Surveyors and Surveyed basically told development of documentary, both in form and concept since people began to use cameras to take pictures up until the 1950s.

The photograph's initial use was as a documentive device. It was a great alternative to the death mask and was used to document different events as well as people. During the Victorian era, a common subject were "far-away" places, people and cultures. This brought about the beggings of using the camera as a subjective device, seeing as how it was always exotic "to us" and far away "from here".

As the camera became more and more portable it began to be taken into more dangerious and difficult areas, such as battlefields or city slums. As taking pictures became easier and easier, the subjectivity of the photograph began to lay more and more on what was not taken rather than what was. Photographers deliberatly choose more charged shots or shots that reflected the "feeling of the times" better. Sometimes shots would even be altered to make it look more like what the photographer had in his mind.

The ease of photography also led photographers to be more bold. Their middle and upper class suroundings became boring to them, so they would seek to photograph laborers and the poor, whose lives they deemed more "real". This was also due in part that many middle and upper class areas began to impart serious restrictions on photographing in social centers, now annoyed by the taking of pictures. An extreme example of this was Jacob Riis, whose method of documenting the poor in New York slums could be catergorized as "guerilla photography".

This mindset continued throughout the 30s with photography during deppresion era america and the spanish civil war. However, commercial photography began to spring up, usually destributed via magazine. Because of the camera's reputation of being truthful or faithful to real life, it became a wonderful media to help advertise products. This notion of the honesty of the camera though, has been contested ever since the camera was used as a documentative device.

With the end of the 2nd world war, the United States' interest began to shift away from seens from the slums and of hardship to icons of pop-culture.

Picture analysis

Alfonso Callejas

Description:
A color image of a dark brown cow peering over a wooden beam, only the top of its nose, right eye, ears and forehead are visible. Behind it there are more wooden beams. The top half of the image is a blue, slightly cloudy sky with trees on the left side.

Reflection:
The image evokes a feeling of captivity. The cows eye seems strained, buldging out giving the animal a look of anxiety. The sense of captivity is heighted by the blue sky and trees in the background, and the dramatic transition between the foregorund and background.

Formal:
The image plays strongly with horizontal lines and echoed elements. There are 2 lines which go through the picture, the bottom beam in front of the cow and the beam behind the cow which devideds the picture almost perfectly in half. The shape of the cow's head is echoed by the shaped of the trees in the background. There is also a stark contrast in the colors of the foreground (dark browns) and background (green, blue and white).

Surveyors and Surveyed

Nancy J. O'Reilly
Image #2 - analysis
February 4, 2008

In this color image the first thing the eye notices is the horizontal layering of the entire image. Upon further inspection a wild eye (of what I believe is a dark brown cow) is spotted peering over a weathered grayish-brown box stall. The top portion of his head is merged between the front and back section of his stall. Above his stall in the distance are green treetops and a blue and white streaked sky all adding to the horizontal plane of the image. A small area of shadow covers his one ear while the light showcases the fur around the edges of his ear.

The photographer has chosen the cow’s eye and top of his head as the area of sharp focus. I'm not sure whether the photographer is watching the cow or vice versa. The top portion of his snout and his wild eye glisten in the light. The box stall in the foreground and the trees and sky in the background are a not in sharp focus. This all adds to the overall appeal of the image and leads your eye upward through the layers.

This image could have been taken in a rural farm setting or he could be awaiting plastic wrap at your local market. It is such a close up shot of the cow and upper portion of his stall that it is hard to tell what his actual surrounding environment is. -------------NJO

Surveyors and surveyed

Surveyors and surveyed was really informational without being boring, which combined to make it a really good read and perfect for its purpose of informing the origins, uses, pros and cons of photography. Travel, war, documentation of and exposure of street life were the main focuses. The description of photography’s purpose in war was very honest, which was a nice change from the usual review; the comments about the importance (documenting the horrors of war) and usefulness of photography was expected, but the side note about the unfortunate ineffectiveness was surprising. The bit mentioned that very little could actually display the horrors of war on its own. (73-74)
There was an indirect correlation from the aforementioned note to, much later in the text, the note about documentary photographs rarely being “single, independent images.” (99) I agreed with this point, without having realized this point before. The other idea that I agreed with was something I had already thought about, which is the “rare phenomenon” of a genuinely interested and committed photojournalist, which resulted in quality investigations. (77)
The next part of the writing was mainly an attempt to begin defining documentary photography. This part, however, led me to my first strong disagreement with the piece. Whereas the text says it is hard to tell the difference from travel and war photography to documentary photography, it is my contention that travel and war photography are the purest examples of documentary photography. (74) This disagreement is followed up by the text’s statement from William Stott that “the heart of documentary is not form or style or medium, but always content.” (90) I do agree that content comes first, but aren’t style, form, and medium variables for the content conveyed? I feel that the artistic aspects of documentary is as influential as the content, because content can be manipulated, as much of the text tried to express.
M I K E Ysmith

I'll attach a picture over the weekend. I'm going home and there is a certain group of amateur documentary pictures from my grandfather.

Visual Analysis: Gus' Barbeque

This picture is focused mainly on the contrast between buildings in an urban setting. This picture is divisible into three segments; the left side, the upper right, and the lower right. The entirety of the left side is an awkwardly designed parking garage. The letters “A” “R” and “K” are pictured above the opening and below a circular pattern design. The design consists of large circles, with four smaller circles in them, stacked in a grid style, seemingly forever, as the building is cut off only a few stories up. The upper right side serves as the background, with an extremely large but simple building, topped with a clock and an antenna which divides the picture almost perfectly down the middle. The top right corner is superseded by another seemingly infinitely tall building. Between the antenna building and the far right building is a clear blue sky. However, the lower right is the abstract part of the picture. The plain colored but monumental buildings are framing a single story and slightly narrow building with a vibrant red brick face. This building, or “Gus’ Barbeque”, is the first thing which the eye is attracted to, as Gus’ Barbeque stands out from the buildings and the plain street.
This picture is seemingly meaningless to the isolated viewer. There is nothing outstanding to be noted, and nothing that seems to be taking place as the picture is void of any people or things besides the buildings. However, some imagination led me to believe that this was a farewell picture to Gus’ Barbeque. Established in 1925, Gus’ seems extraordinarily overwhelmed by the architecture around it. The contrast really makes it seem like perhaps this is the end of Gus’ business, and this is the last picture of the establishment. This photo is somewhat somber; all of big buildings seemingly bullied Gus’ into leaving, and the last bit of excitement in this bland urban landscape is going to go away forever. The contrast of the colors is only paralleled by the contrast of the past and the future.

M I K E Ysmith

camera truth

“Surveyors and the surveyed.”

The text primarily establishes the idea of one’s desire (society’s desire) for a medium mainly engaged with “accurate transcription of reality”. (68) This desire is fulfilled in the mechanical process of the camera, a process characterized by an autonomous action of light upon a sensitive field. However even with such swimmingly detached technology we can not escape the subjectivity inherent in our human condition. The “Surveyors and the surveyed” tries to dissect this condition and at the same time briefly introduce development of documentary photography within our culture. It starts with initial idea of photograph as an objective media, and then moves towards criticism of such simplistic idea, urging the reader to view the process of photography as a construction of reality and not just its capture. With such criticism, and perhaps cautionary advice towards the reader, the text moves through four major fields of documentary photography, trying to define the role of the camera and that of the photographer in this medium. The reader is first greeted with reflection upon the pictures of the “other”, a trend concurrent to the emergence of the photographic technology, where early documentarists collected images of that most alien to them, simply because they could augment their own memories of the bizarre through this innovative process. As we progress through the text, we often stumble over the idea of the other, in both the social justice realm of documentary photography as well as war photography, it is only when we reach the FSA period when we start to see photography trying to depict, us, the usual. Here documentary photography becomes educational, in a cense of showing us, the viewer, of who we really are.
As rational as this account of development of documentary photography is, I often find myself disagreeing with the placement, and notion of “the other” and “self” in its history. It is problematic, in my mind, to separate the photographer and his subject since both influence each other, and there fore even pictures of “the other” become a testament of self. Surveyors and the surveyed briefly address this question in the discussion of Jacob Riis, and his unorthodox approach toward candid photography. However even his work was widely criticized with regard to objectivity. Once again we come to the question regarding the camera’s potential to depict reality, and I would say that even though the image can be, and often is, manipulated by the photographer or the circumstance it is still remains pristine fore we ourselves manipulate reality (refuse to see what is really there) without any aid from various devises.

Artur out

P.S. picture by ~escrimador of www.deviantart.com. Makes me think of what would photographs of a child be like.

Calf image

Looking at these images I instantly realized which one I would like to analyze, which one interested me the most. The calf image, simple at the first glance, offers a lot of subtlety that adds to its power. The image itself is a relatively straightforward depiction of a calf (well at least I think it is a calf, due to reasons I will explain later) peeking out of a what looks like a coral on a clear summer day. The picture is divided into two main sections, the clear blue sky, with a hint of thin clouds, and an animal enclosure. This division is broken slightly by the tree line, which serves to introduce some distraction, and adds dynamic to the image. The animal is bashfully peeking out of the enclosure, which is why I think that it is a calf. There is a feeling of innocence encompassing the picture, facilitated by the both: inviting setting (weather and landscape), as well as the action of the animal. For me this image symbolizes the idea of photography that I hold dear, and that is the idea that one does not need much to make a significant image. Often, simplicity of composition and subject choice provides the strongest effect.

Artur out

Photograph Analysis

In this photograph, there are two scenes being juxtaposed next to each other. One is the interior of an art print shop. The other is a couple situated outside of the window. The woman seems to be making a telephone call. The man looks like he is waiting for her to embrace him. Inside the shop, there are paintings and images depicting a wide variety of subject matter. There is a water color of a landscape, a somber portrait, a black and white photo and segments of renaissance-era oil paintings. There is also a small staute of a naked woman. Beyond the waiting couple is an urban setting, complete with large, grubby buildings and bustling traffic.

Aside from the literal elements of the piece, what immediately caught my eye was the statue of the crouching, naked woman in the corner of the shop. The figure seems slightly out of place in an establishment that primarily sells framed art work. Moreover, the stance of the effigy is interesting. Statues of nudes usually depict the model in an upright or reclining position. Instead, this statue appears to be uncomfortable and cowering, as if trying to hide her nakedness from the viewer. I feel as if the woman on the street is embodying such emotions as well, in a less obvious way. She seems to be reaching for the man, as if trying to pull him closer. However, he seems ambivalent towards her advances, as if he is angry or intolerant of her affection. For whatever reason, the woman feels vulnerable. She is reaching for someone who does not wish to provide her with any sort of comfort. The woman’s internal state is the statue on the shelf.

The construction of the image itself is that of layers. The first layer is the inside of the shop. The second is of the couple outside the window. The third is the city beyond the couple. In order to process what is going on collectively, the viewer must investigate each individual layer. Furthermore, the cropping is not crisp. Many of the objects are cut off by the edge of the frame. Perhaps the photographer wanted us to focus on the center beam of the shop, panning away from the middle in an inward “V”.

exhibition: Testimony to War: Art from the Battlegrounds of Iraq

Testimony to War: Art from the Battlegrounds of Iraq
February 4 - March 8, 2008

Visual Arts Museum
209 East 23 Street, New York, NY 10010
212.592.2145
http://www.sva.edu

Panel discussion: Tuesday, February 19, 2008, 7pm

School of Visual Arts (SVA) presents Testimony to War: Art from the Battlegrounds of Iraq, an exhibition that brings together the creative output of five emerging and established artists, each of whom has a direct experience of the war in Iraq: Army Major Peter Buotte, former Army SergeantAaron Hughes, embedded artist Steve Mumford, embedded photographer Lucian Read, and former Army Staff Sergeant Ryan Roa. Curated by Francis Di Tommaso, director of the Visual Arts Museum,Testimony to War will include examples of painting, drawing, sculpture, photography and video representative of the artists' distinctive bodies of work and of their uniquely personal vantage points of the war. Ranging from the subtly conceptual to the graphically raw, these works drive home the human costs of war as they bring us closer to the street-level reality of Iraq.

Testimony to War encompasses a wide range of formal approaches, from powerful documentary interpretations to highly stylized reflections. The works suggest the varied possibilities for artistic response to war, from the realistic, on-site drawings of Steve Mumford, to Peter Buotte's installation of target-shaped American flag magnets, which evokes the number of US military deaths in Iraq, toAaron Hughes' collaborative project with Ahmed Jabar Shareef, a nine-year old boy from Baghdad who was blinded in a firefight outside of his home.

The exhibition will include several never-before-exhibited works. On view will be a selection of images by award-winning photographer Lucian Read, accompanied by a narrative voice-over by the artist. The photographs depict Marines with whom he was embedded--from scenes of fraternal camaraderie to stark images of isolation and displacement--and the devastating aftermath of combat for both Americans and Iraqis. Steve Mumford's recent drawings and watercolors, of which approximately 20 will be on view, chronicle the daily routines of soldiers, crowded street scenes bustling with activity, private moments of grief in a military hospital, and veterans undergoing physical therapy back in the U.S. Testimony to War will also mark the first viewing of Ryan Roa's installation, Freedom Calls; standing on an elevated plywood platform in the shape of a U.S. flag shoulder patch, the visitor listens to Americans define freedom in phone calls placed randoml y by the artist.

The Visual Arts Museum, located at 209 East 23rd Street between 2nd and 3rd Avenues, is open 9am to 7pm, Monday through Friday, and 10am to 6pm on Saturday. Admission is free. The gallery is accessible by wheelchair. For further information call 212.592.2145.

School of Visual Arts (SVA) in New York City is an established leader and innovator in the education of artists. From its inception in 1947, the faculty has been comprised of professionals working in the arts and art-related fields. SVA provides an environment that nurtures creativity, inventiveness and experimentation, enabling students to develop a strong sense of identity and a clear direction

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