The Cruel Radiance

The Cruel Radiance, 2012, Susie Linfield, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. ISBN: 978-0-226-48251-4. This is a very interesting book and I found it to be a good read. Linfield writes in defence of photography against what she describes as a popular and institutional attack on the medium by critics and even other photographers. She

The Self-Portrait A Cultural History

The Self-Portrait A Cultural History, 2015, by James Hall, London: Thames & Hudson. ISBN: 978-0-500-29211-2 This book examines the history of the self-portrait, unfortunately I purchased a Kindle edition which unhelpfully doesn’t provide page numbers, this option is greyed out in the menu; so I am only able to quote location numbers (Loc) as provided

Photography A Very Short Introduction

Stephen Edwards, Photography A Very Short Introduction, 2006, Oxford: Oxford University Press, ISBN: 978-0-19-280164-7 (Kindle Edition). In my opinion, this is a very good book and a very important book to read for any photographer. Notes/Quotes: Documentary is said to provide its viewers with direct access to truth. In his pioneering book on the subject,

Summary for Part 3, “Look at Me!” – The Representation of Self.

In section 3, “Look at Me!”, I studied the subject of ‘self’ and how it has and is used and interpreted in the portrait. I learned that the idea of the ‘selfie’ goes back beyond photography. Originally the early selfies where exclusively for the rich and powerful to express wealth and more importantly, power, examples

Summary for Part 2, Other

Part 2, Other, began by looking at how photography has played its part in violence against the other, siting Victorian photography as one example of asserting colonial power over weaker subjected peoples of other ethnic and cultural societies. Artists such as Mark Sealy have been addressing these troubling histories with work and exhibitions such as

Research Point – Propaganda in an image.

Photo by Eddie Adams/Associated Press ‘Execution of a Viet Cong officer’, Saigon, Vietnam, 1968. South Vietnam National Police Chief Nguyen Ngoc Loan executes suspected Viet Cong member Nguyen Van Lem, on the second day of the Tet Offensive during the Vietnam War. The act was stunning in its casualness. Associated Press photographer Eddie Adams was

Porträt 1986-1991

Porträt (P. Lappat), 1987 by Thomas Ruff. Porträt (M. Roeser), 1999 by Thomas Ruff. Porträt (A. Kachold), 1987 by Thomas Ruff Ruff’s project Porträt 1986-1991 is a collection of photographs made like passport I.D. photos, only Ruff used a large format camera and printed the photographs size 1600 x 1205 mm at a printing quality for

Reading Task – The photographic works of Diane Arbus – My thoughts

Much has been said and written about Arbus and her work, but I wonder if too much has been read into her photographs?  The images used to critique her work style all appear to poses those elements of the sublime, they have that something, that punctum that Barthes coined (1) and which all photographers strive