Happy 20th WWW!

What the first web page looked like. 

Sexism another reason not to use Wikipedia as a research resource

http://wwwWhybWikipedia is sexist.forbes.com/sites/deannazandt/2013/04/26/yes-wikipedia-is-sexist-thats-why-it-needs-you

http://www.forbes.com/sites/deannazandt/2013/04/26/yes-wikipedia-is-sexist-thats-why-it-needs-you/

Nan Goldin

As I was reading through Nan Goldin's excerpt in Illuminations, I noticed her specific word choice, phrasing and descriptions of her friends and experiences.  For example, when she first saw her 'friends', she referred to them as, "the most beautiful creatures I'd ever seen".  I thought it was a very interesting description of these people who would soon become her friends and subjects.  She then goes on to talk about seeing them as "a third gender that made more sense than either of the other two".  As it said in the beginning of the reading, she was completely infatuated with these people, and became obsessed but also respected them and what they did and who they were and I found that to be very inspiring.
Goldin then talks about leaving and attending art school, and then returning to her 'old world', only to find that she was an outsider looking in.  She had completely immersed herself in those friends, and in that life, so leaving it for a little while must have been difficult, but returning and seeing that she no longer belonged must have been heartbreaking.
Lastly, I really enjoyed her statement referring to her book not being about "people suffering gender dysphoria but rather expressing gender euphoria.  The people in these pictures are truly revolutionary; they are the real winners of the battle of the sexes because they stepped out of the ring."  I think that is a great summation of her experiences with this group of people and her understanding of their decisions and life choices.

Photography and Surveillance (Again)

I want to post again under the title of photography and surveillance, incorporating recent events.  In my original post, I angrily ranted about the unjust repercussions for recording officials performing illegal actions.
In the Boston bombing that just happened, the "officials" not only asked for the recordings made my the public to help find the culprit, but also used photography and surveillance to display the suspects' faces so the city could be on alert.  Here you see two forms of surveillance taking place.  The surveillance by the public and the surveillance for the public.  In my initial post, it was clear which was happening:  The surveillance by the public was the recording of the officer doing illegal things, which ended up being illegal in itself.  But in terms of the Boston bombing, they ask for these recordings made by the public to help them find the bad guy.  So the recordings of an officer doing something bad is illegal but the recordings of another "regular guy" doing something bad is completely legal and sought after.  Granted, I am very much simplifying the horrific event that took place in Boston, but I still want to make the comparison of unjustness between society and society's officials.

Shock Photography

What I found most interesting in the shock photography reading was the undeniably truthful point that the public view these so called “shock” photographs from a position of comfort, or as the article states, “from inside our freedom”.  Because of this standpoint, not many of the photographs actually do what they are meant to which is to promote a “wow” reaction.  The reading also makes a good point when saying that the photographer who took and produced these images was shocked for us, “shuddered for us, reflected for us, judged for us”.  The photographer did all the work for the viewer; he/she took the photograph because of his/her reaction to the scene or event.  But the public, viewing the photograph from a position of comfort, just sees the photograph of the event and the not the event itself, creating this disconnect and therefore the lack of “shock”.  But the question stands:  Did the photographer really take the photograph because he/she was indeed shocked and wanted the rest of the world to be as well, or did he/she photograph the event because of the reaction he/she thought it would receive?  I think an interesting idea to consider is whether the public’s reaction was supposed to be unprecedented, or if it was supposed to follow the photographer’s reaction.

Richard Prince Reading

After reading the article If the Copy Is an Artwork, Then What’s the Original? and discussing art work that deals in appropriation during class, I have to say that I am still not sold on the idea of using another person’s work as your own. I think there are instances in which this can work, such as the Google maps images that are “harvested” by Matthew Jenson for his project 49 States, and even to some extent Sherrie Levine’s Untitled appropriation images after Edward Weston or Walker Evans (I was particularly convinced by the idea that Sherrie’s re-casting of the images allows the models to retain some identity). However, I cannot understand Richard Prince’s appropriation art, and when reading this article I thought maybe my perspective would change, but if anything was only solidified in opposition. The fact that Prince’s work (really Jim Krantz’s work) sold for $1.2 million and is so highly sought seems ridiculous. Ultimately, Prince is not creating his own work, or doing anything that at first glance seems to make a statement. I did give some thought to the idea that it may be a generational gap issue, as to me the Marlboro ads are not familiar, and I would not have recognized much of the imagery if it was not pointed out to me. Ultimately, my general opinion of appropriation art is that it’s definitely hit or miss, and in this case Prince’s work, for me, seems like a miss. 

Invisibility and Trauma Reading

While reading Speaking the Unspeakable: Invisibility and Trauma after 9/11, I couldn’t help but think of how the article, in light of more recent events, now related to the bombing in Boston and the release of Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty. Randell discusses the fragmentation of trauma in relation to movies but also television programming, which reminded me of the initial coverage of the Boston events as well as the opening scene for Zero Dark Thirty. In the hours after the marathon bombings occurred, my roommate and I were watching CNN hoping for actual information, only to be inundated with the same clips looping over and over. Randell remarks that TV, “dilutes it [disaster] into manageable segments”, which is exactly what CNN was doing, intentionally or not. The more we watched people running in terror, the less real it seemed, and therefore easier to watch. In the case of Zero Dark Thirty, the opening scene is almost exactly the way Randell describes the opening to Michael Moore’s documentary Fahrenheit 9/11. In Bigelow’s film, the opening screen is black, and audio recordings of phone calls made from inside the towers are played, much like the audio/black screen combo present in Moore’s documentary. It is interesting to me that with all of the really tough imagery covered in the film (i.e. torture, violence, wounds) and the proximity of its release in relation to the 9/11 event, Bigelow still chose this kind of distancing technique. However, I suppose that decision goes back to Randell’s overarching point, which is that trauma is easier to grapple with when seen on television rather than in a movie. 

In light of my most recent post on shock photography I'd like to expand and comment on Jon Meyerowitz's photographs for 9/11. He was asked to be the exclusive photographer for 9/11, instead of taking the shock photography route, he embraces a different technique. He focuses on the aftermath, the "trace of the event." There is an interesting juxtaposition between calmness of his photographs, and the stills we've all seen taken from video on 9/11. Those freezeframes were chosen to depict 9/11 as accurately as possible. They tell you what happened. Campany states that for years photography taken of an event defined what the event was. It was these photographs that somebody would look for to find out what happened and form opinions. This is interesting to me. In the past, photojournalists would have to search to capture the perfect moment indicative of the current event. Now, we have all these videos to choose stills from, to represent this event, like an icon. Stills of 9/11 were chosen as icons to present the information. In contrast, Meyerowitz captures the event by showing the aftermath and finding a way to instill a sense of hope.

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."

Mapplethorpe: Revisiting and Rereading

In Mercer's second essay he begins to explain the merit behind Mapplethorpe's work. At first Mercer didn't exactly see the significance behind these photographs, but here he begins to explain how Mapplethorpe is ironizing formalist photography, he is using tactful homoeroticism and as a strategy to challenge homophobia. In the photo succession Weston strips the sexuality of his images and focuses purely on form-- how the light falls against a figure, purely formalist images of objects taken out of context. He is looking at the body as an art form, Mapplethorpe on the other hand, inserts the sexuality back into these formalist images. He is ingeniously recontextualizing photography from the photo succession. In his essay, Mercer explains that Mapplethorpe juxtaposes elements of the valuable, classic, nude with "pornographic conventions," which "decenters the hierarchy...of racial and sexual representation." I agree with many of these points in Mercer's second essay and I too believe that Mapplethorpe work holds merit.

Reflection

In closing with the semester, I thought I would reflect on my favorite section of the class instead of talk about a reading from the textbooks. I think my favorite image of the class was Jacob Riis's Bandit's Roost, 1888. I liked how the image was composed in that it evokes a very shady, confrontational feeling because they figures are all staring at you. Even more so, the two men that are closest to the viewer, are both looking at the camera who are by extension looking at us, and one is holding a bat and the other is reaching in his pocket. In the background, the sky is hazy and the fence blocks the end which represents the lack of safety. 

I especially liked interpreting this image in reference to talking about Lange's, Tenant Farmers without Farms, Hardman County, TX from 1937. The linearity and flatness mimic the open and flat Texas plains. The men's hands positions also suggest they don't know what to do with their hands because they're not working. It is similar to a police suspect line however they give a sense of pride for what they have left rather than what they have lost, during the Great Depression. 

Despite the huge year gap, these images are quite similar. Both images are very confrontational, uncomfortable, and unsettling to the viewer, due to the fact that the figures are staring right at the camera. Most importantly, both have a heavy emphasis on masculinity because in both images, the men are not seen as working. A big part of masculinity for men is being able to provide for their families and while we don't see the families in the images, we do see the men and how their ability to provide for them is taken away. 

I thought these two images together posed some great perspectives, seeing that they are during two different time periods but still have similar meanings. 

Photography, Birth and Death

Photographing the dead, as we have talked about in class, was known to be a very private and personal act done by families. Today, we would find it very disturbing and eerie to take a picture of a dead body of a loved one. However during the Victorian era, life was not as long as it is now, in fact nobody lived to be 90 or 100 like most to today. One quote that Wells mentions is by Roland Barthes who says "that the corpse is alive, as corpse: it is the living image of a dead thing" I thought this was an interesting perspective to the dead body in terms of photographing, or freezing it, in a moment in time. We have learned that photography is evidence of something that once was. In History of Photography 1, Micheal Ortwitz stressed the idea that when you take a picture of simply a mug on a table, that mug was really there in real time, making it a moment in history. Similar to how a body was once there and in that exact moment, dead or alive, it reiterates the idea of a moment frozen in time. In a sense, this is how the corpse becomes alive again. Again, we don't find this too appealing because taking pictures of dead bodies is something that only forensic and criminal investigators do to solve crimes. This is mainly because photography has given us the ability to capture our loved ones over and over again while they are living, and we want to remember them as they were, not as a dead corpse laying in casket. 

Human Rights + Environmental Activism Workshop

http://archive.constantcontact.com/fs100/1108232493357/archive/1113125826027.html

Richard Prince and Appropriation

I don't really have a problem with appropriation. I believe in the concept of Richard Prince's work and the fact that he's repurposing an image to say something new about humanity and our society. He's photographing photos taken by artists and using them so say something new. In the postmodern era photography has changed. It is a tool to say something new. It is not necessarily about the beauty of the photograph and the craft of the artist but the message this artist is conveying. It's not like he's rephotographing these photographs to say they're his and claim them as his own. I completely understand how the original artist might become upset. I think if I was Jim Krantz and some "woman active in the art world" and said "Richard Prince has a photo just like that!" about one of my original photos... yeah, I'd be a little mad too. I think that Richard Prince should find a way to credit his sources so there isn't this type of confusion.

Amy Rule, Tina Modotti: Letters to Edward Weston

Amy Rule’s essay, Tina Modotti: Letters to Edward Weston, was extremely interesting to read. I really enjoyed being able to read little snipets of Modotti’s life and what she was going though and what she had found important enough to write to Weston about. My favorite part to read about was when she compared the cameras and photographer life over in Germany compared to what she had been used to in Mexico. I found that part to be the most fascinating, how life could be so different than what she was used to. She had to special order most of her equipment because she preferred what she was used to over the new that was normal in Germany.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning On Dageurrotypes

Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s word on the Daguerreotype was quite interesting to me.  I love to hear of first hand accounts of moments in history.  She spoke so highly of this new invention and how she could have in image of someone forever.  The idea of having this photograph of a loved one rather than a painting made by the “noblest Artist” is quite radical in this time.  Paintings were highly regarded, but Browning doesn’t care.  She wants a daguerreotype and could care less about paintings.  A painting could show someone’s likeness, but Browning states that “the very shadow of a person” in a daguerreotype gives it a sense of realism and how this new invention will overtake the portrait world.  If I were living in the early daguerreotype world, I too, would think it would take over portraits.  Although a sitter must be still for up to 10 minutes, it is much easier and faster to take a daguerreotype than have an oil painting done.  Overall, Browning’s short account on daguerreotypes was fascinating and her interest in this new invention shows in her writings.

Lee Miller discusses Man Ray

Reading what Lee Miller has to say about Man Ray is really quite interesting.  She never speaks of herself or her time with him, only of his work and life.  When speaking of how Man Ray comes to find solarization, Miller never puts herself there, even though she had a hand in its discovery.  This shows she only cares of Man Ray and his achievements. She also says how Man Ray thought all photographic advancements were meant to be shared and made accessible to all.  This idea is wonderful.  As a student, I feel that techniques and ideas should be used and shared by all.  But in reality, a great idea or new way of doing things are kept to one’s self because of the competitiveness of the art world. We should be more open to collaborating and sharing ideas like Man Ray was.  

Photographic Body In Crisis, Wells Reading

In the Wells reading, The Photographic Body In Crisis, the opinions of several critics/theorists are discussed in relation to the advent of widespread digital technology in photography. Digital imaging, according to some, changed the very nature of photography. Within the last 20 years, digital photography has increasingly becomes the norm among photographers and photojournalists, with film photography becoming an expensive and “against the grain” choice. According to theorist Ritchen, because digital photography was much easier to access and manipulate than traditional wet darkroom photography, we would no longer be able to trust images. This would inevitably harm the ethics of photojournalism, and result in our loss of reliable information about current events in the world. These concerns were shared by other critics, such as Mitchell, who felt digital imaging was “the dawning of a post-photographic era”. Wells, However, looks towards art history of photography, and points out that even before digital, photographs were manipulated. Wells asserts that photography itself is a manipulation, therefore the real anxiety caused by digital photography is the loss of the humanist subject as “the rational centre of the world.” As someone who has grown up in a sort of “in-between” phase of film to digital photography, this argument to me is very interesting, but also somewhat lost. My first cameras were film, and when I moved into digital it didn’t seem that significant to me. Considering these dystopian perspectives, it seems to me that photography is always a manipulation via a series of choices, and it’s interesting that to some digital seemed to threaten an already fragile set of ethics.

Lee Miller Illuminations Reading

I found Lee Miller’s account of her time covering World War II in France both frightening and impressive.  As a female photojournalist at this time she was certainly a minority in her field, and on top of that constantly surrounded by male soldiers. I would imagine there was some stigma and sexism she would have had to overcome regarding women being capable on the front lines. If this was the case, Miller does not openly discuss any such issues.  However there are two moments in the essay that I felt may have eluded towards some different treatment as a woman, where she is asked on one occasion to kiss some wounded soldiers, and on another to “speak American” for the entertainment of a few of the homesick soldiers. Another part of this essay I found particularly interesting was how Miller had to find film in an abandoned camera shop. Today with digital imaging technology and super portable SD cards with large storage capacity, the idea of running out of film while on assignment isn’t something I would consider, much less having to develop film in a basement with old chemicals. In a strange, probably horribly desensitized way, I found this more shocking/creepy than Miller stumbling over a severed foot in the street.

Feminist Arts Award Open to All Students!

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PLEASE APPLY! AN EASY APPLICATION AND OPEN TO ALL STUDENTS!

UNDERGRADUATE AWARDS-OPEN TO ALL

Feminist Arts Award: Given for the first time in 2002, it was established to recognize feminist visual, music, poetry, fiction, or film created by an undergraduate. This award was established to honor the wonderful outburst of feminist arts activity at UConn.

1)     To be considered, please submit the original piece of art - if necessary also include a short essay explaining the feminist intent of the piece.

2)     Please indicate whether or not the nominee is a current WS major or minor. 

Chase Going Woodhouse Prize: Awarded to an undergraduate for an academic project that focuses on feminist concerns. This prize is named in honor of former Congresswoman and Director of the Women’s Service Bureau. An activist and leader among the first generation of post-suffrage women in Connecticut, Chase Going Woodhouse provided an example of commitment to women’s interests and to realizing feminist goals in practical politics.

1) To be considered, please submit either the original or a copy of the academic project as described above. 2) Please indicate whether or not the nominee is a current WGSS major or minor.

Gladys Tantaquidgeon Award: Presented to an undergraduate student whose academic and/or community work reflects a dedication to the understanding and advancement of women of color in the U.S. This award is named in honor of the Mohegan Indian medicine woman, anthropologist and community educator, Gladys Tantaquidgeon, who featured original scholarship on Eastern Native American culture through the Tantaquidgeon Indian Museum. In her leadership role and scholarly research she has highlighted the significance of Native American women’s culture. 1) To be considered, please submit an essay or recommendation letter that describes the nominee’s work as described above. 2) Please indicate whether or not the nominee is a current WGSS major or minor.

Nomination Procedure

1)     Self nominations are welcome, unless otherwise indicated

2)     You may submit the required documentation to the WGSS Studies Program Office in Beach Hall Room 421

3)     Or mail it to us at UConn-WGSS, 354 Mansfield Road Unit 2181, Storrs, CT  06269-2181

4)     Or email it to wsinfo@uconn.edu

****Deadline: Monday, April 29, 2013****


If you have any questions, please email the committee atwsinfo@uconn.edu or call at 860-486-2186.