Photo 2 at SMU Spring 2020

The main objective of this essay is to get the reader to question and examine what is presented to us as “reality”. Which I agree is important. Initially reading this I disliked how he ended the essay saying “Prisoner, come out… And re-take the universe” (143), because it felt a little extreme. As if we are victims that at some point had the universe taken from us. Making an emphasis on us vs. them. Us consumers play a role in accepting what is given to us (and agreeing on semiotics). Thinking further and particularly about the monopolization of media corporations I see his urge to address the issue. He is essential asking for there to be a larger variety of voices in our media in the pursuit of having a more honest view of our reality.  I am having a hard time understanding what he means by, “In the post-sampling post-Internet era the presence of the past in the present is massively increased. But this spatialisation of time causes historical depth to drop out. This leads to ...

Fisher analyzed the show Sapphire and Steel, and how it relates to our modern culture, “...it doesn’t feel as if the 21st Century has started yet. We remain trapped in the 20th century, just as Sapphire and Steel were incarcerated in their roadside cafe”. I disagree that our culture is currently at a stand still. There are many reasons why our culture is aging differently than it has in the past.  One possible factor is that our current culture is so fast paced, always looking for the next best thing, that it is unwilling to look at our present long enough to have a ‘moment’.  This pace of new information has also swelled the amount of options for consumers. For example streaming services like Netflix and Hulu (and other competitors) started taking off about a decade ago. This made a huge switch from the more limited options of cable to thousands of different options at our fingertips. This connects to why Spongbob memes work so well for my generation; for, it was sort of...

This reading definitely shaped the way I think about photos. Particularly the part about images being a sort of ‘second life’ that is immortal. This idea clicked with me when thinking about how wrong it would feel to destroy a photo of a loved one. I personally believe we are all bodies of light. With this theory Nadar’s explanation, “everybody in its natural state was made up of a series of ghostly images superimposed in layers to infinity, wrapped in infinitesimal films… each Daguerrian operation was therefore going to lay hold of, detach, and use one of the layers of the body on which it focused.” This theory is interesting to think about.      Going with the immortality of an image, “...people in industrialized countries seek to have their photographs taken--feel that they are images, and are made real by photographs”. I absolutely agree with this. Especially with our ever expanding digital world, but I also feel there has been a more recent trend to be more p...

I thought it was interesting how 6 big companies how so many copyrights that it can be hard to create some new art because of the fear of the companies taking legal action. It can also be concerning that so few companies control so much media because there is less creativity in media with less people controlling a larger percentage of what we get to observe. The author gives a similar view when he said that "filmmakers have hitherto only represented the world in various ways. The point is to generate worlds differently" ZRUOGV GLʷHUHQWO\

"But when two thirds of global copyrights are in the hands of six corporations, the capacity to rework one's memories into the material symbolic form of individual testament and testimony is severely constrained. We rarely own the memories we are sold." Such a massive portion of the media we encounter on the daily is funneled from the same sources, distributed subversively into our psyche. Coca Cola, iPhone, and MacDonalds may be the apparent 'front propositions' of mainstream commercial imagery, the variety of niches associated with these moguls are endless. In the capitalistic structures, the megaliths rising to the top enables exponentially greater allowance to exact their power. It's not really about the companies though, or their ideologies, but about the myriad of avenues they display their ethos. The distribution of images is so multifaceted and ubiquitous, and combine that with a relatively small variety of images circulated- that creates quite a p...

During the Susan Sontag reading I could not help but fixate on her notion that photography “is also a powerful instrument for depersonalizing our relation to the world,” making the use of the image the very thing that separates us from what it is representing or trying to present to its audience. I kept rethinking the example of people in a museum taking photographs of art rather than experiencing the work as it is a physical object they are in the presence of. Using this image to create their experience of how hard it was to find a spot with a clear view of the work or how hard it was to fit the entire thing in frame as their relation with the work. Not only that but it causes their relationship with the object to seemingly last longer, basking in the presence of a small iPhone photo rather than a 6 foot painting creating a different intention of living or seeing than the artist probably intended with their work. I can’t escape this sensation of using image to depersonalize either es...

I found it interesting how she says that a photograph can represent more than just an image, and how it can replace a memory if the only memories you have of something is through a photo or group of photos. I also thought it was interesting how she said that photography can have a certain power because it is the only image system where the creator is not in complete control. ph