An introduction to the exhibition we are looking at and discussing. Taken from the Tate website: http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/exposure. I actually went to the exhibition over summer and it was amazing.
Exposed
Voyeurism, Surveillance and the Camera
Tate Modern 28 May – 3 October 2010
About the exhibition
"...promises to be a magnificent, intriguing, sometimes shocking, sometimes risque show". The Evening Standard
Exposed offers a fascinating look at pictures made on the sly, without the explicit permission of the people depicted. With photographs from the late nineteenth century to present day, the pictures present a shocking, illuminating and witty perspective on iconic and taboo subjects.
Beginning with the idea of the 'unseen photographer', Exposed presents 250 works by celebrated artists and photographers including Brassaï's erotic Secret Paris of the 1930s images; Weegee's iconic photograph of Marilyn Monroe; and Nick Ut's reportage image of children escaping napalm attacks in the Vietnam War. Sex and celebrity is an important part of the exhibition, presenting photographs of Liz Taylor and Richard Burton, Paris Hilton on her way to prison and the assassination of JFK. Other renowned photographers represented in the show include Guy Bourdin, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Philip Lorca DiCorcia, Walker Evans, Robert Frank, Nan Goldin, Lee Miller, Helmut Newton and Man Ray.
The UK is now the most surveyed country in the world. We have an obsession with voyeurism, privacy laws, freedom of media, and surveillance – images captured and relayed on camera phones, YouTube or reality TV.
Session notes:
aim: contextualise analysis of the panopticon in relation to the photographic works that comment on surveillance culture.
explore interactions between surveillance and voyerism
someone who carries out surveillance normally have backing of authority/company
controlling a threat
voyerism for self gratification, own pleasure (strict definition is sexual pleasure but I wouldn't say always)
Vito Aconci - following piece 1969
followed people until they went into a building..
personal curiosity? or to see how people react?
internalise, have we already got it inside us that people are watching us all the time, so if they do we don't notice?
dialogue, you can take the horse to water but you can't make it drink
Merry Alpen - dirty windows 1994
love the style but not content
lots of politics, should we be viewing these?
should the photographer have done something about this?
can you step outside your own opinions/motivations to view the image?
hard when displayed so large! as they were at exhibition
Sophie Calle - venetian hotels
"examined the personal belongings of hotel guests and observed through details lives which remained unknown to me"
not panoptic at the time she does it because no ones aware of it, but panoptic to us as we see that she's done this and instills in our mind that we are always being watched
bringing the private into the public
especially things from bins! thrown away for a reason but she's removed and photographed it and shown it to everyone, not really fair, not her place I don't think
why the text? I think unnecessary
she talks about it factually but then occasionally how she feels
what is this motivation?
"her work can be seen as a critical commentary on panoptic culture and enacts the role of the observer, whose professional demeanor is undermined by their own voyeuristic intentions"
betraying trust of employer and hotel guests
Our task this week is to analyse three images from the exhibition. I have chosen three that I enjoyed looking at as I walked round the display.
The first image I am going to visually analyse is 'Woman moistening her lips, as others are checking out their own profiles, while looking in trick one-way mirror, in lobby of Broadway movie theater, Times Square, New York, 1946' taken by Yale Joel.
As the title states the photograph is taken from behind a trick mirror. This is instantly interesting as it means we are seeing the subjects exactly as they are seeing themselves. The fact that they are unaware of this means we are seeing a personal side of them that they do not necessarily want to be seen. They have no way to choose how they are being seen or portrayed by the camera. The fact that the photograph is taken from behind a mirror is more revealing than just being hidden within an object as when people consciously look in mirrors, we know they must definitely be thinking about their own appearance.
It is interesting how causally the woman in front is looking into the mirror. Especially compared to the woman behind her who is having to lean past her in order to look into the mirror. The woman on the right is also amusing as she appears to not be looking into the mirror at all but at the woman in front.
I don’t think the artist is criticsing the women in the photograph but more making an amusing comment on peoples perception of appearance.
The second image I found really interesting and amusing in the exhibition was 'Lovers at the Movies, 1940' taken by Weegee (Arthur Fellig).
The photograph was taking using infrared and is I think entertaining to look at, I noticed most people would give off a small snigger as they saw what was going on in the image. The funny thing about the image is that we know it is a cinema, so can assume that it is fully dark. We therefore know that the couple assume that no one can see them, but actually we can. We can also see how blissfully unaware the other people in the cinema are of what is going on.
This image is technically quite voyeristic as the couple are kissing, but it also relates to surveillance as it shows that even in times when people would assume no one was looking, you can never be sure.
What I love about the image is how timeless it is. It is in black and white and peoples fashion obviously shows it is not in the current day, but the concept behind the image will not have changed and I'm sure a similar image could be taken in a cinema today.
The final image I am going to look at is 'Untitled no.22, 1997' from Mitch Epstein's series 'The City'.
I chose this image because when I saw it in the exhbition I instantly loved it because of all the flowers (which relates to my love of floral and garden photography) but I was unsure of what was going on in the image. Due to the nature of the other images in the exhibition I assumed that something sinister was going on which I was unaware of so I did some research into it when I got home.
I have actually found it extremely hard to find out exactly what is going on in this photograph. So for the time being I have come to the conclusion that it is up to my own interpretation.
Mitch Epstein said this about the series as a whole:
'
A series of photographs about the meeting of public and private life in New York. Issues of surveillance, and the blurred line between private and public space were central to the formation of the city. In the early 70's—when I first photographed New York—the street and public spaces were fair game for a photographer, and people not only tolerated but enjoyed having their picture taken. But in the 90s, I found myself questioning how a photographer functions in public space: what is acceptable and what is not, because people were, by then, sensitive to the intrusiveness of cameras (of all kinds) in our culture.New York is a chaotic and layered universe. Everyone sustains his own solar system of family, friends, and associates within this complex universe—sanctuaries amid the chaos. The cityreconstructs the intimate core and the anonymous skin of New York. At the heart of this work is the meeting of two disparate worlds: what it means to separate them and what it means to put them together.
At its heart, as well, is my enduring interest in banality, and finding ways to draw from it whatever wit and irony I can. I'm especially intrigued by the meaning of myth and how everyday life can adopt a quality of myth when photographed. In this manner, myth can become a language of its own, and the mythic can illuminate that which is poignantly and simply human in a picture.
The myth of New York cannot be separated from the reality of it. These photographs are of a New York as imagined as it is real.'
I found this interesting to read but still do not fully understand the work. But I love the series and have come to interpret it is a kind of dream like observation of new york. Commenting on the everyday issues of such a big city, issues that anyone can see simply from walking around. Epstein simply photographs what he sees and leaves the images open to us to take what we like from (this is what I think anyway).
The photographs I have chosen are all quite visually different however they all deal with similar themes as they are all photographs that have been taken without the subjects knowledge. I like that they are not malicious in intent but more gentle musings about society, voyeurism and surveillance. And above all, they are beautiful images. Which I think is always the most important thing about photography.
The photographs I have chosen are all quite visually different however they all deal with similar themes as they are all photographs that have been taken without the subjects knowledge. I like that they are not malicious in intent but more gentle musings about society, voyeurism and surveillance. And above all, they are beautiful images. Which I think is always the most important thing about photography.
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