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[photographyatmit]

Blogpost #8

I found Daisies and the analysis put forth in Dolls in Fragments: Daisies as Feminist Allegory by Bliss Cua Lim interesting. Upon watching the film, the seemingly arbitrary but most likely intentional splicing and cutting of scenes right after one another did invoke a collage/montage visual language that reinforced the scattered, sporadic nature in which I imagine children to see the world. This child-like view was underscored in the behavior of the two protagonists–their doll-like behavior and gluttonous consumption of food in every scene was a loud challenge against how women are conventionally thought to behave. After reading Lim's analysis, I see more clearly the larger allegory at play. The film's commentary on how women are perceived juxtaposed alongside what it would mean for women to truly embody that behavior (innocent, child-like, etc.) is interwoven throughout the film. But, the main characters aren't gullible or naive and their ability to capture and evade men throughout the movie for free food shows intention. Notably, the symbolism of the women's head being severed from their bodies and the frequently referenced apples, which I can only presume relate to the biblical and islamic story of adam and eve (man's fall from grace), were two evocative scenes (of many) that hinted at larger nuanced motifs at play surrounding women, decadence and the male gaze. In the article, we read about consumption and destruction as main elements of the film and we learn that the film received a lot of backlash from the Czech government as praising immoral and anti-socialist behavior. The filmmaker argues that the theme is actually an ethical critique of the destructive protagonists and it invokes surrealist motifs in order to convey this concept which is evident in the irrational/illogical/incongruous stitching together of clips which perhaps are meant to express the unconscious mind of the two protagonists. This idea can be summed up in this statement, " Daisies denounces its heroines (thus placating the socialist state censor) while also celebrating them and ridiculing the dogmatic moralism prescribed by the state." Lastly, I found the double entendre of the use of the term "spoiled" to be particularly compelling. The women self-describe as spoiled and in the penultimate scene cry out for help saying they aren't spoiled anymore. However the term spoiled is used to describe children, women, food-- a term that describes something that is unfit for consumption or treated to leniently.

I am interested in what this final statement means: This film is dedicated to those who get upset only over a stomped-upon bed of lettuce.

I will return to this post once I figure it out.

[photographyatmit]

Blogpost #4

This week's readings and films on Guerilla Cinema were powerful and devastating. I need to begin to spread out my engagement with these works as to allow time for processing and emotional recovery. I read the readings first and then watched the films: The Charleston Parade as a clear tool for deculturation and minstrel cinema/the reduction of people to stereotypes while also consuming their art in a slightly erotic and disgusting way with The Battle of Algiers, as an example of Third Cinema and the complexities of anti-colonial resistance and war, helped deepen and nuance by understanding of the texts and worked as an example of the power of media to reflect the conditions in which oppressed classes of colonized countries live. The film, in my opinion attempts to show the nuance of an active war/resistance dynamic–the brutality: children being radicalized to abuse those with addiction issues. The attempt to systematically organize through the power of groups; the role women play. In one scene showing two french citizens walking confidently and calmly past a police checkpoint as the actual Algerians are being subject to this policing of their movement in their own land, we see how the women of NLF begin to weaponize traditional feminine attire in order to pass through the checkpoint without being patted down. It also showcases the civilians who end up martyred as a result of all the violence, and the contrast between the scale of violence in which the Algerians make successful and unsuccessful attempts to kill police officers and in response the French bomb an entire residential complex killing children, women only further inciting the rightful fury of the Algerian people. I'd be interested in analyzing this part of the film in light of last week's discussion on objectivity. We read that the role of cinema is to reflect "the objective" condition and I'm curious how we see that. I read that director refused to condemn any agents of the conflict. Is this the correct way to go about it? We contrasted objectivity with subjectivity rooted in fairness. To me, during this week, there is a clear side who has the historical right would it not be right for a film to take a position when the right and wrong is so clear?

[photographyatmit]

Blogpost #5

I found this week's readings and film compelling and full of points that merit further complication but in this post I will mostly begin to reflect on identity as a construct. What, to me, makes James Baldwin so poignant, in addition to his writing prowess, is his ability to express in such raw form the effect that oppression and race relations have at an interpersonal level– how these dynamics influence and corrupt relationships between father and son, mother and son, son and teacher, son and lover, etc. What he writes are things I have seen; they are things that I have felt and especially considering his time period he became a humanist voice that represented Black people in a way that they had been largely left out. Within the lens of photography and related media, the theme of representation is significant, particularly as it relates to the power of seeing oneself or not seeing oneself represented and the resulting construction of identity. In Notes on Native Son, Baldwin recounts growing up and hearing about the racial intolerance and brutality into the South but not thinking it would happen to "him" at 19 living on his own in New Jersey. (I think this example is quite complex considering we still have this phenomena present today in which brutality occurs against certain Black folks but due to the ramifications of internalized anti-blackness many seek, on some level, to distance ourselves from the typology of the victim or find some way to excuse their fate.) In I am Not Your Negro, Baldwin talks about the shift that changes within black children when they recognize their blackness; they see whiteness in all aspects of their daily life and there is a specific moment that every person of color remembers in which their identity was first racialized, and they realize that they are not white (notice how the identity here is constructed in relation to whiteness (not white) as opposed to rooted in being Black. In Walking While Black, Garnette Cadogan details the reduction in freedom of movement he felt when he moved from Jamaica to the US and could no longer walk through cities in the same way. In all examples, we see how black people and people of color cannot escape their identity. We are racialized since children and grow up seeing ourselves through the constructed identity of whiteness; it is what W.E.B. Dubois described so eloquently as a double consciousness. This psychological experience of seeing oneself through the eyes of people who looked upon you with the utmost contempt. The effect that this has on your mind and self-worth is dangerous. Baldwin writes that this existence can corrupt the soul and that it is imperative that we both accept this reality and resist this injustice at the same time as to not move through life solely with hatred. I think this message has reasonable undercurrents as long as the critical awareness that one cannot escape one’s race remains. I understand movements of joy as movements of resistance in the face of a society that historically has done all it can to exterminate the internal confidence of BIPOC whether by humiliating tactics and representations in the media or through terror and association of blackness with the worst parts of society. In this way, photography and related media has an important role in representing people of color well and in prioritizing the accurate representation of people of color.

[photographyatmit]

Blogpost #2

To be continued:

The opening scene of La Haine sets the tone immediately with documentary news footage of riots in the aftermath of a case of police brutality. We then see clearly how much the climate of violence infiltrates its way at all scales throughout the main three characters lives–how the conversations center on violence, how interactions with the police can be described as war. This is however on a micro scale. Through La Haine we are seeing the interpersonal consequences of being at the opposite end of structural violence and we are seeing the immediate ramifications of said violence, namely death, desperation, destruction.

[photographyatmit]

Blogpost #3

I am toggling between two main interests to develop further over the course of the semester with the ultimate goal of combining the two. First, I am interested in surveillance as a construction that has been and continues to be shaped by political agendas. I could see studying the role of photography in surveillance/ the role of observation and the political power dynamics that dictate who gets to observe, when they get to observe, who is forced to be observed and perhaps most pertinent the spatial manifestations of these controlling forces, namely how we use architecture to force surveillance on other spaces. I made a short video looking into the light and sound of surveillance particularly as it relates to the Black body and tracing these examples over the last few centuries, but there is a lot to be added and nuanced. I am also interested in the constructed biases of our five senses and how the way we perceive the world through our five senses is oftentimes weaponized and manipulated to reinforce racist ideologies within Western culture. In architecture, there is a large optic bias that we rely on to design and experience space that clouds our understanding of the spatial role olfactory politics, for example, have played to justify and reinforce imperialist regimes of power. Architecture as a visual and spatial cultural enforcer undeniably enacted these olfactory politics, but there is a gap in the literature that defines how. I have explored research in the past centering on how scent, for instance, has influenced the built environment and the spatial organization of our world. For this project, I would like to keep exploring this general topic by using digital photography to visually articulate this idea and potentially research its relationship to surveillance.

Thinkers:

Saidiya Hartman-- Venus in Two Acts | Critical Fabulation

Simone Browne-- Dark Matters

Andrew Kettler--Olfactory Racism

[photographyatmit]

Blogpost #1.2

In Special Supplement: Reflections on Violence, Hannah Arendt offers an analysis on the relationship between violence and power that I found lacking at best. As this text was published in 1969 during a historical moment of increasingly publicized state-sanctioned violence, I understand the desire to offer critical commentary on the cultural moment and what the future could possibly hold if the status quo prevailed. However, Arendt’s definition of violence and blatant misunderstanding of the racial context of the time makes it hard to digest this piece in its totality. To begin, I think this piece offers a reductive definition of violence that centers on immediacy, weaponry, destruction and the “barrel of a gun.” She contends that violence and power are opposites, stating that “where one rules absolutely the other is absent” and that violence “cannot be derived from power.” For me, it is not so simple. Violence, which includes structural violence, insidiously upholds the power dynamics of a sovereign nation or government and cannot be described as “opposite to power.” It can be described, as Arendt said, as a means or as a tool for power, but violence operates at different temporal scales with structural violence operating much more slowly than violence on a battlefield for instance. Violence includes the systemic inequities that are entangled into the very fabric of western society: education, housing, food justice, job opportunities, access to healthcare, etc. to say that these inequities persist because the “strength of the regime lies in the civil obedience of people” is just too simple. Yes, I think obedience is a significant factor, but it’s a privileged take to presume that civil support and collective disobedience can even arise when society consistently reminds certain groups of people that they are relegated to the periphery of society. Furthermore, to say that “violence appears where power is in jeopardy” is to further negate the existence of structural violence that is used to uphold systems of power. Violence exists and persists. However, Arendt makes it clear that this is not her experience of the US, particularly when she berates the “organic metaphor.” (12) For, I maintain that when there is violence being enacted on people on a daily basis this equates to a sickness in society. Poverty is state-sanctioned violence, hunger is state-sanctioned violence, failing educational systems are state-sanctioned violence, poor infrastructure is state-sanctioned violence. Violence encompasses a lot more than simply the barrel of the gun and to promote the idea that under these repressive conditions that a society is sick or that it is infected isn’t a promotion of violence but rather a critical identification of exactly what is happening, an identification of exactly what Arendt proclaims in the beginning of the article is being taken for granted. Lastly, I let out an audible sigh when I read, “the greatest danger is…in which case violence and riots may disappear from the streets and be transformed into the invisible terror of a police state.” The political landscape of 1969 was for many people– mostly Black and Indigenous people of color–already one of terror within a police state, and it had been their lived reality for centuries.

[photographyatmit]

Blogpost #1

Because of the publishing dates, I read the Arendt piece first and after seeing that Ariella Azoulay uses Arendt as an interlocutor for her work, I was a little skeptical. However, I am interested in continuing to think through the notion of the act of photography as violent. Through a Marxist lens, whoever controls the means of production has power and Azoulay likens the photographer as controlling the means of production–therefore likening the camera as a tool or a means to power and thus a violent act. She denotes how photography can be exploitative and extracting, connoting a violence that robs the photographed of their privacy, their story, etc. Azoulay explains what she has coined as the civil contract of photography, a contract in which questions of ownership, privacy, private property, and power become entangled, within a contract that ideally would address this violence. She speaks on the photographer, the spectator, and the person whose likeness is captured as each having a civil contract where none is the true owner of the photograph, in fact, in many cases the photograph belongs the public. The question of authorship is also unclear, using the example of the photograph of Napoleon III’s son and concludes that the photograph does not exclusively represent the photographer’s will and intention, those of Napoleon III or those of the photographed boy, a phenomenon very relevant now particularly in the age of social media, Azoulay states that the “citizenry of photography…acknowledged that they have no rights to their images.” (112). (I think it’s important to situate this piece within the context of the West because I know there are cultures around the world in which photography is not allowed, it is regulated/ capturing the likeness of certain religious figures or governmental figures are not allowed, etc.) Nevertheless, the exploitative component of photography is something that I have personally grappled with before. The weaponization of photography to become a tool for surveillance and the tracking of movement/bodies all highlight the camera as a tool that can be used for significant harm. That said, at the scale of the individual, I think it is important to take the position that although you have the means of production/you have the tool that you are anti-ownership and begin to think through what that means or what that could look like. I am interested in the camera as an extension of the gaze. And while Azoulay touches on the “economy of gazes” stating that the modern citizen has thus renounced the exclusive right to his or her image in favor of an economy of images that in principle include the individual and all others,” and even goes so far as to identify each member of the citizenry of photography as a member of a collective, she stops short of identifying what could be a foundational principle. To me, what makes the civil contract of photography interesting is that it is a cooperative model locked within a capitalist framework. In our society, it is hard to imagine multiple owners, worker-owners, etc. We understand and gravitate towards private ownership and authorship being controlled by she who controls the means of production, but as Azoulay is pointing out, within photography that relationship is not a binary; it is multi-directional with multiple point of entry and stakeholders. What if in addition to each member of the collective renouncing their exclusive ownership over their likeness the photographers also renounced exclusive ownership over the image they’ve captured? What would a cooperative economy of gazes truly look like, and could this be a solution to the inherently violent nature of photography?