Susan Sontag excerpt from On Photography
Quote 1
"Photographs furnish evidence. Something we hear about, but doubt, seems proven when we're shown a photograph of it." "A photograph passes for incontrovertible proof that a given thing happened. The picture may distort; but there is always a presumption that something exists, or did exist, which is like what's in the picture."
In modern times it is harder to tell when an image is real or fake as there are more and more ways to alter images. Even in the past though what is in a photo is not actually proven; as seen in the case of the Cottingley Fairies. It is a series of photos taken in 1917 by two cousins which depict them with fairies, and because there was photographic evidence some people believed the fairies were real. Years later they admitted the fairies were fake, though if you think about it they did take photos with fairies, they're just made of paper. So even though a photo can feel like proof it's not always the case.
Quote 2
"Although there is a sense in which the camera does indeed capture reality, not just interpret it, photographs are as much an interpretation of the world as paintings and drawings are."
What and how something is photographed can change how an event is viewed. If a journalist chooses to show the victims of a disaster instead of just photos of the disaster and no people it can inspire more sympathy from people. Another example is when a news story will show a picture of a man happy with his family when he is a family annihilator, instead of his mugshot.
How Carrie Mae Weems Rewrote the Rules of Image-Making
Quote 1
"They were always sort of hidden. They were never square. They were always doing something to obscure the clarity of themselves. Because women were always sort of interested in being objects, because we’ve been trained to be objects. We’ve been trained to be desirous in some sort of way, to present ourselves in that sort of way."
Carrie Mae Weems said this was something that concerned her when she was teaching in the 1980s. I believe this less of an issue now, not the socialization of women part that is still attempting to stick around, but I believe now women aren't obscuring themselves as much in photos, especially on social media.
Quote 2
"And then I move back, and he moves back. And then I move forward, and he moves forward. Just a citizen decided that, whatever this is, you’re not going to photograph it, I’m not going to allow it."
She said this about an incident where she was trying to film a cop who had stopped a group of black kids, and a white man used his car to block her from filming. The author of the article refers to a camera as a sort of weapon, and this random white man was actively stopping her from using that weapon against the cop to possibly protect those boys, or at least documenting in case something did happen, which shows how powerful the camera can be.
Revisiting Carrie Mae Weems’s Landmark “Kitchen Table Series”
Quote 1
"I think that most work that’s made by Black artists is considered to be about Blackness. Unlike work that’s made by white artists, which is assumed to be universal at its core."
This quote from Carrie Mae Weems speaks a lot to new pieces of media loved by a certain type of man that comes out that does not feature a white man as the lead, especially if it is a woman. They experience so much media that caters specifically to them and they're so used to it, that when they see anything different they don't know how to see themselves in the character which upsets them. Like she said they see white characters as media for everyone, but poc characters as media just for poc.
Quote 2
"Viewers may not be able to see the world outside of the kitchen’s walls, but her characters are trying to navigate it all the same."
Even though the pictures in the series all take place in a single room, the people in the pictures all have lives outside of that room that can be thought about and guessed on even when the focus is on that one spot.
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