"Looking"

Image courtesy of Maureen Paley, London/Blueprint Magazine, Paul Noble: Art on the Underground

Sturken and Cartwright elaborate on a fact that as a culture we engage in practices of “looking”. As an artist, I feel that I should pay more attention tothis ever-present practice not only as a ritual, but a process. If, as an artist, the process of “looking” is understood, it then becomes easy to control the gaze of a viewer through use of color, value, texture, focal point etc.. Paul Noble disregards any sort of focus in his pieces by eliminating a plane of perspective, therefore forcing the viewer to look and receive the image as a whole before exploring his minute details.



Image by Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin/Colors

Sturken and Cartwright also take the time to elaborate on the inherent difference of a photographic based image, which relies on photographic truth to evoke a response in the viewer. As a society, I feel that we are becoming less trusting of photos as a whole since editing software has made itself so readily available. However, the photograph as a medium still holds more real-life credibility than any other media (not including video/performance). It is it’s documentary-style quality that allows society to peer into the lives of others and view stories that were left untold. Contemporary photographers Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin say this about their documentary-style process:

"I think a good place to start is one of the main principles that we have when we go into a place and that is that we produce a piece of media which is in some way acceptable to the people who live in that community. So we produce it bearing in mind that we will send this thing back to them and that they won’ t be exploited and they will feel a sense of pride of having taken part in the project. That informs a lot of the way that how we go about getting into a place and how we behave when we are there in terms of getting access. So for instance, there’ s no hidden agenda. What we do is the first step, talking really practically and logistically, is to send a magazine to the community and they have a look at what we are doing and I think that in that sense they see this is not an attempt at exploiting them or an attempt at making some kind of political or hyped-up exposé . It’ s an attempt at really exploring this community." http://www.vam.ac.uk

 



www.nathandurfee.com

The imageries shown in chapter 1 are successful because they rely on connotative associations that are formulated through the context of our culture. The images are “loaded” with various stories that can be drawn from them (ex: the smiley face). It is evident that there is an understanding by the artist of the dependences of their visual images within our culture.  Many artists, such as Nathan Durfee, rely on a popular symbols to invoke conversation into their art pieces.

Fabian Ciraolo/ www.artistaday.com

People and celebrities can also turn into symbol statuses themselves, as the chapter alluded to with Madonna. One other such example shown here is Dorothy from "Wizard of Oz". The character of Dorothy can be seen here representing multiple ideas from a lost sense of home to a misplaced childhood.