Week 5 Realization and Understanding Field of Practice in Photography.

Susan Sontag “On Photography” deconstruct me what purpose does a photographic image hold in the world, utilized in various ways throughout its history to today; documenting societies, recording an investigation, mugshots of criminals and interpreting the world. “Photographs really are experience captured, and the camera is the ideal arm of consciousness in its acquisitive mood.”

“Photographing is essentially an act of non-intervention” This is exactly how I position myself whenever I photograph through the lens because I don't want the moment disturb in the frame, a invisible conscious between the camera and surrounding. However Sontag further explanation about photojournalism has doubted my ambitions about pursing photojournalism. A situation where the photographer has the choice between the photograph and a life, to choose the photograph. The person who intervenes cannot record; the person who is recording cannot intervene.

She gives sources that explains further. Dziga Vertov's Man with a Movie Camera (1929) and Hitchcock's Rear Window (1954).

Another saying Santog that got me thinking about the images I recorded at my little nieces birthday party highlighted what could've occurred in my mind by default while behind the camera. “The act of Photographing is more than passive observing. It's a way of at least tacitly, often explicitly, encouraging whatever is going on to keep on happening.” It sounds like a bad thing but in a form of Documentary Photography, I think it's relevant process in showing the features of life, individuals or societies. Becoming passive, the results are thoughtful and intriguing images because of the simple idea of the camera and myself are uninvolved in the frame but solely observers recording.

One of my flaws last semester was context, understanding my images in-depth and critically know where my work sits. I began to think that my images didn't have the appeal of Photojournalism because I thought my images were implying those ideas as my research last semester was focused. It wasn't until I found Ans Westra at the end of the semester that I found a field of photography where my images belong. I found an article online by Photographer Antonin Kratochvil with Michael Persson that unravel the differences in Photojournalism and documentary Photography, identical mediums but delivering different meanings.

Documentary Photographers: reveals the infinite number of situations, actions and results over a time period. In short they reveal life. Life isn't a moment, it isn't a single situation, since one situation is followed by another and another.

Photojournalism: in its constant and transmission-doesn't show “life”. It neither has the time to understand it nor the space to display its complexity. The pictures we see show the frozen instants taken out of context and put on a stage of media's making, then sold as truth. Viewers can be left with a biased view, abandoned to make up their minds based on incomplete evidence.

Kratochvil explains further that photojournalist employ juxtaposition, a crossroad where extremes or opposite meets. Contrast conjures up black and white. But what sits in the between – the gray, the similar, the normal? Documentary photography offers witness to these less obvious aspects of life. The description was the answer I've been searching for to solidify a strong position for my photography practice. Kratochvil showed me my area of interest and how my images are supposed to be viewed, that witnessing the normality, capturing a timeline aspects of life reveals a visual form storytelling, increasing understanding of what the camera's eye is recording. Documentary Photography is group of work that reveals and engage the viewers to observe another culture or life. it gives the more then a glimpse of the truth.

Source:
http://michaellarkin30days.wordpress.com/2013/02/02/02-02-3-examples-of-photojournalism-that-interest-you/ http://www.rcbsam.com/uploads/4/1/9/6/41960/sontag_on_photography.pdf
http://www.nieman.harvard.edu/reportsitem.aspx?id=101591