Saturday 22 May 2010

Way of looking at the Photographs


The meaning the viewer sees in this image can be effected by physical levels. By physical levels of viewing the photogrph we understand factors like, base of paper, emulsion of light-sensitive metallic salts, pigments or carbon. We can also look at staticness of the image which determines the experience of time in the photograph. Also colour contributes to how the viewer will understand the image. The colour of light and the colours of a culture or an age.
Another way of looking at this image is through Depictive Level, choosing a vantage point, frame, moment of exposure and space and so photographic vision.
We can look if the image is opaque or transparent ( transparent where the viewer is drawn into illusion through the surface)

Lets try and apply depictive levels to the image above, The Scene from a Kabuki play 1850.
We can notice the missing parts of objects beyond picture's edges, such as body of an angel in the upper right corner and another missing part in the lower right. It is obvious that the world is continuing behind the lines but it is the depictive level the photographer decides to accomplish to create visual relationship and depicting the world within its frame.
The surface of the photograph assists with its flatness and in this case we can't say that we are drawn into the image, therefore we would say is opaque.
In depictive levels the photographer decides, either consciously or automatically to arrange a photograph in terms of vantage point, frame, focus and time. If this is done effectively, it will certainly have an effect on the viewer.

Stephen Shore (2007), 2nd edn, The nature of the photographs, London-Phaidon Press Limited

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