10/6 Assignment-The Power of Photography

Photography is a form of art. Each time a photographer takes a picture, he/she has the ability to mold the image in his/her own perspective. It is not necessary for a historical photograph to simply document an event. In most cases the event or object that becomes the subject of the photograph is important to the photographer. The way the photographer takes the picture is also a reflection of his own views or feelings about the subject. It is not necessary for the photographer’s views to be expressed, sometimes the photographer takes a picture because he wants others to view it and interpret it. This is the case with the pictures of the Apartheid and the vandalism that occurred at memorials.

Also photographers take multiple pictures of the same subject. This is important because I feel that it really is very hard to interpret a single photo without looking at others taken of the same object. This is because I realized that in most cases photographers like to present a set of photos on a certain subject of interest. Each photo is part of a set and relates to each other and therefore it is hard to interpret only. This is seen to an extreme degree with the seemingly random Polaroid shots but yet when viewed as a set there is a certain pattern to the colors and patterns present in each of the photos even though each photo has no clear subject matter. To me, because photography can be presented in such a way, it becomes very similar to an painting or sculpturing where the different strokes, colors, and layout matters to the piece as whole.

Photography can be use to freeze movements and time similarly to the ways that painting and sculpturing can. Yet it can also be use to create movement or motion that painting and sculpturing can as well. We see this with the exhibit on moments of the highest stress, where the photo is taking right before an object or a person collapses because they are so unstable. This is very similar to the Greek Discus Thrower (Discobolus) and Bernini’s statue of David, which portrays him just at the moment the stone leaves his sling to hit Goliath in the head. Even though it is a frozen snapshot of a person throwing the discus or a stone,  it still, at the same time, gives a feeling of a great movement.