1.

Uderstanding Photography


1.1 Meaning of Photography
The word photography comes from two ancient Greek words: photo, for "light," and graph, for
"drawing." "Drawing with light" is a way of describing photography. (National Geographic, 2013.
Exposition). At the Oxford Dictionary, is defined as The art or practice of taking and processing
photographs. (oxforddictionaries.com)

In other words, we can say that photography means documentation of a moment in time and
space which describes a narrative, tells a story.

1.2 Memorie

The photograph, when captured, has a unique power to signify the memory of time passed ,
became the replacement or even a reinvention of memory. John Berger mentions in his book:

What served in place of the photograph; before the cameras invention? The expected answer is
the engraving, the drawing, the painting. The more revealing answer might be: memory. What
photographs do out there in space was previously done within reflection. (Berger. J, 2013:50)

It freezes a time that will be nostalgic in the future, a time that would be remembered only in
memory.


1.3 Place, time and eternity
The interest for capture and reproduction of images has always been part of man's ambitions.
The photo has no single inventor; it is a synthesis of various observations and inventions at
different times in history. The first major breakthrough in this direction was the camera. John
Berger says in his book Ways of seeing the following text:

l'm an eye. A mechanical eye. I, the machine, show you a world the way only I can see it. I free
myself for today and forever from human immobility. l'm in constant movement. I approach
and pul away from objects. I creep under them. I move alongside a running horse's mouth. I fall
and rise with the falling and rising bodies. This is I, the machine, manoeuvring in the chaotic
movements, recording one movement after another in the most complex combinations. Freed
from the boundaries of time and space, I co-ordinate any and all points of the universe, wherever
I want them to be. My way leads towards the creation of a fresh perception of the world. Thus I
explain in a new way the world unknown to you. (Berger. J,1972: 17)

The camera makes the observation and photography is the historical record of the moment, a
moment that can not be played again, taking in account the age, the customs and traditions that
are immortalized in the photographed moment, witnessing the world as it happens and as it is
and pausing parts of it, pieces of it, on a perception of space and time.

In the photography of Dorothea Lange (1895-1965), Migrant Mother, at Nipono, California, March
1936, taken under the FSA program (Farm Security Administration) which aimed to document the
Great Depression of 30 Years in the U.S. (viciodapoesia.com, 2013), observed that the
Photographer documenting an image that fills us with connotative thoughts about the real
moment.


Dorothea Lange , (1936), Migrant Mother [online]

By analyzing the historical moment of the photograph, it can be said that there is a lack of hope in
the eyes of the mother, in this desolate environment of misery.
At first, photography was seen as the magic ability to portray a fragment of time, an instant that
could be preserved, guarded and therefore not lost as lost all instants of time. However, this
ability deludes us with the sense of power interrupt the flow of time, since it enables the creation
of a stopped moment, available and possible to be immortalized .
With the photographic image was realized that, even absent, the object can be represented
forever. Melted down the clock, has destructured the material ( Kossoy.B 2007: 53)
Kossoy.B talks about the eternity of the object presented. Disagreeing with the author, the
photograph is not able to make the time/object eternal, but a single time in a certain time and
space. Because the seconds, days, or the life of the object/person after that click, the photo can
not show.

That misery of Migrant Mother did not last forever, and life changed. Despite the rawness, the
photographs end up being iconography of hope, and its truth shows how the eternal does not last
forever , and to the hard times better days will come. (viciodapoesia.com, 2013)

1.4 Value of Time
How was analyzed before, the photograph captures not an eternal moment, but one single
moment at a certain time and space . This shows how the moment of that right photographic click
has so much value. The photograph can document something that does not go back, time is
valuable. From the moment it was taken, it already becomes a memory of the past, nostalgic.
1.5 Photographic Language
The photos are given a cultural filter of its actors when captured, from then on, is up to the viewer
interprets it. (Kossoy.B 2007:115) We can not say that the photographic language is universal.
There is no photographic image that can be interpreted the same way by different people. The
photography has changed not only what we see, but how we see it (Berger.J 1972:18). In the
audience perception, the history of life, the socio-economic class in which they are inserted, are
factors to be considered. Not only these macro factors, but also the meaning of the image can be
changed according to what you feel, values, emotions and what you see beside it or what comes
after it. (Berger. J 1972: 29)


1.6 Photography, copies of reality?

Before the invention of photography paintings were used as a record of life, people and society in
a way manipulated by the vision that each painter had of the object / person / place. With the
arrival of the camera man now had a perfect tool to create a copy of reality that is lived and saw.
But is that photography it actually a copy of our real life? Capture a moment with a tool (camera)
and makes it into an image makes it even real?

In my personal opinion the reality is made by the temporal effect, from the moment that time is no
longer present in relation to space, there is no longer reality. This shows the value that time has
on our lives. The photography is the capture of a moment stopped in time, a spatial snippet
manipulated by Photographer (or photographic editions as I shall speak later) and from there will
receive interpretations of several types of viewers about what really happened in that moment.
"The image come in, and the soul, imagination goes out and this is continuously modified by our
wishes, our knows, emotions and cultures" (Janela da alma, 2011, video)

Looking at the photograph below of Dick Durrance II, 1973 A boy sells lemonade stand from his
front yard on Main Street in Aspen, Colorado, we can see that the Photographer had total control
in manipulating the spatial snippet and freeze a certain second in time, which is clearly a
selection operation transformation of reality. (Kossoy. B 2007:119). What really was there around
this boy? What was he feeling? What is written on the board beside you? This really is the house
in which he lived? The answer to these questions, all shall come with our personal interpretation
as viewers. Obviously, more research about the image would be easier to approach the correct
answers, the more we know the theory, the more we know the image, but even if the observer
has intimacy with the facts motivating the creation of the photographic image, they are found at
another moment which will generate new sensations. If you are far from the facts, the situation
becomes more complex, and photography more vulnerable to manipulations. Getting back the
clues/indications of the formation process of photography and a way to identify manipulations
(Kossoy. B, 2007: 123).


DICK DURRANCE II, (1973), A boy sells lemonade from his front yard stand on Main Street in
Aspen, Colorado [ONLINE]

The Photographer Cassie Condrey sees photography as follows: "Unlike painting, photography,
the traditional concept, reveals the absolute truth, the more perfect identity with the thing
represented, with reference to a unique and individual look that captures the subject . It is this
identity of appearance with reality, along with its ability to reproduce the visual truth to perfection,
when the next moment will never happen, which was regarded as a magical ability".(Condrey.C,
2013. Interview)

I can not say that I do not agree with the opinion of Condrey about the idea that photography and
the reproduction of visual truth with perfection, but as the author says Kossoy says, photography
is a reality, but a second reality since the photographer selects, emphasizes and omits contents.
"The camera faithfully recovers the first reality and deconstructs immediately after the registration
of the image. What we have access to and the second reality. Result of a constructed reality full
of ideologies, impressions and codes. ( Kossoy. B 2007: 94)




Harvey, David Alan, (1988), Summer Cruise, Paris [ONLINE]