“Passport Photos” by Amitava Kumar is an excerpt combining poetry and photography, and making it into a cultural analysis over immigrant conditions. The author explains complicated situations that immigrants have had to deal with when they step towards the U.S. and one of the main conflicts will be language. This piece has described historical moments, such as mentioning “Alfred Arteaga” and the irony of deportation and printing, cultural critiques, and the reality when it comes to the Hispanic cultures. Kumar reflects his book based on a significant image saying “Caution” in English and “Prohibido” in Spanish. In other words, the sign is telling citizens, “Caution”: be careful by avoiding danger, but then it is telling immigrant’s “Prohibido”,
Throughout her article “In Plato’s Cave,” Susan Sontag makes several claims regarding photography. Sontag guides her reader through the many benefits, flaws, and uses of photography. She even compares photography to the words of ancient philosopher in Plato’s infamous, “The Allegory of the Cave.” Throughout her writings, Sontag made it evident that photography is much more than visual stimuli produced for human pleasure; it is a way of interpreting the world, and can be used as a tool for one’s benefit. Sontag’s claims can be used to demonstrate how these means for photography can be utilized by the media.
The article allows its readers to understand the importance and limitations of photography while showing the significance of new inventions during this era. The author makes two central claims throughout the article relating to the camera’s effect. Firstly, they say “His images
As the saying goes, a picture is worth 1,000 words. If we truly looked into the story and meaning behind a picture, it could be worth 1,000 more. The Migrant Mother series of pictures are some of the most well-known pictures in American history. But if we take a deeper look at the pictures as Sally Stein did in Passing Likeness, we see that these pictures truly represent something much more than what they were used for and what they’re known for today. This series of photographs was used to represent the struggling working class in America during The Great Depression.
Chicano art possesses a true aesthetic, mirroring a diverse and ever-changing Chicago reality. Today's Chicano art is multipurpose and multifaceted, social and psychological, American in character and universal in spirit. Chicago is considered as people's art movement, outside of museums and hierarchy, so it continues to establish radical or protest art. Since most Chicano artist continue to be rejected for the creative works due to cultural bias therefore, Chicano art does not appear in museums, alternatively motivating the tension between artists and art authority. Chicano art can be expressed as the experiences Chicanos went through by deciphering codes in images, signs, and symbols.
French theorists Helene Cixous and Luce Irigaray have suggested, women must "speak" and "write" their own experiences, but the speaking must also be related to the context (Helland). In her life and work Kahlo espoused the ethic of Mexicanidad (Mexicanness), picturing herself as nourished by her Indian roots despite the fact that she was the daughter of an Hungarian Jew and a Mexican mother of Spanish and Indian descent (Herrera 1990). As she sought her own roots, Kahlo’s personal pain did not eclipse her commitment to Mexico and the Mexican people. She always also voiced concern for her country as it struggled for an independent cultural identity. Therefore, from looking at Self-Portrait on the Border Line Between Mexico and the United States it provides evidence of an insightful understanding of the fragmented Mexican identity.
The title of the photograph identifies the mother as a migrant worker, and the photograph was taken in 1936, at the time when many migrant farm workers suffered through
Using the photographs to develop a mood for the scene is another unique craft technique the author used often in the novel that helps readers better comprehend the
A photograph can mean so much to different people, but it’s ultimate purpose is to capture an important moment in someone’s life and be able to hold onto a physical copy of a memory. Photographs enact a certain nostalgia for the past, the good times or perhaps an important person or location; it’s a memory you want to last indefinitely. It’s a subject many people don’t touch on when they examine a film like Blade Runner (1982), but director Ridley Scott’s film does place an emphasis on the importance of photographs and what they can mean to people. The film depicts photos as a gateway to nostalgia, the immortalization of important figures and how photographs can deceive their owners. When you hold onto a photography they are generally a preserved version of a past memory that is important or a time of happiness.
This paper will explore a object with the power to preserve a moment and that is photographs. The importance of photographs
The Migrant Mother photograph represented what people were going through day by day and the emotions he or she was forced to overcome. Just the basic picture itself has many meanings and interpretations. Dorothy Lange captured a heart wrenching image of a mother and her children. The contrast and shadows of the photograph give it a dark and grieving tone. The mother is positioned in the center as the focus, however, the children are surrounding her in the background.
Film takes photography to another level. Film, or the cinema “is objectivity in time.” For the first time with film “the image of things is likewise the image of their duration, change mummified as it were”. Bazin argues "only the impassive lens, stripping its object of all those ways of seeing it, those piled- up preconceptions, that spiritual dust and grime with which my eyes have covered it, are able to present it in all its virginal purity to my attention and consequently to my love.
Susan Sontag writes in her book “On Photography” about the Greek philosopher Plato and his relation to the practice of photography as a means for understanding the world and society. Sontag argues that photography is a direct extension of that which it depicts and that it helps convey historical realities and furnish evidence. Harriman and Lucaites, on the other hand, argue that photography indirectly represents that which it depicts and that photographs are often characterized by “promotional zeal rather than syntactical discipline”(138). The photo I selected supports Harriman and Lucaite’s view in favor of photography, which they argue can adequately tap into public memory and convey social knowledge. Photography, as a means of protest, can be used merely as an interpretation of the world and as a vehicle for encouraging positive change.
The readings “Paradise Redux: Gauguin, Photography, and Fin-de-Siele Tahiti” by Dorothy Kosinski” seeks to address how artist of the 19th Century employed the use of photography as an alternative tool to enhance their creativity. The article also examines the important role that the new medium of photography played in expressing the colonial experience, the progress of European culture, and the start of a cultural movement toward the modern and the primitive. What I think the author would like for us to know is how big of an impact photography made on modern art. How photography could be used to draw a person in by providing a visual account of being in another place creating a sense of nearness or of being real, by giving a more accurate representation
Just as Sontag emphasises in her essay, photography is useful tool that captures the memories, defenses against anxiety, and brings familiarity. In additional, personally I also believe that photos can empower the world by sharing
