Month: October 2017

This text written by Joan Fontcuberta has taken my interest largely because it speaks of how women are seen through images, their body on display and how the use of Photoshop can change the image of them to show how they are not. Throughout the text it talks of how Scarlett Johansson and Keira Knightly, amongst other young women, are chosen to be nudity models due to their body figure and their known characters.

In this modern day of age, Photoshop is now used to change the image of the body. An example used is Keira Knightly posing for a film poster, where she is dressed in a top of braided leather, showing of her figure. However what is clear, is the makers of the poster wasn’t satisfied with the results of a flat chest. Using Photoshop they enlarge her breasts to make her look more desirable. I personally find this is common when it comes to body image but I don’t think it is right in terms of respecting and remodelling a figure. In this process they try to create an image which every young girl/women desires to be, instead of being happy with how they naturally look.

Furthermore, another point made in the text is that of models, such as Keira Knightly, should no longer need to go on special diets, go to the gym or have plastic surgery to achieve the required perfect body. In this modern day society where we look more at the image, then how the body is in reality, which can now be achieved by the use of digital technology. In a way I find the digital technology better then having to sculpture a model, but I still dislike the way producers etc. change how someone is naturally seen.

The text given this week is Changing Places: The Rebranding of Photography as Contemporary Art by Alexandra Moschovi. The text explains how photography was once seen to be a side line activity for sculpturists etc. but has now been on the upraising towards being a refashionaing part of comtemporary art. As time has passed, museums have remodelled to embrace for the wider variety of photgraphic techniques and as said is now under the same conceptual umbrella.

I want to concenrate on the fact most arists tend to use photography as material, becuase when doing portraits for example painters can often  take an image and then paint from that image, rather then painting a person thats stood as a model. ‘ The conceptual and material appropriation of photography and its photographicness would determinately impinge on the radical transformation of photography as a medium in the last two decades’. This means in the last two decades the way objects or images within art have had no transformation to them, which influences on the modern day unsual trasformation within photography as a medium. I find that over time photographers and artists have before more experitmental within taking photgraphs and adding material to them. As before, when photographing was once emerging, the photos were monotone, with straight forward compositon. Modern day images have now added colour, as well as leading lines and cubism etc. which creates more of an influence in the contemporary art movement.