Singular Images
Essays on Remarkable Photographs
Edited by Sophie Howarth
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| Dianne Arbus - A young Brooklyn family going for a Sunday outing, N.Y.C - 1966 |
"The fictions we make about photographs are as unreliable as they are unavoidable"
Can't help but wonder what will happen to these people when we look at them.
Father is watchful of the photographer, protective of the child - holding the hand
"They have handed the photographer something much more important, a contemporary metaphor: the unhappy family snapshot"
"But once they had given themselves up to the camera, there they were, pinned to the wall and labelled forever: 'undeniably close in a painful sort of way'."
subverted, painful to the photographer or the family?
Arbus had her work exhibited along with her contemporaries Garry Winogrand + Lee Friedlander.
All held the belief that the commonplace is worth looking at
photographed between that moment they deserve to be photographed or to deny the request
"Arbus understood that the camera was a dispassionate, uncivilised instrument; it made no allowances for the flaws and weaknesses it encountered, recording them faithfully, even if the result was disturbing, or upsetting, or just wrong."
"'I think it does, a little, hurt to be photographed'"
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| Nan Goldin - The Hug, New York City - 1980 |
(First what has struck me is in the book, this picture has been cropped slightly from the top... why? Why was it necessary to change the artist's work and dimensions, surely it changes my perception of it. Also when looking for an illustrative picture to place here I found many different versions in varying degrees of light/darkness ... where is there any truth?)
intimacy difficult to capture in photographs
paralellism between observer and observed that may be termed sympathetic p91
Why did I preconceive this to be a self-portrait?
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| Jeff Wall - A view from an apartment - 2004-5 |
staged scenario
photo manipulation, relies on computers
"he encourages us to accept the illusion of his realism. He is concerned to heighten our understanding, to provoke us into 'seeing' what the image reveals - and also what it conceals."
Research Gary Winogrand
(my self portraits, I often find myself not looking how I think I look, more so often when others take photographs of me, they look odd, wrong, like they are of someone else)
published 2005, london, tate
Simon Johnson
www.thephilosophicalphotographer.co.uk
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