Photography means many different things to many different people. For
some it is an art, while for others it is a means to document what they do day
to day. Regardless what the desired use is of the photos, it is undeniable that
there is the possibility that the photos can be altered for one reason or
another before they get to their destination – whether it be Instagram,
craigslist, a blog, or printed to be put into a frame. I will dive deeper into
what can be done with images later in this, but first let’s start with defining
what photography is. Photography can be split into two parts. Photo, which
means light, and graph(y) which means to write. So, photography is essentially
writing with light, or as I like to think of it as, painting with light since
it sounds a little nicer and as a photographer it seems to fit a little better.
I will be exploring the essence of the photograph, the reasons for which
photographs are taken, the ways in which they are altered, and the reasons why photographs
should or should not be altered.
What is a photograph? A
photo is a moment captured, frozen forever in time in the image. Some say that
an image is worth a thousand words. But what are those thousand words that
everyone talks about? What do they represent? The photograph is capturing a
part of the aura of what has been photographed. In Walter Benjamin’s The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical
Reproduction explores the essence of the aura. According to Benjamin, even “the
most perfect reproduction of art is lacking in one element” its presence in
time and space, it’s unique existence at the place where it happens to be.” Imagine
visiting a beach with the most beautiful sunset you have ever seen. You try to
take a picture of it, but you can’t quite capture everything that you see as
you are there in person. There is a distance from the subject in the frame. Something is missing. What is it that is
missing? The aura of the image itself does not fully capture the aura of the
beach sunset. In this case, the photo is not the original artwork, but the
sunset is. While you were there you experienced the sunset and had emotion
connected with it – or did you? We will touch on that in a little bit. The
closeness with the subject is lost through any type of media, whether it is an
image, video, manuscript of the experience, or secondhand account.
A fellow student, Samantha Andrews shared a
show and tell with us at the beginning of the semester about a similar topic.
In her presentation, she talked about how she visited both the Mona Lisa and
the Great Wall of China. With the Mona Lisa, she talked about how when she got
there it seemed small, underwhelming. The images that we had seen of it in
textbooks and online did not convey the true aura of the painting itself. The painting
in real life did not live up to the hype of what has been seen in texts. I am
under the impression that the painting would be six feet tall but finding out
that it was so small would have kind of been heartbreaking when you were
expecting so much more. In the same presentation, Samantha talked about the
Great Wall of China. This was an opposite kind of reaction. The images did not
do the natural wonder justice. The aura was much greater in real life. There
was no way that the essence could have been captured in images – like the way
that the sunset is not able to be captured in the photo.
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