Documentary Project part 2

Documentary Project part 1

Photoblog assignment Due 4/19 Part II

Walker Evans was under pressure to portray the government in a positive light in his photographs. Can you recall other similar situations / times in the past when images have been created to help tell a certain truth or untruth? Were these attempts successful? Moral? Immoral?

Even today there are people who attempt to portray and distort their artwork to mask specific flaws. To illustrate this point, I Google-Imaged the city Detroit and while I maybe found two photographs illuminating the sheer poverty the city sees (as shown in the first photograph), I found that there were many other photographs that simply made the city look majestic (as shown in the second photograph). In this photograph, Detroit appears as a city that is hustling and bustling, it looks like a city packed with people when in reality if one drives into Detroit today, there is very little traffic, if any at all, and very few business are still open. Most of this "Bustling city" has been reduced into empty parking lots.

Regardless of how the attempt to beautify the city of Detroit has failed (from my perspective), believe there is an honest reason for it. It is human nature to attempt to extract the best from something, for we do not like to step out of our comfort zone, and to be constantly reminded of our failures would take us out of our comfort zone. Therefore to mask the fact Detroit is a city that is failing, Google has managed to balance a perfect blend of glorified pictures of the motor city with pictures of the city that are closer to reality. This act of attempting to glorify a city that has recently been reduced to a ghost town is not an act that questions morality, rather it is an act that illustrates we would rather live in a life of illusion than face the bitter reality.

Photoblog assignment Due 4/19 Part I

"Trusting the photograph was probably a huge mistake from the beginning.”

A picture is worth a thousand words (or more), but who is to say that these words are sufficient enough to explain what the photograph means? Successful photography, like any other successful form of art, will evoke a reaction through each piece specific to the particular individual viewing the photograph therefore my explanation of Walker Evans' photograph below may differ from another individuals explanation. For instance, when I look at the photographs below, I look at it as Evans trying to illustrate how even if this town(s) has a variety of services advertised, they are not necessarily being utilized, possibly due to lack of money from the towns people to partake in aquiring any of these services. While someone else may not even see this photograph as being anything more that Evans stumbling upon a scene that appeared to be an attractive shot and because he had a camera he took advantage of the moment and snapped a quick picture.

It is not necessarily a mistake to trust a photograph, one must simply realize that what one may see in the photograph is not going to be what everyone else sees in it. One must also be aware of the fact that some people take photographs that may bend how we perceive reality, or bend how the story behind the photograph to prove a point. Photography is similar to journalism in the sense that no matter how clear an issue appears, there is always a way to manipulate it to fit a point the journalist is attempting to make; there is always a way, to take things out of context. So rather than drawing the conclusion that we have to be skeptical of each and every photograph we view i think it would be more prudent to simply keep an open mind.

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Project due before april break

Photo Documentary Project

Exercising is an act that is done religiously in my family, and it has come to my attention that within my town, my gym has developed its own community. This community is not a selective community by any means, the only qualification one has to have to belong to this community is to share the urge to exercise. Walking into the gym one can find a plethora of different activities to help the community members achieve the common goal, to exercise. While the act of exercising normally is viewed as an individual activity, if one is to closely examine aspects of the gym one will find that there is in fact a community in this seemingly individualized place. For instance in the weight room, it is not unique to find people who choose to bench press together, while in the pool people choose to swim together. Through exercising together relationships form creating the pleasent atmosphere that I feel every time I enter the gym. My mission is to capture this for the esscence of this community.

I plan to do this by simply photographing people while they are working out, photographing the conversations that take place in between reps on the bench press and the beauty of two people swimming laps in unison in the pool. I plan to have these photographs ready to edit by the 26th of April if not sooner. To get a gist of what I intend my photographs to look like please look below at the following reference photographs. I intend to capture what each sujbect(s) are doing clearly and as personally as they are comfortable with, to effectively capture the entire esscence of the community that is the gym. I plan to visit the Gym on one of the days of the week while I go and a half an hour before I work out I plan to shoot photographs.