Hello All. So this week’s assignment was to chat and reflect on our reading from chapter 1 of Practices of Looking. A section on the myth of photographic truth got me thinking about how the photographer’s point of view plays a huge role in how the subject is portrayed. I was originally going to say something slightly shallow about how Oldenburg & Van Bruggen’s Spoonbridge and Cherry in the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden. Basically, the angle from which a photo is taken can make this sculpture look giant or tiny, depending on foreground reference points and conventional norms for the objects represented. The sculpture is pretty cool in person, but photos of it really can’t show any emotional depth. So I’ll bring in something that should evoke an emotional response from anybody with a soul: a picture of a baby.
Dramatic Baby
Well, I’m the baby in this photo, but don’t let that deter you from ooh-ing and aaah-ing. And the photographer is my dad. My father is one of the most devoted parents on the planet, so I’m pretty sure his thought process when taking this photo was something along the lines of, “I must document every movement of my week-old, first born child because the miracle of life is amazing, I am so incredibly happy, and I love my new daughter.” If he had wanted to take a more artistic photo, he could have photographed me from the side in high contrast black and white. If he had been going for a clinical angle, he would have sought out a photo with me making a relatively neutral expression, not flailing my limbs around, and on a background with less visual noise. (This photo album contains 93 other photos of me in the same onesie, speaking to my interpretation of my father’s thoughts.) The point is that any photo can be taken in a multitude of different ways that completely depend on what the photographer was thinking when shooting and what information they want you to gain from looking at the image.
And finally, one last cute baby picture.
Julius Caesar Baby
Count Winston the Fourth 