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

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,

Ralph Eugene Meatyard

Ralph Eugene Meatyard, “Lucybelle Crater and her P.O. brother Lucybelle Crater,” 1970-72. Ralph Eugene Meatyard, The Family Album of Lucybelle Crater, 1970-72. Meatyard used masks, to acknowledge the incapacity and inadequacy of the portrait convention as a means of psychological disclosure. (Durden, 2014, p.66). His project, The Family album of Lucybelle Crater, 1970-72, was made in

Assignment 4 – Essay

Other Than You. By Shaun Mullins (512659) Assignment 4, PH5SAO – The Self and The Other. Word count without quotations and footnotes: 2563.  Including quotations and footnotes Total: 3931. Sources: Barthes, 2000; 1977; Kelly, Self Image, Personal is Political, 1979; Kuhn, Remembrance, The child I never was, 1991; Ritchin, 2010; Spence, Facing Up To Myself,

Exercise 3.6 – Objects

A self portrait through objects. It seems that apart from a few objects that I keep as ornaments or to record past achievements the majority of my possessions are tools. Tools for photography, tools for DIY, tools for gardening, tools for hobbies and travel. It seems that I practically have a tool for everything and

The ‘Other’ in the history of photography

Because photography was seen as the ideal tool for providing evidence due to its perceived indexicality, it was used to observe and record the face and head. In the 1850s and 1860s the British eugenicist Francis Galton obtained portrait photographs of criminals from the archive of Millbank Prison. He meticulously re-photographed theses pictures, exposing a

Definition of ‘Other’

Stephen Bull in his book Photography (2010) Abingdon: Routledge. Bull discusses how in the 18th and 19th century anthropology linked to colonialism recorded and catalogued native people around the world allowing comparison across races and with the intention of comparing who and what they considered superior and who and what was in their opinion inferior.