Presentation
Authorship - The authorship of a photograph refers to the ownership of the image, for example the photographer who has captured the original image.
Circulation - Movement in a circle or circuit “sharing of images with others”
Corey Dzenko's article explains the transition from analog to digital, as well as comparing to Marshall McLuhan's description of railway.
Dzenko states ‘[…] digital photography “accelerates” or “enlarges”
traditional photographic processes.' Digital photography challenges the historical belief that photography is representative of reality. But have viewers’ perceptions shifted in relation to theoretical discussions? While digital technology affects the theoretical notion of the photographic index, these theories overlook the appearance of the image and the social applications of transparent lens-based media. Viewers continue to read digital photographs as representative of reality, a function images maintain despite the transition from analog to digital.
Dzenko, Corey. ‘Analog to Digital: The Indexical Function of
Photographic Images’ Afterimage vol.37 no.3 (Sep-Oct 2009) 19-23
Michael Wolf
Michael Wolf is a German artist and photographer who
currently lives in Hong Kong and Paris out was raised in US, Europe and Canada.
Having looked through his photographs on his website, there is one common
element in each of his photography series which is capturing the essence of
life in cities, whether its capturing the positive or negative aspects of life.
Google Street view series
One of Wolf’s photography series involved using google
street view to capture the interesting scenes online. He labelled his series “a
statement about art”. The street view photographs were characterised by pixilation
and image noise which were compared with techniques used by Roy Lichtenstein
and Andy Warhol in their art. The work led to discussion of how the
automatically – taken google street view images affected the “decisive moment”
concept of Henri Cartier-Bresson; nevertheless, the photographs were said to
contain “some mystery” in that they were “hard to interpret” Does he have
circulation or authorship over these photographs? Some may say that its his
work because his eye saw the beauty in the moment and captured it, others say
its not authentic and lacks originality and has been shared. Were captured up
to 500 times a day which is a violation of our privacy, but I guess Wolf’s
photographs is questioning how the general population reacts to being captured
by surveillance – do they really care?
Wolf's statement on similar images: “I strongly disagree that mine or Jon’s images are repetitions of each other,” says Wolf. “The only thing they have in common is they were taken from the same street-view page. But the resulting images are very different. It’s as if you would say an image taken by Martin Parr of a beach in Rimini is a repetition of an image taken by Massimo Vitali at the same beach. They both happened to have photographed the same location, but their images are not in the least similar, or ‘repetitions’ of each other.”
On the left is Wolf's photograph and the the right is Jon Rafman's photograph
"Through my extreme crops, and repetitions of the motif [the finger], I reinforce an idea. This differs enormously from Jon’s handful of images where somewhere in the photograph a person is flipping the bird. Jon is often interested in the GSV page as a whole, I am creating my own images through extreme crops which I use in specific contexts to make a point.”
Tokyo Compression Series
Wolf presented portraits of Japanese people inside a crowded
Tokyo subway train who had been pressed against a window. The commuter’s
expressions were characterised in one review as “traumatised” and “woeful”.
Wolf stated that some people closed their eyes or hid their faces with their
faces with their hands upon realising that they were being photographed. So
going back to the earlier point about surveillance, why do people care when a
person is taking a photograph of them when they are constantly being captured
every minute of the day. On top of that, billions of users who have signed up
to social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter have no authorship of their
photographs as they are own by the social media companies.
Real Fake Art Series
Wolf’s ‘Real fake art’ photographs portray regular people
holding famous pieces of art. It could be argued that the subject of the image
are the pieces of art which is not his own work. However, Wolf uses his own
artistic values in terms of deciding on location, subjects and lighting. In the
image, the settings look quite deprived and the lighting is very low; this subsequently
draws attention to the pop art painting.
We are so consumed by social media, every Instagram or Facebook
post has to be self-constructed and perfect so we can create this hyper reality
realm, but realistically, there is over 3 billion users on social media where
our identities can be revealed but one photograph being taken is a problem. Just
as Jose Van Dijck stated in ‘The culture of connectivity’ “Facebook is business
model is most certainly a contentious balancing act between stimulating users’
activity and exploring it.
Julian Stallabrass
Julian Stallabrass is an art historian, photographer and curator from London, UK. Stallabrass is currently on a professor at courtauld institute of art, university of London. He photographs people, places and sculptures usually in vernacular style. He uses photography as a social commentary to enforce his own ideologies.
This image was taken in Berlin. It denotes a graffiti portrait of snow white wearing a bandana and holding a grenade. the text below is translated to 'anti war'. By Stallabrass taking a photograph of this it is suggested that it reflects his own ideology that he too is against war. The subject of this photograph would be the graffiti in the centre of the image, however this was art created by someone other than Stallabrass. This questions his authorship as the very thing that attracts you to the photo that was made by someone else.
This photograph was taken in Chingford, London. Stallabrass argues that taking things out of their context and constructing a more beautiful image is too conventional. He therefore prefers to capture the essence of the natural environment without tweaking too much. In terms of authorship, he considers lighting and composition when taking his pictures. "When photographing, I look for a combination of light, formal and symbolic juxtaposition that appears to work together and gives the subject coherence choices about framing, exposure and focus may help to bring that coherence out".
Feedback
In terms of relating these photographers concept of authorship to my project would be really effective. They contextualise the meaning of authorship as they believe in creativity and versatility. Applying this type of feature to my final project would be really interesting but would also question the idea of originality. The feedback the class gave was their personal opinions on whether these photographs are copyrighted or not. The majority of the class said that they believe that this is a violation of copyright and lacks originality however if we are talking about authorship, it could become a deeper subject as pretty much everything is owned that we are using, unless you was the first person to create it. I personally believe that these photographer's work aren't stealing the originality out of the photograph as they have a different meaning behind the photograph. The creativity behind the photograph is only expressed through the photographers mind as they both saw the beauty in the moment and captured it.
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