Amie Palombi - Contemporary Photography

Assignment 3 - Politics of representation

2010-05-23T18:32:00.000+10:00

I chose this image of NBA star LeBron and supermodel Gisele Bundchen because it has caused many people to question the magazines purpose of the image. While most see the image as just a nice picture portraying fashion others however see it as an image racial and sexual stereotypes, some see it as 'a depiction of an aggressive, black man in a King Kong-like pose, embracing a white woman, a Fay Wray-like damsel in distress'.
http://allday.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/03/26/808683.aspx

Image: http://allday.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/03/26/808683.aspx

Assignment 2 - Practices of looking

2010-05-23T18:09:00.000+10:00

IMAGE ICONS

Ubiquitous - Universal, omnipresent, everywhere

Motif - dominant theme, central idea

Implicit - understood through something unexpressed

Overdetermined - one effect is determined by multiple causes

Divergent - diverging from each other

Overall summery

An image icon is something that can have a great symbolic meaning to many different people. These icons can be used to make a meaningful statement in many different ways to either an individual, a group of people or a whole community.

Interesting points

Icons represent universal concepts, emotions and meanings.
Icons do not represent individuals.
Icons can be viewed as historic evidence of how people lived in the past compared to now.
Icons, like all other images can evoke a range of emotions.
Iconic images are often re-explored and reinterpreted and can be depicted ironically or humorously as a result of the human need to question.

http://julieluongo.files.wordpress.com/2008/02/leibovitzlennon-and-ono.jpg

I chose this image of John Lennon and Yoko Ono by Annie Leibovitz because of the story and meaning behind it, with John passing away hours after this photo was taken the image gives others an insight into the last hours of his life and his personality as well as his love for Yoko.

Contemporary photography - Exercise 1

2010-02-22T18:25:00.001+11:00

I think that the most important issue raised in the text would have to be what kind of image is suitable enough to be included in the documentary photography category. For example, by manipulating, enhancing or changing a photograph to suit personal style or to please the audience is not considered true documentary photography. Some of the reasons behind this rule include the idea of in order to help others observe and also gain information from a place, time, issue etc using an image; the image must then be entirely accurate otherwise it becomes fictional and useless. With the technology of Photoshop it is very easy to mislead an audience using various manipulation techniques. For example the image on the left of the basketball game is in fact the true untouched image, but the photographer thought that they would make it look even better by putting a basketball just above the women’s heads, by manipulating this image in such a way that misleads the audience into believing that this situation actually happened the image then becomes almost totally fictional to the real event. In the end the photographer did pay the price by losing their job over this image.

http://www.toledoblade.com/assets/pdf/TO16827415.PDF