Franki the Starr

Aperture

Aperture
Photography
Franki Starr

In the most resent edition of Aperture there were several deep articles about photography and what it can mean. How many times did you walk by Joanie on the Stony and just ignore it but when it got defaced how many of you were upset? In the article about ‘Notes on Photography and Monumentality Roland Barthes had said photography has replaced the monument as the site of collective memory. Which I take that to mean is the way Hiroshi Sugimoto took pictures of his building series. It was a photograph taken as a memory and when that building or ‘monument’ crumbles we still have this memory through seeing a picture. It also shows the stability of the building but more deeply the stability of our society. What was even more moving was a photographer Lynn Davis works of icebergs, which can be conceived as many things like a beautiful landscape. Now we live in a generation of global warming, this represents a monument of ‘global apocalypse.’  Now with more contemporary photographers the move is toward people and they becoming monuments. Wodiczko says that in a lot of European countries there isn’t a town square that hasn’t been ruined by a pompous figure in a monument. People walk right by ignoring but when you take a picture it creates a contradiction.
In the article The Civil Contract of Photography Ariella Azoulay says the  “ ‘civil contact’ of photography is a role as a means through which citizen can be viewed, conceptualized, and established. She talks about how photography can blur the lines. Private intimate moments now splattered everywhere or deterioration between oppressor and oppressed all the way to event and history. Another way she says photographers take pictures is the production of images always sexualizing violence. We have impaired forms of citizenship.
What I think Ariella was trying to say is we have an ethics and a job as photographers to portray the truth. But that is hard to do without having an opinion. Look at the FSA photographs by Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange. They were told what to photograph and would set up scenes.
Ariellas writing says that photography is a profoundly political act and public. Photographs are powerful tools that can affect countries. In an analysis of the Civil Contract it is about he relations between photography and citizenship in disaster contexts.
What was frustrating is at first it seemed like she was talking about the ethics of photography and how we should take pictures. I had to read an analysis that explained that it’s about photographs and making them speak have become a part of civil practice. Our duty is toward one another rather then toward the ruling power.
These articles were related in that its was explaining the past through monuments and photography and now how we should take our skills and use them to show the real truth.
The way I take photographs is lying on thick narrative with false story line. Next time I will take pictures in a political situation I will focus on the people.  Now that were in school it is hard to capture these types of images because we are sort of confined to a safe campus bubble. But when I do take pictures I do like to deconstruct the scene finding the realness in the situation.

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