Is a camera the same as a gun?

After reading McElroy’s article “Are Cameras the New Guns?” I was surprised.  I was shocked to find that my home state, Massachusetts, like many other states, can charge people with a felony if they have recorded something without all of the parties consent especially in relationship to defending oneself against a crime or police brutality.   People cannot use their personal surveillance of an event to their defense.  I was appalled to hear this because if the footage is to defend yourself then how is it wrong.  It is wrong to randomly film people for some thrill or to slander them in some way, but using it as evidence should be aloud. 

I believe that raw footage should be able to be used and should be objective in any kind of struggle.  A camera in the sense is seen to me as a device that captures the truth especially if the person holding it is not an artist.  Yes some may argue that if a victim is holding the camera there is a bias and if there is a police officer there is a bias.  If there are two different cameras capturing the same scene and the same thing is happening there should not be any discrepancies.  It is frustrating to me that defending yourself is now a crime.  I simply cannot understand it. 

Pollan: The Perfect Meal- An Unrealistic Idea

Pollan’s analysis of the “America’s eating disorder” has shown me the flaws and contradictions in the American food system.  I had always thought that I wanted to know where my food came from and that it should be humanely raised in open fields.  The vegetables and fruits should be raised to be GMO free.  I wanted everything to be organic or from a farmers market.  Although I had been scolding agribusiness I still bought and ate food that contradicted what I was preaching.  I always thought well there is no way to possibly change it or achieve the ideal meal. 

            As I neared the end of the book I realized how flawed my thinking was.  As Pollen constructed his perfect mean.  His list was as stated.

1.     Everything on the menu must have been hunted, gathered, or grown by me.

2.     The menu should feature at least one representative of each edible kingdom: animal, vegetable, fungus, as well as an edible mineral (the salt).

3.     Everything served must be in season and fresh.  The meal would reflect not only the places that supplied its ingredients, but a particular moment in time.

4.     No money may be spent on the meal, though already purchased items in the pantry could be deployed as needed. 

5.     The guest list is limited to those people who helped me in my foraging and their significant others…

6.     I would cook the meal myself. (p.392)

He then after gathering everything and spent an entire day in the kitchen preparing the meal.  In the end the meal was delicious, but Pollan came to an understanding.  He said, “The two meals at the far extreme ends of the spectrum of human eating… The pleasures of one are based on a nearly perfect knowledge; the pleasures of the other are equally perfect ignorance.” (p. 410).  He goes on to say how one is born from the diversity of nature and the other shows the advances of industry. 

            Everyone falls on the spectrum, but most likely not at the extremes.  The extremes, I am now realizing, are highly unrealistic.  My previous idea of the perfect meal being humanely raised, organic, and not doused in chemicals is almost impossible to apply to everyday life.  There is no feasible way to eat the way I thought I wanted to.  It is at that point where one must do the best they can given their surroundings.  There is no perfect meal.   

Neighborly surveillance as art

http://hyperallergic.com/200601/artist-who-furtively-photographed-his-neighbors-wins-in-court-again/

Photography + Surveillance Response- Fallon Wilson

       I felt Peter Phun’s “Street Photography Tips for the Modern World” was very informative, although I found it interesting that paparazzi and street photographers seem to have a completely different set of rules as far as being respectful. He says, “[j]ust remember, if they’re not happy with your presence with the camera, be a good sport and move on…Take no for an answer unless you’re a paparazzi-in-training.” Celebrity quite literally means ‘the state of being celebrated,’ yet it seems that one cannot simultaneously be celebrated and have the right to say ‘no’ to any photos of themselves. It is curious to me that the police tend to protect average people that wish to dismiss a photographer on the street, but celebrities are held strictly to the law: “no one should expect privacy in a public space.” 

I recall watching a video of Taylor Swift talking about her recent vacation in Hawaii. Before the trip, she had asked that people respect her privacy while she was away and that paparazzi did not follow her for the week. The morning of her last day, she was shocked that everyone had actually honored her request. She had not seen any photographers and no photos had yet surfaced on the internet. That afternoon though, while whale watching in the middle of the ocean, they spotted what they thought was a fishing boat in the distance. Her security guards got out their binoculars and saw that there were indeed paparazzi following them with long lens cameras that shot up to three miles away. It turns out, she had not seen any photographers because they were at such far distances during the entirety of the trip and had yet to post their photos. 

While I understand that Swift and her friends were technically in public domain, I feel that if this were an ordinary person being photographed in such a way on vacation, the situation would be treated very differently. Instead of referring to these photographers as “stalkers” as anyone would in a non-celebrity situation, they are referred to as annoying “paparazzi” and the incident is overlooked. Police often have no problem stopping unwanted pictures of themselves or, like Phun mentions, a mother and child in the park, so what makes celebrity situations so different?

Photos as a Way to Access Memory

After reading "Speaking the Unspeakable: Invisibility and Trauma after 9/11" and responding to Anthony's blog post I was motivated to write a whole separate post about how we use photos to access our memories. The essay starts out by setting the scene of Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 describing the sound of the plane crashes over a completely black screen. There were a few reasons listed for this but I believe that the most compelling argument was that the scene was used to make the viewer recall how they experienced the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center without any external influences, for example, photos or video footage of the event. 

This got me thinking about how useful it is to have pictures as a way to remember past events. Are they even helpful at all? This question is really about gauging the helpfulness of photos based on how much they guide the way we remember specific moments in time. I think that sometimes photos sway our memory of an event so much that they begin to tell an inaccurate tale. In the example of 9/11 much of my memory is from the television coverage and the famous videos of the plane number two crashing into the south tower and the north tower was burning. My other memory of the day was my elementary school principle coming over the loud speaker telling us what had happened and that school was dismissed for the day. However, I don’t remember nearly as much about my day at school than I do about the television coverage. Over time the videos have started to shape my memory and it is strange to both think about it and see how my memory has shifted as time has passed.

Passionate Observation and Representation: Nan Goldin

Christie Dooley

In the introduction to her 1992 autobiography Die Andere Seite, Nan Goldin explains her lasting infatuation with photographing drag queens.  During the 1970s, Boston, Goldin’s friend David Armstrong introduced her to a group of "gorgeous creatures," whom she soon moved in with and photographed daily. As a photographer, Goldin does not exploit or objectify her sitters in any way. They are her friends, above all, and she does not attempt to “unmask them” as anyone but themselves with her camera. That is, Goldin keeps the interests of her subjects in mind—her self-proclaimed goal is to “put the queens on the cover of Vogue.” And her friends in Boston seem to have loved it, as they playfully competed for most photographed. I think it is important for portraitists (or even fashion photographers) to have similar respect for the people/models they are representing.

Once Goldin moved out, her photography no longer worked—she needed to be an insider to feel comfortable. Over the next decades, especially when she moved into New York, she made an effort to reintegrate into the changing drag scene and discover “home” again. Even when she travelled to Manila and Bangkok in the 1990s, now much older, she made real friends and affectionate relationships. Notably, she refuses to treat this “underground” culture of gender fluidity as merely “fascinating”—she respects each individual and their identity. She not only accepts but also represents her subjects as they desire, not how the audience desires.  I find that her passion contributes to the quality of her photography (see below).

One last thought/question—Goldin’s photographs remind me of Sally Mann’s, perhaps because both photographers bond with their sitters. Do you find these emotional bonds are discernable in their photographs, or is it just me? I have attached my favourite Sally Mann photograph (Sunday Funnies, ca. 1991) below for comparison.

Cameras as guns

My initial reaction to this article was anger, frustration and confusion. To me it makes absolutely no sense why police officers would be hold a camera to be the same threat level as a gun pointed at them. To an extent that is an exaggeration to but to another it is not. When confronted by a camera there have been many accounts of police officers becoming hyper defensive, it is as if they are legitimately being threatened by a camera.

As I thought about it more though on some level I do understand the fear of a camera being pointed at you. As a photographer I have grown to becoming increasingly comfortable behind a camera but at the same time my comfortability in front of the camera has declined. It makes one more self aware and questioning. How do I look? Do I sound stupid? What will other people think of me when shown this? Some of those questions I have asked myself when standing on the other end of the lens but I have also heard this from some of my portrait subjects. 

The reason I believe that some police officers do not like to be photographed or video taped is partly because of this self awareness. I am sure we have all had moments in our school careers when our professors watched us paint or draw or work on a math problem. You suddenly become a little more tense, more aware of what you are doing and question yourself on if you are doing something correctly. If I was in the officer's shoes this is an uncomfortable place to be. Again I do not agree that it should be illegal to photograph and video tape police as a way to hold them accountable for their actions and I do not condone police who use excessive force or these arrests that are obviously ludicrous. However, I can see why police are uneasy when it comes to being photographed. 

Literature as an Art Form: Lee Miller on WWII

Christie Dooley

In his essay “From Realism to Virtual Reality: Images of America’s Wars,” American cultural historian H. Bruce Franklin characterizes literature as an “art form capable of projecting the action of warfare as temporal flow and movement.” He boldly states that Joseph Heller’s satirical novel Catch-22 “most insightfully” illustrates the aerial bombing of World War II. As classic as Catch-22 might be, I believe Lee Miller provides equally valuable insight in her 1944 essay “The Siege of St. Malo,” in which she describes a firsthand experience of World War II.  Writing in the first person (unlike Heller’s narrative, which is written in third person omniscient), Miller certainly captures the action, temporal flow, and movement of the siege—“It was time to go,” she writes, and then shortly after, “Time passed slowly, slowly, tensely.”  She conjures burning buildings, Vesuvius-like thunder, belches of smoke, and the poised silence of each moment in between. Furthermore, she hints at language and gender barriers between herself and her company. Though she “projected” herself into the struggle, surrounded by unpredictable gunfire and detached body parts, the soldiers still treated her as an accessory.  One asks her to photograph (and kiss) the Polish deserters, and another demands, “Hey lady take my picture, put it in the paper!” I find that as much as Miller sympathizes with her male companions going into battle, she also recognizes their inflated self-importance. Nevertheless, Miller seems like she is in her natural habitat, even inside the bomblines. A dedicated photojournalist, she drags her cramped body from post to post, looking for permission to take pictures and making do in an abandoned photo shop. Miller’s description of the stench of dead bodies, or lost cats yowling in the night, gives dimension to her experience of war in a way photographs cannot.