Photographic Journalism Rhian Ryan
Contents What is a Myth? .................................... 3 Timeline of Image Acquistion .............. 6 Surrealism ............................................. 8 Narrative photography ......................... 9 Propaganda ........................................... 10 Social Commentary .............................. 12 Every Image tells a Story ...................... 14 The Journey .......................................... 16 About Me .............................................. 18
Demeter and
Persephone To simplify what a myth is would be to say it was a traditional story used to send a message. Though it was not always a message as such, some myths tried to give an understanding or reason for natural phenomenon’s that early societies did not have the technology or science understand. The gods or religion were usually used in early myths as they were believed to be the creators of our world, so they would of had to of also created these natural phenomenon’s. As some of these phenomenon’s were harmful to the population at the time, e.g. floods, earthquakes ect., a reason had to created or believed in, in order for the population to understand why the ‘gods’ had done this to them.
This can be seen In the Greek myth of the goddess Demeter and her daughter Persephone. Demeter and Persephone were believed to rule over the death and growth of the Earth’s vegetation and harvests, which would have been the upmost importance to the survival of early civilizations. In this myth, Hades, the god of the underworld, looks up onto the surface of earth and see’s Persephone. Hades immediately falls deeply in love with her and asks for his brothers Zeus’s help to trap her. Zeus creates a ‘cosmic flower’ which once plucked will open the earth beneath you. Persephone is lead into a beautiful field and plucks the most beautiful flower, the ground then opens up and she falls into the underworld. After her disappearance, Demeter searches the whole of the earth for her daughter. After 9 days she becomes so distraught that the goddess denies herself all food, drink and comforts, and renounces her role as the goddess of vegetation and fruitfulness. Zeus, after seeing the harm the goddess’s renouncement was doing to the Earth, demanded that Hades release Persephone from the Underworld. Hades only agrees under the condition that Persephone would spend one third of the year with him. So for eight months of year Persephone would live with her mother on earth, and for the remaining four months live with Hades as Queen of the underworld. As Demeter was not a forgiving goddess, and blamed the earth for opening up and letting her daughter be taken into the underworld, she let the earth go barren for these months. These months account for the winter season when no vegetation will grow. Although this is the basic myth of Demeter and Persephone, there are a few other versions that have developed over time. In one, when Persephone is kidnapped by Hades she refuses to eat anything but the juice from three pomegranate seeds. Even now in Greece, Pomegranate’s are traditionally eaten on Christmas and other important occasions. So pomegrante’s have come to symbolise important events. The pomegrante is also though to symbolise the death of easy prosperity of humans on the Earth, and the goddess love for man. This also highlights the importance of the kidnapping within the myth, which starts what we know as winter. Overall this myth would clearly show why winter happens annually. It also became a tradition to sacrifice the first loaf of bread of the season in the hope that Demeter would not be too cruel to the harvest in the coming winter. This myth would have been adaptive to early societies as it would of helped time when best to plant crops to insure a good harvest. Persephone also symbolises the seed, as she stays underground in winter and comes above ground in spring.
Although the story of Demeter and her daughter Persephone is a Greek one, the image that is commonly used to represent Demeter was taken from the pre Raphaelites. The pre Raphaelites were a group of English painters, poets and critics who believed in rejecting what they considered to be the mechanistic approach to art and returning to the detail, intense colours, and compositions of medieval art work. They believed that the medieval culture possessed spiritual and creative integrity that had been lost in later years. The Pre Raphaelite Brotherhood, although all from families with money and very well educated, painted many themes that displayed the hypocrisy of the times. They used old tales and social scenes to show this. This is not so surprising when you see that Karl Marx was writing his communist manifesto at the time and the first trade unions were being quashed. The hypocrisy of the society they lived it was all to clear to them and they wanted to go back to a more classical time which is reflected in their early doctrines. The model for the Pre Raphaelites image for Demeter and Persephone was Jane Burden. She embodied the look of a timeless classical beauty that the Brotherhood craved. Her and her sister were approached by Dante Gabriel Rossetti to pose for him while they were seeing a play, though at first Burden didn’t turn up to model after another chance meeting she agreed to and there started her involvement with the Pre Raphaelites. She was never an official member of the brotherhood, she married William Morris and had an long lasting affair with Dante Gabriel Rossetti, two of there founding members, but she herself was never a member. Jane was also fairly uneducated upon her introduction to Rossetti, but after her engagement to Morris was privately educated. So the face of the Pre Raphaelites, although a beauty, was not of the social standing to of ever come into contact with the Brotherhood if it wasn’t for her looks and a chance meeting. An uneducated daughter of a stableman should of never been able to understand that philosophies that the Pre Raphaelites held so dear. The hypocrisy of the hypocrites. It should also be added that at the time, the Pre Raphaelite’s were slated by many critics who thought there style was medieval and backwards thinking. There magazine the Germ was also short lived with only a few readers. The President of the English Academy of Arts, Sir Charles Lock Eastlake, was a particular critic who publically criticized there principles. The Clique, a rival group of artists who were much more popular at the time with much less controversy, helped lead to the eventual disbandment of the Brotherhood. By 1850, after the controversy surrounding the painting Christ in the House of his Parents which was considered to be blasphemous,all members of Pre Raphaelit movement had stopped signing there painting PRB.
1827 Joseph Nicephore Niepce
1835: Henry Fox Talbort created the Mouse Trap camera. It used paper lined with silver and created negatives . 1839: Louis Daguerre designed the sliding double box Dageerrotype camera which used the mirrored metal plates, the first commercially produced camera produced by Alphonse Giroux in Paris.
Created Heliographs/sun prints. Needed 8 hours of light exposure and would fade soon after appearing.
1500’s Camera obscura - uses light to project a colour image onto a surface. Used by artists, seen as why painting became considerably more life life/accurate around the 1500’s.
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1600
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1700
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1800
Glass coated with light sensitive salt. Glass created a more detailed and stable negative than paper. But wet plates had to be developed before the emulsion dried so you had to carry a portable dark room around if you were out of your studio.
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1888 George Eastman invented film with a flexible base, smaller, not easily breakable and could be rolled. But highly flammable.
1851 Wet plate negatives
1772: Johann Heinrich Schulze discovered that silver nitrate darkened upon exposure to light.
1500
1884 William Schmid patents first commercially produced camera for Dry Plates – Detective Camera.
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1856 Hamilton Smith -Tintype. thin sheet of iron, base for lightsensitive material, created a positive image. Lighter than glass, more moveable.
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1841 Calotype 1834 Henry Fox Talbort First Photogram
1665: Johannes Vermeer paints girl with the pearl earing using camera obsura
‘The art of photographic drawing’ – pressed leaf or plant on a piece of sensitized paper, covered it with a sheet of glass, and set it in the sun. Created photograms.
Talbort created paper negative process which could be used to make multiple positive prints.
1853 Thomas Ottewill creates one of the first compact folding cameras, intended for use by the military.
1852: Collodion process created by Frederick Scott Archer, images only required 2 to 3 seconds of light exposure 1837 Louis Daguerre Fixed images on mirrored metal plates. Needed under thirty minutes of light exposure to fix.
1879 Dry Plates made hand held cameras possible. A glass negative plate withed dried gelatine emulsion, these plates could be stored for a period of time. No longer a need to bring a portable dark room.
Timeline of Image Acquisiton
1889 Eastman creates Kodak. Kodak produces first camera for amateurs using ready loaded Eastman film. Had to send the whole camera back to have the photos processed.
Timeline of Image Acquisiton 1913 first Leica
1900
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1984 First digital electrical still camera - Canon
1943 First photograph of the Earth from Space
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2000
1983: Kodak introduces disk camera
1904: Lumière brothers patented their Autochrome color process
1933 First SLR
1963 Polaroid cretes instant prints
1991: Kodak DCS-100, first digital SLR
2002 First camera phone
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2012
Photomanipulationsm Sureali
Photo manipulation is widely used technique to make a photograph look more surreal whist still keeping it looking realistic. The illusion that a manipulation photograph can create is mirrored by the surrealism seen in the works of Dali. However, modern photo manipulation is usually done in photoshop by layering photographs over the top of each other. This particular photograph by Dormen Lombergar is a combination of five separate photographs. The horror feel to it helps create the illusion that it is a manipulation of on image, whch brings it closer to what you may see in reality therefore more realistic and scary. Although photo manipulation is commonly done digitally on programs like photoshop, it is also done manually in the dark room and using collages. A really early form of photo manipulation was just posing shots and making them look natural. This commonly done in all types of propaganda without a lot of people realising.
This is a classic painting by Salvador Dali is called the Persistence of memory. Dali was heavily influenced by the Freuds theories and the idea of the subconscious mind, so his used his artwork to covey this. This particular painting represents the clash of the real and and the imagination. Without the melting clocks and the little creature in the middle, the scene could potentially be a landscape But when you add those in, it makes a realistic painting look surreal. The mix between the real and the surreal is the theme that is always expressed in classic Dali work.
Narrative Photography The Frozen Moment Constructed and Captured This photograph was taken during the Toulouse Riots in France on the 25th of
March 2007 by Son Nguyen.
Violence broke out in Toulouse when the far right French political party, the Front National political party headed by the French political candidate Jean Marie Le Pen, held a meeting in the town. Violence started in Arnaud-Bernard, which is seen as the most multi-cultural part of Toulouse and then spread towards the centre. The over 300 rioters were met with police in full riot gear, helicopters and tear gas. Bottles were thrown, tear gas was fired, ten people were injured, two were arrested and one policeman was injured. The photograph shows four burning dustbins with a man swearing and crowd behind him. What you can’t see in the photograph is that the man is swearing towards the police and he is standing on the picket line between them and the rioters. This pacific photo of the riot seems to steer sympathy towards the police. Although there were only two arrests, the photo makes the protesters look unruly and violent as they are positioned behind the burning bins with the main figure swearing at the police. The photo does not show that police threw tear gas into a non violent protest and the bins were set on fire in retaliation. If you only had this photograph to show you the Toulouse riot, you would assume that the riot included at lot of violence with no reason for it. Although, the photograph does portray the anger felt toward the Front National well and shows enough of a crowd to show that they are a united front.
The Front National, one on France’s most controversial political parties due to its anti immigration and nationalistic ideology, presence in the multicultural Toulouse was bound to cause uproar. The decision to hold a meeting there was a clear attempt to create a volatile state so that the eruption of violence could be used to back up their parties ideologies. I feel that the photographer was trying to portray how strong the opposition to the Front National was. Although, in doing this, he has made the unrest felt by the citizens of Toulouse to look more like violence. As the task was to research a narrative image I immediately thought of more documentary photography, and those you would find on the front cover of a newspaper. If you have a news article, the photograph accompanying it must portray enough of the story to link it to the article. http://www.noodlepie.com/toulouse_riot/ http://www.behance.net/gallery/Riot-in-the-city/174502
During the Russia Revolution, propaganda was used as one of the main ways to gain support for political parties. As much of the Russian population were proletariat (85%), most were illiterate, so newspapers and journals were ineffective in creating more followers. Communist propaganda posters were the most effective in doing so, there posters were characterized by simple designs, bold colours and short slogans. This made them easily understandable to both the literate and the illiterate, which gained them much support with proletariat's and the bourgeoisie. Russia's war time propaganda was the same style, just more geared towards the peoples war time efforts, eg Sticking to quotas in the 4 year plans, and to vilify Russia's enemies and unite the public.
PROPAGANDA
On the top poster showing a father with his two children, the slogan translates to ‘We’ll raise a generation, selflessly loyal to communism.’ This would suggest that to be a good communist not only must you be selflessly loyal; you must also raise your children to be as well. To some, this may also suggest that the rest of the population is this loyal to the party and you are alone in not being this devoted. This type of propaganda was used to increase support among their own supporters.
This next poster created around half way through WW2, shows a caricature of Hitler. In this poster Hitler is shown as disfigured, grotesque, green and Dracula looking. The caricature vilifies him to the Russian people, especially children who would associate this drawing of him with the story book figure of Dracula and therefore automatically evil. Another reoccurring theme in communist propaganda posters is photomontages. Rodchenko was constructionist and was a particular pioneer of this in Russia during the early stages of communism, (in the later stages Stalin thought his work was becoming ‘dangerously subversive’ and was listed as a potential traitor ). Lenin believed that photography was the super power of Propaganda in Russia, and commissioned many photographers to create propaganda posters. These photographers were heavily bias towards the state and in many cases edited to help put across any belief the party wanted to enforce on the public.
Social Commentary For this task i decided to look into more modern images that displayed social comments than those we had discussed in the lecture. While Gilray and Hogarth’s style of cartoons and caricatures are still relevant and used today, i feel that cartoons are now used for mostly on political and economical issues. Since the commercial introduction of photographs in Newspapers, photos have replaced much of the content that used to be reserved for cartoons. Also, to comment on the issues of society nowadays, you would have to look deeper that just the political and economic problems. For my Social commentary i decided to look at the at the rise of fascism in modern times. I’ve mainly looked the BNP protests in England. There extreme nationalist and racist views have earned them a lot of enemies but also a lot of supporters. It’s a sad truth that in times of bad economy and high unemployment, people need someone to blame, and the BNP have directed this anger towards immigration. For this task i will use photographs of both the BNP protests and of the protests from opposition groups. This shows the effect there protests have on areas they protest in, and try an give an overall less bias view.
All theses photographs were aimed to be sold to Newspapers or other types of media. They are all documentary style photos that report the protests without any editing. However, depending your view on the BNP’s policies the photographs that you would take may lean towards being bias. On the BNP’s official website there are no photographs of any opposition or counter protests to there own. Or no photos of the incidents of violence, or the clashes with police. But the coverage by the BBC and many of the major newspapers showed a different story, one of major public opposition to there protests. These photographs were aimed at the general public for general consumption through the news, newspaper and the internet. So to keep on par with the social view that is against racism, the photographs were more geared towards the opposition faced by the BNP and the trouble that there supporters caused. However, the whole protest was photographed and there was an overwhelming amount of opossition towards it, so there was an
Every Image Tells a Story....
Buddhist Self-immolation
For my task on the story, I looked in the one specific image of Buddhist selfimmolation. I decided to look into Buddhist self-immolation as I wanted to personally understand the reasons behind it, as I can’t comprehend the amount of self sacrifice and belief in your cause that is needed to burn yourself alive. I chose the famous photograph of the Monk Thich Quang Duc burning himself alive in 1963 in protest to the Catholic Diem regime that controlled the South Vietnamese government at the time. The Catholic regime cracked down on practicing Buddhists by banning the flying of the traditional Buddhist flag; prohibiting Buddhists from exercising the same religious freedoms as Catholics; and the continued detainment of Buddhist monks and nuns. Self-immolation among Buddhists is not a new form of protest. Evidence of this practice within Buddhism dates back to the fourth century, where self-immolation became public events in which people would come to watch in admiration of their sacrifices. Suicide for personal reasons is stunned in Buddhist beliefs but self-sacrifice for a noble cause is highly regarded. An act that is done for the good of the community is considered noble, and especially so if it is done by a member of the clergy. As self-immolation is usually done by monks, it makes it hard for the Chinese government and the Chinese media to discredit the protest as they are so highly regarded within the community.
It is was also seen in other religions, such as Hinduism where in the tradition of Sati, a women would throw herself onto her husbands funeral pyre after his death. This practice is still very much alive today. Since 2011 30 Monks have set themselves on fire in Tibetan areas of China in protest against Beijing’s heavy-handed rule in Tibet. This is the chosen form of political protest at the moment as the 2008 peaceful protests, which included 150 smaller protests, ended in 30 different incidents of violence between the protestors and the police. This ending of violence allowed the Chinese government to concentrate on the violence and not the original reason for the protest. Self-immolation does not do damage to people or property and does not involve unrest, but does create a big enough scene and incite enough public sympathy for it not to be ignored. This seemed the only way for the Monks to be heard. However Beijing has blamed the Tibetan Buddhist spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, who has been living in exile in India for decades, for inciting the self-immolation. China refers to self-immolation as an act of terrorism, however the definition of terrorism is the use of violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political aims. Selfimmolation is neither; therefore it can only be described as an extreme act of protest or suicide. There is no doubt that it is a very extreme form of protest, but it comes from a point of desperation. The desperation to help there people and need to be heard by there government. I think that this photograph shows that. This absolute dedication to there cause to which has lead this Monk to sit absolutely still while burning to death is staggering. This is a story of unswerving belief and the need for change.
The
Journey
For our task based on a journey, I decided to look at the journey from adolescence to adulthood. The journey of time is one of the most easily recognisable in people, however it’s not the time that has passed, it’s what you’ve done with your time that makes you. A lot of people in the western world have what would look like to the outside the same journey, your born, you go to school, you get a job, you retire, and you die. However the differences of these stages between people can be massive. I decided to focus of the journey from adolescence to adulthood because it’s more forced than the journey from childhood to adolescence. When you become an adult you have to take up responsibilities and you’re forced to lose your care free way you used to live as an adolescent. But the journey from childhood to adolescence is more gradual, you’re not pushed into much more responsibility but there is a huge change in you, physically and mentally. As a teenager most people have schooling in common, so that should create similar adults with the similar abilities. Wrong. The pictures I have chosen to depict this journey show the difference in teenagers that are coming up to adulthood. How some can be looking towards further education, while others are looking towards work and some trying to hold on to their care free lives for that little bit longer. The difference in people is startling and amazing. Two people can go through the same exact journey and come out as two completely different people, and that what I want to show. It’s the journey and personality that makes the person, but without the journey they wouldn’t develop the personality. The age that society considers you an adult has also changed over time. Legally in the UK you are considered an adult at 18. However at 16 you can legally have sex, get married, get a job, join the armed forces and leave home. So doesn’t 16 make you an adult? Legally no.
I looked at some specific photographers for this task to see how they looked at youth, but I also looked at how teenagers are seen socially by adults and the media. We are usually grouped into two categories, those who work hard at school and will come out with a good education and a good job, and those that don’t try, are trouble makers and will end up with menial dead end jobs. That’s 12,400,000 people classed into two categories. I looked a lot at Joseph Szabo and Paolo Marchetti’s work; they both have collections based on adolescents. Although Marchetti’s collection is focused on Central America, it still links into the journey of age, just not standard western coming of age journey.
The image I eventually selected to show a point in the journey between adolescence and adulthood was taken by Joseph Sazabo. The photograph is called Mary in the mirror and was taken in 1981. It shows a senior standing in a bathroom looking at herself in far away mirror. The seriousness of her expression makes her look a lot older than her years, like the journey it has taken her to get there was long and difficult. It looks like she is making a difficult decision in her head, and added responsibility and trying decisions are usually more associated with adulthood than adolescence. It looks as if she’s already gone on to the next stage of her journey, adulthood.
Looking at the journey of age made me look back at my own growth. This photograph i took last summer and when i look at it i still can’t believe how old we are, I remember when we used to ride our bikes places and bunk the trains fairs, and now some of us can drive? It seems incredible how far we’ve come in just a few short years. The photograph also shows the maturity you can see in the drivers face, a maturity that i never really noticed until i look back at the photo. I never realised how mature my boys had become.
About Me Rhian Ryan First Year Photographic Journalism Student In the future I hope work for a newspaper as an photojournalist. I like the more hard hitting journalism that is usually in broadsheets more than that of magazines, but i wouldn’t mind working for either. I would love to get an internship at major newspaper to get some experience in the trade but that wont be for a while. I don’t want to just get carried away with journalism and forget the photography because that’s what i’ve got the most experience with. I’ve always been a big fan of photography, and love taking pictures. I can’t see myself ever putting my camera away forever so there will always be a big space for it in my life. I don’t know what to say about my self so i’ll leave it at that.
A few of my own photographs ...
The End By Rhian Ryan
http://rayrayryan.wordpress.com/