Culture Event #3: DUPB Movie

My last culture event was when I watched a movie in Daniels Auditorium hosted by the DU Programming Board Film Committee. I applied and was accepted to that committee at the beginning of this quarter. I believe that the movies we show once a week can be considered a culture event because movies are part of the American culture. We watch movies all the time, when we are happy or sad, during the holidays, during classes, etc. Movies can educate us about different issues or they can just be there to entertain us. The movies we show are purely for entertainment, but they still show different aspects of the American culture in them. When we showed Captain America is was shown through the movie that people like to see explosions and great fight scenes in action movies. Different movies for different genres show different things about our culture to the people viewing the movie. Also, I think these weekly movies are a great event because it helps to bring people together. I have my friends come to watch the movies with me and our group continues to grow as more people keep coming. I am able to bond with my friends over a funny scene in a movie, or a traumatic breakup scene. I think a culture event is when you want to discuss what you witnessed or took part in after it’s over. I always do that with watching movies, so that is why I think going to the DUPB movies every Thursday night counts as a culture event.

Culture Event #2: Lamont School of Music Concert

Recently, I went to the Lamont School of Music concert. A couple of my friends were in the choruses and I wanted to go and support them. The concert was amazing. Everyone sang really well, but the most interesting thing to me was that a lot of the songs were in Latin. I don’t speak Latin, nor do I understand it at all, but somehow the music intrigued me. I think that is a big deal because that means the music was so captivating that I didn’t even care that I had no idea what they were singing about. I always wished I could sing because I love listening to any types of music. My favorite part of the concert was when the Women’s Chorus did a dance with one of the Latin songs they sung. I was so intrigued by it. My friend Abbey and I, both got really into it and were moving to the rhythm of the beat. I love concerts and I try to go to as many as I can because I am always in awe of how talented singers are. The Lamont School of Music concert was fantastic, and I can’t wait to go to the one next quarter!

Culture Event #1: Destination Trip

Our Destinations Trip was one of the most memorable events of my first quarter in college. I really liked that the group was all-girls because I feel like everyone could act herself and it was a really relaxed atmosphere. I learned so much about my camera during this trip. I love my Nikon camera, but I didn’t know to change the shutter speed, or aperture.  Roddy, you taught me so much about the ways to take pictures manually. Now I rarely use the “automatic” setting on my camera. I was able to start to form a relationship with my camera. Also, this was a great culture event because I got to explore Denver more and see what the city was like. I’ve only been to Denver a couple of times and I didn’t know how it compared to San Francisco. I came from a city where it’s always noisy and the lifestyle is very fast-paced.  It was interesting to explore Denver because it is nothing like San Francisco. They are almost polar opposites in my mind. Denver is much more laid-back and there is not a lost of “hustle and bustle” when you walk around Downtown Denver. This day allowed me to explore the city and I got to learn more about photography.  

Famous Photographer #28: Nan Goldin

Nan Goldin is an American photographer who is known for her visual narratives, which show the world of addictive and sexual activities. She left home at age 13 and lived in foster homes after that. She tried to find a substitute family for herself. Goldin ended up becoming part of a group of alienated women and men who were involved with drugs, violence, and sex. In about 1971, she started doing taking pictures. In 1973 she published her first work, which was of transvestites and transsexuals. She photographed drag queens, sexual play, people recovering from violence, or people using drugs. She published multiple series which showcased her work. The Museum of American Art has an exhibition of her work. 

Famous Photographer #27: Gregory Crewdson

Gregory Crewdson had his first experience of photography at the Museum of Modern Art at the age of ten. He studied photography at the State University of New York. He graduated with an M.F.A in photography from Yale in 1988. He took portraits of people in the residential area near his family's cabin for his senior thesis. He took pictures of birds, mutilated body parts, and insects, which would later be put together in a series called Natural Wonder. For his next series he changed from colored close-up to bird-eye view black and white shots. His recent photographs have become quite popular among people in Hollywood. They are in color and enlarged to 50 X 60 inches. Crewdson plans to direct a feature film in the future and so his career as an artist will continue to grow. 

Famous Photographer #26: Sally Mann

Sally Mann is known for her large black and white photos. She primarily shot her children, but later too pictures of landscapes. Mann worked as a photographer at Washington and Lee University after she graduated from Hollins College. She got her first one-woman exhibition in 1977 for the photographs she took of the University's construction. Mann is best known for her series called Immediate Family. It was published in 1992. It consists of black and white pictures of her children. The book touches a variety of themes such as childhood themes (dressing up, napping, and playing board games), and much darker themes (injury, loneliness, and death). There was a huge amount of controversy over this book because it was seen as child pornography. The New Republic considered it "one of the great photograph books of our time," despite all the criticism it received. 

Famous Photographer #25: Cindy Sherman

Cindy Sherman grew up in New York. She majored in painting, but switched to photography in college. After college, Sherman began to work on one of her best-known series called United Film Stills. She was a model in many of her photographs. During the 1980s, she decided to move away form black and white film and started shooting in color. She wanted to concentrate on facial expression and lighting. Many of her photographs reflected concerns about death, insanity, and eating disorders. Many of her pictures and disturbing and she is known for photographing grotesque and sinister things. 

Famous Photographer #24: Francesca Woodman

Francesca Woodman grew up with parents who were artists. She took most of her photographs in black and white. She would shoot herself and female models usually. Woodman is from Colorado, but attended Rhode Island School of Design for college. She moved to NYC and began a career in photography there. Unfortunately, no fashion photographers were interested and Woodman ended up committing suicide. Some videos that she shot at while in college are displayed in museums around the world. Before she died, she created many artist's books. She only had a few exhibitions during her life. In 2000, the movie The Fancy was created by Elisabeth Subrin and it examined Woodman's life. People seem to find Woodman's work favorable and intriguing. 

Famous Photographer #23: Robert Adams

Robert Adams is known for his photographs of the landscape of the American West. He particularly enjoyed shooting California, Oregon, and Colorado. He work was inspired by his joy for landscapes. He wanted to show how great the land was because it was degraded by residential and commercial development. He showed two kinds of landscapes. He wanted to to show the landscapes of ones damaged by people and the other is how landscapes somehow beyond their power to harm. He took pictures of housing tracts that were being built in Colorado. Certain elements recur in Adam's landscapes. These elements are cars, boxy houses, loneliness, and isolation. Also, Adams made a series of photographs focusing on the people who lived near Denver. He started to travel to different places to take pictures and started to take pictures of people in addition to landscapes. 

Photographer #22: Diane Arbus

Diane Arbus got married at age 18. During the war, her husband studied photography in New Jersey Signal Corps. Both of them were fashion photographers. They took equal credit for their published photos. They separated, but remained good friends. Arbus took portraits of people for Esquire and Harper's Bazaar. They were mainly traditional subjects, such as actors, writers, and activists. Her non-commercial work was awarded Guggenheim fellowships. It was oriented towards people who were not famous. She committed suicide at the age of 48.  

Famous Photographer #21: Robert Frank

Robert Frank is best known for his collection of photographs called The Americans. It was faced with a lot of criticism. He became a photographer at the age of 24. He worked for Harper's Bazaar magazine as a fashion photographer. He left fashion after thinking the work was too limiting. He traveled to Peru and America from Switzerland to explore taking pictures with a 35-mm camera. He returned to Europe and published a series of photographs called The Americans. The book contained text by Jack Kerouac, who was an American novelist. His style was characterized by bold composition, and social commentary. This publication established Frank as a creative photographer. In 1959, he turned to cinematography and his first motion picture was Pull My Daisy. 

Famous Photographer #20: Robert Capa

Robert Capa exploited wars and it made him a legend in modern photography. He found a job as a darkroom apprentice when he was 18. He scored his first scoop with pictures of Leon Trotsky. Capa was sent to Spain ad his picture of a dying Spanish soldier made his famous overnight. He went to China and took pictures of the Battle of Taierchwang. He came back to Spain and covered the Spanish war. He eventually went to America and became part of the Life magazine staff. He continued to travel allover wherever work took him. He became the most colorful war photographer because of his pictures of war on Omaha Beach. Later, Capa became a businessman selling photographs. 

Famous Photographer #19: Henri Cartier Bresson

Henri Cartier-Bresson is a French photographer who is considered to be the father of modern photojournalism. When he was younger, Cartier-Bresson used a Box Brownie for taking holiday photos. He helped form the Magnum picture agency in 1974. He traveled all over the world to take pictures for major magazines. A 400-print retrospective exhibition was a major milestone in his career. The exhibition toured around the U.S. in 1960. In his first book, Bresson wrote about his approach to photography and it become a creed for photojournalists everywhere. Some people criticized him for being nothing more than a snap-shooter. He is known for talking about the "decisive moment" approach. Most of his photographs showed human details. He also would start to use the flash for photography. 

Famous Photographer #18: Margaret Bourke White

Margaret Bourke White got a degree in Herpetology from Cornell University. Her photography career started at Cornell when she sold pictures to students. After graduation she moved to Cleveland and opened a studio. Henry Luce offered a staff photographer position to Margaret Bourke for Fortune magazine. Her first published work was in 1931 and it was a book called Eye on Russia. She was assigned to take pictures of the drought and it opened her eyes to human suffering. Later Bourke started working at Life magazine. She also photographed wars and these pictures revealed horrors of the world. She was a member of the American Artists' Congress. She supported the state-funding of the arts and was against discrimination against African American artists. Bourke became a war correspondent for Life magazine during World War II. This was huge because she was the first female war correspondent. She was the first female permitted to work in combat zones and permitted to take pictures of the Soviet Union. 

Famous Photographer #17: Dorothea Lange

Dorothea Lange is best known for taking pictures during the Depression era and for her work for the Farm Security Administration. Her photography showed the consequences of the Great Depression and she influenced documentary photography. Lange went to Columbia University and studied photography. After school, she opened a successful portrait studio in San Francisco. She was employed with Resettlement Administration and later the Farm Security Administration because of her pictures of unemployed and homeless people. Her images became icons of the Depression era. Lange took pictures of the forced evacuation of Japanese Americans after the attack of Pearl Harbor for the War Relocation Authority. In 1952, she co-founded the magazine Aperture. After Lange died, she was inducted into the California Hall of Fame. 

Famous Photographer #16: Alfred Stieglitz

Alfred Stieglitz was known for making photography an accepted art form. Besides photography, he is known for introducing European artists to the U.S. He was married to painter Georgia O'Keeffe. Stieglitz traveled through the countryside in Europe and he photographed peasants working on the Dutch seacoast. Stieglitz was the editor for American Amateur Photographer magazine. He was forced to resign and decided to helped rebuild the New York Camera Club's newsletter. He created an organization called Photo-Secession that was invite-only. He wanted the art world to recognize photography "as a distinctive medium of individual expression." Buffalo's Albright-Knox Art Gallery set attendance records, and Stieglitz organized it. Stieglitz took pictures of Dorothy Norman and his wife O'Keeffe and these were some of the first pictures to recognize the isolation of body parts.

Famous Photographer #15: George Eastman

George Eastman founded the Eastman Kodak Company and he invented roll film. This helped to bring photography to the mainstream. In 1884, he patented the first roll film. He perfected the Kodak camera in 1888. Eastman established the Eastman Kodak Company in 1892 in Rochester, New York. His firm was one of the first to mass-produce standardized photography equipment. In 1889, Eastman created flexible transparent film, which was vital to the film industry. 

Famous Photographer #14: Richard Leach Maddox

Richard Leach Maddox is best known for his invention of lightweight gelatin negative plates. He created this process in 1871. Before he created this process, he was known for photomicrography, which is photographing organisms under the microscope. Maddox was noticing that the wet collodion was affecting his health. Maddox suggested that sensitizing chemicals cadmium bromide and silver nitrate should be put on a glass plate in gelatin. Photographers could use dry plates off the shelf instead of having to prepare their own emulsions. 

Famous Photographer #13: Lewis Hine

Lewis Hine took pictures that were instrumental in changing child labor laws in the U.S. Hine became a staff photographer for the Russell Stage Foundation in 1906. He captured the life of people living in the steel-making districts. He became a photographer for the National Child Labor Committee in 1908. In Europe Hine photographed the American Red Cross relief during and after World War I. He made a series of portraits, which showed the human contribution to the modern industry. He was hired to photograph the construction of The Empire State Building. The Library of Congress has more than five thousands of Hine's photographs. 

Famous Photographer #12: Jacob Riis

Jacob is known for being a "muckraking" journalist and for being a social documentary photographer. He is known for using his skills to help the impoverished in NYC. He discovered the use of flash in photography. Pistol lamps were becoming too dangerous, and so so Riis created the method of lighting magnesium powder of a frying pan. Because of the use of the flash, Riis was able to photograph New York at night or photograph dark places. He documented the hardships that the poor and criminal faced especially in Mulberry Street. 

Famous Photographer #11: Timothy O’Sullivan

Timothy O'Sullivan was commissioned in the Union Army, and he fought numerous battles. After he was honorably discharged from the army, O'Sullivan he started working for Mathew Brady again. He was joining Alexander Gardner's studio and because of this he was able to publish his photographs in the first Civil War photographs collection Gardner's Photographic Sketch Book of War. O'Sullivan created his most famous photograph, "The Harvest of Death," which showed dead soldiers from the Battle of Gettysburg. In 1867, he became the official photographer on the U.S. Geological Exploration of the Fortieth Parallel. He photographed the mines and work done during this expedition. During his last years he was in Washingoton D.C. as an official photographer for the U.S. Geological Survery and the Treasury Department. 

Famous Photographer #10: Alexander Gardner

Alexander Gardner is best known for his photographs of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln, and the execution of the people who conspired Lincoln's assassination. His interest in photography began when he saw Mathew Brady's photography at The Great Exhibition in 1851. Gardner ended up working for Brady. Gardner was the chief photographer under the U.S. Topographical Engineers. After that short appointment, he became a staff photographer for the Army of the Potomac. He published books showing his war photos. Not all the photos were Gardner's, but he credited the producer and printer of the photos that were not his. 

Famous Photographer #9: Félix Nadar

Gaspad Félix Tournachon, also known as Félix Nadar, was poor but talented. Nadar became famous before he was a photographer because of his writings and illustrations. He had a successful career as a satirical cartoonist. His skill for it was effective in capturing his photographic subjects' personalities. In 1854, Nadar opened his first studio. During his six years of practice, he focused on psychological elements of photography. He wanted to show moral personalities. His subjects were usually his friends. Nadar was one of the first photographers to use artificial light.

Famous Photographer #8: Julia Margaret Cameron

At the age of 48, Julia Margaret Cameron started her photography career. Her home at Freshwater was where she produced most of her work. She took pictures of her family, neighbors, and servants. She was in the highest circles of society and she photographed intellectual leaders within her circle of friends and family. Much of Cameron's inspiration was from literature, and in turn her work influenced writers. She was inspired by from the paintings of Raphael, Michelangelo, and Giotto. She is known for her portraits of famous people. 

Famous Photographer #7: Francis Frith

Francis Frith worked as a grocer before becoming a photographer. He opened the Frith & Hayward photography studio in Liverpool. When Frith went to Egypt, he photographed the entire trip. He used three different camera: two large format cameras and a stereoscopic camera. A major photographic publisher published Fenton's pictures the following year and the firm Thomas Agnew and Sons offered the larger prints. After a couple more trips, two to Egypt and one to Syria, Frith opened up his own firm near Surrey. His firm published his own images as well as the work of other photographers. Frith and Company stopped operating in 1971.

Famous Photographer #6: Roger Fenton

Many say that Roger Fenton's photography career was great but brief. He was a photographer for only twelve years. He is a founder of the Photographic Society in London and he photographed the British royal family. He made the first photographs of Russia and the Kremlin. The British Museum invited him to take pictures of their collections. The first large-scale photographic documentation of war was Fenton's photographs of Crimea in 1855. Fenton photographed many genres including landscapes, still lifes and architectural design. Even though Fenton exhibited and sold his own pictures, he grew disdainful of how commercialization of photography increased. He returned to law and gave up photography in 1862. 

Famous Photographer #5: Frederick Scott Archer

Frederick Scott Archer invented the photographic collodion process also known as wet plate collodion process.He invented the new process in 1848 and published it in The Chemist in March of 1851. It allowed photographers to combine the fine detail of the daguerreotype with the ability to print multiple paper copies like calotype. He did not patent the invention and so it was a gift to the world. He later developed the ambrotype with Peter Fry. An ambrotype is a photograph that creates a positive image on a sheet of glass using the wet plate collodion process. Because he did not patent his invention, he died impoverished.

Famous Photographer #4: Hill and Adamson

In 1843, David Hill and Robert Adamson formed a partnership as photographers. Hill wanted to take pictures of each attendee who was at the Free Church of Scotland meeting. He was introduced to Adamson and it took them more than a year to create calotype portraits of each person in attendance. During their partnership they made more than three thousands photographs. The photographs included landscapes and architectural design. Some of the earliest examples of social documentary photography were Hill and Adamson's portraits of working men and women from the fishing village of Newhaven. Hill gave up taking pictures for years after Adamson's death, but he still sold prints. In 1858, Hill became a Council Member of the Photographic Society of Scotland. 

Famous Photographer #3: Henry Fox Talbot

Henry Fox Talbot published his first article in 1835. it showed his first discovery of paper negative. He published a book with photographic illustrations and it was called The Pencil of Nature. Talbot developed the calotype process in 1840. He obtained a patent for the calotype process. His process improved the daguerreotype process. His process involved the use of photographic negative which multiple prints could be made. The method of converting a negative to a positive is the basis for modern photography. He is considered to be one of the two founders of photography.

Famous Photographer #2: Louis Daguerre

Louis Daguerre was an inland revenue officer and then became a scene painter for the opera. In 1822 in Paris he opened the Diorama which was an exhibition that showed pictorial views. In 1829 Louis Daguerre partnered with Niepce which began a cooperation which lasted until Niepce died. Louis Daguerre invented daguerreotype process of photography. Daguerre first exposed silver-coated copperplates to iodine which created silver iodine. Next he exposed them to light for several minutes, and then he coated the plate with mercury vapor that was heated. Finally he fixed the image in saltwater. The plate produced an exact reproduction of the scene. This process only took 20-30 minutes. Also, Daguerre's name is one of the 72 names that is inscribed on the Eiffel Tower. 

Keith Carter: My Version

Keith Carter has said, “I don't just look at the thing itself or at the reality itself; I look around the edges for those little askew moments-kind of like what makes up our lives-those slightly awkward, lovely moments.” I try to do this too. When I take pictures I attempt to find those special moments and capture them. One aspect of Carter's photography that interests me is that most of his pictures have something blurred in them, whether it be the edges, the subject, or anything else in the photograph. I believe that it the blurriness of  pictures that make them seem mysterious. The mystery of the photograph makes me look at it longer and I usually take more time to see everything in the photograph because the blur allows me to notice different things the longer I look at the picture. Carter's photography interests me too because he only shot in film. I wish I knew how to shoot with film. It is such a long process and I am in awe of anyone who uses film. A photographer who shoots in film needs to have a lot of patience and I want to be more like Carter where I can shoot in film and try to find the awkward moments in life. Carter is able to take pictures that attempt to reflect hidden meanings in the real world. He is such an inspiration because he is able to take something ordinary and take a picture of it, showing the world how extraordinary the thing is. 

Plato's Cave

Plato’s Cave is about people who see shadows reflected in a cave, but believe it is reality. That can happen when people view pictures, too. Everyone can interpret photographs and their meanings differently. Susan Sontag explains that people do not have all the knowledge of the world. “Photographed images do not seem to be statements about the world so much as pieces of it, miniatures of reality that anyone can make or acquire.” (4). Photographs do not represent the whole truth; they show parts of the world and people shape them into whatever they want to believe in. Therefore, everyone who views photographs has their own perception of the world. Susan Sontag wrote about how photography can influence peoples’ opinions. “In teaching us a new visual code, photographs alter and enlarge our notions of what is worth looking and what we have a right to observe” (3). People all around the world will be influenced by what they see. Photographs can make people think one subject is more important than another, or that something is not worth looking at, thus, altering the person’s view of the world. Since photographs are supposed to be proof of reality people just assume that what is in the picture is real.

When looking at anything I have often fallen into the trap of thinking that this is what reality is, when really it is just my version of reality. With wars we are often shown pictures of soldiers fighting for our country, but sometimes what we do not see is the innocent civilians killed because they are in our way. When I see photographs I assume that they are showing the truth about our world, but I do not take a moment to look at the picture and question it. Sometimes I realize that the photograph does not represent reality, and other times I do not. I think everyone sees things that they think represent the truth, but really they are seeing the world in their own way and do not notice that it is only their view of the world. Also, when I take photographs I believe that they show others proof of reality, but really they only show my idea of the world. Photography is all about perception. Everyone will have different ideas about photographs they see or about the messages behind their photographs. Everything about photography is pure opinion. I will always perceive the world differently than others.

I believe people, including myself, sometimes get caught up in the act of taking the picture and do not really take the time to appreciate what we are seeing. Sometimes I only look at something and then take a picture of it. Other times I see something that I think I can turn into art and use my camera to create a masterpiece. I believe that photography is about capturing what one sees, in one’s own artistic way. I recently got caught up in the moment of taking pictures was when I went to the music festival called Outside Lands. I kept snapping pictures of the different bands, but did not take the time to appreciate what I was seeing. A couple times I had to put the camera down and just enjoy the music. Photography can be a double-edged sword because it can allow one to show the world their artwork, but it can also make one loose sight of the importance of enjoying what they are seeing.