5.2 – Assessment Criteria – Context

Exercise 5.2

Select an image by any photographer of your choice and take a photograph in response to it. You can respond in any way you like to the whole image or to just a part of it, but you must make explicit in your notes what it is that you’re responding to. Is it a stylistic device such as John Davies’ high viewpoint, or Chris Steele Perkins’ juxtapositions? Is it the location, or the subject? Is it an idea, such as the decisive moment?
Add the original photograph together with your response to your learning log.  Which of the three types of information discussed by Barrett provides the context in this case? Take your time over writing your response because you’ll submit the relevant part of your learning log as part of Assignment Five. 

The image I have selected is John Wilhelm, who is a Swiss photographer who considers himself to be an artist only using his own images to create surreal photos of his children and family.

image by John Wilhelm

too see John’s work click here:  https://www.johnwilhelm.ch

One of my passions is digital manipulation and this kind of photography is something that I have done quite a bit of.  The image I have created, in ‘homage’ to John’s work, picks up the themes of daisies, children and miniatures.

Debra Flynn. Daisy Pinata, 2018

images used to create the image above

In his essay Terry Barrett (to read click here) suggests there are three sources of context: 

  • internal context – the picture itself, it’s name, who made it and when
  • external context – how and where it is presented 
  • original context – the understanding of the environment in which the photographer physically and psychologically made the image.

all of these elements can affect how the image is perceived or understood by the viewer.

Robert Doisneau. Paris Cafe, 1958

This is described by Barrett, using Robert Doisneau’s image of a couple drinking wine in a Paris cafe.  It has been published 5 separate times in different forms and each time it’s context has been altered.

  1. by Doisneau in a set called Paris cafes
  2. by the Temperance League extolling the perils of drinking alcohol.
  3. by a French scandal sheet with a caption about prostitution
  4. by a photo gallery in New York as an artwork
  5. in a book about modern art, suggesting it be a ‘possible seduction’.

Depending on which description the image is given at any one time (internal context) or the place where it is seen or published (external context) the viewers understanding of the image can be changed.  To really understand the context of the image the viewer should endeavour to understand the environment which caused the photographer to make in the image in the first place. (original context) i.e. when, where and why was it taken, what was the political or moral environment in which it was taken and what was the viewpoint of the photographer.

As a photographer, this makes me think very much about how and where I present my images.  In these times of Facebook and Instagram, 500 px etc photographs are rarely printed and once uploaded to the internet are pretty much free to be used by anyone.  Particularly when creating an image like the one by John Wilhelm and my ‘homage’ to it, there is a lot of work gone into collecting the right photos, and then digitally creating the image, to then just upload it to social media where it can be used at will, does that denigrate my hard work or reduce it the level of the selfies flooding the internet?  It’s a difficult one, because like most photographers I want to share my work for others to enjoy too.

Contextualising my image:

internal context: Debra Flynn. Daisy Pinata, 2018

external context: published on instagram / facebook (see here

original context: as the photographer, I physically have the equipment and computer software to produce this image, including the knowledge, skill and artistic vision to create the image.  Psychologically; I am drawn to the surreal and adding a bit of magic to children’s lives.  In the examples below, all but one are members of my family.

link to Assignment 5 – Photography is simple (reworked)

references:

www.terrybarrettosu.com/pdfs/B_PhotAndCont_97.pdf 

Click to access Barrett-1986-Photographs-Contexts.pdf

 

Part 5 – 5.1 – Place holder

Exercise 5.1
Use your camera as a measuring device. This doesn’t refer to the distance scale on
the focus ring(!). Rather, find a subject that you have an empathy with and take a
sequence of shots to ‘explore the distance between you’. Add the sequence to your
learning log, indicating which is your ‘select’ – your best shot.
When you review the set to decide upon a ‘select’, don’t evaluate the shots just
according to the idea you had when you took the photographs; instead evaluate
it by what you discover within the frame (you’ve already done this in Exercise 1.4).
In other words, be open to the unexpected. In conversation with the author, the
photographer Alexia Clorinda expressed this idea in the following way:
Look critically at the work you did by including what you didn’t
mean to do. Include the mistake, or your unconscious, or whatever
you want to call it, and analyse it not from the point of view of your
intention, but because it is there.

still to do