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1 Post Photography AK 2100 Oct. 26, 2005 Robert Jackson, 1964 Post Photography AK 2100 George Mahlberg. Oswald/Ruby as a Rock Band, 1996

Post Photography - York · PDF filePost Photography AK 2100 Oct. 26, ... •Examples of JFK and Forest Gump: ... between fact and fiction as presented in the media will no longer matter

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PostPhotography

AK 2100Oct. 26, 2005

Robert Jackson, 1964

PostPhotography

AK 2100

George Mahlberg.Oswald/Ruby as aRock Band, 1996

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Robert Burgoyne

• Cinema as the language through which reality expressesitself - an idea now under attack.

• Contemporary cinema an expression of the hyperreal,rather than the real

• Bazin: realism of cinema part of its relation to the physicalworld

• No longer the case today. Loss of ethical and moraldimension

• Examples of JFK and Forest Gump: mix of fictional andarchival scenes

Robert Burgoyne

• Thomas Elsaesser: future generations … will never be able to tell factfrom fiction, having media as material evidence.

• Uncertain relationship between memory and history• Origins, authenticity and documentation: traditional sense of history.

Challenged in the digital domain• Prosthetic memory: memories that circulate publicly, that are not

organically based but are still experience by one’s own body by meansof cultural technologies

• Potentially dangerous?• Gump, JFK etc. literalize concept of prosthetic memory. Offer

experiential relation to history

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Robert Burgoyne

• Cinema to be an instrument that allows individuals to “experience abodily, mimetic encounter with a collective past they never actuallyled…”

• In contemporary media culture, historical events are transformed intoexperiences

• Wag the Dog sequence• Forest Gump scenes:

– George Wallace– Lyndon Johnson– John Lennon– John Kennedy

Wag the Dog

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Forest Gump: George Wallace

Forest Gump: John Kennedy

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Forest Gump: John Lennon

Forest Gump: Birth of a Nation

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Forest Gump: Johnson, making of

To consider the documentary images of the history of the 20th century, what mostpeople consider to be the audio-visual record of the recent past, as simply part of theimage bank, material available for poetic or metaphoric use, challenges our sense of thesacrosanct nature of the document, which as Ricœur points out, "marks a dividing linebetween history and fiction.” But in fact, this form of visual history, one that usesdocumentary images in the service of storytelling that freely mixes fictional, factual,and speculative discourses, gives us a history of the future that is in some ways verylike the mythic histories of the past. Perhaps, for future generations, the distinctionbetween fact and fiction as presented in the media will no longer matter because awhole new genre of visual history, or history as vision, will have emerged with its ownrules, its own regimes of credibility, and its own sort of truth. For them, and perhapseven for us, documentary images may no longer signify the facticity of past events, perse, but rather convey the sense that they are a representation of the past, a representationthat may be employed for the purpose of metaphor, irony, analogy, or argument, andthat may be used in such a way that a certain poetic truth may emerge in the telling.

Quote from Robert Burgoyne article

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Manipulation and Illusion -

a few examples

Elsie Wright and Francis Griffiths, 1917. Manybelieve that their photos of “faeries” were authentic

Manipulation and Illusion -

a few examples

Elsie Wright and Francis Griffiths, 1917. Manybelieve that their photos of “faeries” were authentic

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Manipulation and Illusion -

a few examples

Robert Fenton, 1855, “The Valley of the Shadow of Death.”Additional cannon balls were added for dramatic effect

Manipulation and Illusion -

a few examples

Oscar Gustave Rejlander, 1857. “StreetUrchins tossing chestnuts.” Stop actionphotography was not possible at thistime. The effect was created by using afine thread to suspend the chestnut

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Joe Rosenthal, Raising the flag on Iwo Jima, Feb., 1945

Not the picture of the original flag raising, which wasthwarted by a Japanese soldier tossing a grenade. Thetwo images on the right show the first flag being raisedand then being taken down again in order to make roomfor the second flag.

March 2003: During Gulf War II, the Los Angeles Times ran the photo on top on its frontpage on March 31. It was a composite of the two lower photos. Photographer Brian Walskiwas dismissed two days later.

http://www.sree.net/teaching/photoethics.html

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June 1994: Newsweek's straight photo and a Time "photo illustration"

http://www.sree.net/teaching/photoethics.html

December 1997: Newsweek gives Mama McCaughey a “makeover”.

http://www.sree.net/teaching/photoethics.html

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February 1982: The pyramidswere moved closer together toaccommodate this verticalNational Geographic cover.

Nov. 2000: Bill Clinton andFidel Castro did meet inNew York, but nophotographer was present.So the Daily News just fakedthis photo.

http://www.sree.net/teaching/photoethics.html

February 2003: SaddamHussein and George W. Bushdid not debate, but appearedto in this cover shot.

http://www.sree.net/teaching/photoethics.html

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= +

http://www.sree.net/teaching/photoethics.html

Peter Guzil. Composite photo, 9/11

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Blade runner scene: the scene presents a

radically new understanding of the photographic imageas a three-dimensional "virtual" space.

The referent to the virtual picture taken by thecomputer is a data set, not a fragment of the real

The computer can see in a way profoundly liberatedfrom the optical, perspectival, and temporal conditionsof human vision

What we confront here is a multiply distorted technicalmediation that requires the abandoning of anyparticular perspectival anchoring for its "resolution."

BLADE RUNNER