"Lonely"

"Date Rap Drug"

"Animal Human Nature"

Violence and Abuse

"Trapped"

The marks I make

"It Is What, It Looks Like"

" Just Take the Picture"

Body Language

Modern Ana - David Sroka

 

"Modern"

"The Girl With The Hair"

Sam

"The Red Room of Pain"

"To photograph is to appropriate the thing photographed. It means putting oneself into a certain relation to the world that feels like knowledge -- and, therefore, like power"

I choose this quote because I feel as though I can relate to this quote so well. Before I was never the type of person who likes taking pictures. It just wasn’t my thing. But from time to time when I actually decide to take a picture and i actually liked it, I started feeling good about taking pictures. I use to never post anything on social media because I just felt as though nobody would like my pictures, but when i actually posted I notice people felt the same way about my picture as I did. The more I did it, the more confidence I got about taking pictures and posting them. Now I’m a photogenic type of person. I take pictures all the time and post them.

Appropriate Your Photographed

The quote I have pick from Susan Sontag On Photography was

"To photograph is to appropriate the thing photographed. It means putting oneself into a certain relation to the world that feels like knowledge -- and, therefore, like power"

I feel like I can relate to this quote in many forms like taking photograph of myself or with others. I really don’t care taking photos but when I take a photo of my self or with friends it’s something. I appropriate because it’s a memory in a photograph that never go away. For example my grandma have many photograph of her self and with others back in the day. She  appropriate  each photo with her brothers and family  who some who our not with us no more to remember the good days. Also it a powerful knowledge to show the younger ones like me her grandson and my cousin who know their family. So, the picture I posted with  quote  is with the people who I care about and myself as well.

Susan Sontag.(2010). On Photography. Retrieved from

 http://www.susansontag.com/SusanSontag/books/onPhotographyExerpt.shtml

Polaroids

“…  just like the Polaroid owner for whom photographs are a handy, fast form of note-taking, or the shutterbug with a Brownie who takes snapshots as souvenirs of daily life."

I took this quote for my photograph because I thought it was relatable how there are people who collect Polaroid pictures of times that they want to remember. It is a way to instantly get a picture printed minutes after it is taken using a Polaroid camera, and it can be used for a number of reasons. In the quote it states how it can be used as a fast way of “note-taking” or taking “snapshots of souvenirs of daily life.” Basically, it could be any reason and I have a few pictures that show that. In a few of my pictures, they were taken over the summer, when I went to the beach at Seaside Heights, one with me sitting on the boardwalk, and another with me with two prizes that I had won. The other picture of me is when I went to a birthday party. The final picture is a selfie of myself, with me smiling looking at the camera. This picture I just recently took for this assignment, and it’s not anything specific that I was doing, but these are all “snapshots as souvenirs of my daily life.” It is basically like I’m taking notes of things I do through photos. As time goes by, and the collection grows, it is definitely something I could look back on one day and remember.

Resources:
http://www.susansontag.com/SusanSontag/books/onPhotographyExerpt.shtml

Bite Sized Pieces

"Photographed images do not seem to be statements about the world so much as pieces of it, miniatures of reality that anyone can make or acquire." 

When I read this quote I thought of all of the small reference photos I take with my phone. If there is something that I like, want to remember for later, or use in a drawing/painting, I take a picture of it. I have plenty of pictures of things from museums to a book cover that I liked. Through most of my art classes all of my professors would tell me to keep a little folder to hold anything that I thought was interesting as inspiration. Instead I would just take a picture of it.  All of these are just small bits of reality and now with the use of social media we are able to share these small bite sized pieces with the world around us. No matter what the format we take pictures and share them with just anyone though the click of a button. It is interesting to see how we take in these images from other places and though we are not there we still get to experience being there. On one social media app that I own I have seen and reblogged pictures from different cities, states, and countries. However looking back at them now they all seem so narrow. We have the feeling of going somewhere without going there, but we don't really experience the full picture. We share our world to others and only view other worlds through a peep hole. 

"To photograph is to appropriate the thing photographed. It means putting oneself into a certain relation to the world that feels like knowledge -- and, therefore, like power"

I picked this quote simply because I felt like I could relate to it the most.  Me being the shy person that I am and do not necessarily like taking photos, when I do get a good picture, I feel a lot better about myself.  I feel like when  I post a picture people look at me like "Wow she really knows what she's doing.  She looks so comfortable being photographed" when in reality it is the complete opposite.  So in a way I feel as though when I take a picture I have complete power. I'm sure a lot of people feel the same way, including people who are famous on social media. When looking at the camera no one thinks that everything isn't how they make it out to be. Even my face doesn't really look like how it appears in the photo. Filters and Photoshop apps help a person create a reality they do not really live in so when I know I can make my eyes a little brighter, and make my skin a little softer, and people actually think I look good in the photo, I have power over the photo and what I look like to throw them off,so why not do it all the time?

“Photographs, which fiddle with the scale of the world, themselves get reduced, blown up, cropped, retouched, doctored, tricked out”

I chose this quote from Susan Sontag’s excerpt On Photography, specifically because of the fact that our world today has become so self conscious about the photos that we post, that it is becoming hard to tell what photo is real and authentic. We’ve become so self conscious of what we post that we manipulate our images to hide what we think is our imperfections to showcase a “perfect photo.” Photographs can be altered in ways that we change our appearance such as our skin complexion, hair color, eye color and even our body shape. For example: Nowadays, even magazine covers cease to reveal original photos of celebrities, but instead they showcase unrealistic photos after a lot of retouching in photoshop. To demonstrate, the picture on the left shows the original photo of myself, whereas the photo on the right shows the altered version which I changed my hair color, eye color and skin complexion.

"Bell and I"

My selfie, "Bell and I," depicts myself and my baby cousin Bella. I decided to take a picture with her this week after reading Susan Sontag's article on Photography and concentrating on this quote "To collect photographs is to collect the world. Movies and television programs light up walls, flicker, and go out; but with still photographs the image is also an object, lightweight, cheap to produce, easy to carry about, accumulate, store." From this quote I gathered that photography has changed from going to a studio and paying a photographer to take a photograph of you to now being able to easily take a selfie of yourself anywhere from your phone. By Sontag saying it's lightweight and easy to store I believe she means to say that in the past photographs were framed or kept in scrapbooks whereas now photos can easily be stored on sites like iCloud or just in your phone. 
Over this weekend my grandmother wanted to take my baby cousin to get a professional photograph at a studio since she had not yet taken any baby pictures. We had a hard time finding a place since they are not so common anymore. Once we did find a place we were shocked by how expensive it was to get photos done. After going through with it and having to choose a package plan my grandma wanted to add wallet photos to the package and I was trying to explain to her that in my opinion most people do not carry wallet photos anymore. Wallet photos are a thing of the past that not many people continue to do because of the fact that we carry photos in our phones. 
Anyone can be a photographer with today's technology and advanced mobile devices. In my selfie Bell and I are sitting the same way and I incorporated the matching stuffed animals of Tiger from Winnie the Pooh as a prop. 

"Photographs are perhaps the most mysterious of all the objects that make up, and thicken, the environment we recognize as modern. Photographs really are experience captured, and the camera is the ideal arm of consciousness in its acquisitive mood." (Sontag) 

This quote caught my attention because in a miraculous way photographs are the most convincing, complicated, working objects that have power to create scenes in the most mysterious ways. The camera itself is our own eyes in our hands. Whether it was taken on purpose or by accident the camera took it. It snapped our experience, From the things that we love, the people we love, the scenes that we love, and ourselves. These pictures along what I am saying right now are experiences of mine that were captured. To the people that I grew up with and made accomplishments with, to the place where I free my mind, to the person that I think about when I wake up and go to sleep. These are memories. My moments. 

"In teaching us a new code, photographs alter and enlarge our notions of what is worth looking at and what we have the right to observe"

I chose this quote mostly due to our competitive selfie and like generation. A lot of times pictures are used to impress followers by how the quote itself said, alteration. As a female I think we are more self conscious of what to post or show off to our friends because of judgment. This selfie is something I would post on social media or be proud to show off because of I feel in this picture, confident. When you look good you feel good and even though we might feel flawless, others may look down on that. Also constantly asking others for approval as to if to post it or not is a constant bad habit that many should overcome. People will preach for the natural look but point out everyone's flaws in a second because that is not what they wanted to see.

Aggression vs. Meek

Images which idealize (like most fashion and animal photography) are no less aggressive than work which makes a virtue of plainness (like class pictures, still lifes of the bleaker sort, and mug shots).

Aggressive 

Meek

The reason why I choose the quote, "Images which idealize (like most fashion and animal photography) are no less aggressive than work which makes a virtue of plainness (like class pictures, still lifes of the bleaker sort, and mug shots)" (Sontag), is because now in days our current gneration tend to value and idealize the less important things in life. There are copious amount of people I know that will waste at least 30 minutes to take a selfie. They always have to make sure there lighting in the back is up to par, worry about no one photo bombing the picture and most important the angle needs to be perfect just so they can snap a master piece just too show it off on snapchat or Instagram. The picture of the dog filter is less aggressive. The audience is able to tell that the person in the picture is innocent and is not looking for trouble. The other photo is more of a meek type of setting. Its more quiet, gentle and submissive. I am at work and sitting in my office. When people think of an office environment, they think of this silent and obedient persona. Overall, in my opinion I believe this quote contrast the two different types of selfies that person is able to capture. You can always go with a fun and joyful setting or a professional elegant environment. 

Reference:

Sontag, S. (2010). On photography. New York: Picador.