Photography in the past and present day...
Back in Lecture 6 of this module, we learnt about what photography is and how it is used in everyday living and how it effects our lives, and also how it is used in the industry of work and advertisement to promote ideas and products. Since the invention of photography through personal photography, to commercial photography, to press photography, the use of this media has in some aspects changed the way we view the world, a photograph taken can effect a single person or single handedly shock the hole world. An image can circulate around the web in seconds, and once an image is on the web, this can never be removed and sometimes causes many controvisy.
This photograph of a falling man from the 911 attack in America caused much upset and disturbance around the internet and effected the 911 witnesses or family members of which had victims die in the attack. "In the United States, people have taken pains to banish it from the record of September 11, 2001. The story behind it, though, and the search for the man pictured in it, are our most intimate connection to the horror of that day.(1)" - This quote taken from a article on-line which reviews the image and goes into great detail about the background of this photograph, shows how much pain this photographed caused to people, many wanted this photographed banished from the internet but because no photograph can ever be removed completely, this photograph still circulates the web.
This photograph which I have found on the internet has personally shocked me, these photographs show the viewer of how the Germans treated the Jews in the concentrations camps and caused much stir and disgust within the internet of the circulation of this image. It shows the viewer of the power and strength of the German leader Hitler and the capabilities which he was able to do to the Jews, showing a wide Social change for the jews who were taken into to poverty and starvation by Hitler and killed. This photograph is taken at 'Buchenwald Concentration Camp, Germany'. "Buchenwald was not, per se, an extermination camp (such as Auschwitz), but prisoners were starved, maltreated, and worked to death in the camp quarry and adjacent armaments factories.(2)" The concentration camp was used to starve, and kill the jews, not intentionally but was a way of making them work until they died, this photo and other shocking photographs from the Jews extermination ment that family members who had victims from the concentration camps killed from their family had to look at these shocking photographs and the photos were not removed from the internet.
“Photography involved in maintaining social class hierarchies through delineation, of for instance, prisoners or the poor, colonial travellers………. Political and ideological implications of using photography to define social types viewed as different or OTHER.(2)" Photography can become a big impact when different types of social classes are photographed, the varied amount of photographs which photographers take show an increasing amount of social difference and change within the world. The world is fast separating the divide between poverty, working class and middle/upper class and a photograph can relate to this. These two photographs represent the difference between the rich and poor scale, the cityscape to the right shows a rich town and a poor town becoming divided by one fence.
(2)John Tagg - http://www.studynet1.herts.ac.uk/crs/10/4MMF00010910.nsf/
The use of Image manipulation in the photographer world has been apparent and visual right from the earlier stages of photography when it was only just invented. It was used in commercial business back in the 20th centery,where photos were manipulated by commercial companies who specialised in taking photos for families, the companies at many times would take two or more photographs and manipulate them together to make a family which were not at the photo-shoot together seem as though that they were in fact together as one in the photo. In this photograph which is of the Dequilla family, photographed by the company A. Werner and Sons around about the 20th Century, the three people to the left of the photo appear to be floating in mid-air. This is because the commercial company took the portrait photograph of the single person on the right and then took the three other people from another photograph and stuck these three onto the portrait and re photographed the existing photo with the stuck on family members. This then made a full framed photograph of the Dequilla Family with Four people in the photo, which started out as only one person.
Image manipulation is still done to the present day and does cause some questionable problems and even being arrested, advertisement photos are manipulated to appeal to the audience more, some product companies manipulate their images so that the buyers would be more attracted to these products. An example of this, which is of an advert which caused a stir in UK for many people and also was banned in the UK by Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) . This advert was banned as it portrayed a false sense of what the effects of this product could achieve when appealed onto the face. Photo shop was used on this image or another photo editing software to alter the wrinkles and also the brownness and colour of the skin, most wrinkles were removed off the face of the model called twiggy from the original photo and the colour of her skin was also altered to remove her rosy cheeks and to give her an even light brown glow. Also, a vast amount of editing was made around the eyes to give the appearance that if you use this product; this is the after effect of what you can achieve.
The conclusion which i can give to this Blog and this lecture is to suggest that photography as a whole is a very important part of the lives and emotions of the world, Commercial photography needs to be used to promote products. Yet also now CCTV recordings are classed as photography, a lot of artists use this excuse of CCTV to record the public or take photos to represent how we live.
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