zefular

Latest Posts by zefular

Under a large tree by a busy road, a dried and flattened roadkill is laid to rest.

Remember: no rule is worth anything until you have discovered it afresh for yourself.

https://vine.co/v/eB7l5dZgYdK/embed/simple

A pat on the back. Sometimes that's all you need.

Journal #4 Part 3

Journal #4 Part 2

Journal #4 Part 1

Journal #3: The Performing ‘I’

10 November 2014

The methods by which we define ourselves can be very interesting. Generally speaking, our sense of self is greatly impacted by our environment and the social pressures, attitudes and beliefs which make our specific culture.

My feeling of being myself seems to be related to the number and activity of people around me. In crowded areas, my identity seems completely obscured. I feel most like myself when I am alone, especially at night or in a place far from the populated city.

I might be commonly referred to as reclusive or anti-social. In fact, I enjoy the company of intelligent, thoughtful people but such people are rare. The concept of social roles offers insight into why people might feel most comfortable when they are alone, as I do. Psychological studies have proven that most people adapt to situations by assuming social roles, by which they begin to define themselves. The most famous study is Dr. Zimbardo's Prison Study at Stanford University, in which a random selection of students were assigned to be either a prisoner or a guard. Zimbardo discovered that the prisoners adopted a passive, defeated demeanor, while the guards became progressively authoritarian and abusive, inflicting more and more terrible punishments against the prisoners. 

In social settings, I have become accustomed to focusing on maintaining my identity. I have noticed that this makes me socially ignorant in many ways and slows down my reactions. Because of this, I must also spend a great deal of effort trying to convince others that my words are worth listening to. This struggle for some measure authority is exhausting, and ridiculous, but it is part of our culture to streamline our thoughts so that we do not need to think more than necessary, and so we shut out all distractions, including each other.

When I was young, I remember how often kids would reply to each other with "what?" as if they were pretending not to hear each other speak. The most common role that I end up playing in a social setting is one of being knowledgeable. Our culture is a terrible game of denying each other consideration. We are all worthless until proven valuable. We are thus forced to show each other that we are valuable in order to simply be heard.

Most of my public identity in a populated setting is defined by this struggle, unfortunately. I know there must be a culture somewhere in the world that does not hold everyone to such unfair initial judgments.

Journal #3

Performing identity

Journal #2: A Sliver of Time

To take a photo is to direct the gaze of viewers. By refining the subject to a single image within a limited frame, the photographer ultimately has the power to convey a very specific message. The un-manipulated photograph also serves as a kind of proof in that one cannot doubt the existence of the subject. In both cases, the implication of presenting a cross-section of time is a temporal tunnel-vision: doubt lies in the question of what was not photographed.

The aftermath shows only the results afterward, and may not necessarily be indicative of the preceding events. In the film, Night and Fog, director Alain Resnais contrasts the peaceful ruins of a Nazi concentration camp in the present to the nightmares that had actually taken place there in the past. Resnais reminds us that we must continually make a conscious effort to remember the past because the present may not be representative of the past. In this way, we may be lulled into complacency, associating those ruins - now peaceful and overgrown with plants with the concentration camps.

The decisive moment shows a tangent of an act in progress. Henri Cartier-Bresson reasoned that the camera is an instrument of freezing and capturing time. The snapshot, according to Bresson, elevates a fleeting moment into the sublime. However, like a photo of aftermath, the snapshot also leaves much room out-of-frame for manipulating how an image may be interpreted by the viewers, who are likely inclined to follow the tangent of the concept. For example, in one of Bresson's iconic images, Derriere la Gare Saint-Lazare, it remains to be seen whether the man stepping off the ladder will continue to levitate over the water or fall into a deep lake, or splash into a shallow puddle.

Comparing both of these techniques, capturing an image of aftermath is very different than capturing the decisive moment, which requires a higher level of skill, speed, and discernment, and perhaps a great deal of luck as well. For these reasons, the decisive moment deserves greater recognition. Yet, discerning viewers should always consider the intent and authenticity of the photographer's vision.

In the end, the quest for objectivity may be a futile one, as Levi-Strauss argues, to photograph anything, for any reason, is to aestheticize the subject. There will always be an embedded message in art, and thus a lack of objectivity. Authenticity in photographic vision is achievable, however, given that authenticity questions the relative precision of one perspective to another.

Journal #1: The Role of Photography in Modern Life

It has been established that the acceptance and availability of cameras in society changed the way people perceive reality (expansion/distortion). Reaching further into the present, photography has become even more widely available, which has further changed the dynamics of its role in every-day life. Society as a whole is becoming more visual. I have found that the public world is scarcely populated by photographic images in the form of advertisements and regulations. In fact, despite the ubiquity of cameras, most of the resulting images reside within electronic devices, such as TVs, computers, phones, etc.

Susan Sontag reasons that the ultimate realism of a photo makes it seem like a magical object, which can be thought of as replacing the actual subject (Wells, 62). As insightful as it was at the time, I believe the changes brought on by the proliferation of digital electronic devices have further altered the landscape of photography in society.

Images have transitioned from physical representations to less tangible digital representations. Thus the environment encountered in daily life, driving down the street, working in an office, running errands at the grocery store, or the bank or any number of other public institutions, the primary source of photographic imagery encountered is almost entirely advertisements. These images are highly edited, and rank with a message that we must all unwittingly have echoing and burning in our minds: “Buy this.”

Despite the ubiquity of the camera, and no lack of using said cameras, I feel the physical world is an artistic wasteland. This is because, if each source of images was a stream, each would ultimately flow into the ocean of the internet, and very rarely be printed into reality. One must therefore access the internet to reach any of the photography that was not inherently driven by capitalism.

Sontag goes on to suggest other effects of photography to include the notion of the photographic seeing, which suggests an intricate relationship between the photographer’s identity and the subject of the photographer’s images - an unending cycle of seeing and being (61). It takes only a single glance at Facebook to see that this is as true today as ever. Among the people that I know, the vast majority use photography explicitly as a means of praising a moment. When my wife and I go somewhere without the camera, she is likely to be angry with me and I joke with her about it. She, realizing the ridiculousness of the situation, openly admits that the day is ruined without the camera. This example demonstrates another aspect of seeing photographically mentioned by Sontag, that perceiving the world as a series of photo opportunities dissociates us from reality (63). This is a notion that creeps into many other aspects of society, and it is my opinion that the most precise explanation of this phenomena must come from a psychological perspective. It is my understanding that, in some way, most of us are dissociated from reality, whether by wealth, or status, or misinformation.

In psychology, the Self-Reference Effect refers to the tendency of people to perceive things that relate to their values more often than things that do not. When considering whether I see photographically or not, I believe that I do. In between appointments, I enjoy taking in my surroundings, and try to find the beauty in them. Sometimes, I endeavor to find a sight that is worth sharing, and take the time to capture, and transform the moment into something shareable. 

Sublimation Object #4

This memento has adorned the rear windshield of my car for several years. It seems rare to find a whole sand dollar intact. I believe superstition holds that they are lucky. I could be wrong. Yet, the symmetry and odd markings have always reminded me that this was once a living creature.  This concept endeavored to reveal the sand dollar's animal origins. When the light shines at a shallow enough angle, it appears to have flesh-like ripples along the veiny ridges on its back. I wish I had had a macro lens to get closer to it.

Sublimation Object(s) #3

With this concept, I had hoped to use the Peter's Ghost technique of reflection to show a real girl sitting in a barbie house, but I didn't have the means to make it work.  Instead, I decided to experiment with glowing objects and realism. I found that the absence of color did a lot to sell the effect of realism, and the glowing aliens seemed to come off as slightly creepy.  I don't feel that this concept was a huge success in relation to the goal of the assignment, but it was a great time.

Watching people pass by through the reflection of the drinking fountains.

Sublimation Object #2

The granddaughter of one of my roommates has moved in with us, adding a fun dynamic to our household. One of her streaking barbies agreed to pose nude for me.  My goal here was to capture moments of grace and intimacy. In some of the photos, the model seemed shy, and confident in others. I am surprised at how some of them turned out.

Sublimation Object #1

A couple tacky paintings have been hung in my rental room since before I moved in - a dispirited attempt at giving the place a bit more taste, no doubt.  Having lived here for a year or two, I had not consciously acknowledged these paintings for some time, until a friend on skype joked about how terrible they are.  That's when I really noticed them. What really stands out to me (literally) are the brush strokes and the way the paint is built up on the canvas. I attempted to play with the texture of the built-up paint, and found that the scene can be altered completely by substituting real light where the artist had painted light into the scene. What used to be a couple geese flying over a glassy lake at sunset, is now transformed into a very spooky scene of high contrast, dead trees on a hill. The added affect of shallow depth of field gives the painting even more dimension.