"A photograph without space and time". Functions, Values and Messages of the "generated-through software photograph" (GSP)

Yiannis Galanopoulos

• Publisher: GRIN Verlag
• Year: 2011
• eBook ISBN: 9783656034216
• Edition: 0
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Film & Video

Research Paper (undergraduate) from the year 2011 in the subject Art - Photography and Film, Old Dominion University (Humanities), language: English, abstract: Garry Winogrand was one of the last masters of so called modern photography. A photojournalist and art photographer, using a Leica reflex camera loaded with a 28mm lens and a TriX 400 iso film, he rose to fame for his street pictures taken extensively across the United States, and across several foreign countries. Winogrand began his entanglement with photography in the 1950s. He created numerous images and produced five published monographs before his death in 1984. One of his famous quotes summarizes his perceptions about photography, as follows: "A work of art is that thing whose form and content are organic to the tools and materials that made it. Still photography is a chemical, mechanical process. Literal description or the illusion of literal description is what the tools and materials of still photography do better than any other graphic medium. A still photograph is the illusion of a literal description of how a camera saw a piece of time and space. Understanding this, one can postulate the following theorem: Anything and all things are photographable. A photograph can only look like how the camera saw what was photographed. Or, how the camera saw the piece of time and space is responsible for how the photograph looks. ….I like to think of photographing as a two-way act of respect. Respect for the medium, by letting it do what it does best, describe. And respect for the subject, by describing as it is. A photograph must be responsible to both." (Garry Winogrand, Austin Texas, 1974, photograpy quotes.com, 2011)Since then, a lot has changed. We are experiencing a shift in traditional ways of displaying and producing photographs. On the one hand, photographs are now displayed via projectors, digital frames, digital family albums, blogs, and massively on web sites. On the other hand, photographs are now produced with digital cameras, or are generated-through-software without the use of a camera (GSPs; Computer generated images and composites; digitally manipulated images). Winogrand's condensed statement concerns the function and the value of photography as a medium and as a process; the relationship between the photographer and his medium; and the photographic image as a product of representation. In other words, it concerns the relationship between artistic expression and image interpretation. [...]