Assignments

Chaos Texture Nature Shadow

For this assignment, we were given prompts to follow and find occurrences of, what we interpreted the prompt as, around us. The purpose of this assignment was to show how things to take pictures of and photography, in general, is literally all around us. Everything can be a photo if you use your own creative lens. The process of doing this assignment involved simply walking around and following prompts. What I enjoyed most about making this assignment was wandering around my neighborhood and house. By completing this assignment, I learned that photography can really be anything I want it to be if I exercise my creative view. Now I am wondering how I could make this more interesting now with a DSLR camera and a more extensive knowledge of photography. One of my most successful photos from this assignment is the texture one which was the one with all the little stones on the pavement because I think the image really created a sense that you could feel the image and the actual texture of the image. If I were to do this assignment again, I would simply do it again with more advanced knowledge.

Harlem, Doll Test 1947 Washington, D.C. Government chairwoman

or, American Gothic (parody), 1942

What role do you believe photographs and other visual representations play in shaping hearts and minds and/or attitudes and behaviors?

I think that photographs and such carry a special power to spark many emotions in a person. Not just happy but also sad or angry. I think that using this ability to our advantage, photographers can achieve many things maybe such as advertising or activism and possibly many other things.

What truths did Gordon Parks’ work reveal about America?

Gordon Parks truly used photography as a weapon of mass destruction, or, as Spike Lee described it, “When Gordon Parks had that camera in his hands, that was a bazooka”. Truly a tool that Gordon learned to use to his advantage. Throughout Gordon’s career he revealed many truths about America using his photography. One specific example was with his photo, ‘Washington, D.C. Government charwoman’ which was a parody of American Gothic the famous painting of two white people staring blankly at the painter. This photo of his was extremely powerful, it depicts a woman staring at the camera with a mop and a broom. While an American flag flys behind her. This image is so powerful because it depicts a hard working woman in front of a flag that represents a country that doesn’t stand for her. The working tools she holds could represent the influence of African American people in our country’s history. The sadness in the woman’s eyes really conveys.

How does having a close and trusting relationship with the people they are photographing affect an artist’s work? How does it affect the artist?

In the documentary they talk about how it was a special skill that Gordon had to instantly connect with who and what he was photographing. With the Harlem gang member they talked about how he opened up to Gordon immediately and you can see that reflected in Gordon’s photographs. Having a trusting relationship with who you’re photographing really changes the image because the subject is more comfortable and photogenic and most importantly, real.

The camera lens itself provides a point of view, in that it captures a scene from a particular distance and angle and provides a frame and boundary of an image. How did Gordon Parks express a point of view through his images?

Do the contemporary artists in the film share a point of view with Gordon Parks? If so, how?

African American people today still experience incredible amounts of instituted and systemic racism. A way that Gordon Parks illustrates implicit racism is with his untitled photo that he took during the doll test where they had black children pick between a white doll and a black doll and a majority of the time, they would pick the white doll. Proving how insitutional racism has even been taught to the people who are being opressed and how it’s very much still alive today.

How can his published imagery function as a call to action?

Published imagery can be used as a call to action by using it to raise awareness about subjects. With other kinds of methods about raising awareness they become performative activism because it’s a poor way of actually making a difference in that area of the world. But using published imagery, the power abnd emotion of the images are much greater than other methods and can reach more people, being entirely more effective in all categories.

How has the use of documentary photography evolved for this purpose?

I think that the idea of photography and and art in general has evolved from it’s old purpose of just being pretty or making one happy. It’s evolved much more than that into a way to carry more than just that simple emotion. People have learned how to utilize these things to spark every other emotion in the human playbook to make a point about something. And that does’t mean sadness or anger doesn’t have to be beautiful, just a different kind of beautiful from say, a pretty little pond scene.

This was our first experience with the photo walk technique. We walked through the gardens of the Norton Simon and took pictures. For the most part, we still used automatic shooting mode which controlled ISO, aperture, and shutter speed. But a few people experimented with manual as we hadn't learned much about it yet. In this assignment, we walked over to a wonderful and beautiful place called The Norton Simon Museum and took photos throughout the botanical garden outside. It was a wonderful experience because when we got to share our photos, they were all so unique despite being taken at the same place as each other. My favorite part about the assignment was exactly that, being able to take photos with my friends in a gorgeous place was very educational and enjoyable. I think what we learned here in retrospect is that no matter where you go, your photos will always be unique to you. We also used this time as an opportunity to exercise our skills with manual mode and our general photography strategies and skills.

In this assignment we were assigned two photoshop practice techniques. The first one on the left we were assigned to experiment with mirroring and overlay which I used one of my abstract photo shoot photos for and made it colorless. The second prompt was to recolor an image so I recolored the windows of the building to a stunning pink and made the rest of the building colorless.