• When is it not OK to take a photograph? • Should you always seek the permission of your subjects before taking their photograph? • Does it make a difference whether or not you have a personal relationship with the subject of a photograph? • Can photographs hurt people? • Is all photography a form of voyeurism? • How responsible is the photographer for the way in which a subject is represented?
She takes what Abigail Solomon-Godeau would. Solomon-Godeau’s 1994 essay, ‘Inside/out’ can be. Jul 31, 2017 Reflection Reflection on the outcome of the assignment and the planning and research as they contributed to the outcome. Contextualisation I have aimed to.
• How much control can the photographer exercise over the ways in which their images are understood by viewers? • Can photographs tell the truth? In her famous essay ' (published in 1994 in an exhibition catalogue entitled' by SFMOMA), the writer Abigail Solomon-Godeau discusses what she refers to as the inside/outside positions of photographers in relation to their subjects.
She refers to Susan Sontag's book ', in particular the writer's criticism of the photographs of who typifies, for her, an outsider perspective which leads to an unsympathetic, objectifying, voyeuristic attitude to those photographed. Sontag sees this as evidence of photography's colonisation of the world, the photographer as 'supertourist', fascinated by the weird and wonderful. Take this image by Diane Arbus, for example.
Mtv Splitsvilla 4 Theme Song By Agnee Free Download here. Ask yourself the following questions: • What has attracted the photographer to this particular subject? • How has the relationship between son and parents been presented by the photographer?
• How do you feel when looking at this image? Susan Sontag argued that certain forms of photographic depiction were especially complicit with processes of objectification that precluded either empathy or identification [.] Arbus was indicted as a voyeuristic and deeply morbid connoisseur of the horrible. -- Abigail Solomon-Godeau. However, Solomon-Godeau goes on to question this binaristic view which she sees as underpinning much of the debate about the ethics or politics of photography.
In order to show how the situation might be more complicated she wonders about the relationship between photography and truth. On the one hand, we frequently assume authenticity and truth to be located on the inside (the truth of the subject), and, at the same time, we routinely - culturally - locate and define objectivity (as in repertorial, journalistic or juridical objectivity) in conditions of exteriority, of noncomplication.
-- Abigail Solomon-Godeau. Furthermore, if photographs are the capturing of surface appearances, how does one judge whether or not a particular photograph represents an insider's or outsider's viewpoint? Where does the difference between inside and outside lie?
Is it possible to see a photographer's stance (in relation to his or her subject) evidenced in the photographs s/he makes? In order to further debate the issue she explores the work of several photographers/artists represented in the SFMOMA exhibition. Here are some examples for you to consider. And Larry Clark represent for Solomon-Godeau the 'confessional mode' of lived experience and privileged knowledge in which the photographer has a personal stake in the representation of their subjects, sometimes even appearing in the images themselves. Their work is compared to that of Diane Arbus in the sense that its subjects are drawn from the margins of society. Consequently, some of the same issues are at stake. To what extent are the subjects a spectacle for the viewer.
She quotes Goldin on the subject of voyeursim who claims that, rather than the photographer being the last one invited to the party, 'I'm not crashing; this is my party. This is my family, my history.'
However, regardless of the intimate relationship between photographer and subject, how can the photographer control the reception of these images by the viewer? Raises some similar issues. Much has been made of Clark's privileged insider position. His photographs of juvenile delinquents document his own gang, the young people he hung out with. The photographer is one of them, so to speak. However: The desire for transparency, immediacy, the wish that the viewer might see the other with the photographer's own eyes, is inevitably frustrated by the very mechanisms of the camera, which, despite the best intentions of the photographer, cannot penetrate beyond that which is simply, stupidly there. -- Abigail Solomon-Godeau.
Is there a way for photographs to escape the binary of inside/outside? Is it possible for photographs to represent 'a truth of appearance'? Is the 'truth' always to be found behind surface appearances? What are the limits to photographic seeing? Cp750 Setup Software.
Solomon-Godeau's final sentence offers a mysterious suggestion: It may well be that the nature that speaks to our eyes can be plotted neither on the side of inside or outside but in some liminal and as yet unplotted space between perception and cognition, projection and identification. • Look through a selection of your own images. Try to decide whether they tend to be views from the inside or the outside. How can you tell? What does seeing them in these terms do to the photographs and your understanding of your own practice? • Attempt to take a series of photographs of a particular subject having decided before you start whether you intend to adopt an insider or outsider perspective.
Look carefully at the resulting images. Were you successful? What strategies did you use in either case?
Show your pictures to another viewer. Are they able to tell? • Attempt to take a portrait of someone you know well. Try to make the portrait communicate some truth about this person.
Describe carefully your photographic decisions and the outcome, making sure you incorporate the views of the sitter. • Take a series of photographs about an aspect of your culture (your local community, your friends, the place where you live etc.) without including any people.
Carefully consider the use of accompanying text - titles, captions etc. • Create an entirely staged photograph about something you have noticed in reality - something you have seen and remembered, an issue you care about, a feeling you have etc.
It is important that you have complete control over the resulting photograph, the people, their poses, the backdrop/set, the props etc.
The Abigail Solomon-Godeau Essay Inside/Outside Solomon-Godeau in Inside/Outside ( i ) puts forward the argument that that Susan Sontag and Martha Rosler ( ii ) are being simplistic when they categorise photographers into “good” insiders or “bad” outsiders, labelling outsiders as voyeurs and insiders as subjective and confessional. Sontag and Rosler’s perspective could be summarised as the photographer as an outsider is a tourist who commits an act of violence towards, and steals something from, their subjects. She goes on to look at the work of a number of “insiders” including Nan Goldin and Larry Clark who in different ways photographed people with whom they were intimately linked. She asks whether the fact that they are, or are portrayed as, insiders removes the notion of voyeurism or whether they still risk only portraying the exterior of their subjects as opposed to revealing an “interior truth”. Charlotte Cotton (2) points towards many other photographers who are cast in a similar mould including, Richard Billingham, Nobuyoshi Araki, and Annelies Strba. Outsider documentary photographers are obviously far more numerous but Diane Arbus is one of the more interesting artists to consider in this context as her subject matter has some cross over with Nan Goldin. Arbus’ work is admired and criticised in equal measure, but Sontag, who accused Arbus of of nihilism ( iii ) is quoted by Gerry Badger (8) as saying that “her view is always from the outside” and according to John A.
Benigno (7) “more that any other photographer before and after, she forces us to question the morality of photography.” Richard Billingham Ray’s a Laugh I reviewed Richard Billngham’s Ray’s a Laugh (4) as part of TAoP, and tried to understand his motives when he captured the images of his chronically alcoholic father and how he retrospectively viewed these photographs. It is relevant to note that he never set out to publish intimate photographs of his family. Billingham took these pictures as a way of studying gesture in the context of his fine art degree, and now believes that few people get beyond the obvious subject matter and identity or understand his intent. Unknowingly I addressed the subject of insider / outsider as part of my review: “If the photographer had been from outside the family they might be perceived as being opportunistic, a voyeur, exploitive and merely creating drama from misery, and perhaps the publisher was guilty of these things. But, of all the challenging issues this work raises I find this the easiest to reconcile.
There is a detached affection in these photos which are the work of a young man whose interest in nature and ambitions to be an artist appear at odds with his environment. I believe he uses his camera and sketch pad as his way of looking at and understanding a family that appear to be sliding down a slippery slope that he has stepped off or avoided ever being on. He may not be rejecting his family but his work has provided him with a screen through which to observe them, a way to translate them into something that he can understand and even use as part of the foundation of his work. ( iv )” The relevant point here is that Billingham, although an insider, was not attempting to help us see inside his subjects, in fact quite the opposite, he was very specifically capturing their exterior. The art world has read many meanings into his work that were never intended to be there.
Nan Goldin Cotton explains that also Goldin was, at first, not taking photographs with the intent to publish them. Goldin says “. photography saved my life. Every time I go through something scary, traumatic, I survive by taking pictures.” (3) Her photographs are a diary of her friends, their lives, her life and a way of holding on to people, confirming their presence and, in her words, “about keeping a record of the lives I lost, so they cannot be completely obliterated from memory.” (3) Over time they became an exploration of sexuality, gender, addiction, violence, relationships and dependencies but this was not her initial intent.
Goldin’s photographic journey began in the 1970’s when she was introduced to the Boston drag scene. The subjects of transsexuality, subcultures and the people that lived on the fringes of society would all become major themes of her work. In the late 70s she moved to New York and immersed herself in the nocturnal world of punk-rock, a world of shared apartments and an endless round of parties, drugs, alcohol and sex.
The Ballard of Sexual Dependency (11), her major work that came out of this time, is the archetypical insider documentary. An intimate diary of, what she called her tribe, of friends, family, lovers and their intertwined relationships with her. She describes the photographs as “stark”, “all flash-lit. “I honestly didn’t know about natural light them and how it affected the colour of the skin because I never went out in daylight “(9).
The work was presented as slide shows, projected onto the walls of Tin Pan Alley, a NYC club, and not published as a book until 1986. Gerry Badger (8) believes that the layout of the book – women alone and together, men alone and together, children, marriage, sex, death highlights the underlying subject matter as relationships and the conflicting nature of relationships that can be simultaneously nurturing and corrosive. Stylistically the work is held up as an example of “snapshot aesthetic” the images are often over lit with hard flash or blurred and casually composed. Goldin explains that this was no so much an intentional aesthetic as a desire to take the picture regardless of the available light. “Sometimes I use a very slow shutter speed and they come out blurred but it was never an intention.
It (also) used to be because I was drunk (6)” but she identifies that the snapshot is something that people take of the people they love and that it was therefore wholly appropriate to her work at this time (8). The slide shows that came out of this work became part of the social scene of the city, despite the intimacy and often unflattering poses, friends and acquaintances came to see whether and how they were included and far from being offended her subjects turned viewers were flattered to feature in her work. (6) Badger (8) points out that she “photographs like a predatory voyeur” but that the results are not voyeuristic. He believes her non-judgemental approach resolves this contradiction and explains her acceptance by her subjects but I prefer Mihaela Precup’s (6) idea that, by including and intimately revealing herself in her work “exposed, upset, naked, out of control, having sex”, she made it very clear that she was part of the greater scene that she was documenting, she was inside the group despite being the person holding the camera and therefore potentially in a position of power, most of her work “represents a democratic solidarity with her subjects” (6). Goldin herself expands upon this idea “There is a popular notion that the photographer is by nature a voyeur, the last one invited to the party. But I’m not crashing: this is my party: this is my family: my history.
(10)” At times Goldin’s photographs move beyond the simply intimate and challenge her audience to confront taboos. Much of her work subverts our preconceptions of gender, especially her long term themes of transsexuality and drag queens, and her intense and moving narrative on the impact of AIDS in New York’s gay community. It is the extended series of photos of drag queens that tempt people to compare her with Diane Arbus who captured similar subjects but she herself dismisses this idea at two levels. Firstly and most importantly she recalls that when she lived with drag queens in the 70’s they “hated her (Arbus), violently” (9) because she stripped them of their identity and showed them as men.
Goldin says that she neither saw them as men nor women but as “another species”. She puts great value on the ethic of respect and even today she still asks permission of her subjects before she publishes photos of them. She did not build trust with her subjects in the way that an outsider documentarist would have to, she automatically had their trust as a member of the tribe. She identified with the social alienation of AIDS sufferers, transvestites and homosexuals because she shared their space on the margins of society in both a physical and metaphorical sense. Solomon-Godeau is asking whether, because she is an insider, we see behind the exteriors of her friends, whether we gain a real insight, see more deeply, understand better. In some ways this question misses the real point of her work which, as pointed out by Badger, is self-centred and autobiographical, the rest of her tribe are a significant part of her life but we are seeing them from her viewpoint, not a planned and constructed viewpoint but seemingly, casual snapshots of her interactions with them.
When they are happy we assume she is part of that joy, when they are grieving we realise that she is capturing her own grief, when they are naked we suspect that she is equally vulnerable behind the camera. Her photographs take us deep into her world and she communicates her emotional history to us via those images. We develop an empathy with her drag queens, feel sadness when we see Vittorio and Cookie in their caskets and share her joy in the children of her living and dead friends. JeiJei (10) argues that the world that Goldin photographed was only accessible to an insider but I suggest that this is only partially true. An outsider could have accessed many of her subjects, Diane Arbus had previously done so with her photos of homosexuals and drag queens. The difference is that her subjects turned viewers and the rest of us, the real outsider viewers, know that she was part of the marginal worlds she photographed, her inclusion as a subject emphasises this point, and this assured her subjects of her motives and the rest of us of a real intimacy that is impossible to replicate as an outsider. A question remains, perhaps to be considered at another time: does the fact that she was not a voyeur prevent her photographs from being voyeuristic?
Is voyeurism determined by the viewer or the photographer? Diane Arbus Nan Goldin is often mentioned in association with Diane Arbus but, apart from characteristics that are shared by many contemporary documentary photographers such as their observational skills, a willingness to photograph subject matter that many would consider as taboo and a connection to their subjects, there appear to more opposites than similarities.