FEMINISM - GUERRILLA GIRLS

Reinventing the "f" word: Feminism!

Feminism is widely referred as political, cultural, and economic activities aimed at setting up greater rights and legal protections for women. Feminism includes some of the sociological theories and philosophies concerned with concerns of gender differences . It is also a movement that campaigns for women's rights and interests. One of the best known groups of Feminist was the Guerrilla Girls.

The Guerrilla Girls are an anonymous group of radical feminist artists established in New York City in 1985. They fought against sexism and racism in the art world with facts, humour and fake fur. Known for posters, books, billboards, appearances and other creative forms of culture jamming that expose discrimination and corruption. The GGs would only go public wearing mask, rumour has it that some of the 'Girls' were well-known artist.

TACTICS

The GGs used a combination of graphics, text and design to reveal the understory, the subtext, the overlooked, and the downright unfair. Billboards over majot cities were used on many many occasions as a tool to strenghten the Guerrilla Girls campaing.

DIFFERENT FEMINIST GROUPS

Marxist

Postmodern

Cultural

Equity and Gender

Socialist

Ecofeminism

Radical

SEVEN PHOTOGRAPHS THAT CHANGED FASHION

PROGRAMME ON BBC 4

A while back BBC4 featured this programme titled Seven Photographs That Changed Fashion, it gave a good outline of the world of fashion photography and how its influences are still around. The programme is based on fashion photographer Rankin, he takes us on a journey back to the history of fashion photography to recreate seven of his favourite images.















FROM LEFT TO RIGHT

- Cecil Beaton - Hat Box, 1934

- Richard Avedon - Divina With Elephants, 1955

- Erwin Blumenfeld - Vogue, 1950

- David Bailey 1963 Jean Shrimpton

- Helmut Newton - Rue Abriot, Vogue. 1975

- Guy Bordin - Untitled

- Herb Ritts Fred With Tyres 1984

SHORT CLIP FROM Seven Photographs That Changed Fashion

FASHION PHOTOGRAPHY

I consider myself a student of photography as I am interested in all genres of photography. BUT if I am to pick one genre of photography where most of my passion for photography is, it would have to be fashion photography! It is what brought me to photography, it is the first this I liked about photography an it is the reason why I am studying photography.

My ultimate goal is to become an established/published fashion photographer.

SOME OF MY FASHION PHOTOGRAPHY

SOPHIE CALLE

FILM
- Sophie Calle (born 1953) is a French writer, Photographer, Installation Artist, and Conceptual Artist.
In class we watched a short film of Sophie Calle taking about her work and the secrets behind her images. I find her style unique and very influential! After watching this film I felt inapired to do some documentry/undercover work lol.

Enjoy. =]

PART 1 OF 2



PART 2 OF 2



NOTES (WHILE WATCHING THE FILM)
- Following people at random - Photographing them
- Followed a man to Venice
- Documentry style
- True Stories - Autobiographies
- She write in Police style.. 'Subject leaves, Subject enters'

DISCOURSE CLASS 16-04-2010 (NOTES)

For this post I will be summerising some of the notes I took down during the class we had on Friday 16th of April 2010. I felt that we covered interesting topics during this discourse sand it would be a good idea to share.

REALIST THEORIES
- Photographs as aesthetics artefacts
- The institution of photography
- Position and behavior of photographers
- The viewer/audience + context of image
"We have concrete proof that we have not been hallucinating all our lives" Kozloff, 1979

EVERYONE IS INFLUENCED BY
- Taste
- Conscience

FILMS









- REAR WINDOW
- BLOW UP
- PEEPING TOM

ADVERTS
- Nikon - Nikon D5000 - Being creative is child's play!
- Cannon - The Canon Digital Rebel Ad

WALKER EVANS - Planned Documentry Style
INTENSION + AGGRESSION
- No longer for the few
- Widespread social uses
- Consciousness of photography an art
- The internet + Social networking (Facebook, Twitter)
- Magazine + Newspapers

THE FAMILY ALBUM
- Eviedence of being a good parent?
- Memories

INTERNET ALBUM
- Evidence of being a good friend
- Holidays

TOURISM
- As Souvenir
- Divise or experience
- Set up voyeuristic relation to the world
- An event itself
- Interface, Invade, Ignore
Photography suggest that time consist of interesting events that are worth photographing.

INTERVENTION
- The person who intervenes cannot photograph it
- EXAMPLE













BRASSAI - 'THE FLANEUR'
- No plan, Just wondering the streets.
- Mostly men

SUSAN SONTAG

PHOTOGRAPHY + REALISM
- Putting yourself in relation to the world
- Abstract
- Scale, Cropping Retouching, Blowing up
- Packaging the world
- Evidence/Surveillance

PHOTOGRAPH + THE REAL
- A photograph seems to be more innocent + accurate than any other media that mimics.

Sontag's Book - On Photograph
- This book gave media students and researchers an entirely different perspective of the camera in the modern world. The book is an exploration of photographs as a collection of the world, mainly by travellers or tourists, and the way we therefore experience it.

What other said about Sontag & On Photography
- "Susan Sontag has written a book of great importance and originality. . . . All future discussion or analysis of the role of photography in the affluent mass-media societies is now bound to begin with her book."
—John Berger

"After Susan Sontag, photography must be written about not only as a force in the arts, but as one that is increasingly powerful in the nature and destiny of our global society."
—Newsweek

"Not many photographs are worth a thousand of (Susan Sontag's) words."
—Robert Hughes, Time Magazine

"On Photography is to my mind the most original and illuminating study of the subject."
—Calvin Trillin, The New Yorker

"Every page of On Photography raises important and exciting questions about its subject and raises them in the best way."
—The New York Times Book Review

MODERNISM | POSTMODERNISM

From what I understand Modernism and Postmodernism refers to old and new, black & white and colour, traditional and contemporary in many fields such as photography, fine art and architecture. Modernism and Postmodernism also indicates change, for example the end of an era like communism or capitalism.


In regards to photography, postmodernism is sometimes viewed as un-creative badly-composed, crappy-looking photographs of mundane subjects, and print them with tricky edge effects and other gimmicks (such as enormous size and cutesy frames) to hide their pathetic lack of substance. personally I believe that this approach is too hard. I love the work of Postmodernist photographers such as Richard Prince. The example below shows his wonderful eye for capturing a moment.











Richard PrinceUntitled (Cowboy)


In the other hand Modernism photography is also something i admire. The photograph provided below by Edward Weston is a classic example of Modernism photography.

















Edward Weston, Nude 1936


Fundamentalist Best and Kellner shed light on the matter writing:
"Lyotard himself is advancing the notion of a “postmodern condition” which presupposes a dramatic break from modernity. Indeed, does not the very concept of postmodernity or a postmodern condition, presuppose a master narrative, a totalizing perspective, which envisages the transition from a previous stage of society to a new one? Doesn’t such theorizing presuppose both a concept of modernity and a notion of a radical break, or rupture within history, that leads to a totally new condition which justifies the term postmodern? Therefore, does not the very concept “postmodern” seem to presuppose both a master narrative and some notion of totality, and thus periodizing and totalizing thought -- precisely the sort of epistemological operation and theoretical hubris which Lyotard and others want to renounce?"(Best and Kellner)

Bibliography Reference
Images and Quote -
http://www.metapedia.com/wiki/index.php?title=Heb25
http://www.edward-weston.com/

BOOK REVIEW - Ways Of Seeing by John Berger

This book was recommended to me by one of my tutors at university so I decided to get my self a copy. Since I started reading it I have been able to see other sides to my photography improve dramatically. The book enlightening the importance of the little things I use to not pay much attention to for example cropping and framing!

OTHER REVIEWS - Peter Bil'ak

Few books have a title that describes their content so well as John Berger’s book, Ways of Seeing, which is about… hmm… ways of seeing things around us. The emphasis is on the plural, as Berger suggests that our ways of perception are less spontaneous than generally assumed, manipulated by numerous external factors and dependent on cultural conventions. Berger questions assumptions about..

Click here for full review http://www.typotheque.com/articles/ways_of_seeing_book_review

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SEMIOTICS

What is SEMIOTICS?
- Text, Signs and Codes (Saussure)
- Cultural and text interaction (Barthes)
- External reality awareness

NOT ALL CULTURES SHARE THE SAME SIGNS!

FOR EXAMPLE

In America gangs use signs as a means of communication(A sends a message to B) amongst themselves and often these same identical signs carry different meanings to different gangs. The image below shows some of these signs and their meanings.





















DIFFERENT FORMS OF SIGNS
- Words
- Textures
- Shapes

WHAT IS A SIGN?
- Has a physical form.
- Refers to something else and not what it is.
- Recongnised by others as a sign.

WHAT DO PHILOSOPHERS SAY?

ROLAND BARTHES - DENOTATION / CONNOTATION

DENOTATION
- Assumes the reference is an objective and value free
- A camera can reproduce this for analytical purposes i.e a flat copy

CONNOTATION
- When a meaning stands for the value system of a culture or person
- Focus, framing, lighting (draws attention)
- Soft focus/sharp focus
- tones of voices
- What nice hand writing
- Typeface i.e Disney

SEMIOTICS IN ADVERTS

HSBC ITALIAN CLUTURE ADVERT
- Here HSBC play with the idea that different cultures see things in different ways! This piece of semiotics they use are a base for their adverts shows them to be the worlds local bank. Viewers all around the world can relate to the message they are trying to send out.



HSBC LOCAL KNOWLEDGE ADVERT