Summary of Readings for 3/13

Within the first reading titled The Modern Public and Photography, Charles Baudelaire makes mockery of multiple titles of artworks.  He states that we are moving downward in progress; that every day we are losing skills that are simply obtained by patience. Baudelaire then goes on to talk about how the people that make up France and incapable of feeling the “ecstasy” that artists could show in true art and therefore the artists bow down to the French society and give them what they want.  He mentions the ideas of realism and reproduction of nature through painting and statuary.  He is completely against the idea of reproduction through photography.  Baudelaire believes that photography has become the go to industry for those who have failed at being painters for various different reasons.  He believes that photography should only be used for keeping our memories and that painters are now forced to paint what they see and not what they dream of.

On the other hand in the second reading, Photography and Photography and Artistic-Photography, Marius De Zayas thought of photography as the “herald of a new artistic age”.  Photography is stated as not being Art or as being an art. Art is stated as being the Idea and Photography as being the Nature.  It is said that through nature comes ideas.  The reading discusses how some artists get their inspiration from museums and therefore they build on the past; except for Picasso (an artist of the time), who searches for new forms.  Europeans conducted experiments using Africans by having them draw from nature; those experimented on always gave importance in decorative items that represent abstract expression.  It is stated that form can only be “transcribed through a mechanical process, in which the craftsmanship of man does not enter as a principal factor.”  Photography is said to be the representation of concrete facts. It is later stated that although photography is not Art but that photographs can be made to be Art.

The third reading titled, The Paradoxes of Digital Photography, by Lev Manovich starts by discussing technologies that have all extremely changed what a photograph is now.  Manovich then goes on to talk about how computer graphics simulates sets and actors in movies and that film may soon disappear but not cinema.  He also talks about that a difference between traditional and digital photography is the amount of information that is included in an image.  He mentions a program for Macintosh called Live Picture that can allow someone to work with a photo at any size.  He discusses the difference between a film-based photograph and a grid of pixels taking up computer space on a hard-drive.  Manovich says that 3-D computer graphics can technically be digital or synthetic photography.  He states that the goal of computer graphics is not exactly realism but more photorealism; that they are attempting to depict something either from the real world or something made up as realistically as possible.  He uses Jurassic Park as an example to get his points across.