Camera Lucida by Roland Barthes

What is a photograph? According to Roland Barthes, it "mechanically repeats what could never be reproduced existentially" (4).  The photograph has no desire to change, transcend or tire of its own contingency.
Who am I when photographed? It's an interesting phenomenon that when the lens is upon a person, that person is no longer his or herself but a person merely imitating a person who does not exist. The subject may or may not be aware of this "pose" but Barthes likens the sensations to feelings of merely unauthentic to nightmarish. "A subject who feels he is becoming an object" (14).
Why does this photo touch me? The emotion or pity the spectator feels is called the "punctum" or "prick" and it is inarticulable in a linguistic sense. Barthes also calls this the "obtuse" (as opposed to "obvious") or "third" meanings.
Barthes makes in inevitable connection between a photograph and death with the photograph serving as the  "proof" or to eulogize the subject. He makes the connection to his mother, citing a childhood photo of her where he feels he has "discovered" her. This image is not reproduced as Barthes assures us readers that the photo would be uninteresting to anyone but himself. The Winter Garden photo emanates a punctum to Barthes that no one else would capture. The photograph is a passage through time and a repetitive resurrection of the subject.
Image from page 50 - Lewis H. Hine, Idiot Children in an Institution, 1924      

Artist Profile: Francesca Woodman

Francesca Woodman (1958-1981) was born to a family of artists in Denver, Colorado. She discovered a passion for black and white photography at the young age of 13. Woodman spent a year in Rome under scholarship from the Rhode Island School of Design and graduated from a public high school in Boulder, Colorado. After moving to New York City to become a photo artist, she became an artist-in-residence in the MacDowell Artist Colony in New Hampshire. She died jumping out of a loft window on January 19th, 1981 at the age of 22 after struggling with depression and a rocky relationship.
Woodman usually depicted herself or doppelganger figures as the subject but they would not be considered portraits in a traditional sense. She experimented with setting, using dark, empty and decrepit rooms and exposure times, both of which she mastered in her short years. Art historically, she was inspired by the Baroque, Surrealism, Classicism and Futurism.
Her work is celebrated post-humously being critiqued as haunting, sexual, vulnerable and slightly disturbing. The only show held during her lifetime was at the Maldoror Bookstore from 1977-78 in Rome during her aforementioned stint in the Rhode Island School of Design's honor program. Some Disordered Interior Geometries was the only written work published during her lifetime. The Fancy was an experimental film is 2000 about Woodman's life and work. She has had several successful posthumous exhibitions.
Her work generally evokes curiosity within the viewer and is incredibly interesting compositionally. Clearly, she had a sexually attractive figure and frequently used nudity as part of her progression. However, it is not interpreted (by myself) as aesthetically pleasing but instead disturbing and violating much like the nudes portrayed by Egon Schiele.      

Sense of Time

This project was the most difficult by far in terms of coming up with a theme or subject. Therefore, this series focuses on my love of art, in this case sculpture, that I wanted to make come alive somehow. I wanted the statues to convey either movement, emotion or both. To have one of those attributes does in fact convey a sense of time. View the rest of the series here.

Artist Profile: W. Eugene Smith

Eugene Smith (1918-1978) was a photojournalist, later recognized as a master of photography, documenting with tragic vivacity events such as World War II. He has photographed for several magazines including Newsweek, Life and Parade. He refused to use traditional methods of photography and that led to several conflicts with media employers.  
He created photo essays with various individuals as his subject. He photographed U.S. Marines on the front lines in Japan, even suffering a war injury (by mortar fire) in the process. His first official "photo story" centered around a country doctor in late the 1940's shot in Kremmling, Colorado. He covered the 1950 general election in the UK, which included photos of working class British citizens including the famous portrait of three generations of coal miners. Other stories take place in Spain, Africa, several places in the United States including Pennsylvania, California and South Carolina as well as returning to Japan to document the devastating effects of mercury poisoning.
Eugene Smith is thought of as the originator of photo stories. He most poignant series are titled Pittsburg, Nurse Midwife, Minamata, Country Doctor and Albert Schweitzer - A Man of Mercy.
Eugene Smith passed away in 1978 from a stroke as a result of drug and alcoholic tendencies.  
 

Cultural Event #2

Space Gallery on Sante Fe Drive has been a primary catalyst for the era of abstraction in the Denver art scene. Galileo's Garden, Space's latest abstract incarnation, features husband-wife duo Monica and Tyler Aiello. Monica is the painter, using mostly acrylic, ink and fiber on panel in organic designs similar to amoebas or possibly different types of flora. To complement her work, Tyler is the sculptor doing floor and wall installations in hand-forged steel. Recurring circular patterns add depth, texture and color to the space. The floor installations seem to give a sense of functionality, as if the pieces are furniture and decor for an alien creature. The show was enjoyable, the gallery is very spacious unlike some of the surrounding galleries. I always found Space Gallery to be tasteful, current and very reflective of Colorado taste.
 

Painted Failure (Final Project)

This is my final project aptly titled "Painted Failure". See more pictures here. The intention of this project as to explore the reverse process of art imitating life. Through editing, I capitalized on the graininess of the original shots and attempted to give them a "painted" look with texture and exaggerated proportions, colors and compositions to further emphasize the distorted quality. Some of the final photos were a success and some, as the title suggests, were failures.  

Cultural Event #1

Cities of Splendor: A Journey through Renaissance Italy at the Denver Art Museum travels through Florence, Milan, Mantua, Siena, Venice and even explores the cultural impact Across the Alps in countries such as Germany and Spain. It was a great way to show off the Denver Art Museum’s Samuel H. Kress Foundation collection, which is truly breathtaking. The show is meant to be the viewer’s “passport” through 15^th and 16^th century Italy. The associate curator is Angelica Daneo, who also teaches a Renaissance art history class at the University of Denver. She provided her class with private access to the exhibition and to the head conservator James Squires, who talked about some of the stabilizing and conservation efforts he and his team went through to prepare the pieces for display. It begins with stabilizing the relative humidity in the downstairs gallery where the exhibition would take place. Stable relative humidity for the show is 50% +/- 5%. The most important thing is to keep the humidity stable and not fluctuate by more than 2% in one day. Some of the pieces, including Albrecht Dürer’s engravings Prodigal Son and Madonna and Child are in microclimates, which look like small clear plastic boxes. They provide a very important purpose though, to further stabilize the environments of the incredibly delicate materials. The conservation of the pieces is what I found most intriguing during my visit to the exhibition. I especially loved the aforementioned Dürer engravings, Prodigal Son and Madonna and Child. 

Significant Others

For the significant others project I decided to shoot my friend Nina. We chose to use the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse as inspiration but not in a serious way -- We wanted the symbology to take on a playful, sexy and irreverent vibe. I think the shots reflect both our personalities and our friendship; we love to laugh. The rest of the photos can be seen here.

Fortune Cookie Assignment

My fortune cookie saying was “It is better to stay and fight than to run away”. I chose this picture because the point of view is behind the tree almost as if that person were hiding from the rest of the landscape, which is dominated by an imposing mountain. The viewer is (hopefully) ready to conquer her/his fears, step out from behind the tree and face the obstacles ahead.  

Sense of Self

For my sense of self project I wanted to do silhouettes to emphasize feelings of agoraphobia. I wear my favorite vintage clothing because it too seems to rarely see the light of day. The rest of the pictures can be viewed here.   

Iraqi Women's Photo Stories

This movie about the creation of photo stories takes place at first in Damascus, Syria where a group of 30 or so women learn to use a digital camera and begin experimenting with them by taking lots of pictures of everything they encountered. They also created these life journey picture board things and the women had very tragic as well as very touching backgrounds. Some were struggling with growing up in a worn-torn region; a fear of the inevitable seems to grip them constantly. Others had painful stories about marriage, children, being kidnapped for ransom and other forms of violence. The women told their stories with a surprising amount of grace and control.

Seeing the women try and ‘figure out’ photography – not how it works per se but how it sends a message or a feeling - was very interesting especially when they stopped to talk about a picture of a little girl whom they felt had been exploited. Some felt the photographer exploited her by taking her picture but others saw a deeper pain, exploitation from elsewhere in her young life. The actual little girl in the video had impressive insight for her age regarding her own photography project. In her choosing to “laugh instead of cry” sends a message of wisdom beyond her years.  

The video definitely helped me learn not only about personal histories and photography but also about women on the ‘other side’. It would be impossible for me not to feel empathy but at the same time grateful that I have grown up in relative safety and without this oppressive atmosphere of death and fear surrounding me.  

Sense of Place

For my sense of place project, I was inspired by the Surrealist movement. L'Ange du Foyer by Max Ernst was the main work I wanted to emulate through photography. The featured photo is of the Star Flyer ride in Germany during Oktoberfest. See the rest of the series here.  

Personal Paradigm Shift

When I was 19, I had a life changing experience that affected my perspective on the world. It was around Christmastime that my grandfather Ken passed way after spending four days in a coma. He had fallen in the upstairs library and hit his head on the marble table. It was sudden and traumatic. No one told my dad (it was his father) that he had passed for almost a week after it happened. Apparently, because of things my dad had done in his adolescence, we (he & his family) did not deserve the information. The “things” my dad had done includes lightheartedly making fun of his older sister throughout childhood, being a liberal and overall being human. My dad was always the black sheep in the family but he did not deserve that and it changed my view on people. No one is sorry. I have not seen or spoken to grandmother in almost three years. She does not care, though so I suppose it’s ok. I called my aunt the C-word to her face. She said horrible things, too but no one cares about that. My dad tries to laugh about it but I still cry about it. 

Letter To Myself

Dear Me,
This is ok.

Narrating the Self

           The article Narrating The Self by Elinor Ochs and Lisa Capps examines the personal history of an individual from the perspective of linguistics, which includes language and storytelling. The activity of narrating brings meaning and conjoins various aspects of the self, which are separated by time, environmental factors, the psyche, our individual concept of right and wrong, etc. It is also a way for an individual to compromise her expectations and her experience.                

            My overall view of the article is that it was a bit wordy but interesting anyway. I found most intriguing, regarding my own personal narrative, the writer’s words on silence. “Silencing is a product of internal and interactional forces in that a person may repress and suppress emotions and events, but these processes are linked to external circumstances, including others’ expectations and evaluations. Silencing takes many forms, most of which do not lead to severe psychopathy” (32-33). Silencing myself from photographs most of the time is probably not psychologically detrimental to me nor does it represent a deeper issue.

           The idea of the personal narrative relates to photography in that the individual (photographer and/or subject) shapes the ‘telling’ of her story (photograph). The same things that shape her linguistic narrative shape the characteristics of her photographic perspective. The photograph has a sense of permanence – tangible - over storytelling. The manifestations of perspective into the photograph can convey a sequence of events, such as a childhood, that usually carries a coherent mythos consistent to that of the verbal narrative. Yet, we have ways of hiding our narrative from others, even from ourselves. Other times, our narrative only becomes apparent in retrospect. Even other times, outsiders are keener to our personal narrative than we are because they provide an unobstructed objective perspective.   

            The writer spoke briefly about the way artists use narrative that “unsettles status quo principles of a genre” (29). I can think of this being a significant proponent of Modernism in art, literature and performance where the avant-gardes turned the middle class on its head. The list of the movements (almost every one from late nineteenth to the 1960’s) include Impressionism, Dadaism, everything Picasso did, Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism, etc, etc. Artists love the idea of confronting an audience with their narrative and the stronger the reaction, the better.