Week 1 Reading Response

1)  One example Berger uses to illustrate his statement is the photograph, and how it is not simply a means of mechanical reproduction of a subject, but that the choice of the subject based on the photographer's personal aesthetic, rendered into a photograph and then viewed by another creates a dialogue between that personal aesthetic, the photographer's sensation of vision and interpretation thereof, and the sensation of vision of the viewer and his/her interpretation of that image.
2)  Wendy Richmond uses her cellphone to take the fifteen second videos and stills of her subjects.
3)  Richmond uses the cellphone to not only remain inconspicuous, but also to mirror the subtle ways public surveillance captures the public.  When one lives in a city, one is almost always under some form of surveillance (whether it be police cameras on the streets or CCTV cameras in stores and banks).  These official and socially accepted forms of surveillance are rarely made noticeable to the public; you are meant to know that you are being watched, but not from where or by who specifically.

Assignment 1 (8 Existing Photographs)

My photography is not entirely directed towards finding a specific voice, or communicating a specific message, but I've found that it seems subconsciously motivated by a disassociation between the modern human lifestyle and something more... natural?  Primitive even.  We are nomadic creatures by nature, with those behaviors subverted by a society that forcibly attaches us to specific places and functions.  My more involved digital work has taken on the clash between the forces of our more primal natures and our socially mandated roles.