For your initial post, select a photograph dating from between 1915 and 1955, include the link to the website where you located the image, and embed the image in your initial post.
Describe the subject depicted and identify some of the formal elements (http://www.getty.edu/education/teachers/building_lessons/formal_analysis.html) at work.
Identify whether it is a fine art, documentary image, or a mix of both. How do the formal elements contribute to the photographs potential to communicate conceptual ideas (for a fine art image) or to work as socio-political propaganda (for a social document)?
In other words, how and what does this photograph communicate in ways non-visual art forms could not?
For each of your two response posts, adopt or identify a specific viewpoint for interpreting your classmate’s photo (intent of a particular audience, the photographer, or the subject in the photograph). How does your interpretation differ from theirs owing to the shifted point of view and intent?
Peer 1
Image is attached
FRANK B. and LILLIAN M. GILBRETH. Photograph of inefficient work operation, circa 1935.
For this discussion, I chose “Photograph of inefficient work operation” from our class book Seizing the Light. This photograph shows history because it made an impact through immediate financial and social effects. With that said, I think that this image is more of a documentary image. It is a gelatin silver stereograph with one-half of the stereograph shown. The curves of the lines convey energy. There’s also line and shape in the image through the graphed background and table. There is a chronocyclegraph in the image through the light dashes. There is also organic shape through the light dashes as well.
Peer 2
Image is attached
I am choosing a picture taken by Dorothea Lange this week. The photo was taken in 1936. It is a gel print silver in color on paper. For this picture, he has taken a D camera of gra-flex RB sequence of 4×5 dimension. The photo comprises women and children. A lady holds a baby, and two children lean their heads on her shoulder. The woman in the photograph seems tired, scared, and looking at something. The standard feature of this photograph is its texture. Texture can be seen by the clothes people are wearing in this picture. The women’s struggle can be seen through the women’s dirty, rough, and pashed fabric in this photograph. One can also see features related to peace in this picture too. The picture is taken by keeping the woman in the center with two children on her both sides.
The kids leaning on a woman’s shoulder shows that the photographer has thought before capturing this photograph. Focusing on these features, the photographer wants to show the reality and struggles of the family. Lange wants to cover the miseries and difficulties of women or a mom going through times of depression while living in poor camps. Lang shows that the women in the picture are devastated and hungry. The photo is taken without any texture and not with proper positioning, so you would not be able to get the feeling that the woman is broke and devastated very quickly and easily. Lange was never intended to capture this photo, she got the signs for the camp, and she keeps on driving for around 20 miles; from here, she turned and saw pea pickers camps and sensed their struggled lives and triggered her cameras button and capture this picture.
Lange found a mother with her six kids and ask her if she can take some photos of her family. With every click, she went deep to take more meaningful pictures. After taking many pictures, she feels the struggles of women and her kids living here helplessly. So, she captures those photos because she thinks they can be seen by others too. She never thought of selling her photos; she put them in the photo-editorial project in her research associations. Showing visually to the people to make them realize people’s miseries, the picture is one of the correct ways of doing it. I like this photo and the concept shown by the photographer in it. Showing a photo that comprises of many people and they are conveying the message too makes this photo a unique image. For me, this picture is an initiation of realizing the struggles of others and addressing them.
