Landscape and Power - Book Report/Review Example

Chapter 4: Landscape and Power

Industrial sublime

The chapter navigates the history of different landscape photography. It examines how photography was used by people such as Mitch Epstein to evaluate the impact of energy production in ecosystem. The topic also talks about John Davis whose work is highly appreciated within photography profession. Davis contributed immensely to landscape photography with his documentation of industrial heritage in the British landscape. Lastly, the topic talks about the relationship between photography and infrastructure.

Topographical Outlook

As the name suggests, the topic discusses changes that have occurred in topography. Such changes have influenced photography in various ways. The photography exhibition contributes to the development of infrastructure in North America. Conservatives criticized the new development as they felt that the monies acquired through photography were not good.

Environmental Politics

The topic discusses how people like Henri Carter-Bresson contributed politically on photography. Henri was critical in criticizing works of Ansel Adams. The heated debate between the two men somehow contributed to the conservation of photojournalism. Due to their contributions, many know photos of William Anders of the lunar module orbiting the moon on a Christmas day. The topic also illustrates how human beings influence political ideologies using landscape (Alexander 2000, p. 130).

Engendering the Landscape

The topic talks about gender distribution in the art of the photography. Males often outnumber females in landscape photography. Mother Nature plays a significant role in contributing to this disparity since masculine nature of men gives them an edge in conducting landscape photography.

Pastoral Reality

The topic illustrates the term postural, which is used in visual culture to relate to activities that incorporate agricultural in their narrative. A pastoral picture can contain an image of animals such as goats and cows. Pastoral art began in around 16th century and was introduced by Claude Lorrain. The topic generally talks complexity of pastoral pictures as asserted by Fay Gordon.

Inspiring Nationhood

The topic states that photography is one of the identifying factors of nationhood. In the same way a family album contains some repeated picture, the society should try to take pictures of their environment frequently. The importance of taking photos of a can be seen in several historical pictures taken by the likes Peter Kennard on his Haywain with Cruise Missiles photo(Alexander 2000).

Chapter 4: Steeling Beauty Industrial Landscapes

Following the industrial revolution, industrial landscape emerged. As a result, economies diversified opening up to urbanization, infrastructural development and job employment. Industrialization was characterized by the alteration of landscape to allow industrial set ups. Critics argued that industrial landscapes lost their aesthetic appeal while natural landscapes maintained their aesthetic value. Contrast built up between the two and prompted photographers to start taking pictures on the industrial landscapes. Artists viewed Industrial landscapes as a form of art, which motivated them to start documenting the art.

Photographers used different approaches in actualizing their course. Foremost, painting of the industrial landscapes was an approach initiated by Joachim Patenier (Protzman 2003, p70). In this case, the perspective created a dramatic aura of the industrial landscape. Later, a couple embraced the photography of distinct features within an industrial set up. A movement was later formed that prompted for more objectiveness in the photography. Pictures taken would put comparison to nature and manmade objects. Critics regarded to the industrial photography as being cold and emotionless due to its undefined value then.

However, photographers’ motivation kept rising to collect more pieces in quest of documenting the art. Evidently, Klipper, a photographer, compiled small industrial pictures to create an illustration of a world of industries (Protzman 2003, p70). Other documented industrial landscapes included the Ohio rift by Borowiec, Alpha dams in Switzerland and rail sceneries

Photography collected would be used as a form of study in portraying how nature blends with architecture. Contrast was established between the artificial landscape and natural landscape forms. It was then used for bases of economic, political and cultural significances of nature. Effects of industrialization to the environment would also be analyzed using the photography. In this case, pictures of smoky chimneys and spillways would remain collected and subjected to analysis (Protzman 2003, p73). Industrial landscape also sets the world to being a unique canvas with what it has in terms of structure. It also illustrates the form of diversity in structures set up in different parts of the world at whole.

How to do Photography with networks Video

The technique involves ways to use the network as a medium, tool and culture besides relying on the galleries and museums. Scott McQuire, an artist, claims that there is a dynamic shift from the integration of the older photography to the current integration of photography as the information entitled to algorithmic politics of quantification (Sluis n.d, 03:25). It tries to explain what is inside the image frame and its relationship with the world. Most of the politics on images include software, screen culture, and the attention economy that are used by culture organizations to understand their audience.

The year 1992 was the era of the photography, which was what the image contained as well as what the image represented. Ten years later, the photography material was being dematerialized. During this period, photographers were denying the photography reproducibility and creating edition photographs that were simple to circulate in galleries and museums. In addition, a brief history of photography outlines that the first photography was produced in 1826. However, the first major photography show took place in 2003 at Tate Modern (Sluis n.d, 06:24).

Media wall program is an impression of the exciting digital platform for the entire ground cafe. An example of a project on digital wall platform is “Born in 1987, the animated GIF”. The project uniquely used webpages and screens. The importance of digital wall projects is that the public can respond to the digital work. The best platform to market such projects is on YouTube. However, such projects require permission to ensure that no rules are violated (Sluis n.d, 17:07).

Another project called Spherical harmonics involves animations in the digital wall projects. However, a caution in undertaking these projects is that theory work should not be applied in justification of artwork when writing artist statements (Sluis n.d, 29: 55). James Bridle, an artist, uses networks in photography a different way through seamless transitions. In photography network, an artist needs to communicate articulately with charisma about the relevance of their work.

Social media can be used in photography to display live photography. It is vital because photography is shared alongside the story behind it. Instagram, for example, provides a platform for interacting with many audiences from diverse backgrounds (Sluis n.d, 37:17). Lastly, the issues in photography with networks are conflation and programming, ignorance of social platforms participation exhaustion and quotation of the digital platform (Sluis n.d, 44:39).

Chapter 3: Documentary and storytelling

Documentary photography gives an idea to new life and other social function. Most documentaries emerged during the World War 1 and remained common throughout the twentieth century. Documentaries give information mainly about the creative education in an actualize form (Bate, 2009, pp46). Documentaries in most cases aim at showing the informal way on how ordinary people stay and relate with others. After sometime, documentaries remained the main significant component in the almost all modern mass communications in our daily lives.

With the help of documentation, photographers became to have a new media field, which required being supplying magazines, and newspapers that were needed to fill the magazine pages. Documentaries accelerated almost all the industries of photography and the photographer reporting. The photographer reporters began to play a vital role in the competitive production of magazines. Many famous reporters of the magazines of this time became to be called authors (Bate, 2009, pp51). The authors had a tendency of extracting individual pictures from any original source sequences and placing them in a formal art gallery that related all the information about what a photographer or a journalist saw and all that was required to be written in a magazine. Therefore, the photographers published much information about their works and stored the information in the photography books.

In presenting a documentary, the following steps are important

Decisive moments, which refers to a notion where old information from the art history or the storytelling of a single picture, depicts an entire story about what was written or what is about to be written (Bate, 2009, pp56).

Staging reality has been a binding mediation that is involved in all photography. Here, a decision about the position of the camera is important. Camera position is important since it helps the photographers to capture the best photographs before presenting them to media.

Eyewitness. In documentaries, eyewitness aims at making any reported information to be factual by avoiding the publication of wrong information (Bate 2009, pp 59). Thus, the ideology of eyewitness becomes the premise in truth, therefore, making the reporting stage real.

In summary, the making of the documentary does not only involve shooting of pictures but also editing those pictures before presenting them to any related media. The motivation of the documentary photography is creative information, where the main aim is to criticize, support and reform any situation that is being described.

Documentary and Photojournalism by Pedro Meyer`

Documentary photographers intend to record aspects of reality whereby they produce a depiction of what the photographer saw. Agreeing to this kind of description suggests that it is the reason why we do not have computers used in reconstructing documentary images. According to Pedro Meyer, an equivalent to manipulation is believed to be photography per session. The faithful representation of reality is questioned by technical variables, the film and lens chosen. Past tradition and customs pushes people to believe that photos edited in the computer are not actually accurate documentary representation.

Evidence, truth and order by John Tagg

The development of flexible film and more rapidly dry plates that manufacture simple photographic apparatus enhanced the industry growth and attraction of new customers. According to John Tagg, the state has the responsibility of diversifying and expanding the technical development of photography. Technology has been of great impact in the enhancement of photography. Social formation bonds the diversification in which photography operates on. In the state, a camera is never neutral thus produces highly coded representation with the power that is never of its own. The political axis of representation is affected by a powerful surveillance. Photography has no identity therefore John Tagg talks about how new technology has enhanced the state growth

In, around, and afterthoughts (on documentary photography) by Martha Rosler

Martha Rosler argues that photographers no longer document in order to improve but rather just to identify. It means that documentary photography has reformed for the worst. She emphasizes on the fact that tourism and exoticism has substituted the commitment to reform. Martha Rosler still claims photographic images of death and famine are viewed the same way as the spectacle by the society today. Additionally, the photographer and the subject that is at hand should have a reciprocal relationship. An individual can handle imagery when he leaves it behind. Besides, documentary transforms threats into imagery and fantasy thus being like a movie with the face of fear.

Summary of the Second Video Lecture

The lecture video explains evolution of photography and its relation to the network culture. Culture institutions are faced with many challenges in the contemporary society. For cultural institutions, they are still stuck with traditional culture and various strategies needs to be used to change this aspect. Such strategies as hiring someone in charge of digital programming, helps changes our perception on careers, our work and how we view and relate with others in the society. The digital program is meant to help most organizations, which are still stuck in the analog culture to make sense of the digital network distribution image culture.

We are encouraged to use the social networks and the internet to display photographs and a brief explanation of our work. It stresses that gallery system is not the only way gain a verification for the work we have done (Sluis, n.d, 00:26:14). Different platforms can be used to express our photography and views. In the 20th century, photography was always viewed according to its relation to the world and the deeper meaning it. However, machines have become the prime organizers of information today. They understand and read information in a very different ways. It resulted to lose of trust in our digital photography. We are encouraged not to rely on institutions since they are hard to change.

We should embrace different other platforms. Museums and galleries may use the digital platform and channel their work to many other viewers or they can use it to may use to recognize the most creative artist. The lecture also insisted on being real when writing a statement of our work. Being clear and giving good illustration makes our work more understanding. Therefore, anyone who wants to be a good artist should insist on creativity and being real on their expressions about their photography. Some of the negative impact of using the media is the attention an individual gets after being famous and the exhaustion from the traditional culture.