Group Project

 

ART/FIST 340/540 Phases of the Image

 © 1983 Jean Baudrillard, Simulations (p. 11) 

It might be interesting to think about images in more straightforward terms:

-Suggesting reality (reflecting everyday)

-Distorting reality (idealizing)

-Only hinting at a possible reality (iconicism, mythical)

-Transforming our sense of reality by not relating to anything we consider real.

Relating to a reality that is understood as fantasy.

 

Sometimes Art isn't so straightforward, blurring such classification, unmasking via masking... 

 Confined to an apartment overlooking NYC's Washington square park, the extraordinary life of Andre Kertesz (1894-1985) would have a final period of solitary reflection. A gift from Graham Nash (of Crosby, Stills, & Nash) who would occasionally visit the apartment with his wife Susan, would help him objectify this emotional journey...a Polaroid SX-70 camera, the ultimate creation of instant photography inventor Edwin Land.

On page 18 of The Critical Eye Lyle Rexer states, "Kertesz had an ability to find metaphors for his inner experience." Throughout his long career Kertesz's work would embrace this, and in his last pictures that was all that was left.

August 3, 1979

April 11,1979

December 9, 1979

January 1979

Susan Nash, September 27, 1979

"Without a sense of the life and the work that have come before, the world of these last photographs may appear confined and melancholy. With that background, it appears rich with the possibility of making meaning about the most profound experiences, from the smallest things." Rexer, p.22

The Global Village

 It's a pretty easy concept to grasp, the world is getting smaller. In McLuhan's lifetime it was things like satellite news, long distance telephone calls, and international mass-marketing of consumer items, like the Beatles. Now we have auto-translate, zoom, and instagram, the app which is making everyone visually literate. McLuhan's musings on his 'global village' were rather dark, rooted in the cold war, which wasn't really over until after McLuhan's death. The last section of the book opens with a picture of Marilyn Monroe attending the 1959 visit of USSR leader Nikita Khrushchev to the US.

This visit coincided with a period of aggressive build-up of nuclear weapons by both countries. Next comes...

"The (media) environment as a processor of information is propaganda"

A line that's definitely worth pondering.

"Propaganda ends where dialog begins."

 

 

Now with interactive media, do we really have any true dialog? Is instagram all the commercials with none of the programs? And with only the most smug, cliche comments?

Next;

"Quảng Đức's self-immolation came in response to the persecution of Buddhists by the government under Diệm." Students from Vietnam always have much to say about how misleading the narration here is. Then...

"God is dead."

Interestingly interpreted by McLuhan, a devout Catholic. Then, symmetry with the beginning. "You" becomes "...and who are you?" ...it all depends on who you're with.

How do you end this?...with a New Yorker cartoon that propagandizes McLuhan!

Found Magazine

Found Magazine #2, published in 2002.

 Found Magazine was created by Davy Rothbart and Jason Bitner. In the early 2000s it was published as a magazine and wow, it really was a cool project that had a huge following.

Some back issues and compilations are still available on their website or you can follow them on instagram, where they are still actively posting items.

More Robert Frank

Thank you Gerald Fox for doing this beautiful documentary.

 

 Know it didn't come so easy but that may help it be so good.

 

Robert Frank's Journey to the Outside

Sarah Greenough discusses the structure of The Americans in this video. She authored the 528 page volume that investigates Frank's Guggenheim project and the resulting 180 page book, first published in the United States in 1959. More here

Pemiere Pro Tutorial

This is a fairly tolerable tutorial and completely in sync with our assignment;