU!
However, extra sessions are available for everyone to come and work in my classroom
“I was a really shy person, so it is really strange that I have made a life out of approaching strangers”
Alex Soth is an American Documentary photographer, well known for his extensive photographic projects featuring the mid-western United States. Soth is an extremely successful photographer who has the rare ability to sell photographs as prints for large amounts of money, as well as being able to sell copies of his photo-book in mass quantity. Soth’s work explores social documentary, specfically the sub-genre of community photography, meaning that he is very much required to work from an outsider perspective. He has stated that his biggest success within his photography is being able to shape his “photographic career out of finding chemistry with strangers”, often “loners and dreamers”
Soth was born in 1969 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. An introvert, Soth was extremely shy during childhood and adolescence. His interest in photography began through studying the worrk of portrait photographer Diane Arbus. Orginally, Soth considered himself to be a tableaux photographer – largely because he felt uncomfortable photographing people without their permission. He eventually began to become more interested in social documentary, esacially of Amercian Culture, and so extended his photography to combine photojournalism and tableaux photography.
Soth first won worldwide artist recognition in 2004 with the publication of Sleeping by Mississippi; a self printed book by Soth. The book contists of Soth documentation landscapes and interiors while road trips along the Mississippi river. In 2006 this was followed by Soth’s series ‘Niagara’, using the location Niagara falls as the case-study of the project, exploring the meaning of Niagara Falls for different people. He has since then produced two more books, Last Days of W and From Here to There: Alec Soth’s America. He has also produced commissioned work for The New York Times Magazine.
Soth’s work is included in a number of permanent collections, including those at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. He is represented by the Weinstein Gallery in Minneapolis.
“There’s a kind of beautiful loneliness in voyeurism. And that’s why I’m a photographer. “
” It’s a weird combination that makes a great picture. It’s a complete mystery to me.”
Like the theme of Family, Community is a very difficult to properly define. When looking at different definitions on the internet and in dictionaries there are various different definitions and interpretations of what a community is. These are some of the definitions I came across in my research
a group of people living in the same place
a group of friends
members of the same sporting/recreational activities
body of nations or states unified by common interests.
denoting a worker or resource designed to serve the people of a particular area
The main idea that I developed from the my research is that community is much more broader than family. Community is often a larger group of people, an the relationship shared within that community tend to be less personal than family.
Community is an important part of a person’s identity. Community can be race related, nationalistic, religious, political, or even just a group of neighbours and people who live in an area, who might not even know each other. Nearly everyone to some degree would consider themselves to be a member of community.
Community Photography
Community is one of the most popular types of topic to study in documentary photography. It has lead to some of the most influential bodies of photographic work in the 20th and 21st Centuries. Here are a list of some photograph who have explored the theme of community within their work.
