Trachtenberg Vs Sontag

In her essay Photography at the Crossroads, Berenice Abbott advocates for the return of documentary photography at a time when commercial and fictitious approaches were dominating. Photography is the most creative medium available to capture the spontaneity of real life, and the essence of photographic art is realism (Abbott, 179). In her summary of photography’s development, Abbott describes the early stages as “truly spectacular” and commended the “sound American tradition” of realism – for example, portraiture and post-war geological documentation (180). She denounces the commercialization of photography – the use of props, constructed backdrops and retouching to create ostentatious painting-like photographs. Honest documentation was abandoned for sentimental painting-like images by photographers such as Henry Peach Robinson (Abbott, 181).

While emotions were extremely high in the sense of angst for a better life, photography provided a new sense of reality to Americans and for others around the World. Photography all around the World is unlike anything else of its kind. People are able to tell stories and elicit emotions that bring the audience to that desired response. Throughout the 1930’s, photography from governmental institutions or advancements alone brought a new beginning to the end of a terrible time that Americans all around the nation

Before starting this project, I knew very little about photography, photographers, or exactly how much impact photographical images have had on our society. I have never taken a photography class, or researched too in depth about specific pictures or photographers. This project has allowed me to delve deeper into the world of photography in order to understand just how much influence pictures can have over society’s beliefs, emotions, and understandings’. I have have chosen two highly influential photographers, Diane Arbus and Dorothea Lange, who I have found to both resonate with me and perfectly capture human emotions in way that moves others.

Photography allows us to conserve memories and relive them by simply seeing them again, whenever we desire. Although it can be argued that people are no longer enjoying experiences and becoming narcissistic by the amount of pictures taken, in Susan Sontag’s essay, “Why We Take Pictures”, she depicts her theory that photography can be used as a defense mechanism against anxiety and a tool of power. I personally agree with Sontag on the significance of photographs because it's pleasing have a physical record of an adventure or informational event or even in the remembrance of ones culture, either way photography is a powerful device used worldwide.

The technological innovation of a camera allows people to mentally travel back in time. Photography has the magical ability to capture unique experiences and atmosphere. Writers such as Susan Sontag explore the idea of photography as a mode of documentation that allows for different interpretations. The gelatin silver print, Pleasures and Terrors of Levitation, by Aaron Siskin expands on the idea of photography being more than just a copy of the original, but a documentation that manipulates the emotional importance. In Pleasures and Terrors of Levitation, Aaron Siskind captures the elegance of fear through the subject, composition and quality of light.

Photography had been around more than 20 years before the Civil War began. When pictures were taken, they showed colonels, bodies that were on the battlefield, even soldiers that were around the camp tent. A few photographers that will be discussed are Mathew Brady, Alexander Gardner, George Barnard and Timothy O’Sullivan. I will talk about how their photography affected the social and political arena as well as how photography in contemporary society provides the public with an up-close testimony to recent wars and global strife.

Photography was first used in the United States prior to the Civil War as a way of making portraits of people. Due to the limits of the technology, each photograph was a unique image that could not be reproduced. Over time as the technology improved, photographs could be reproduced and this art form was then used as a method of communicating and sharing images of places and themes. The use of photography during the Civil War to depict (show) battles is one example. While the effect of photography on people’s perceptions of the Civil War has been well-documented, the changes in technology gave photography a more extensive influence on public opinion, institutions and the way people lived after the Civil War.

Winogrand took photos of everything he saw; he always carried a camera or two, loaded and prepared to go. He sought after to make his photographs more interesting than no matter what he photographed. Contrasting many well-known photographers, he never knew what his photographs would be like he photographed in order to see what the things that interested him looked like as photographs. His photographs resemble snapshots; street scenes, parties, the zoo. A critical artistic difference between Winogrand's work and snapshots has been described this way, the snapshooter thought he knew what the subject was in advance, and for Winogrand, photography was the process of discovering it. If we recall tourist photographic practice, the difference becomes clear: tourists know in advance what photographs of the Kodak Hula Show will look like. In comparison, Winogrand fashioned photographs of subjects that no one had thought of photographing. Again and again his subjects were unconscious of his camera or indifferent to it. Winogrand was a foremost figure in post-war photography, yet his pictures often appear as if they are captured by chance. To him and other photographers in the 1950s, the previous pictures seemed planned, designed, visualized, understood in advance; they were little more than pictures, in actual fact less, because they claimed to be somewhat else the examination of real life. In this sense, the work of Garry Winogrand makes a motivating comparison to Ziller's

A photo is an occasion, which drifts to endlessness. It is a method for partaking in an occasion without being a part of it. Sontag sees the camera and a sort of controlled weapon, and the demonstration of capturing as symbolic shooting. Sontag contrast photography and assault on the grounds that in photography we see individuals in a way inaccessible to themselves and we pick up information of them, which can never be theirs, and therefore photography demonstrates individuals into articles that can be subjected to typical ownership.

In “Why We Take Pictures,” Susan Sontag discusses the increase use of technology and its ability to impact the daily lives of mankind. Taking pictures is a form of self-evolution that slowly begins to shape past and present experiences into reality. Sontag argues how the use of photography is capable of surpassing our reality by helping us understand the concept of emotion, diversity, and by alleviating anxiety and becoming empowered. Moreover, according to her argument, people are able to construct a bond between the positive or negative moments in life to cognitively release stress through reminiscing. Therefore, Sontag claims that photography itself can help with reshaping individual’s perspectives of reality by being able to empathize with the emotions portrayed through an image. Thus, giving

In “Ways of Seeing”, John Berger, an English art critic, argues that images are important for the present-day by saying, “No other kind of relic or text from the past can offer such direct testimony about the world which surrounded other people at other times. In this respect images are more precise and richer literature” (10). John Berger allowed others to see the true meaning behind certain art pieces in “Ways of Seeing”. Images and art show what people experienced in the past allowing others to see for themselves rather than be told how an event occurred. There are two images that represent the above claim, Arnold Eagle and David Robbins’ photo of a little boy in New York City, and Dorothea Lange’s image of a migratory family from Texas; both were taken during the Great Depression.

Photography offers perspective into a world that harbors a unilateral view of the life surrounding it. When examined in intricate detail, a photo would serve to aid in a person’s learning process. It provides new insights; introducing foreign locations and ideas to those who may have never seen them otherwise. The human brain is not being limited knowledge when it analyzes a photo. To limit knowledge would be like observing the world only through photographs. Susan Sontag’s claim of photography limiting our understanding of the world is absurd. A picture does not limit our perception of the world; instead, it merely opens us up to further our knowledge.

Photographs became invented in the 1840s, which was an addition of things such as written texts, paintings, and sculptures. They reconstructed the life of humans in the past, because humans were now able to capture images of physical objects. It changed the access people had to different time periods, which gave a unique visual on people and objects that were not of modern day. Photography can be used a form of advertisement. To do so, “The Great Northern Railroad used photographs to sell its images of the “vanishing” Blackfeet to the American Public” (33). Photographs are one of the most modern types of documents available. Visuals can provide a different outlook on history, rather than verbal explanations.

In his succinct argument, Raoul discusses the potential longevity of photomontage as an important medium for not only its initial political and propagandistic purposes but also as having future use case in psychology, sociology, and even optics. Not only is this argument sparked by the opinion, (although these opinionated critics are never directly named), that photomontage did not have future potential but, importantly, that it had also become too commercial for the avant-garde. Photomontage had begun to gain primary popularity in advertising, used for popular film and even fashion. This widespread use in advertising simplified the respected method and initial motivations for the medium, supposedly diluting critical high art appreciation. Hausmann also touches upon the new critical obsession with the New Objectivity movement in Germany. Is there room for new movements to exist parallel to former expressions, allowing them to both advance or is the latter doomed to only exist as an illustration of a particular historical lens?

Pictorialism was a movement during the beginning of photography that “approached the camera as a tool that… could be used to make an artistic statement” ( Britannica Academic, 2016). It focused on subject beauty and usually incorporated soft focus rather than a documentation of reality. Jerry Uelsmann is a pioneering photographer that “broke ranks” (Hershberger, 2014) with the previous generation of photographers who advocated for ‘straight photography’. The previous generation had also tried to break away from ‘pictorialist’ photography while also ridiculing it, but Uelsmann “revived and expanded Pictorialist-era techniques” (Hershberger, 2014), mainly through a medium called ‘photomontage’. This form of photomontage was created by combining multiple exposures in the darkroom. Modernist photography (also known as ‘straight photography’) expanded virally, encompassing exemplary forms of sharpness and accurate exposure, but Uelsmann’s concept of the photomontage created a new era of postmodernism for the photographer.