1. I am studying Jennifer Blessing's article Rose is a Rose is a Rose and the issues of instinctual gender. I am interested in finding out how you can interpret gender by subtle changes in wardrobe, ultimately I will mascaraed as both a feminine woman and a masculine woman captured by the camera. 

3. I want to study Blessing's article and try and come up with a clear understanding of what it means to a woman, and that is a very loaded discussion. 

...I have been thinking this through for awhile but don't know how it will start until I start it (next week). 

This is going to be a pair of photographs that are meant to engage the beholder and hopefully be able to translate what I believe they will. I need to read, re-read and re-re-re read Blessing's article a couple more times to get a real hold on this idea. These will be large scale images at least 24x 30 each. 

an example of how clothes change how we perceive although not in the gender way this time. 

http://www.andrepenteado.com/ 

Andre Penteado is a great artist, and this body of work is about his father who committed suicide. After Andre took all his dad's clothes to the studio, still embodied with his father's hair and the smell of his cologne and photographed himself wearing each outfit. This kind of changes our understanding of what an outfit can do and I think it really talks about the idea that is brewing in my head. Hopefully I will be able to make a more concise articulation by the end of class or this week. 

PICTURING VIOLENCE: AESTHETICS AND THE ANXIETY OF CRITIQUE

This essay written by Mark Reinhardt is about images of suffering. We are given the term "aestheticizing suffering" as our base of understanding his stance on the matter. Reinhardt believes that these images of suffering are artistically and politically reactionary meaning they invite passive consumption (the reader/viewer) and narcissistic consumption, condescension (the trait of displaying arrogance by patronizing those considered inferior) and even sadism. A lot of the imagery of war and suffering we see in magazines, newspapers on the t.v. and online avenues only give you a glimpse of what is really going on. 


Another theme of this essay was the photographic representation of suffering as an instrument used to "abuse and humiliate prisoners." Are images of people being tortured and suffering really to inform and mobilize relevant issues or are they only really causing injury to the individuals pictured or the culture and cause they stand for? Being photographed like many men/women captured in war makes you question why  we are given these images and of what benefit they are having on us, the reader. "The aestheticizing tendency of photography conveys distress and ends by neutralizing it." This quote sums up a lot of what Reinhardt is calling into question. Not knowing these people pictured, the images begin to group into past images we have seen of this nature, totally neutralizing our view we become the passive consumer. One image pops into my mind when thinking about images of war that are so overly saturated in media we have become unengaged by its tragedy. 

These images we all have seen before, whether they are the same images or different ones we all remember this tragedy. Yet having seen these so many times, scratch that thousands of times on numerous platforms they begin to stop having impact on us. This arouses the issue of the importance of the context of circulation and/or display. Why is it so important to thrust these graphic images and burn them into our minds forever remember this image? We cannot do anything about what has happened, we cannot help these people and ultimately we are left feeling emotionless. 

One more main theme is defining aesthetic's? "Are we supposed to be cheered by the triumph of artistry?" This question begs to be answered, does the image have more impact because it is composed formally, should it matter, why should we even care? Reinhardt goes to define aesthetic as a noun then as an adjective and each definition mentions beauty- how are these war images or images of people suffering beautiful? Are we supposed to be happy and exclaim how beautiful, when we see something so disturbing but formally composed? He questions how this affects our rendering of the images, if in fact it does make us pay more attention to what is going on in the images or detracts from the human suffering depicted. BEAUTIFICATION-IN-THE-SERVICE-OF-PLEASURE. I find this phrase to be humiliating, it makes humans seen like emotionless beings only looking for spectatorial gratification via photographs. 

Another couple images of war that I cannot forget no matter how hard I try. The worst thing is that these are a staple figure in our history, so we are forced to remember these things. (Images from the vietnam war-last image of a monk in America burning himself during the Vietnam war era). 

In Part Actual, In Part Virtual

In the introduction of The Civil Contract of Photography by Ariella Azoulay, there are quite a few memories that become the table-setter for her arguments. Azoulay makes it clear that photography is evidence for what has happened and it creates a relationship between the spectator and that particular photography, a "contract." The word contract is used to show us that we are bound to what we are seeing, or "watching" as she puts it and it holds us just as a contract does. She uses the example of Johnathan Walker the supposed "slave stealer" who was accused of freeing slaves and sent to jail for it. Walker' hand was photographed and eternalized by the photograph. Azoulay refers to this image as a "shell, a hat, a fossil."

The differences I see between Azoulay and Fried is that Fried talks more specifically about the art photograph rather then the war photograph/photojournalist photograph. I also want to make the distinction that Fried focuses on how one interprets the construction of the image rather then how Azoulay says the photograph becomes a contract between the photographed, the photographer, and the spectator. Fried mentions the more technical side of photography including the size and what does to our interpretation as well as the absorption of the beholder into an illusory image. In comparison to Azoulay, Fried does not talk about the lasting effects a photograph has on the beholder, this "contract" we are bound to after we have watched upon it. Azoulay is not talking about the illusion but rather the reality of the image.

Imagery-the Driver of the Media

This week we read Susan Sontag's essay called Regarding the Pain of Others, she analyzes our society quoting it as a "society of spectacle." This is to say that our media in today's confinement of newspaper, magazines, online resources and books are driven by imagery but specifically highlights war imagery. Sontag goes to question that without the photograph, is this really happening? Yes, it is really happening but the photograph makes it "real." The war has become a spectacle, our news has become a form of entertainment whether it is horrifying images or not. Yet, without having any real connection to these images we begin to feel immune to their horror using the example of the borgeouis sitting eating their breakfast reading about the war without any sympathy since our media has become so hyper-saturated with these tales and images it is all the same to them. Stemming from that idea Sontag then goes to say being "adept of proximity, without risk" viewers are safely able to question the sincerity in order to refrain from being moved by these images. With that, our appetite has become wet, and hungers for more (she uses the term "ghoulishness"). With photography we are offered a glimpse of this reality from a distance but when these images are hung in a gallery does this change what we are seeing? We then have more questions of rationalization as it asks the viewer to really pay attention, reflect and examine: Who caused what the picture shows? Who is responcible? Is it excusable? Was it inevitable?
These kinds of questions are what we should already be asking, but with only the representation of an image surrounded by a story we loose context of what the photograph really is asking us to see. Great point of Susan Sontag's.