Category: Blog Post 3 (Page 2 of 2)

Provoke No. 2, 1969; gelatin silver print; 14 x 17 in. (35.56 x 43.18 cm.)

Daido Moriyama is a prominent Japanese photographer, who has illuminated the dark underside of Japanese urban life and the breakdown of strict, traditional values in the post-war period. Before starting his career as a freelance photographer, Moriyama became fascinated with the world of photography as he studied under Takeji Iwamiya, and later moved to Tokyo in order to join the photographer’s group VIVO: all of which jumpstarted his career as a prolific artist.

Daido Moriyama’s series of works, whether it be from his Aesthetics of Punk or his Farewell photography, has animated me in a way that causes me to crave and see more. The punctum of this picture, Provoke No. 2, is the odd and bent posture of the subject in the photo, as well as the fact that the subject is turned away from the camera. The curve of her back and its almost skinny and bony appearance has produced a sense of discomfort and curiosity for me; it causes me to wonder about the meaning and the “noise” of the picture. Just as Barthes’ elaborated,  “society, as it seems mistrusts pure meaning: It wants meaning but at the same time it wants this meaning to be surrounded by noise.” The feelings induced by these personally piercing details, makes me question the purpose in Moriyama’s decision to photograph the subject in such a way: Why is she facing away from the camera?; Why is her back bent in such a disturbing way?; Has she eaten recently? If you look closely, you can almost see the bones and details of her spine, all of which add to my feeling of discomfort originally induced by the punctum. I crave to know and understand more, yet I can’t.

What captures me most about this photo, is its simplicity, and the feelings I get out of it despite that. The studium of this photo is a woman sitting naked on a bed, slouching, and turned away from the camera. There is a general and vague interest I get out of the studium, which is deepened by my discomfort of the punctum, which is her hidden face and odd posture. There is nothing particularly crazy or busy going on in this photo, as there was in previous works I’ve observed, but I could not stop thinking about it as I beheld other works by Daido Moriyama, and I don’t seem to understand why. Here, within this frustration, I walk a mile in Roland Barthes’ shoes. I understand now, as it did for him, some photos animate me, while others do not.

Dmitry Markov is a Russian Photographer who was born on April 23, 1992. “Gray Brick Road” is a series of photographs he took in 2015, and they depict a disabled father and his family in the city of Pskov, Russia.

The studium of this photograph is a father sitting on his bed, accompanied by his two young children. The hut is, crammed, dark and dilapidated. The family’s objects are few, and are piled on top of one another. Lastly, the children are staring directly at the lens of the camera, innocent and wide-eyed.

After looking at this photo, I immediately feel sorry for the family, and sympathize with them and their living conditions. I can’t help but wonder about the safety and security of the children, and what their futures hold. Are they destined to a life of poverty and uncertainty, or will they overcome the challenges of their childhood and create a better situation for themselves?

In my eyes, the punctum of this picture is the cat that the father is clutching. It immediately makes me think that the father focuses more of his love and affection on the animal, rather than on his two young children. Perhaps the father feels ashamed of the life he has created for his children. He finds it difficult to look at them because their innocent faces are a constant reminder to him that he has not properly provided for them, which is something he has always dreamt of doing. He wonders whether there is anything he can do to fix this, and to finally make these dreams a reality. However, my mind then goes to an entirely different place, and I no longer sympathize with the father, but rather resent him. Perhaps the father clutches onto the cat, and not onto his children, because he is more concerned about the cat’s safety. Therefore, the fact that he has not provided the best living conditions for his young family is not at all surprising, and my heart aches for the children even more.

I believe that this is why the cat is is the punctum. It is subtle, however it allows the photograph to take on a whole new meaning, even two meanings, and I interpret the work differently because of its presence. The way the father holds it tightly, to ensure that it doesn’t jump off its lap, hurts me. I can’t help but hope that everything will be okay for this family.

Elliott Erwitt | Fort Dix, New Jersey | 1951

This image was taken by American photographer Elliott Erwitt at Fort Dix, New Jersey in 1951. Erwitt was born on July 26th, 1928 to a Jewish-Russian family who immigrated to the United States in 1939, where he would eventually study photography and filmmaking. Most of his work consists of silly yet common situations found in everyday life. This photograph of a laughing African-American male soldier serves as just one example.

The studium of this image is an African-American soldier laughing in front of his fellow soldiers stationed at the fort marching in the background. The soldiers, clad in military gear, march forward to their destination. I noticed the soldiers in the background were all white males, with the soldier in the foreground being the only African-American one present. The white soldiers display a serious, focused demeanor, unlike the soldier’s silly demeanor facing the camera. The punctum of this image appears to be the African-American soldier’s facial expression. Mouth wide open and tongue sticking out, the soldier is quite overwhelmed with joy. I interpreted this to be reflective of certain artwork of the time period that stereotyped African-Americans as silly and incompetent. It is important to note the year of this photograph (1951). Racial division in the United States was still prominent at the time. His joyful demeanor contrasts with the white soldiers marching in the background, who are highly focused on their assigned duties.

The soldier’s smile caught my attention the most because of the total randomness of it. It raises some questions regarding the situation itself. Why is he laughing? Why he is the only one happy? Does this have anything to do with him being distant from the group of soldiers behind him? Whatever the reason is, he doesn’t seem to consider what he’s doing to be all that serious and is comfortable enough to allow himself be distracted. Another thing noticeable about this image is that the soldiers in the background are utterly oblivious to his laughing. They don’t really seem to notice or even care how he sticks out from the rest of the group. Perhaps this is to further emphasize the lax character of the soldier in comparison to the rest of the group. The overall silliness of his expression is what pulled me into the image. If the soldier was wearing a basic mundane look on his face, I most likely would have skipped right past through it. This is because his expression is unexpected. In all things, it is what is unexpected that drives interest, and photography is no exception.

Friends skipping (jumping rope) in New York City, circa 1976 by Jill Freedman

Childhood is a special time in any individual’s life, there are countless precious moments that are extremely mundane but nonetheless valuable. Growing up the most memorable moments happened when I played outside with my friends until the street lights came on. In Jill Freedman’s photo “Friends Skipping (Jumping Rope) in New York City” you can see how simple and normal the situation is, but you are drawn to it because of how similar the situation is to your own memories as a child.

In Roland Barthes book “Camera Lucida” he explores what photography exactly is, but after he cannot find the answer he begins to examine why he is drawn to certain images. By the end of the book, he discovers many things about photography, like its ability to create death and the reasons why some works resonate with him more than others. He coins the terms studium and punctum; the studium is the aspect of the photo that initially gets your attention, but the punctum is the part of the photo that pierces you and leaves an impression which allows the viewer to actually feel.

The studium of the “Friends Skipping (Jumping Rope) …” image is the simple action of two children jumping rope. But the part that struck me the most was how serious the faces of the girls playing are. Instead of laughing, they have a straight face. I can imagine how determined the two girls are to win; making sure they do not lose their breath or trip over the rope itself. Another aspect that catches my attention is the presence and stance of the little girl in the back waiting her turn to play. I wonder how long she’s been waiting, because her facial expression does not seem pleased.

Barthes said photograph also brings death because photography has the implied message that this moment has already happened and can never happen again. Although Barthes is right in the sense that photograph shows only the past, I also believe that photography is able to make moments live forever. These three girls will forever be alive in that moment, playing rope with their friends.

Garry Winograd was a New York based photographer who lived during the mid 1900s. Most of his work is New York street photography, snapshots of people in their everyday lives. Scrolling through pictures on google, I immediately stopped at this picture. Something about it struck me. I was immediately enthralled from what appeared to be an ordinary photograph.

The picture is titled “Radio City” and it was taken in the year 1961. The studium is a woman standing outside Radio City Music Hall Rockefeller Center with a bag by her feet. A man seems to be walking towards her and she is staring at him. But staring at the picture, I wanted to know more. Something about the picture captivated my attention and arouse a certain curiosity in me. What was that something? What was the punctum? Was it the cigarette in the woman’s hand? The sign next to her? The hand behind her back? Maybe. The more I allowed the photograph to consume me, the more I realized that the punctum was not in the picture, yet it was the entire picture.

To me, the punctum was the angle in which the photograph was taken. The picture was not taken from a traditional viewpoint. The photographer was crouched down on the floor and standing on the right side. Staring at this image, I understand what Barthes means when he says the punctum is a call for action. I feel a certain level of discomfort and I am overcome with a desire to step into the picture and straighten everything out. I can’t help but wonder why the photographer chose that angle. The building looks slanted as though it is sliding down the sidewalk, and everything on the left side of the picture is “higher” than the right side. The fact that the picture is taken from such an angle changes my entire perception of the image. The slanted angle highlights the man and he appears larger than the woman. Standing on the left side and having the picture taken from the bottom right, the man seems to be walking “over” her as though he is on top and more dominant. I can’t help but wonder if Winograd intended for the photo took like this; I want to say that he didn’t but then why did he angle the picture?

This photograph was taken by a photographer named Shirley Baker. Shirley Baker was born in 1932 in a town in England called Salford. She lived in England from birth until 2014, when she died. Throughout the 1960s and the 1970s, Baker took pictures of things she saw in the inner-city slums of Manchester. Her images were never posed; she just waited until the perfect moment to take a photograph. Baker’s photographs are usually taken on the streets of Manchester, where the streets are rugged and destroyed.

The image I chose to focus on strangely is unnamed and almost untraceable. It appears on a British gallery website that sells Shirley Bakers photographs. In the photo the clear studium is a boy standing upright by a street corner with his friend bent over the side of the building corner. When I first looked at the photo I noticed that the first boy I mentioned has a bandage wrapped around his left knee. To me, this is the punctum. Seeing that he is still immaculately dressed made me question if this is a new injury or had it happened a few days prior? He did not seem to have any other injuries. However, after seeing the possibility of a quarrel having occurred, I looked around the photograph more for some clues to help me figure out the image. The blond child that is hiding behind the wall is wearing glasses, however it appears that they are crooked and one of the lenses is popped out. Were these boys in a fight with each other? Are they friends? Are they brothers? By the smirk on the first child’s face it seems like they are just having playful fun. Additionally, I noticed a third, and final punctum, the object in the boys hands. To me, it looks like a wireless remote controller. Although this unnamed photo also doesn’t have a date attached to it, referring to context clues from other pictures that Shirley Baker took, it is unlikely that that is a game controller, because they were not circulated until the 1990s, and Baker’s oeuvre was taken up until the 1980s. It is something to note that perhaps the fact that the child is very well dressed, especially for a toddler, tells us that he is from a rich family and could afford these new games to play with.

No matter what the circumstances were, this photo intrigued me and livened me up, just like Barthes says a photograph is supposed to do. Shirley Baker photography will forever hold a place in my heart.

Photograph taken in NYC by Vivian Maier, 1954.

This picture is one taken by a famous street photographer named Vivian Maier. Vivian Maier was born in New York City in February of 1926 and lived until April of 2009. As the child of a French mother and Austro-Hungarian father, she spent a portion of her life going back and forth between Europe and America, before eventually settling in the U.S again in 1951. This is when she began photographing the streets of New York City until around 1956, when she moved to Chicago and worked as a nanny, but continued to practice street photography during her free time.

This picture, which to my knowledge has no name, was taken in New York City in 1954 and was able to capture my attention from the moment I saw it. The studium in this picture, is this young boy probably around the age of four, who is petting a cat on the street. I found the punctum to be the warm expression on this cat’s face. Street cats are often thought of as feistier than the stereotypical cuddly house cat, therefore it intrigued me to see this cat looking so satisfied to have this boy petting it. When I look at this picture, I can almost feel the purr of the cat which would signify the happiness the cat feels. This cat is calm, and does not feel she needs to be guarded in the presence of this boy. It seems as if she is comfortable with the boy and that maybe this is part of a daily routine. However, this arises my question of whether this boy and the cat really are comfortable with each other, or does it just so happen he is petting a friendly street cat? It could very well be that the boy feeds this cat, so she returns to see him each day as if she were his own cat. But, with no description to the photo, I cannot be sure of the relationship between this boy and the cat. The real reason I felt that this particular aspect of the photo was the punctum and also why it really animated me is because I have 2 cats of my own, and I also foster cats and kittens. So, as you can imagine, I am very familiar with what is happening here. It just so happens that the cat in this picture looks similar to one of my own house cats, and the expression on this cat’s face is one I have seen on my own cat many times. The expression on this cat’s face animates me because of this, and allows me to picture myself petting my cat while hearing and feeling the soft purring in which she produces as I pet her.

Photographer Shirley Baker, who was born in 1932 and died in 2014, saw the poverty that the inner-city neighborhoods of Manchester and Salford were struck with in 1961 and decided she couldn’t sit idly by. It was then and there that she began her 20 year journey photographing these neighborhoods. From 1961 to 1981 she walked around the most destitute neighborhoods in these cities with her camera in hand, to record and empathize with everything and everyone that was there.

The photo above is one of her’s from this particular collection that intrigued and animated me. Although the photo holds no title, the studium is a little blond girl, probably around the age of three or four, wheeling a play carriage on the sidewalk by a brick wall. It’s a seemingly very ordinary and mundane photo. The punctum, for me at least, is the fact that this little innocent girl is wearing men’s shoes. Immediately upon seeing this photograph I was taken back to the days when I was younger and would walk around my house in my mom’s heels or my dad’s sneakers. There is probably even a picture of me wheeling a stroller whilst styling one of my parents’ shoes. Then, however, I remembered the time and place of Baker’s photo and I began to question: whose shoes are these?  Are they her father’s? Did she just find them on the street? Is she wearing them out of necessity or just to play? After my mind flooded with these questions I began to notice that certain parts of the photo didn’t exactly coincide with the circumstances of the picture. I became aware of just how well dressed this toddler is, and that intrigued me as well. I wouldn’t imagine a child living in a poverty filled neighborhood to wear clothes as well kept and perfect fitting as she was. Therein lies my second punctum, the way this enchanting child is dressed. This photo “gives me tiny jubilations,” in the words of Barthes, because of the similarity yet wide differences to my own childhood experiences as well as the ambiguity of the child’s situation because of the way she’s dressed. I believe this piece will captivate me forever, or at least until I get some answers on how this charming little girl seems to be living an ordinary life in the slums of England. Even then, her innocent look and the familiarity of her oversized shoes will keep me mesmerized.