Dennis Dunleavy

Back to the blog

I've been away for a stretch of time -- trying to catch up with other
projects. So many blogs, so little time. I've enjoyed submitting
regular columns to Black Star Rising on a variety of topics and
have been extremely busy developing a school blog called SOU
Today. Unfortunately, the Big Picture has suffered from neglect.

Now, onto something to think about.

East Kodak's collection called Machines of Memory brings to mind the
rapid advances technology has had on photography. For example,
in 1966, engineers created this camera for the NASA Lunar Orbiter to
shoot the surface of the moon. What is most revealing about this camera
is that there is appears to be little energy spent on cosmetics. What
engineers worried about were much more pragmatic issues such as weight,
image quality and retrieval, and of course withstanding the rigors of
space. There was little margin for error. Everything done during these
times represented a first. It was the beginning of the digital age for
photography.

Presidential candidate buttons

A box of campaign buttons of former presidential candidate are put on sale at
a Minneapolis gift shop.

Teaching photojournalism may not be obsolete, but it is changing

Last October, I wrote a post about how technology is changing the way in which we teach photography, especially as it relates to photojournalism.

Since then, readers have responded with great insight on the subject. Most recently, however, one respondent's comment prompts me to think hard about this issue.  Milwjill writes:

We need to develop a better pedagogy around teaching digital imaging. The educational strategies we used for years in the wet darkroom don't necessarily apply to the digital darkroom. Is anyone finding any good research on this? I don't want more "How to teach layers." I want more on learning styles, making connections between theory and practice, teaching technological flexibility and intuition, and so on. I look forward to any suggestions.

At the college I teach at we have given this issue a lot of thought. What we have had to struggle with, unfortunately, are not only pedagogical issues, but ideological concerns as well.

Education is deeply entrenched in the process of institutionalizing specialized conditions of knowledge. Sometimes, the institutionalization of teaching in traditional ways does not adequately address or keep pace with the ways in which students learn.

Historically, different disciplines have staked out and taken claim to teaching different skills sets to the point where even if there are overlaps between disciplines students find it difficult and frustrating to enroll in courses that do little more than teach from tutorials. 

In the realm of teaching digital media, the disciplines of art, video production, journalism, communication, and computer science are converging.  Although convergent is hard to deny many departments continue to compete for student enrollment by offering courses that offer the same foundational skill sets.  Little consideration, then, is given to not only to how students learn in a digital age, but also how to teach across converging disciplines.

At many colleges, the vocational mindset of teaching is the rule. This mindset is one that teaches skills without considering learning styles or theoretical perspectives. The vocational approach fails to consider the larger implications of  creating and consuming digital images in what appears to be a never-ending flood of digital images.

In my opinion, this mentality subjugates a capacity for optimizing learning experiences. What students are taught this year about a specific technology will probably be obsolete before they actually finish their education. Educators must consider how to teach in a world in which technology impinges on ways in which students apply knowledge in society.

What is needed are ways in which faculty across difference disciplines can collaborate with each other to find new models of teaching and learning. Dialog across the fields of computer science, digital arts, communication, video and journalism must take place before any substantive change can occur.

An interdisciplinary approach to teaching in the digital age, especially at the lower division level, can successfully provide students with a greater range of perspectives  and skill sets. 

For the past year, for instance, I have been teaching  a course  with a colleague in Art called Digital Media Foundations I. The course is the first in a series of foundational classes aimed at increasing recruitment and retention at the school, as well as eliminating course redundancies across disciplines. In the DMF sequence, comprised mostly freshman and sophomore students, instructors from art, journalism, video production and computer science team-teach various approaches to working with digital design, photography, page layout, web design, and audio and video editing. With one 90-minute lecture and a 3 hour lab each week, students integrate theory with applied techniques.

Evaluating and Measuring how students learn is based on several  pedagogical objectives. First to consider is the quality of the assignments presented to students. Each assignment is tied to larger constructs discussed in lecture and through journaling.  Throughout the week, students keep a journal of their visual experiences by collecting media, notes and original photography and artwork.

For example, in teaching digital photography some of the non-technical competencies explored include developing observational skills as well as understanding subject-photographer interaction. In teaching design and layout skills, students investigate the relationship between form and function as it applies to collage and book design. 

To address Milwjill concerns the design of the courses is very much centered on "making connections between theory and practice, teaching technological flexibility and intuition." At the same, getting the institution to think along these lines requires a great deal of patience.  There is always the possibility of a breakdown in implementing such a practical approach toward understanding student needs. Because institutions tend to be hierarchical, there is alway the risk of one discipline or department trying to take advantage over others for all sorts of reasons. When serious pedagogical differences cannot be worked out, the interdisciplinary approach of integrating theory with the applied fails.

Ultimately, teaching digital imaging demands that we not only help students understand how to create "layers" in Photoshop, but  why we do it.  In other words, we are always looking for ways to create learning experiences that make sense in the real world. Sometimes, however, that can be easier said than done.

Why are these people looking at me?

For a long time, editors often shied away from images of the poor and marginalized people looking directly into the camera lens. Editors chided photographers for making “portraits of strangers,” when there was direct eye contact was made between the subject and the photographer. The rationale? Eye-to-eye images make viewers uncomfortable and are too personal for mass audiences.

Throughout the 1970s and 1980s photographers were encouraged to make images that reflected objectivity by not being noticed.  Although this preference may no longer be the case, there is still the consideration that appearance reflects reality.

The idea that a photographer could be inconspicuousness, like a fly on the wall, lent itself to the notion that an impartial observer would have no real influence over the scene being portrayed. Over the past decades, a relentless stream news images showing starving children has assaulted Western consciousness, yet poverty, starvation and disease continue. The so-call developed world has seen countless pictures of starving babies staring into the lens of a camera, yet remain we estranged from reality.

Cultural theorist Guy Debord observes that the spectacle can be thought of as an objectified vision of the world – a vision where people become alienated from each other and the things they produce.  Albeit obtuse, Debord’s criticism of modernity is reflected, unintentionally, in the visual routines and practices of today’s media. Today’s media, often with the help of public relations experts, seek to simplify political, economic and moral complexity through sound bites and photo ops. Photographers make pictures with the expectation that audiences will come to perceive what is presented as something of a truth.

Debord notes:

The images detached from every aspect of life fuse in a common stream in which the unity of this life can no longer be reestablished. Reality considered partially unfolds, in its own general unity, as a pseudo-world apart, an object of mere contemplation. The specialization of images of the world is completed in the world of the autonomous image, where the liar has lied to himself. The spectacle in general, as the concrete inversion of life, is the autonomous movement of the non-living.

There are rhetorical distinctions presented in various types of news photographs. There are subtle nuisances between looking at and being looked at. Looking into the eyes of stranger invites us read a personal narrative that may be alienating. The eyes, like a child staring into the camera in a “Save the Children” poster pleads with us to take action—to give money. In these images, there is far less ambiguity compared to pictures that have a subject looking away.

The eyes also suggest a relationship between the photographer and subject  – one that may lead viewers to interpret the image differently. More importantly, pictures suggesting the appearance of a pose do not activate the viewer’s attention in the same way as images of people in action. In this way, with the subject looking off camera, the viewer is not confronted with having to interact directly.  Anytime a subject, especially the poor and marginalized from the so-called Third World, appears in a U.S. publication, a sort of déjà vu occurs. We have become increasingly detached and anesthetized from much of the wider world because the pictures simply say, over and over again, “been there, done that.”

To test the idea that eye contact in a picture has a distinct rhetorical function compared to images that have no eye contact, I turn to my own work from the 1980s in Central America.

There are two images I will analyze here: one depicts a female rebel soldier sitting on a bench after a patrol, while the other shows an elderly woman staring into the lens of the camera. In the former, the woman is looking away from the camera.

I assume that one way of measuring a picture’s emotional and intellectual appeal is through various feelings of immediacy, intensity and intimacy.

Not all images can be characterized has having all three elements of appeal, and it appears that in this case both present immediately and with a degree of intensity, they fail to be equally intimate.

Although interpretations remain the unique province of each viewer, it appears that focal point, as well as eye contact contribute to levels of intimacy in the frame.  I am drawn to the withered face and blank stare of the woman looking into the lens more than the picture of the female combatant. Although curiously intrigued by the latter image, I find the former more intimate. In a sense, I could argue that the first image is more persuasive in that it holds my emotional attention longer than the second.

Chinese citizen journalist beaten to death by city inspectors for taking pictures

When Wie Wenhau, a 41-year-old construction company executive, took out his camera phone to record a "scuffle" between residents trying to stop city trucks from dumping trash in their neighbor, he must not have realized it would cost him his life.  Reports say that a crowd of between 25 and 100 city workers turned on Wie, beating him to death.

Can free speech go to far?

When Dutch filmmaker and political conservative, Geert Wilders, launched his anti-islamist film, Fitna on the Internet last week,  a storm of controversy ensued, and not just in the Muslim world. More than 2 million people watched the film in just the first three hours. Soon after a flood of criticism, Network Solutions and LiveLeak, the domain server and the site hosting the film removed it fearing backlash. Now the film is up again on Google and You Tube.
Wilder's film, like the Danish cartoons that sparked international concerns in 2005, challenges not only the value of free speech, but also the use of the Internet to exploit fear and spread hate. Without the Internet, the response to Fitna would be limited by its distribution to smaller audiences in the Netherland. Not only would it take viewers energy to attend a screening, but they would also risk being identified in public as individuals interested in the content of the film. The Internet makes it easy for people to become exposed to views on all sides of the political spectrum.

Should Google and YouTube be held responsible for removing potentially offensive content? Peter Hoekstra in the Wall Street Journal observes:

Reasonable men in free societies regard Geert Wilders's anti-Muslim rhetoric, and films like "Fitna," as disrespectful of the religious sensitivities of members of the Islamic faith. But free societies also hold freedom of speech to be a fundamental human right. We don't silence, jail or kill people with whom we disagree just because their ideas are offensive or disturbing. We believe that when such ideas are openly debated, they sink of their own weight and attract few followers.

Despite all of the things I detest about the film, and there are many, I do not believe that censorship will spare the world from such divisiveness and  hatred.  Those of us that believe in the freedom of expression must defend even the hate-mongers such as Wilders. We must defend his right to express himself, because if we retreat from our values out of fear, we risk living in a society of absolutists -- where there is only one truth -- the truth of those holding the purse strings or the gun.

As Hoekstra notes, "I defend the right of Mr. Wilders and the media to air this film because free speech is a fundamental right that is the foundation of modern society." But free speech has always come at price. 

Library of Congress uses Web 2.0 to build awareness of historical images

Matt Raymond, Director of Communications at the Library of Congress, had a brilliant idea. Instead of making the public come to the LOC Web site to look at historical images, why not make the pictures go to where people who love photography live -- on Flickr.

Recently, the LOC posted more than 3,000 of its images on to a Flickr site called The Commons. Raymond hopes that traffic to the site will generate interest and information for the LOC collection, which now holds 14 million images.

LOC caption reads: Color guard of Negro engineers, Ft. Belvoir(?), [Va.]

Although anyone can view the pictures, Flickr members have access to post comments and add tags that will help make identifying the images better. 

According to Flickr:

There are two main aims to The Commons project, starting with the pilot: firstly, to increase exposure to the amazing content currently held in the public collections of civic institutions around the world, and secondly, to facilitate the collection of general knowledge about these collections, with the hope that this information can feed back into the catalogues, making them richer and easier to search.

The idea of taking this collection to the Web 2.0 is not only good for the LOC is a terrific public relations strategy.  As Raymond notes:

The real magic comes when the power of the Flickr community takes over. We want people to tag, comment and make notes on the images, just like any other Flickr photo, which will benefit not only the community but also the collections themselves. For instance, many photos are missing key caption information such as where the photo was taken and who is pictured. If such information is collected via Flickr members, it can potentially enhance the quality of the bibliographic records for the images.

Caption Reads: Delano, Jack (1914-1997)
Children gathering potatoes on a large farm, vicinity of Caribou, Aroostook County, Me. Schools do not open until the potatoes are harvested. Oct. 1940.

There are more than 40 comments for the image above, which suggests that niche communities as Flickr become unified around images that share commonalities or historical significance. Many of the comments share life experiences related to rural American life and having to work as children.

Just by looking at several of the images and the comments they generate suggests that the LOC objectives in posting the images is very effective.

 

The Mexican Suitcase: Exploring Capa's legacy

Zone Zero has published a terrific essay and presentation by Trisha Ziff about a suitcase of lost negatives belonging to Robert Capa, Gerda Taro and Chim Seymour. This is well worth the time reading. Ziff's essay sheds light on not only the value of the images, but also the relationships between friends in a time of war.

Editing as important in the digital age as in the past

With all the additions that digital photography brings, people still need to understand the importance of editing pictures. Dave Johnson of PC World Canada, has a good article about editing as an integral part of digital photography. Johnson discusses what he calls editing tricks including,  color balance,  exposure correction, perspective cropping,  and eliminating noise.

Nuance remains critical to emotional imagery

As a culture we have come to expect more out of the pictures we see. We are
far more visually sophisticated than previous generations.  In fact, we demand
that the images we consume each day -- many of them from advertising -- stand
out. The pictures we see, some 5,000 to 6,000 daily, actively compete for
out attention.