America, Seen through Photographs...darkly

I really enjoyed this read alot. There is so much in this i'm going to talk about a few things i liked. Right off the bat they talk about what makes a beautiful photograph. "a beautiful photograph is a photograph of something beautiful like a woman, a sunset." in Whitmans' words " each precise object or condition or combonation or process exhibits a beauty" Have you ever heard of the term " beauty is in the eye of the beholder" ? well i think that is what they are trying to say here. Some people think that a sunset is beautiful, which i think it is, others also think the rotting corpse of a dead animal or a chicken fetus is beauty, which i dont really. everybody has a different definiton of the term "beauty".
The importance of a photograph. They bring up the discussion of that by photographing an object or a place it makes it important. I think this is kind of true.... I wouldnt really take a picture of somethig if it didnt catch my eye or attention.
Going along with the theme of beauty I liked that they were talking about Walker Evans photographs being all beautiful no matter what he took pictures of either a victorian house or buildings in alabama towns.
The "Family Man" exhibit is something that I would have loved to been around to see. I think that it goes with the theme of America being A. a melting pot of so many diverse different peoples as well as all people are created equally and have freedom. Cause that is around the time of civil rights and what not. Diane Arbus's work on the other hand says the exact opposite of this, i dont agree with her work but respect it as well.

Past Blog Catch up 1.24 Baudelaire "The Painter of Modern Life"

Ummmmm, yea..... I really didnt understand this article much....I think it is written very well and proper. Thats about it... I really wish i had more to say about it. Who is this M.G. character? I think if i had more information about this it maybe would have made a little more sense. One thing i think i caught onto was that this was an article about the way this unknown artist goes about viewing the world. When it mentions "Convalesence is like a return to childhood" and “The child sees everything as a novelty; the child is always 'drunk'. Nothing is more like what we call inspiration than the joy the child feels in drinking in shape and colour.” that part maybe is talking about seeing the way a child sees.

Past Blog Catch up 1.22 Photography as an art..

Well my thoughts on this topic are that I do think that photography is art in some circumstances. For a photograph to be considered art or artistic it should have the qualities that deem it "fine art" these pictures are possibly made in a certian way, useing various darkroom/photoshop techniques. For example i'll say that an artistic photograph maybe maniupulated with cepiatone or using a vignetting around the picture. where as taking your pictures to wegmans to get develped may be not as artistic. Something like say the nude as an art form...i defintly think that there is a difference between something like Man Ray's nudes and a nude one would fine in Playboy.
But then again what do we consider art anyways? In france there was a man, for the life of me i cant remeber it, who put a toilet on the wall of an art gallery and called it art. Is it art because its in an art gallery? if so, anyone can do that. Example some people have a huge conterversy over Jackson Pollok's art work, of which i love, being just paint thrown on canvis. When i was at the Andy Warhol museum in Pittsburgh there was a piece of copper that he pissed on and called it art. to me that was crossing the limits.

Past Blog catch up 1.29, general intro "thinking about photography:the photograph"

I guess i'll start off by giving my opinion on this subject. The simple idea(s) behind a photograph is/are to me at least: captureing moments in history/documenting something, painting with light/the definition, art, journalistic and candid. I try not to really look too deep into this concept for i think it will drive one insane.
On this issue I agree with Berger's saying "photography is rather like memory." He states that the photograph, when its real and not tricked, its a memory of the past.
I like the wording about criticism when Eagleton says we arent concerned with the history of photography but the histories of ideas about photography. To me that means that when photography was created that brought about a whole bunch of theories that are just as important as tracking the timeline of photo.
I also agree with the ideas of Victor Burgin discussing the variety of photographic studies. I think its saying that there is the general theory of photography but also theories for all of the different areas.

Famous Icons

Well I think a really interesting topic is the 'Icon' or iconic image. Today we discussed the iconic value of Che Quivera. I would like to talk about an icon that has had alot of imapct in my life, Superman. The icon of superman spans from 1933-present day. I'll start of with the man of steel himself. He has been adapted into radio shows, comic strips, comic books, tv shows, movies, cartoons, grapic novels and even broadway...pretty much any kind of media outlet superman has dominated. The icon of superman stands fof "truth, justice and the american way". its all about image as well, superman is the all american type hero with bright colors, big broad shoulders, brown hair blue eyes, muscular, smart. he is also one of the only superheros to actually hide his real identity with a costume instead of say batman who is actualy mr.wayne dressed up as batman. superman is dressed up as clark kent, ha. in his movies and comics superman is shown holding the American Flag which is a iconic image for America. In the newest movie some people refrenced or promoted kind of superman as a christ like figure. one of the first movie trailers refrences marlin brando talkig about superman bringing people light and hope. Similartieds, and i'm a nerd for knowing all of this :(1) Superman's real name is Kal-El and his father's name is Jor-El. The "El" should sound familiar, it means God in Hebrew. (2) Superman's father is quoted, “They [Earth] only need the light to show them the way. For this reason, and this reason only, I have sent you, my only son.” Thus paraphrasing John 3:16: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son.” (3) Jesus (of Nazareth) and Superman (of Smallville) both grew up in obscure small towns, and began their Earthly ministry at the age of 30. So onto a more important issue of the Iconic value of the Superman "S". I'm betting that this symbol if shown to pretty much anybody in the world they would be able to identify it. So i think thats enough about that.

David Levi Strauss Intro and Ch. 1

I really enjoy reading John Berger but in this introduction to the book I didnt really find what he wasy talking about releveant to photography at all. It seemed more just bitching about Tyrannical Rulers, which yes I agree is not a good thing, but it just didnt really realte to taking pictures much for me.
Ch. 1: documentary debate: aesthetic or anaesthetic?
This was related to photography more i felt. The part that got my attention was when they were talking about Salgado's photos and how they go about it in the San Fransisco Museum of Modern art's catalog. "in hurried visits to scenes of despair or violence, they climb out of the plane or helicopoter, press the shutter release, explode the flash: they shoot and run." I think that is a great description of how some photographers might do things. They just are there to get a picture, there isnt really any kind of thought that goes into it cause they dont want to get to involved. Can we blam them? i dont think that the photographer should put their life in danger to get a good picture. You have to be safe. I'm sure others would disagree with me because there are always 2 sides to everything. But then again i cant speak from experience i dont take pictures like that. so i guess you would never know until you are in that situation what exactly you are going to do.

Thirdness...

So I was researching this topic and came up with a website: http://www.helsinki.fi/science/commens/terms/thirdness.html

A few of the examples struck my interest : Thirdness is the mode of being of that which is such as it is, in bringing a second and third into relation to each other.

Thirdness is the triadic relation existing between a sign, its object, and the interpreting thought, itself a sign, considered as constituting the mode of being of a sign.

Now I'm not going to lie and say that I really understand this concept to the fullest, cause I'm still really confused, despite the fact that it is 4:30am. Cheers!