Visual Culture: Introduction 22.10.15

INTRODUCTION TO VISUAL CULTURE

What is visual?

Seeing/sight. Anything visual is physical.

Relating to seeing/sight - anything you can see.

The term 'visual' is the thing that distinguishes it from Philosophy (very much about theoretical ideas, based on a language of ideas rather than based on phenominas that are in the world).

Visual culture is particularly interested in the things that we can see. In a context of culture; if you make a piece of work and keep it in your room and no one ever sees it, it's not culture. Very much visual but it is not culture because it's kept hidden in your room.

What is 'Culture'?

• In some way out of the concerns of every day life, outside of everyday needs (eating, sleeping, working etc) in our spare time we create some kind of cultural project. The arts and other manifestations of human intellectual achievement regarded collectively. Images of things that are reproduced, things we can see, study and experience.

• The ideas, customs, and the social behaviour of particular people or society. You can be described as a cultural group - Art school. Other art courses in UK involved in the same culture. Buildings you get access to, time you get up in the morning.

1. Visual Culture is a versatile ‘field'.

There are a range of 'objects' contained under the term ''visual culture''.

''Visual events in which information, meaning or pleasure is sought by the consumer in an interface with visual technology''

(Technology here is understood broadly but equals the 'reproducibility' of the 'image')

''It's focus is on how visual events work and what they do, rather than just the ideasthey represent or the reality they purport to depict” (Martin Jay, Journal of Visual Culture)

While the image remains a focal point, it is the relations between images and consumers that are evaluated for their cultural significance, not just the image in and of itself.

OBJECTS OF VISUAL CULTURE STUDY

What is a focal point? How do you select a focal point?

Graffiti

People who graffiti often have the same taste in music, fashion taste and activities in urban spaces that are beyond spray painting. Not to provide a description of this image and whether you like it. How is it understood as a cultural context? Writing an essay about something you like and talking about why you like it etc is not interesting, it's often good to write about something that annoys you - because you have such a strong opinion, that can be expressed and provide a critical engagement with that subject.

Images of War: Visual culture particularly develops on images of conflict or war, closely tied into Photography but also other art practices that have evolved out of questioning this type of imagery. In terms of visual culture, you can use this image as a starting point and one argument point is that none of us will have a real interaction, or embodied experience of this type of conflict. Even though we fight as a nation 'we are at war' we dont experience it ourselves so the only understanding we have of the war is through images. Then examining these images, what do they say? What's being left out of this image? What's being included? This is a photograph of an event, but why has this specific photo been selected to show on the media? What is the ideology, the mechanic behind that image? Looking at the presentation of this conflict.

Gender: 

Ideas of beauty, ideas of the feminine body.

Punks are subculure, skaters are subculture, and pageants are a subculture too. As hard as it is to understand, it is a thing. There are a collective group of people within a subculture with it's own codes and languages. The adaptation of that culture including 'pushy mums' through their children (shown through TV documentaries). 

Looking towards American culture, gender construction and the values of children. For example there isn't any male pageants for this age range in America - the idea of how women/girls should look and having that enforced on you from such a young age. Forcing the 'idea of beauty' on children.

Reading Groups: On Photography - Susan Sontag

Our third reading was called 'On Photography' by Susan Sontag
https://blackboard.uwe.ac.uk/bbcswebdav/pid-4426593-dt-content-rid-6196103_5/library/eReserves/UA1APQ-15-1_15sep_1/On%20photography.pdf

IN PLATO'S CAVE
The main questions that were asked in this extract were:

• What makes photography an art?
• What makes photography a hobby?

Using photography as a hobby would mean you know a little about it and you enjoy it, but you don't pursue it full time. Amateur's associate photography as their hobby if they take their camera to weddings, birthdays, sunny days to the beach etc. Preserving a family moment and placing this in your family album including holiday photographs which are of good quality.

However making photography an art takes patience, using analogue cameras and playing around with how they're processed in the dark room. Not using the Auto button on a DSLR but using the manual setting to adjust according to lighting, weather and the subject. Taking time to focus on what you're taking a photograph of and finding a connection between yourself and the subject. Rather than snapping to capture a moment to stick in a frame on the mantlepiece. The professional photographer pursues this art everyday, working in different aspects such as analogue and digital. Both branching out into processing, dark rooms, editing software, technical equipment to improve quality and so on. All these things are considered by professional photographers but perhaps not by people who use photography as a hobby. Therefore making it an art as more thought and care goes into it.

''Sontag argues that tourists feel insecure and use photography to take possession of their new spaces (just as they photograph to take possession of their past). The photographs become proof both of the visit and the pleasure'' 

This quote explains how society uses photography to connect, whether that be towards their family back home while they're visiting a new country and so they send off tourist images 'as proof of the visit and the pleasure' to connect their excitement with people back home to experience too. Or perhaps taking images in places you've never been to before as it allows you to gain a connection with that city/place that you didn't have before. As tourists feel uncomfortable with their new surroundings, photography allows them to connect and feel comfortable once they own those images they can possess. 

It was also mentioned how photography is so easy to possess in this generation, back 50 years ago it was hard for someone to even get hold of a camera and film, let alone shoot with it and learn the dynamics of using a camera. In modern day, almost everyone owns a smartphone which has a camera built into it and images can be instantly posted on to social media sites or even physically printed out. Photography was more cherished 50 years ago as it wasn't so popular, being able to own photographs of places or people that have long passed enables you to keep that connection to the memory. However it has become desensitized as it is something that is used every second of the day to document holidays, events, places etc. Which is interpreted to be a positive or negative thing to different people. I personally admire how photography was used in the past and how we can carry it on through analogue processing but add a modern twist to it. However I also love how easily accessible photography is now, being able to use a variety of cameras from instant polaroids to full blown DSLR wide angle, macro lens cameras which produce amazing imagery. It has been put to so much good use on TV shows such as BBC's 'Life' and 'The Hunt' narrated by David Attenborough which displays tremendously talented film work and patience.
In conclusion, I am intrigued on the development of photography and how it is getting more advanced and wonder what will be next for the use of photography.

Reading Groups: How do we read a photograph - Graham Clarke

In our second reading, we looked at Graham Clarke's "How do we read a photograph?"
Link below:
https://blackboard.uwe.ac.uk/bbcswebdav/pid-4426592-dt-content-rid-7664335_5/library/eReserves/UA1APQ-15-1_15sep_1/How%20do%20we%20read%20a%20photograph.pdf

We were discussing the interpretation of photographs and how we view them... How others/the photographer wants us to view them and what feelings we should have towards it. Photos are constructed in order to tell us what to think. Other people may have different perspectives of that image and what they see but the photographer often includes feelings or emotions of how they want you feel about this image. They have their own meaning, but of a 2D representation rather than the real thing. If you were placed in the middle of a lavender field, physically. You'd have a closer connection with that place as you are actually there, rather than if you were looking at a photograph of it. Therefore some photographers position the camera to get certain angles or perspectives as if you were actually there, wanting to feel connected to it and feel as if you're physically there.

Specifically we were studying the noun 'Arbiter' a person who has the sole or absolute power of judging or determining. How the photographer is the arbiter of a photograph, they decide how you should feel about this person, place or object. You are being controlled by the photograph to feel and think a certain way towards it.
It's interesting how your perspective can change on a photograph once you know a piece of information about it that you didn't before. For example Sally Mann - 'Family Pictures' is one of her pieces of work which includes black and white/sepia tone images of nude children. At first you would think children + nude images = disaster, non PC, inappropriate? But once you find out that she's photographing her own children then it becomes more acceptable, as we didn't know the relationship between the photographer and the subject before reading up on it. This proves how our perspective of photos can change and will change once knowing a piece of information.