The first thing I found very compelling about this reading was the idea of the tourist. In many instances, on vacation, or even just in your everyday surroundings, you will see a tourist taking photographs of just about everything that they see. As an artist, I know that I am very quick to judge that these tourists are not artists but are just using photography as a tool to quickly document an experience that can't be repeated in any other way besides maybe a home movie. This made me think about how our experiences change when a camera is around, people start acting differently. I know that in my home albums, the photographs always tell different stories than how the trip actually went, and so it points to the idea of the posed photograph, and how much truth that actually speaks to real experience.
This also relates into the end of the reading where it was said that "We are entering an era when no one will be able to say whether a picture is true or false"(Richin 67). So often nowadays photographs don't always tell the truth, but rather stretch the truth, lie, or are created not in the camera. It's so easy now with the technological age we are living in to create a photograph without actually taking it, and it makes me wonder where the art context of photography is going to come in play in the years to come. Because the industry is so ever changing and the technology is constantly growing, I would have to agree with Richin. Our generation is so used to photographs being edited and tampered with that it's a thing of the norm, and the phrase, "oh I'll just Photoshop it later", is becoming more and more prevalent among the public, and even the art world. Photographs are becoming so manipulated nowadays that it's going to be hard to trust any photograph that you see; because true documentary is just becoming a myth, in my opinion.
No comments:
Post a Comment