‘For every minute you are angry you lose sixty seconds of happiness’
A series of photographs made over 8 years of the quiet existence of Charles Snelling, an elderly man living alone in a small house in Portsmouth, shown alongside pages from Snelling’s own albums. Charles Albert Lucian Snelling (Charlie) spent the last years of his life absorbed in his memories of his wife, his children, his love for flowers, music and the daily pleasures of the crossword, and his albums of his own photographs. Germain’s photographs of Charlie, his home and the things he owned are a beautiful, gentle portrait of a gentleman in his twilight years.
I love his work as the photographs are so bright and colourful, even though the context is quite upsetting, the photographs represent a more positive light. My favourite photograph is the picture below because I love the colour popping in it, his old fashioned car is so cute and I love the colour. Also the expression in his face makes me smile as it portrays a positive vibe. I love the idea of how the book has memory’s from their marriage from his personal photo album, it gives it a special touch and makes it more personal to Charles which is really sweet. He has inspired me to put my own family memory’s from our personal album into my final book as it will make it more personal to me and give it that extra touch that will make it more family orientated. Also, the use of colour popping has really interested me as I would like to have a contrast of old black and white photographs and then bright colourful pictures in my final piece.
The above quotes are just some of the information i found. I feel these quotes are a description of family that is from a stereotypical view. Which is perfectly normal, and what i was expecting when researching. However, I feel as though Family can be many things. It can be a group of close friends, teaching classes, people that share a common interest, or a family of material things. Family can be described in many ways and also perceived and shown in many ways too. Blood relative families have a unique dynamic, this is because your are ‘blood related’. You fight but always forgive and love eachother no matter how severe the fight.
I can closely relate to a family in the form of a ‘Friendship Family’. Family friendships have a very similar dynamic. You fight, just like blood families and you also always make up and forgive eachother. The fights may be worse and over longer periods of time, but you always do eventually make up and forgive.
In this short reponse, I’ll be considering the question in the title. This is a very contraversial topic and many people have varied opinions on this. However, i can analyze some of the points that agree with each one.
A very famous photograph includes:
Vietnam Napalm 1972 South Vietnamese forces follow after terrified children, including 9-year-old Kim Phuc, center, as they run down Route 1 near Trang Bang after an aerial napalm attack on suspected Viet Cong.
Nick Ut, was the man that recorded this disturbing image. It was taken in South Vietnam. At that moment, war planes had accidentally dropped bombs over their terrain, which caused an outburst of people in shock. The children are seen trying to evacuate the place and have a look of terror on their faces. The girl is left completely naked after the acidic bombs erode her clothes.
Nick Ut holding his Vietnam picture
Discussing mind-set, I think it’s extremely difficult to change someone’s. It takes a powerful and meaningful picture to get to some people. Nick Ut was asked the name of this specific image, and he said: “Terrible War.” A lot of people say “Napalm Girl” or “Napalm Photo”, but when I use the photo I say, “Terrible War.”
This is a link to a website that I found. It shows the 30 most influential photographs that people say changed the world: http://www.photographyschoolsonline.net/blog/2010/30-photos-that-changed-the-world/
Example of a strong picture on that list:
The 9/11 attacks; New York Times, 2001 There are many haunting images of the terrorist attacks of 9/11, but this one of a person standing in a gaping hole of wreckage, with no exit or hope of rescue, is one of the most wrenching.
Lewis bush, a photographer and lecturer posted an article on his blog. He talked about the topic in which I’m addressing, whether pictures have the power to change the world or people’s perceptions.
Bush’s official website: http://www.lewisbush.com/
Bush’s blog post: http://www.disphotic.com/photographs-wont-change-the-world/
In the title of his essay, Bush says: ‘Photographs won’t change the world’. He goes onto say that there’s no real evidence that an actual picture can change the world. He says: ‘photographs are just bits of paper’. Bush states that pictures do help to ‘expose’ situations for what they are. Nonetheless, he say’s it’s always ‘incomplete and fragmented’. Bush says it’s not the same, to experience the situation in real life and look at it in a picture. For example, the picture of the drowned Syrian boy. Bush quoted: ‘This is not to say that seeing a photograph of a drowned child on a beach is the same as standing on that beach over that small body. But it is about knowing that somewhere a child drowned, and that his death is the consequence of other things which might be more within our power to change. Photographs present the idea that things are happening, or exist, or are possible’.
Lewis simply adds that photographs can’t drastically change someone, they also won’t completely make someone a saint. Picture can influence people in both ways, bad or good. Photographs can only change the world due to one link, says Bush: ‘in the unreachable recesses of the human mind’. Bush included that: ‘To claim that photographs, and by association the act of photographing, will in themselves change the world is disingenuous, a case of letting ourselves off the hook’. I believe that this is a very powerful quote. Bush very clearly exudes that there needs to be external factors, that work to make the world a better place and that the photograph should only remind us of the deterioration as a motivation. Bush ends with a slightly alternative view: ‘To believe that photographs can’t drive us to change the world is to believe in a futile, solitary, and self-fulfilling prophecy’.
For me, I believe that photographs have the power to change people’s perceptions .You have to feel very strongly and be motivated, as a human being, to change the world. Of course, strong and powerful pictures like Vietnam one, can leave a long lasting impression on people. Therefore, I think that, that’s what causes us to want to change the world. It cannot be done without being in a certain mind-set, which photographs ignite in us. As Lewis Bush says: ‘These things (photographs) can’t change the world, but they can change people, and people can change the world’.To conclude, pictures have the power to change our views, in result we act to change the world.
War photography is a form of photojournalism recording armed conflict. It is a medium with has existed since the mid 19th Century – the American Civil War of 1861-1865 was the first war to be photographed extensively. War photography covers all ranges of armed conflict; the battle; relief effort; soldiers; civilians; weaponry; border control; landscape; and aftermath of battle.
The way we view war has been influenced greatly since the invention of photography. People have more access than ever to the events.
War photography is seen as an incredibly challenging form of photojournalism which involves great bravery, in often volatile and emotionally distressing environments. It is a highly respected role, because photography is an effective means of communicating to the general public the events of the war. Unlike radio or news reporters, a photographer is required at all times to be close to the action, and the visual evidence that photographs provide, give a much more reliable and objective viewpoint (assuming the photograph is genuine). War photographers are therefore very influential, and in the 20th Century many respected magazines such as ‘Life Magazine’ who covered conflicts such as the Korean, Vietnam and the First Indo-China War, emphasis was actually placed on the photograph, and photographs were prioritised over written reports, meaning that reporters had to base their writing around the photographs. Photographs are much easier to view and often captivate the viewers attention much easier then reports do, because they provide an instant interpretation and recognition of events. The Vietnam War in Particular was seen as a milestone for War Photojournalism. Visual journalist had complete access to cover the war. The worldwide audience were shocked and disgusted by what they witnessed.
War Photographs look at all aspects of the War, not just the battle. A good photographer will produce work that is empathetic.
Iconic Photographs like this changed how people viewed the Vietnam War. If public opinion was not influenced by what they saw, then America’s involvement in the war may have been dramatically different.
War photography is often very dangerous, and nowadays photojournalists covering war are extremely vulnerable to deliberate, politically motivated attacks. Traditionally photojournalists in war zones were considered as neutrals, similar to the medical assistants, whose role is report the war from a balanced, well-rounded perspective. However as many cases in the late 20th Century and early 21st Century show, War Photographers have since been deliberate targets of attack themselves, as military and national leaders started to appreciate the influence that photojournalists can have over the war, and can potentially obscure, or the organisation they work for, can obscure images to manipulate the events and produce a bias. Unfortunately therefore, photojournalism is now a very dangerous role to be in, and their is an extremely high death and kidnap rate. The Arab Springs of 2011 highlighted the extent of vulnerability of journalists and photojournalists alike. Many photojournalists have been kidnapped or killed since reporting on the events. This has forced journalists of all disciplines to re-evaluate their approach to conflict, as fears for safety are higher than ever.
Two time Pulitzer Prize Finalist Chris Hondros was killed whilst covering the Libyan Civil War in mortar attack by Pro-Gadaffi forces. Fellow Photojournalist Tim Hetherington was also killed. Is such a cost of modern photojournalism worth such a loss?
Conflict photography involves photographing armed wars plus the effects it has on the places and people around it. During the early 1830s although the technicality of photography was limited the beginning of war photography emerged. It started initially in order to enhance the public awareness of conflicts and the strategies experienced. Photographers were not able to capture moving targets, therefore photographed fortifications, soldiers and land before and after the conflict. The first known war photographer was Josh McCosh a surgeon in the Bengal Army, he documented the Second Sikh war from 1848-1849. During the 20th century war photographers covered all the major war zones, many were sadly killed in conflicts. Robert Capa was famous for photographing the D-day Landings and the Spanish Civil war. Capa died in 1954 from a landmine in Indochina. One of the most influential images produced from a conflict photographer was produced by Joe Rosenthal, the photograph of the flag-rising in 1945.
Now a days photographers and journalists are protected in these conflict areas, by international conventions of armed warfare. War photography has become more dangerous due to terrorism. During the Iraq war, 36 photographers and camera operators were either killed or abducted during the war from 2003-2009.
“Photojournalism is a particular form of journalism (the collecting, editing, and presenting of news material for publication or broadcast) that employs images in order to tell a news story.”
Photojournalism is separated by ethical idea behind the photos, in that they should be both honest and impartial whilst telling the story in strictly journalistic terms.
Photojournalism images have meaning to do with recent events. The situation implied by the images is usually fair and accurately represents the event(s) being shown. They are normally paired with other bits of information (a news article) to help make facts more relatable to the viewer.
When photojournalistic photos were originally printed in news papers, they were used more to enhance the text, rather than to be a medium of information. The first weekly newspaper to be illustrated with images was the Illustrated London News, which was first printed in 1842.
“In Migrant Mother Dorothea Lange produced the seminal image of the Great Depression. The FSA also employed several other photojournalists to document the depression.”Eddie Adams’ is well-known from having taken this photograph. “Saigon, 1968,”. Adams said the image haunted him for the rest of his life. Although he photographed 13 different wars, he is known best for his work during the Vietnam War.
Whilst thinking about the theme of Family in class, I decided that I thought a main feature of family life is home. Home is a place which everybody returns to after school, or work ect. It is a place where the people who know you best live and base their lives around. I decided that I would like to involve my grandparents house in my project as my dad and his brothers grew up there, so there has been a life time of memories created in that house.
My Grandparents have recently moved out of their family home and have moved to a new build in Le Hocq. These houses have been built to create an estate for over 55’s. I will be photographing them moving into their new house and unpacking their boxes, and how they decorate their new house to make it their home. Their are essential Items that my grandparents need to make their house their home. Some of these items may be my Grandparents chairs; my Grandma’s reclining armchair and my Grandpa’s wooden chair that he likes to watch the rugby on. Other items may be my Grandpa’s Piano and the family photographs.
As well as photographing my Grandparents moving into their new house, I would also like to dig into my family archive to find some photographs from when they first bought their house, and how it has changed over time. I will speak to my grandparents, my dad and my uncles and ask them about their most memorable times spent at their house, and I will see if i can find any photographs which captures their memories. I think it is a good idea to use the family archive in this project, as it will give me a wider breadth of photographs.
In class we watched a documentary film called ‘The Genius of Photography’ and we watched the scene which is called ‘We are Family’. From this video i think that to take documentary images a key aspect is to try to get someone to open up, so then in the images you can reveal the real person. Through the images that you take you are trying to capture a feeling or an emotion that comes across in the images. For these types of images it is not about the lighting the photos that you take can look quite amateur, as long as there is some kind of meaning behind them. It can also be said that when you take a documentary image and you try to get your subject to pose for you and it is not realistic that the feeling that comes across from the image is the feeling that the person taking the photograph is feeling. So the photograph that the photographer takes project how they feel onto the subject, so in reality the image is of the photographer and not actually the person who is in the photo. When some photographers take images they like to try and give it a vernacular feel to it, this basically means traditional and that the photographer tries to take images how an ordinary person would take them, and not from a photographers perspective. This is how they make their images look amateur.
The first photographer that was mentioned in the film was Tony Vaccaro. In the late 50’s and 1960’s there was a lot of high gloss images of celebrities.
Tony Vaccaro says that celebrity portraits shows the photographers opinions on the celebrity and not how the celebrity actually views them self. As when the photographer takes the image they get the celebrity to pose and that shows the photographers views on them not their own views.
In the film one other photographer that was mentioned was Duane Micheal’s, he said that he doesn’t believe portraits and they do not tell you who the person is. I think that this is true as when you look at a portrait you cannot tell anything about the history of a person or anything about their personality. If there is a background to the image then you can maybe get the context of their life, but if not then i think the photograph is just a still image. This is why some photographers choose to take photographs of celebrities as they are pre-packaged as the media know about celebrities lives and they do not need to tell their story through one still portrait image. Pablo Picasso refused to get his portrait taken for many years until around 1966 and 1967 when he asked Tony Vaccaro to take a portrait image of him. Tony says that Picasso kept pulling different poses and Tony could tell that the images just didn’t show his personality, so he pretended to be fixing the light that was on his camera and when he was doing this Picasso relaxed and Tony took the photo. This image of Picasso was taken in 1968.
This image of Picasso shows a relaxed version of himself compared to the other portrait images that were taken of him, and that Picasso himself did not like. I think that by Clarke taking this image when Picasso didn’t realise it shows more of Picasso’s personality.
When taking documentary photography there are two view points that the image can be taken from, one is an insider, where you are apart of the culture or family of the subject that you are taking photos of. Or you can take an image from an outsiders perspective, this would be taking images of subjects who maybe do not come from the same background as you, and these people may be strangers to you. Taking photos like these can be interesting as you are documenting life from an outsiders perspective and this explore someone else’s life.
Another photographer that was mentioned was Martin Parr, his documentary photography is considered as dairy photography, this is because Parr kept a diary while he was taking his images. In Larry Clarke’s book called Tulsa there are sections in the book which show Clarke’s dairy and what he wrote in his diary. These images that are in ‘Tulsa’ are very intimate images and can be considered as an impolite genre. In these images there is drug use in the photographs, which makes the images intimate.
Larry Clark photography
Larry Clark photography
Nan Golding was another photographer that was mentioned in the video. Golding was a New York photographer who photographed her ‘own tribe’, this consisted of transsexual’s and images of drug taking and party animals. However Golding did not call them this she called them third gender, i think she did this so she did not discriminate them from everyone else. Golding took this images to show people how ‘third gender’ people live normal lives and she wanted this to come across in her photography. Golding considered her photographs as confessional photography and for this she was inspired by film makers when she took her images. Sometimes Golding puts herself in this images to tell a story, there is one famous image of Golding with a black eye that her boyfriend at the time gave her.
These images show part of Nan Golding’s life and show how her life was not always perfect. Nan said on the film that in a photograph there is an ‘ability to be present in the moment, but you can be there and get lost at the same time’.
Some photographers consider it that when you do not take a photograph then you do not remember the memory or the moment, so therefore they believe that is you don’t shoot you don’t remember. But also documentary photography can be seen that you only photograph what you want to remember, as sometimes you do not want to remember the memory. When taking these images it can be considered that you have to be in the mindset that you are going to take the perfect documentary image otherwise you will never take the perfect image. Black and white photographs are interesting as they show past to present in one image.
Richard Billingham is a famous photographer who photographed his drunk father, his father could drink uninterruptedly. When Billingham first started taking his photos they were to make art out of, he would use a triple print as he thought this made for more interesting paintings. So when Billingham was taking these images of his father he was not taking these from the eyes of a photographer but from the eyes of an artist. However Billingham was criticized as people said that he was photographing his parents for his own fame. Whereas i think that Billingham took the images so that he could understand his father and so he could be closer to him. I think that by him taking these images it made him more aware and try to understand why his father/family was like this.
On the other end of the scale, a photographer Sally Mann took idealistic images of her family showing them off in their best light. She took these images from an insiders perspective whereby she took image of the idealistic family life. She took these images in collaboration, as when she was photographing them she said that they need to ‘give you the picture’.
Sally Mann family photographySally Mann family photographySally Mann family photography
I have become fascinated by Corinne Day and her photography book ‘Corinne Day Diary’. I’m interested in the explicit nature of the book, exposing drugs, intoxication and nudity. These type of books interest me as I feel they push the boundaries of society and the photographers seem to not care what people think of them of their work, this therefore has interested me to study them . All of days pictures represent a feel of community to me, she is taking us through Tara’s community of friends.
Corinne Day is a British photographer whose influence on the style and perception of photography in the early 1990s has been immense. As a self taught photographer, Day brought a more hard edged documentary look to fashion image making, in which she often included biographical elements. Day is known for forming long and close relationships with many of her sitters (most famously Kate Moss), which have resulted in candid and intimate portraits. The most notable of these being the photographs of Moss in the 3rd Summer of Love editorial for the FACE magazine in 1990. Days approach as illustrated within the lifestyle and fashion magazines of the 1990s, came to be known as grunge and grew into an international style.
“Good friends make you face the truth about yourself and you do the same for them, as painful, or as pleasurable, the truth may be”
This is one of my favorite quotes from Day, as i completely agree with this. Your true friends and the community you surround yourself with, do have this affect on you as they can make you face things you wouldn’t normally, they encourage you to do this you may not also. You do the same for them as you know eachother the best so can influence them and yourself to do things.
Immediate Family: The book consists of 65 black-and-white photographs of her three children, all under the age of 10. Many of the pictures were taken at the family’s remote summer cabin along the river, where the children played and swam in the nude. Many explore typical childhood themes (skinny dipping, reading the funnies, dressing up, vamping, napping, playing board games) but others touch on darker themes such as insecurity, loneliness, injury, sexuality and death. The controversy on its release was intense, including accusations of child pornography (both in America and abroad) and of contrived fiction with constructed tableaux.
I think her photographs are beautiful, and the fact that they are her children, there is an immediate connection in the pictures. They’re so natural and simplistic but so effective, some of her photos are quite controversial too and I like that. One of my favourite photographs is the one of her daughter where she is holding a cigarette, its such a beautiful photo but is more risky and shes not scared of the publics reaction.
