Week 8 - Photography

Why do we consider photography as a form of cultural critique? Is every photograph able to do so?

Photograph is a picture made using a camera, in which an image is focused onto film or other light-sensitive material and then made visible and permanent by chemical treatment, or stored digitally as Wright (1999, p.1) states that "photography has been used to record all aspects of human life and activity.". Therefore, in a photograph can have more than one meanings embed.

Photograph is also a prosthetic memory. According Landsberg (2004) defined prosthetic memory as a form of memory that "emerges at the interface between a person and a historical narrative about the past, at an experiential site such as movie theater or museum."

Photography usually used the captured images as portraiture. Whether the images captured during the past and present, which to create nostalgia, in many ways shows more accurate representation of life than paintings. Apart from being able to document whatever happened, Photograph could be use to critique culture.

Photography is consider as a modern cultural product and it is one of the modernity revolutions. Due to this, photography can be critique culturally. Photography is also a simulacrum as another reason for being considered as a form of cultural critique. Simulacrum is defined as “a copy of a copy whose relation to the model has become so attenuated that it can no longer be properly said to be a copy." (Pronger, B, 2002). In other words, Photograph is a powerful tool to critique culture because it is a real truth which it is a form of cultural critique. For example of the picture below which document the people and certain landscapes of Africa. The picture shows the world wide that the African country suffer from financial and economy problem.

References:

Landsberg, A. (2004). Prosthetic Memory: The Transformation of American Remembrance in the Age of Mass Culture. New York: Columbia University Press.

Pronger, B. (2002). Body Fascism: Salvation in the technology of physical fitness. Canada: University of Toronto.

Wright, T. (1999). Photography Handbook. London: Routledge.