Sunday, April 28, 2013

Shock Photography

In his article “Shock Photography," Barthes explains the problems with shock photography. This article is interesting because I've always been a quiet critic of shock photography. I feel that photography should have a deeper message than to simply shock its viewers, I think it's a cheap trick to get emotion and a reaction out of people. I believe in art that gives a bit of credit to it's viewer, to allow them to look further, to invest time in the meaning of the photograph. Barthes articulates this by saying when looking at these types of photos we are "dispossessed of our judgement, someone has shuddered for us, reflected for us, judged for us, the photographer has left us nothing."

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I agree with your point that shock photography should have a deeper meaning than to shock the viewer. But at the same time though not all art has a deep meaning to it. Sometimes art does not have any meaning to it because the viewer does not understand what they are seeing. So art that gives people an emotion like shock for a moment of emotion even if it is shock than it cannot be all bad