USTby's Class Blog

English 202: Ways of Seeing

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Citizen - Exploring Racial Injustices

If Rankine spent a day in my shoes she probably wouldn’t have much to write about nor notice any major/noteworthy racial or gender injustices. Her whole work of poetry in “Citizen” is focused on racism and the role it has played in our society. Her writing is rich with examples of adversity that African-Americans face, and specifically women, even in today’s world. She touches on a few instances where skin color came into play negatively for African-Americans and had been very demeaning specifically because of their skin color. A specific example that struck me was the instance of Serena and Venus Williams in women's tennis. Serena in specific had lost matches due to blatant missed calls by different officials and had been mocked and ridiculed by fans at the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells for her race. I thought it to be intriguing how Serena had seemingly matured to rise above all of the hate throughout her career, especially after she had been suspended for her unsportsmanlike actions toward an official whom she believed to be intentionally signaling incorrect calls against her. Serena’s maturation genuinely showed when sports commentators talked about well Serena was able to “hold it together” during the matches. (35) Another commentator suggests that Serena has “grown up” which brings  to question ― Is it childish to lash out against racial injustice? Or is it best to maintain composure?

[kjnick]

Chibok Schoolgirls

For my show and tell I thought I would bring in a little current event. I’m not sure if any of you remember or not, but 2 years ago a terrorist group called Boko Haram quick refresh: radical Muslim group trying to eradicate all Christian and Western influence in Nigeria) kidnapped almost 300 schoolgirls in Nigeria. Since then only about 60 have been accounted for, and the Boko Haram has recently requested 50 million dollars for the release of the rest of the girls. There are a lot of questions and opinions surrounding this, some of which are the following: Should the US get involved? Does the US have an imperialist agenda? Should we give money to an acknowledged terrorist group? Is there anything that we should or shouldn’t do?

here’s an article: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/04/09/boko-haram-demands-50m-ransom-for-release-of-kidnapped-chibok-sc/

[ustby-blog]

I think that this is a horrible tragedy and wish things like this wouldn't happen in our world. However, acts of terror, unfortunately, have become all too common recently as we have had many attacks such as San Bernadino, Paris, and Brussels. It is hard to say whether the US should be involved because I believe, like others, the US does not need to get involved with everything. We do not need to be the worlds policeman in every situation because frankly we do not have the funds. Taking action ultimately increases our debt and comes out of taxpayer money. About the imperialist agenda, I believe it is hard to argue that the US is not attempting to establish political and economic dominance in the world, being we have 662 overseas military bases in 38 foreign countries across the globe. We should, however, coordinate with our allies of the United Nations to address proper action for getting rid of terrorism.

[ustby-blog]

I found a sweet TED talk done by my chosen photographer Sebastiao Salgado who was first a PhD in Economics before he took up his passion of photographing after ditching his economics job. His photos tell a compelling story in black and white of the suffering, death, and destruction within our world. I think that Sebastiao is doing a good thing by shedding light on these difficult situations because they certainly cannot be ignored. This TED talk is a tremendously compelling exclamation of Salgado’s life story of his tough roots in Brazil to now world-renowned photographer who is inspiring people to do more to take care of our planet and the people call it home. How should we handle the pollution in our environment? How should we be helping other nations who are suffering as a people?

[ustby-blog]

          This photograph was taken by a photographer by the name of Sebastiao Salgado who was born in Brazil in 1944. Salgado began his professional life as an economist for an international organization until he chose to switch to photography in 1973 . His main focus was on the Earth and the environment in which we live. He has numerous works that show the various facets of indigenous culture and nature. One of Salgado’s biggest concerns is climate change and he wanted to find a way to make people more aware of the negative impact that pollution can have on our environment. A quote that I found from him describes perfectly his reasoning behind this picture and the exhibit that this photo is a part of and the quote is, “So many times I've photographed stories that show the degradation of the planet. I had one idea to go and photograph the factories that were polluting, and to see all the deposits of garbage. But, in the end, I thought the only way to give us an incentive, to bring hope, is to show the pictures of the pristine planet - to see the innocence” I think that this is a powerful quote because it communicates that his work is to inspire people with the natural beauty of Earth instead of giving them a picture of a grimy, environmentally damaging factory. I think this way of thinking worked better for him because this photo truly does bring hope to the viewer, they see the mesmerizing beauty of nature and areas untouched by the human hand.

          My eyes were initially drawn to the winding river that runs from the bottom right corner to the top left corner where my eyes are then met by the intense, dark rain storm. I am then drawn to the contrast between light and dark in the skies that show a clearing of the clouds and sunlight amidst the dark storm. I am then taken to the heavenly mountains that seem to touch the sky as they can be seen deep into the distance. I think that the contrast between light and dark is very symbolic in this image because, as you can see, the dark storm seems to be creeping into the image, but only takes up about a fourth of the width of the image.  This is symbolic because the rest of the 3/4 page is taken up by the light. This light symbolizes how our world was before the dark storm of pollution began to creep into our environment. Just as the picture shows, there is only little darkness right now, and Salgado wants us to realize this darkness of pollution and darkness before it grows into something much larger. Salgado wants to give his viewers hope by showing the light is overcoming the darkness, but the darkness is working its way into our environment, and we need to act now as a unified world in order to cease this approaching darkness. I am also drawn to the specific and differing textures of the mountains as some seem to be smooth and soft as others seem bumpy and rigid, all while maintaining the majestic nostalgia and happiness of such a breath-taking natural sight.

[madelinemungerblog-blog]

The Disturbing Photography of Sally Mann

A mother's provocative portraits of her children raise confounding questions about the boundaries of art and the responsibilities of a parent. Meanwhile, the pictures can't be printed fast enough.

I found this article written about Sally Mann and her photography. Mann talks a lot in her book about the criticism that she received for her work and I wanted to find some on my own to hear what people were saying. One of the paragraphs in this article talks about the photograph of Virginia that got censured with black covering her eyes, breasts, and genitals. I saw this as particularly interesting because in the book we were able to see how this affected Virginia in an emotional sense. I think that many people have their own opinions which is fine but its hard to criticize a little girl because she does not understand why she is being criticized and as Mann explains, Virginia took this to heart and had a hard time feeling comfortable with her body after seeing the censored picture that was put out.

This article shows a different perspective but I like that we are able to see some of the criticism Mann talks about in her book and are able to relate it back to her book, so if you’re interested check it out!

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Madeline found an interesting article about the controversy around Mann’s photos of children: do you think Mann’s photos deserve censorship? 

[ustby-blog]

This is interesting to me because again we get to the topic of what is and what is not acceptable in society as far as nudity. I think it is also worth noting that this article was written in 1992, and I think society has since then made advances in terms of being more open and accepting to this kind of work. Nevertheless, I don’t think that Mann’s photos deserve censorship in places such as museums or art shows/galleries where people are expecting this kind of work. However, I believe that if published in a public newspaper or broadcasted on public TV that the pictures should be censored because it is a common courtesy I believe to those who don’t wish to see nudity whether it has sexual intent or not. I think that this has to do with the will of people about whether or not they are knowingly exposing themselves to nude photos, because in places such as the newspaper and TV, people don’t really get to choose what the article will show or what the next headline will be. I think this is where the line is drawn. An example is this is that nudity is appropriate at certain beaches where people are expecting it, while nudity is not acceptable at beaches where people aren't expecting it. And for this same reason, nudity is censored in newspapers and on television(usually).

[ustby-blog]

Though Mann is known for crossing lines, she respects the boundaries of each subject

In this article entitled, “Naked and unafraid: Photographer Sally Mann addresses line between art, vulnerability”, a seemingly play on words with the current TV show “Naked and Afraid”, Mann explains that each artist or photographer needs to decide for themselves what lines they will and will not cross. Mann states that she never intends on taking advantage of the subjects in her photos, and that she knows where the line is drawn. An example of this is when her father was severely ill with cancer and Mann knew at a certain point that she should not be photographing her father during this time. It is obliviously apparent that Mann’s work has created a widely debated topic on what is and what is not acceptable in photography, and in particular, the nudity of her young children. I believe that Mann’s intent was unharmful and not in anyway trying to display her children in a sexual manner, I believe that she is simply portraying them the way they were and the way they were comfortable. As Mann said, they lived on a large acreage farm and didn’t have to worry much about her children running around naked, so it was acceptable. Also, Sally Mann has said that her photographs are more about the place rather than the subject, she says that she would have nothing if it were not for her farm, because the farm provided her with the rich and lush landscape and scenery that was encaptivating to viewers. I believe that Mann’s intent was to capture the beauty of naturality and maintain that Mann did not intend to sexualize her children, but to portray them in a way that shows their natural beauty. Anything you do in life, there will always be people who don’t agree with you, and that is because their lines are drawn differently and they have created their own way of seeing. All in all, I believe that Mann’s photographs are acceptable based on the fact that her intent was not malicious, although some may perceive it to be that way.

[ustby-blog]

Gifts, indeed. Many pictures came to me in that lucky rush of exultation, the ones for which I had time to shoot only one, one sheet of film, those where I sank to my knees after shakily replacing the dark slide, eyes shut tight in thanksgiving and fear, fear that I'd screw it up in the developer, fear that the fraction of a second I saw was not the one on film, and in exhaustion, too, from the breath-bated moment, a tenth of a second with the expansive, vertiginous properties of Nabokovian timelessness, while before me the brilliant angel no longer radiant with the sun snatches up the towel and heads to the beach, the tomatoes are imperfectly carved up for supper, and my heart, my pounding heart, sends from my core the bright strength for me to rise.

Sally Mann (pg. 129-130)

Overall, I believe that Mann’s passion for photographing is capturing the moment, no matter when that may be, while Sontag takes a drastically different stance in preaching to soak in the moment and enjoy it instead of wasting time trying to get ‘the perfect picture’.

What I believe to be extremely powerful and intriguing in this paragraph is the way that Sally Mann uses parallelism throughout her sentence structure in this paragraph. Examples of her parallelism are “only one, one sheet of film” , “thanksgiving and fear, fear...” , “my heart, my pounding heart...”. In all of these instances, Mann uses this specific style of writing in order to emphasize the drama in getting that perfect picture. In looking at this paragraph, Sally Mann uses verbs such as sank, shut, and shakily to list a few. These verbs allow us to better visualize what is happening as we are reading and really does a great job of grabbing the reader’s attention. Her tone of voice sounds to me like that of a casual narrator, but the situation she is describing sounds hectic and worrisome because of the stress being caused in attempt to capture the perfect photograph. Another very interesting piece that I noticed was that this “paragraph” contained just one long sentence and I did not notice this until reading it a few times over. This is one of the areas where Mann breaks the rules of writing because to an average writer, they would be told to break up the sentence into multiple ones, but Mann does this so beautifully that I, personally, almost did not even notice this.

Going off of capturing the perfect picture, I think it is interesting to note when Mann states that, “Many pictures came to me in that lucky rush of exaltation, the ones for which I had time to shoot only one, one sheet of film….” Here she is basically communicating to her readers that you cannot simply just plan on taking a great photograph. The best photographs are unplanned, spontaneous, and in the moment. This is why, when her family was together, she always had her camera set up and when she foresaw a quality picture she would quickly ask everyone to hold still or tweak a few things before snapping the picture.

When Mann says, “the brilliant angel no longer radiant with the sun”, she is referring to her daughter as she is gracefully posing on the table and using these words and imagery to escalate her daughter to the level of a heavenly being. This shows the reverence that Mann has for her children and also helps to explain why she enjoys photographing them in the “place” which is their family land. In this photo, the light is placed perfectly on her daughter as she has almost a heavenly glow to her while the rest of her surroundings look almost as if they are in the shadows.

[ustby-blog]

Creative Ekphrasis: This photo was taken by Alec Soth and is titled CF#1 (2013). This piece features Minnesota Twins player Josh Guyer #10 who is standing confidently and athletically in anticipation of the next pitch. With close analysis, you can see the white foul ball line in the upper right corner. With that information, you can tell that he is currently in fair territory playing the left field position. His position in left field seems to contradict the title of this picture “CF#1″ as the letters CF in baseball stands for Center Field. With further analysis of the picture, the light green summer grass is easily noticed as it takes up most of the picture. I noticed how the groundskeeper has worked cautiously, steadily, and carefully to cut the parrallel, alternating grid pattern into the pristine grass. Taking a look now at the player, he is wearing the navy blue jersey, which is one of their home game jerseys for the 2013 season. With knowledge of this, we know that he is standing in the new Target Field ballpark in Minneapolis. Looking at other features of Guyer, you can tell that he has an armsleeve along with an EvoShield wrist guard and on top of that is rocking the old school knee high baseball socks. Judging by this, he clearly has a lot of swag and has prepared well for this game. He also looks like he is ready for his next at bat because of his batting gloves nicely situated in his back right pants pocket.

Critical Ekphrasis: In this picture, there is no area that is blurred, meaning there is no specific emphasis on the either foreground or background. Instead, this picture shows clearly the whole scope of what a fan in the stands would see. Going off of what a fan would see, you can tell by the angle that this picture was taken at, that the photographer has to be seated in Left-Center field in maybe the second or third deck. The short shadow of the player tells us, for one, that it is a sunny day at Target field, and secondly that it is in the early afternoon. This picture shows the light equally on the field as well as the player in the darker jersey and white pants. Immediately upon seeing this picture, the eyes are automatically drawn to the player because his uniform contrasts the green ballpark grass, and also for the reason that he is the only player in the picture. His isolation could represent the isolation and individuality of America’s favorite pastime because unlike other sports, like football and basketball, baseball does not absolutely require as much communication between players, and often it is up to individuals to make the plays happen.

[ustby-blog]

Baby Dolphin Dies After Beachgoers Passed It Around for Selfies

A baby dolphin was killed in Argentina last week after beachgoers scooped it out of the water and passed it around for selfies. The incident has sparked ou

I have seen this on the news and on social media outlets, and it relates to the topic of photographs that we have talked about in class. This incident has obviously caused a lot of uproar and criticism from animal rights activists and wildlife foundations who have rightfully condemned this issue. I did not know what to think when I saw this, I was questioning if this could have actually happened because, to me, this doesn’t seem like something people would do. But, nevertheless, this is yet another example of how people can become so obsessed and captivated with taking photographs that, like in Faris’ post, people don’t realize what consequences their actions will have. People love taking pictures because it can allow them to hold onto a memory and essentially “keep it alive” in a sense, but the irony of that, however, is that their actions have had deadly effects on the surrounding wildlife. This example shows that in certain situations people can take “selfish-selfies” by only thinking about things like how cool that picture would look on their twitter, Instagram, or facebook page rather than thinking about the life of that animal. It seems like nowadays some people can get more caught up with how many likes they will get rather than, as Sontag has said, simply enjoying the beauty of nature instead of trying desperately to get that ‘perfect shot’ while missing out on what pictures can’t capture. After reading this article, Sontag’s book, and talking in class, I can definitely say that I have a new view on pictures and have tried to limit my picture taking and instead soak in the beauty of life and nature in the way that pictures can’t fully grasp.

[ustby-blog]

This scene at the end of page 35 had me staring at the images for awhile, pondering what was happening and the deeper meaning of them. Some of what I was thinking and remembering was that since the Bechdel’s owned a funeral home, the kids seemed to be around death and had gotten to be pretty familiar with it. This familiarity and “cavalier attitude” toward death Alison and her siblings had developed through experiences at the funeral home seemed to have created for them a sort of numbness to the idea of death and what a tragedy it really is. This “cavalier attitude” can be noticed in the bottom two pictures, first where Alison is looking lamentably down at her siblings as they are pretending to be dead, lying in the cemetery with flowers and their hands folded across their chest. In the last picture, which was most appalling of the two, showed Alison asking the gravedigger curiously if she could get in while her dad is behind her with his hands at his waist which may represent his authority as a father and in charge of the grave digger. I thought it was fascinating how Alison smilingly asked if she could get into the grave, because that is rare for anyone to want to do because being 6 feet under means you are dead and have been buried, and usually people want to stay as far away from death and not think about it as much as they can. Although Alison had a “cavalier attitude” towards death after time spent at the “Fun Home”. It also shows her youth and innocence as at that age we cannot fathom the idea of actually dying and may not have experienced it at a personal level, so at that age curiosity usually get the best of us as we know no better. Bechdel’s language narrating this scene is short and quick to the point she is making, and that style can be seen in a pattern throughout the whole graphic memoir as she is able to tell an extravagant story with few words per page, but most of the words are ‘said’ in the pictures which aid readers to visualize and better understand her story. 

[ustby-blog]

My image world at St. Thomas is all about social media interactions with friends whether it is showing each other pictures or videos from our personal experiences or the ones we find on Twitter or Facebook that are too funny not to share. I think the university does promote a certain image culture because they encourage students on their social media pages like Instagram and Twitter to post pictures of themselves in St. Thomas gear or at the game to show and circulate their support on the web. The image world of student life includes, at least I would say, a heavy snapchat use to communicate with each other and to show everyone where we are at and what we are doing, all while having the capability to filter the picture to make it look better or funnier.

In a close-read of this interesting picture I found online, you can tell a few things about what is changing in our image-based culture. First off, you can see that technology is being introduced to kids at a younger age than ever, and that can be looked at in both positive and negative light. On the positive side, technology increases learning opportunities and communication, but negatively it can become an addiction of social media and games that leads to little to no real-world interactions. What I am getting at is that we are moving away from the real world towards the virtual world. Sontag talks about how images/photography is a form of acquisition of things/people, events, and information. Photography is a kind of means to possess a part of reality for people, and the intense consumption of photos seems to deaden our experience of the real world.

Picture: (https://digitalhubblog.wordpress.com/)

[ustby-blog]

Here is a (not very good) picture that I took using my phone with a snapchat filter on my recent trip out to California. I took this photo because I guess it is the cliche thing to do when you visit places like Hollywood because it is something that you are excited about doing and want to capture and remember the moment as well as show everyone that you were there. Taking pictures is a way, as Susan Sontag said, “Of certifying experience…” and goes on to say that people are trying to, “convert experience into an image as a souvenir.”(9) Even more interesting is when Sontag mentions that “Travel becomes a strategy for accumulating photographs.” (9) I think the previous statement is a powerful one in the sense that most people strive to capture those moments when they are vacation as a reminder of what a great time it was and to also showcase their experiences. If Sontag were to comment on my picture think that she would say reiterate and point out how pictures (especially from a phone) cannot provide an exact replica of reality and fail to capture the true beauty of the moment no matter how hard people try. My punctum is definitely the Hollywood sign in the background because it evoked a certain excitement in me upon seeing it and just thinking about all of the movies and tv shows the sign has been shown in.