New Question: Aesthetic, Vernacular, and Visual Rhetoric

What’s the relationship between two influences—the vernacular and the aesthetic—and how we see today? What’s the relationship between these influences and visual rhetoric?

Two Clips: Decasia and Spiral Jetty

I.
An excerpt from Bill Morrison's eerie Decasia. Morrison edits together found footage of decaying and damaged film and, overlaid with a creepy soundtrack, creates a strange experience. Why is this so unnerving?

It seems to me that the disintegrating film brings our awareness of the materiality of the film to the forefront (and thus an increased awareness of mortality), reminding us even more of the distance of time, heightening that "shock of discontinuity." This seems to confirm for me again that the image content is not nearly as relevant as the material in which the image is formed and presented. I'm not quite sure what that would mean for Visual Rhetoric as a discipline, however...


II.
Sontag writes ". . .photographs have become so much the leading visual experience that we now have works of art which are produced in order to be photographed. In much of conceptual art, in Christo's packaging of the landscape, in the earthworks of Walter De Maria and Robert Smithson, the artist's work is known principally by the photographic report of it in galleries and museums; sometimes the size is such that it can only be known in a photograph (or from an airplane). The photograph is not, even ostensibly, meant to lead us back to an original experience"(147-148). Here is Robert Smithson's film on his (in)famous earth installation Spiral Jetty, a work that is somewhat difficult to access in person. Here, Smithson plays on the idea that the "true" experience of Spiral Jetty can only occur on site, and that the "closest" we will probably get to the work of art is through this film--with Smithson playing the role of a half-serious surrogate.

dw3844 (33 months ago) cool, cool, cool!

A snap-shop of the Current Context of Photographic Knowledge: The picture to the left was captured by "Rachel on holidays (sometimes)" on December 15, of 2007 at 2:15 in the afternoon. She uploaded it to her photostream two days later at 9:46 in the evening. This information is taken from the Exif data for the image. Flickr.com explains: "Exif data is a record of the settings a camera used to take a photo or video. This information is embedded into the files the camera saves, and we read and display it here." This image received seven comments. Similar to what we notice in the filtering of wikipedia, all of the commenters here are ranked "pro." These comments range from someone mistakenly thinking that Rachel had mispelled the type of beer that was mistakenly thought to be pictured, to someone thinking that she might was to get checked out for diabetes because Rachel has been drinking so many San Pellegrinos (commented on in the caption to the image), to someone commenting on how nice her "greens" are.

The image that I have included to the right of "Rachel on holidays (sometimes)" is the camera that she used to take this picture. New on Amazon, this camera costs $400.00. The graph below this image is recording "DMC-TZ1 Usage this Year." So, we see that its popularity on Flickr is dropping off.

1987-2010: The first camera I had was given to me by a neighbor. It was the flat kind that used 110 mm film and had those flash packs with 10 single-use bulbs that snapped on top. Today, I do not own a camera, per say, I have an iPhone with a camera app. Most of my pictures will never be printed.

__________

Question: Given the shifting materiality of the photograph, the shift in ratio between viewing and consuming, and the exponential increase of “noise in the channel” of the photographic, how would you reflect on your assertion that photographic knowledge can never be “ethical or political knowledge”?

Thoughts about this question:

While I’m not sure that this question by itself would be a good one to ask, I’ll trace how I arrived at it. As I say, on page 24 Sontag writes: “The limit of photographic knowledge of the world is that, while it can goad conscience, it can, finally, never be ethical or political knowledge.” It seems, however, that as she nears the end of the text she moves away from this assertion in some fairly substantial ways. While this was plausible in 1973 when most people did not have access to a camera and the process both in terms of materiality and process was much different, today, many more people have access to a technology that can produce, manipulate, and publish their images. For many this process either involves or culminates with the Internet either through a posting site, submission to a printer, or e-mailing relatives.

After discussing photography as a means of appropriation at the beginning of the book, Sontag returns to the topic of power and control towards the end. Here, she discusses “photographic recording” as a means of control. Advancing technologies have made “photography an incomparable tool for deciphering behavior, predicting it, and interfering with it.” In this, photography, like language, is a medium and not an art. These statistics from flickr affirm this: 6,071 images posted “in the last minute,” 558,832 things tagged with urban, and 4.6 million things geotagged this month. Here we are told very little about the content or artistic quality of these images, but lots about photography as a medium of both creation and, perhaps, circulation in the case of flickr.

It is in these later moments of On Photography that Sontag asserts photography’s potential for control “that could not even be dreamed of under the earlier system of recording information: writing.” Here, while we could say that the alphabet itself does not really carry ethical or political knowledge, written compositions (applications of a medium) certainly do. So, if writing is a medium and a system, can we move towards saying that photographic (a medium and a system as well, according to Sontag) knowledge is coming closer to ethical and political knowledge?

Given the above example from flickr, and the countless other examples that we could come up with, the ethical and political knowledge that accompanies a “photographic knowledge,” is perhaps a different way of knowing that is conveyed much differently than other “knowledges” that Sontag may be thinking of when she refers to “photographic knowledge.” When “photographic knowledge” moves from print-dependent to digital – the circulation, the meaning of the image, as well as the kind of knowledge that is produced may be changing. The “atomic reality” that she describes may still be atomic, but the channel is so full of noise that the distance between moments is shrinking as flows of images course through structures that support a digital “photograph knowledge” in the 21^st century, structures that no longer rely on the 110 mm film and flash bulbs of my little pink camera to produce the material that holds them up.

Photography at its best!

It is all about perspective! :)

A NYTimes Feature on Op Eds *and* Their Illustrations Over the Last 40 Years

Pretty interesting to see how the illustrations have/have not changed.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/09/25/opinion/opedat40.html

Questions for Sontag

Given the changes in the technology of the camera between the time of Sontag’s writing and now, what are the questions you would pose for Sontag today? Why are these questions important, and what do they tell us about visual rhetoric?

NY Times. Perspective, Visual

In today's issue of the Times, there is an article looking at visual representations (think bird's eye views) of suburban sprawl. Worth taking a look:

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2010/09/16/opinion/20100916_gielen-12.html

Chris Marker and Images

Since Sontag mentions the filmmaker Chris Marker, I thought that this would be a good excuse to share his fantastic work. I'm most familiar with his film Sans Soleil--a fascinating rumination about the relationship between images and memory that takes the form of a fictional travelogue. The question of how images are strung together to form a narrative (especially how our images of other cultures help us formulate larger cultural narratives) is central to this film. Marker particularly plays with the dissonance between what is seen (what we construct) and what really is ("reality"--which may not be accessible, especially across cultures). Enjoy:

This is a Hoot

Reverend Luke Murphy appropriates corporate visual rhetoric to explore abstract concepts like fear and shame....it's too funny not to share

http://therecord.blogs.com/withinearshot/2009/02/the-pooptoshame-ratio-and-other-highlights-of-the-best-lecture-ever.html

significance of existence

Image 1

I chose the image of this young man, because it was posted in the Tallahassee Democrat online and received several comments.

Some of the commentors identified the background color as the background for jail photos and therefore, this person's story became affected and the focus of it--the life of this individual--was rendered insignificant by some. It affected the senses of the posters taking their eyes away from the heading Endangered & Missing Tallahassee Man.

In reality the background is similar to that of an FSU student who would go Image 2. missing a year and a half later--and to hundreds of thousands of Floridians who possess a driver's license.

Image 1 is simply a picture of my brother getting a driver's license. A responsible act of a citizen wishing to participate in lawfully in an act that is statutorily controlled. Looking at the background of the picture from this standpoint, questions about his deviance, raised by several commentors on Tallahassee.com and wctv.tv may have been different. However, perhaps not.

Berger states that the for him photography is "foremost a means of expression" that "tells nothing of the significance of existence" but presents us with dual messages wherein a photos of strangers are held to the first which is a message concerning the event photographed. Berger's discussion on page 87 asks readers to imagine losing a loved one to disappearance. He goes on to illustrate the meaning attached to knowledge of subject and the meaning one invents from a subject unfamiliar to them. "What the photograph shows goes with any story one chooses to invent", he says before calling attention to the broader variables at play within a photograph and includes the "thereness of the world". The background color of the pictures in my post tie them to a known thing that a few readers could identify. Through the medium of color, questions were raised and meaning was assigned, then shared and discussed.

Without a story, Berger continues, there is no meaning. Therefore, the very raising of the question of the location from which the picture was taken led to investigation into this person's background which, did reveal he had broken the law in the past. What then do the words begin to mean when the images lead to a different set of questions--instead of where is this person? discussion focused on what has this person done to get themselves in this situation?

How do our connections to color and environment affect a reader's ability to focus on the headings or the author's suggestion of the focus?

How does this affect interest and urgency in the story or it's call to action? While the skin color of the individuals in the photos can be included in this discussion it is for me, a secondary (though integral!) issue within this post. Because here, the meaning associated with the background overshadows what seems to be most clearly in focus. Looking at Berger's photographic choices and lableing of "peasants" while pulling in what he attributes to be its primary raw materials: Light and time--the dark shawdowy pictures of especially the children give treatment to the meaning I associated with the plight of the individuals shown here.

Number of the Beast

I know this is late, but I posted to the wrong part of the blog last week and had trouble uploading my pic. This is a copy of my post, with image intact (yay!). Before my trouble posting, I had hard time choosing an image to post. I was debating between several different artists I like, but Larkin's post kind of cracked me up. It reminded me of the Iron Maiden album Powerslave, with all the Egyptian iconography. For this assignment, I ended up going with Number of the Beast, which I like a little better than Powerslave, both visually and rhetorically.

I am currently reading Jeff Chang's 2005 book on the history of hip-hop, Can't Stop, Won't Stop, for an art history class on the impact of hip-hop culture on contemporary art. Chang talks about the interplay of graffiti, fashion, dance, film, and music creating a rich, multisensory, public image of hip-hop culture. This gave me a conceptual framework for thinking about the visual rhetoric of 80s heavy metal in general and Iron Maiden in particular.

I mainly like the Number of the Beast cover because it’s like the ultimate “fuck you” to suburban parents and the entire White, middle-class, conformist, Christian establishment. Eddie, the skeletal demon and Maiden mascot, towers over Satan in a stance that both threatens (parents and other conservatives) and beckons (teenaged metal-heads). But then, have any of you listened to this album (or any classic Iron Maiden) recently? I was in Decent Pizza a few weeks ago and heard the entire Piece of Mind album by Iron Maiden and was really surprised at how tame, and even pretty, it sounded. The music is melodic and sophisticated, and the lyrics are literary and smart. The music it isn’t even remotely as scary as Maiden’s album covers would have us believe. So my questions about the Number of the Beast album cover are: Does the disparity between the aesthetics of the music and the image of the band conveyed by the album cover result from my contemporary listening context (25 years later)? Or did it always exist to a certain extent? If the latter (which to me seems more interesting to think about) what does that say about the 80s metal fan and about Iron Maiden?

Quotes!

Looking forward to your quotes . . . .

fishes

I have to admit that I wrestled with selecting an image for this assignment...probably because I was conflating our “Document the Decade” assignment with this one. However, that being said, I selected a “nature” picture. I think this image is interesting for several reasons. Depending on a person's knowledge of fish breeding habits, this might appear, at first glance, to be a mouth brooder with a “boomerang child;” however, fish aren't that forgiving and there is no returning to Mom's. A closer look might reveal the difference in the facial structures of the fish suggesting that they are different species. Likewise the fingerling's position in the Pike's mouth, gullet actually, also suggests something different is happening here. As a fisherman, this picture reminds of a time I was ice fishing with my father, grandfather, brother and assorted cousins and friends...after all, ice fishing is a social event as much as a sport. In one of the most amazing hunting or fishing events I've witnessed, I caught a 14” pickerel with a 7” perch in its belly. The perch's tail was still visible is the pickerel's mouth and I caught it using a 3-4” shiner (a bait fish)! FYI -- Pickerel are members of the Pike family, freshwater eating machines, think barracuda or piranha.

This picture was taken at an aquarium in Alaska during an effort by the Alaska Fish & Wildlife Division to eradicate illegally introduced Northern Pike from Salmon and Trout streams which makes the image interesting on several levels. First, in one sense it was a “staged” event. The pike and fingerling trout were placed in the aquarium together. However, then nature needed to take over and when it did, I'm reasonably sure that this image wasn't the intended outcome. In spite of this, the picture does illustrate the dangers of introducing wildlife in areas where the species isn't native. At the same time, I see metaphors for Empire and Capitalism lurking just beneath the surface. The pike is heading towards the viewer with its mouth semi-open. The pike is also apparently a youth fish because its teeth aren't fully developed. In fact, the teeth are 2 nub on the roof of the pike's mouth giving the fish a somewhat vampiresque appearance. At the same time, the fingerling trout has a sort of frown-like facial expression/appearance...an “Oh No! Save me Mr. Bill!” moment.

So I wonder who the audience for this display is...clearly, the trout and salmon fishermen aren't going to be introducing pike into their favorite salmon and trout fishing holes. But if the salmon and trout stock are depleted, I can picture the average joe/josephine dropping a fish or tow into a “barren” river or stream so that s/he can have a little action when they go fishing.

The irony of the Alaskan Fish and Wildlife Division launching a campaign to remove the pike from areas where it isn't native mirrors the Europeans' attempts to remove the indigenous people from the their (the indigenous people) homelands because the white men wanted the property isn't lost on me either. The raptorious nature of the Northern Pike reenacts the Europeans' swarming invasion of the New World. Likewise, images of capitalism can be drawn, the larger corporation swallowing the smaller one whole...

I think it's fantastic that a staged PR photo shoot resulted in an image that captures much more than a wildlife campaign, a save the Salmon and Trout drive...what color ribbons are we supposed to wear?

Emperor and Horus

I guess people just decided to post these on the main page, so I guess I'll follow the crowd. Don't want to make waves after all...

I chose an image that overlaps my own research. I write a great deal about cultural convergence in video games and this image is an important one for the narrative of Warhammer 40,000 which really interests me. The image represents the turning point in the internal universe of this particular story: a point at which the tragic villain betrays Goodness and irrevocably changes the course of the narrative(s). If this were a scene from Paradise Lost (and it can be thought of that way since Warhammer 40K is a clear remediation of Milton), this would be the scene in which Satan betrays God and is soon to be cast from Heaven.

I also like the picture because it's visually elaborate and baroque, overflowing with detail in the particular visual style cultivated by the publishers. It gives the eye a great deal to focus on even though the overall composition of the painting - the lines and positioning of figures - clearly guides the eye along a particular trajectory from the lower right to the upper left, establishing the narrative of the piece. The Emperor of Man (on the right) is confronting his first son, Horus (on the left) and their placement causes the gaze to follow from the Emperor to Horus across the big red eye in the middle (which, as per the story, symbolizes the moral and spiritual decay that stands figuratively and literally in this case between the two figures).

I have a couple problems with the image though, mostly because it troubles the morality tale being told. Horus is clearly higher and perhaps even taller than the Emperor, putting him at a rhetorical advantage where the Emperor ought to occupy the "high ground". This positioning also puts the Emperor as confronting Horus, stability confronting chaos - God confronting Satan - instead of the other way around. The over-eviling of Horus is also a problem for me (he's obviously the evil one, dark and covered in blood and decapitated heads), and for me this stylistic choice erases the tragedy of the narrative. Horus - and Milton's Satan - are compelling because their stories are partly tragic, and I don't see Milton's Satan as bright red and carrying a pitchfork any more than Horus ought to be bedecked in the trophies of his victims.

Those critiques notwithstanding, my preferences aren't set in stone. The moral and rhetorical ambiguity that the positioning of the figures lends them can be interpreted as following the story. For Milton, God's place is somewhat troubled and we are invited to entertain the logic of Satan's position. For Warhammer, the Emperor is even more ambiguous and distant than Milton's God - the Emperor occupies a troubled space between mortal and god - and there is always a question of his intentions, methods, and morality. The Emperor is "goodness" and "justice" are less clear than God's, so the image here implies that troubling.

The thing about this whole post, though, is that the image is and must be intertextual. It's part of a Convergence of media - video game, book, and painting - and requires interpretation in that respect. Only as a piece of Convergence Culture does the piece have useful narrative context.

Trang Bang, 1972

The girl is Phan Thi Kim Phuc. We all “know” her. Which I find amazing since I’ve never actually met her and this photo was taken about 10 years before I was even born. Yet, somehow, I know this little girl. Odd, no? This is why I like this photo; iconic images in general are incredibly interesting to me. More importantly, they raise some interesting questions, ones that piggy-back off of Berger.

Do photos need narratives (that provide contexts)? What would have happened if this photo was released without a caption or explanation? What if we did not know the war it came from; the girl’s name; the village; the year; what the cloud was behind her; why she looks in pain; whether she is safe after this is taken? This photo was cemented in American consciousness in 1972, and it continues to remain a (Pulitzer Prize winning) image of war. Would it have achieved that type of status without the narrative that was attached to it from the beginning? Furthermore, Berger talks about our tendency to create narrative when we are not given them. What happens when a 13 year old sees this photo, lacks the historical context, and perhaps sees it as a child in the Middle East at war? Does that change the photo? Does it essentially have the same message/meaning? Has the author, as Berger says, “chosen an instant which will persuade the public viewer to lend it an appropriate past and future?” Does it need to be about Vietnam and Phan Thi Kim Phuc for it to achieve its purpose? I think this is a perfect example of the notion that photos can provide “irrefutable evidence” but are weak in meaning. The power of this image is simply that it happened, this irrefutably happened to those children. Is the images power arrested to the Vietnam war specifically or not?

This iconic image also makes me question whether this is one of Berger’s “for ever” moments—one that exists across history, outside of time. We all have those images in our personal lives, as he notes, but aren’t iconic images proof of the social subjectivism he says is hard to find in our culture? Isn’t this a moment frozen in time, one that extends across history, and means is meaningful for large groups of people? Is that not a socially subjective “for ever” moment?

Finally, I cannot help but think about the photographer in this image. Huynh Cong Ut, or Nick, won a Pulitzer for this image. But, even as Berger says, aren’t there times when a person puts down his/her camera? Nick’s first reaction to seeing the pain of these children was to take a picture? That baffles me…. The narrative fills in the blanks, Nick poured water on Phan Thi Kim Phuc after this picture and took her to a nearby hospital where she spent 14 months recuperating from the burns. Her brother, also in the photo, also recovered but lost one of his eyes. As Hill and Helmers stress, the (mass) dissemination and (outraged) reception of this photo helped push for war reform in Vietnam; however, in the moment Nick could not have known that, all he knew was that these children were in extreme pain and he chose his camera lens first. I cannot reconcile which is more inhuman: the napalm or the fact that this image was taken.

Smooth Criminal?

This image is the work of famous (or perhaps infamous) graffiti artist Banksy. I enjoy Banksy’s work in general (I have his 2005 compilation Wall and Piece and my desktop wallpaper for over the past year has been one Banksy piece or another), but the Banksy I’ve posted here is the first one I ever saw. As such, this piece was not only my first exposure to Banksy but also the major impetus in my continual interest in his work.

My affinity for Banksy stems primarily from his unique style—no small feat for someone who works in a medium known for its uniqueness. His work certainly embodies many of the elements associated with standard graffiti art, but he’s also, as anyone who likes his work can attest, distinct. The poignant social and political commentary inherent in his work as well as the way he utilizes stencils (more on that later) and the space in which he creates his work set him apart from most of his contemporaries.

Perhaps most interesting about Banksy, however, is Banksy—the enigmatic persona, not the actual artist behind the pseudonym. At this point, Banksy’s work is so well known and received that a good number of people would be honored if he were to use their structure (house, building, etc.) for his work. But Banksy would never do that: part of his appeal is the very persona his art works to construct. He embraces fully the graffiti artist as outlaw mentality; as evinced in the Banksy I’ve posted, that mentality is often the inspiration behind his work. The maid in this piece is symbolic of those opposed to graffiti, the ones trying to hide it from the masses. Banksy is thus subverting the “graffiti equals criminality” argument through graffiti; he uses the medium to lampoon those opposed to the medium.

What’s perhaps more impressive is the lengths he’s gone to secure and maintain his persona. In order to conceal his identity and work amongst the shadows (heh: that makes him sound like Batman), he’s adopted stenciling; that is, he creates his stencils ahead of time so that the actual “painting” portion of his work is highly efficient, allowing him to create large pieces in a short amount of time. In a Bitzerian sense, it’s an extraordinary adaptation to the constraints in the rhetorical situation that constitutes his work.

Now: some questions. First, how much of a role does his persona—that is, his status and reputation as a graffiti artist—play in the way his audience understands and perceives his work? I brought up a similar point with the Lange photo: in other words, if we see a Banksy piece and are privy to Banksy the artist, then we most likely come to see his work through a different lens than if, say, we randomly stumbled upon his work and were oblivious to his prior work. In saying that, I’m not simply trying to claim that context matters—it obviously does. Rather, how much of a role does context play when the visual artifact is well known? I’m willing to buy the argument that we construct the context and thus the way we interpret and understand visuals we encounter for the first time, particularly visuals with no major cultural traction. However, doesn’t the context generated by fame, because it is so pervasive, trump our individual contexts?

Secondly, what role does the audience play in a Banksy piece? Or here’s another way of looking at it: is there an intended audience for his work? The perpetually public status of graffiti necessitates that he cannot control who sees his work. Does this limit him in any way or is this something he uses to his advantage?

Lastly, what is the extent to which location influences his work? I’ve never seen an actual Bansky piece, just pictures of his work. These two—the original and a picture of the original—engender a different viewing experience. That doesn’t mean I can’t still appreciate Banksy’s work through a removed viewing of it; rather, the viewing is just different. My question, then, is to what extent is it different? Moreover, with the original, where does the visual artifact end? Is it the stenciled image, the building as a whole, the block that contains the building? There’s also a context contained in the location that one isn’t privy to when looking at a still photo of the art; how much does that matter?

My Oma and Opa

I think that it is interesting that there aren’t more personal photographs posted; I see now that there are a couple, but it is still surprising. I wonder if this is because others might think about “image” the same way I do? For some strange reason, I seemed to have dis-associated the word “image” from “photograph” --strange because they should be synonymous (wait--should they?). But I wonder if “image” represents something more formal (somehow different) whereas the home photograph, of course, is a vernacular image. Do they operate differently? If so, how? If they do operate differently, do we require different grammars for these different types?

Anyway, the image I chose is a photograph of my grandparents. I like it for many reasons: it is a photo of two people who were an important part of my early life and so, of course, it has sentimental value; it is a bit of a curiosity because it shows my grandparents as young people (my guess is that they are about my age in this photo, perhaps a bit younger) and also because it shows me a past that is relevant to me but didn’t involve me (my odd experience with this photo is much like Jennn’s—a photograph of people I know/but don’t know).

My experience of this photo is strange; there seems to be, like Hill and Helmers suggest, different levels of time at work in my viewing but they are hard to articulate. It seems that a photograph like this represents a diachronical viewing since it is “an image that represents the past and was created in the past” but, beyond this, I’m not sure about the connections between personal/vernacular photos and time. Hill and Helmers’ example is a photograph operating on a national scale that lends itself well to the idea of synchronic and diachronic time, but I wonder if individual photographs operate in the same way. My experience seems to also involve a moving forward of time much like Berger suggests—from the past of this photo to its future (my present). Since I know the future of the people in this photograph, my time with it seems to move forward rather than back (as is the case with the Ground Zero Spirit photo). Berger says that a photograph “preserves a moment of time and prevents it being effaced by the supersession of further moments” (89). For Berger the photograph is separated from “continuous experience”—yet, in some way, this photograph is embedded in a personal experience that continues to have meaning (it is a story of my family after all) and relevance (because of this story I was born and was able to attend FSU and take Visual Rhetoric with Dr. Yancey.)

On top of all of this, the photo is something else: a puzzle much like Berger’s mysterious photograph of a man and a horse. This photo was discovered among my grandmother’s possessions following her death and, at that time, there was no one to corroborate the story “behind” the photograph—no date, no location, no identity of the photographer, nothing. So the story behind the image is pure speculation. However, with a bit of research, I’m pretty confident that the river behind them is the East River in New York since the bridge seems to be Hellgate Bridge. I also might be able to date the photograph within a few years: since they might be standing where the Robert F. Kennedy bridge now crosses the river, and since construction of it was begun in 1929, I can guess that this was taken in the mid-1920's. Again, speculation: meaning is half-present, partially discontinuous.

Koyaanisqatsi nuclear beach

This image is from Koyaanisqatsi, a 1982 film directed by Godfrey Reggio with cinematography by Ron Fricke. (The score is by Philip Glass, which was very prominent in the film, but not so much a part of visual rhetoric. Although the music definitely affected the visuals in the original production/context.)

John Berger writes, “[p]hotographs do not translate from appearances. They quote from them” (96). Regarding an image from a film, the photograph is still a quote, but of a specific kind of appearance—an appearance that was already tailored by an artist at least once. A new third party decides exactly which moment of a larger piece of visual rhetoric should be emphasized or paused upon. The scene that this image is taken from begins with an image of a crowd of sunbathers. Then the cameras sweep upward to reveal the nuclear power plant that looms over the beach.

I like this specific image out of this scene because of its composition, which I think can stand alone well. The sunbathers lay at the bottom of the frame, prominent because they are in the foreground, and dressed brightly, but also easy for the eyes to move away from, because they are reclining, seemingly docile. The two figures in the middle of the frame appear as tiny figures without recognizable identities, and also submissive in their crouching positions. The hill that stretches through the mid right quadrant of the frame introduces nature as an entity unto itself (which the beach can’t do because of the people on it, and the sky can’t do because of the wires across it). The nuclear reactor draws a viewer’s attention because of its large size in the frame, and also because it is what turns the standard image of a beach vacation into an image that seems to hold a specific message.

I say that the image seems to hold a specific message, but Berger reminds me that messages through image are ambiguous. I read this image as negative commentary on the scars human technology puts on the world—I read it that way, but I view the image in the context of Koyaanisqatsi, a title that means “life out of balance.” This image could in another context, be presented along with factual information about how little impact a nuclear power plant has on the surrounding environment.

I chose to discuss the image because it complements my question about music’s place in visual rhetoric. Obviously speaking, it doesn’t have one. But in a film like Koyaanisqatsi, or in family slideshows, or other visual rhetoric that has no language but visuals (a half-language, according to Berger) and music (maybe a language?), how much might music act as captions to the images, and can the discussion of such caption be as relevant rhetorically of that as written text captions?

Patricia Whitaker

I adore this image. Isn't it sassy? It's my grandmother. This is actually a reproduction of the original print my mom found in a box after my grandmother passed away. After seeing this photo, I knew I wanted to frame it and display it in my room. (It's currently on a bookcase in my bedroom.) My mother refused to part with the photo, so I had to make a copy of it. After being rejected at Walgreens for copyright legalities, I attempted to persuade the photo department manager at Wal-Mart. Nope. She wasn't having it either, but after some pitiful begging, she consented and permitted me to make a copy. Yes, I'm a criminal.

I don't have too much of a context for this photo. I don't know when it was taken or for what purpose. And I think that's why I'm so drawn to this photo--it's ambiguity. Allegedly, this photo was taken by a professional photographer unbeknownst to my grandmother's father, who would have--according to my mother--disapproved. I like this image for two reasons:

1. This image represents my grandmother when she was not my grandmother. I did not know this person, which is an odd idea for me to fully understand.


2. This actual image is a picture I took w/ my iPhone of an illegal copy of an original photograph that I'm now posting to a blog.

I think the connections here between media, circulation, and copyright are intriguing. As Helmers and Hill note in their introduction to Defining Visual Rhetorics, a picture's meaning depends on its dissemination and reception. This photo, like all others, depends on the context of its dissemination and reception in order to understand its meaning. So, in this context, what is its meaning for me? What is its meaning for you?

Hands

This image first caught my eye a few years ago. I like it. I notice the way the hands stand out, are isolated from the subject’s body, are celebrated in an unexpected way. The beauty that Alfred Stieglitz draws our attention to is neither glitzy nor glamorous. He challenges our sense of beauty: what beauty is and where beauty comes from. Seeming to at once claw at and grapple with themselves, these hands are engaged in struggle and creation. They are the hands of Georgia O’Keefe.
Alfred Stieglitz took hundreds of portraits of O’Keefe. In doing a little background hunting on this image, I read that he considered each image of her hands to be a portrait in itself. Her identity, he thought, couldn’t be captured by any single image. For Stieglitz, a photograph did not halt the ever-changing world. Rather, it merely interrupted it. This image of O’Keefe’s hands is also an interruption. While time is stopped in the image, she exists beyond it – in other capacities and in other portraits of her. In these moments of interruption we see his feelings towards the subject rather than any objective truth about O’Keefe.
In Hands there seems to be little pretense of context. If Stieglitz is persuading in this image, which I’m not entirely sure he is, his persuasion is couched in his celebration of the explicit ambiguity of the image he has captured. He acknowledges the discontinuity from which the meaning of the image emerges -- two hands floating, detached from the human form. Here, authenticity is perhaps beside the point. Perhaps, all that is authentic is the viewer’s response to the image, an image that is celebrating more than just some hands – some nice hands that we can appreciate whether or not we know that they belong to Georgia O’Keefe. What is most authentic is perhaps the meaning that the viewer brings to the gap between certainty and uncertainty, known and unknown that is created by this interruption: the tortured and grasping hands of a creator.
Is this image rhetorical? Are we being persuaded of something? Is this image responding to or conspiring with the rise of positivism and the dying social function of subjectivity that Berger observes in Another Way of Telling? How is the rhetoricity of this image different than the rhetoricity of an image of mass-consumption such as Ground Zero Spirit?

Child Like Wonder

          This photo encompasses the child like wonder of the boy who is riding the bicycle, and also embodies the themes of balance and adventure.  The boy and the bicycle is clearly where the action of the photo is taking place. The height of the bicycle which places the boy above all the other people, and the pointing of the on lookers make it clear that this is where the action is taking place.  Also, the photographer, one of the pedestrians on this dirt pathway, has clearly either taken the photo using a fish eye lens on a Holga camera or enhanced the photo by giving the edges a blurry circular boarder. This forces the center of the photo to be the clearest point, or the action point.  
                One question that was aroused from the photo is about the color options. The sepia coloring makes this photo feel like it came out of an old collection of personal photographs, dating back to the 70s. However upon deeper inspection of clothing style, only one person, the only visible woman is dressed in modern 70’s style clothing.  
                Another question that comes up is that even though the bike takes the action away from the rest of the photo, it is clear that the location of the photo is at a fair ground or an event that is constantly moving. I question, if photo was staged. I find it extremely interesting that there is three groups of people: The guy by himself who looks to be in a hurry; the couple holding hands and walking but not in a hurry; and the group of three guys standing still enjoying their beverages and company.  Do these groups of people give commentary to the way society looks at people? When you are by yourself you rush to get to the next point in life. When you are with someone you are walking the journey together. When in a group, you feel content to be where life has taken you. Yet, how does this connect to the bicycle? Maybe this photo is about perspectives. The boy has a completely different perspective than that of the other people.
                This photo was actually taken by a good friend of mine at the March 2010 Harvest of Hope Music Festival. The boy on the bike is also a good friend of mine. 

Missiles and Forgeries

I like this image from the New York Times Online because (a) it is a refutation of a digitally altered image that was published in major news outlets (e.g., the front page of the Chicago Tribune) across the world as a true record of an Iranian long-range missile test, which after all is a very serious matter indeed; (b) it highlights what sections of the image have been duplicated from other sections for the reader with an untrained eye; (c) it raises L.H. Oswald-on-the-cover-of-Life-type questions about the integrity and ‘honesty’ of all AP-grade images that purport to tell us the whole truth and nothing but, etc.; and (d) it draws attention to the fact that even if an image isn’t altered, just whose truth it tells and for what purposes are matters that ultimately remain unsettled.

The biggest questions this particular image raises for me are who photoshopped it and for what reason? What does an image of four rockets being fired accomplish that an image of three rockets does not? According to the New York Times, the Agence France-Presse reported that the fourth rocket “has apparently been added in digital retouch to cover a grounded missile that may have failed during the test.” But how are we, the news-reading public, knowing that newspapers worldwide were apparently fooled by the 4-missile image, supposed to believe that the ‘original’ 3-missile image has not itself been altered to include the failed fourth missile launcher? CONSPIRACY THEORY ALERT! Could this whole charade be part of a western-media propaganda initiative intended to debunk (or insinuate the incompetence of) the Iranian military (although three out of four ain’t bad) and its own propagandist counterpart (because what dingus would realistically think that they could pass off as genuine an image whose parts were so obviously copied and pasted to Major Journalistic Outlets and have them publi– oh wait…)?

Here is the purported original:
And here's the one that almost made the presses but was cut at the last minute for reasons yet undetermined:

Project 365

Have you all seen this?

http://content.photojojo.com/tutorials/project-365-take-a-photo-a-day/

Questions re Images for Sept 6

Please choose an image you like (and upload it); share it here; explain why you like it; and identify questions that the image-as-text raises for you. Also, be sure to respond to at least two posts.