A photographic image is able to capture and moment in time and freeze it an eternity. An early photograph for example one taken during the civil war can transport you back you back to that one moment in time instead of imagining what a young union soldier looked like. Obviously you need many photographs to represent time in general but only one photograph is needed for a moment in time and therefore time and the photographic image can be compared at some level. An image illuminates a moment in time but it can also cause the viewer to generalize. I think it is possible to connote time through multiple photographs of the same subjects because the details change. However its not possible with one if you have nothing to compare it to. With a single image you can read into it but essentially you’re just making up a back-story for what you see. I don’t consider any art form a reliable method of conveying reality however photography is certainly capable of reproducing an object very realistically.
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Really? So although a photographic portrait of a Union soldier is just a visual image from an automatic machine, it's capable of transporting you back to the Civil War? I don't know, I'd much prefer a painting of a Civil War battle to create my understanding of the war rather than a portrait of a soldier...
ReplyDeleteI agree with what Hayley has to say. As opposed to a painting of the Civil War, I think that a photograph is more accurate. It's evidence of this person's existence and proof that they were there. I agree with the fact that photography is much more capable of realistically taking someone "back in time" to a place that they may have never been able to experience
ReplyDeleteI also agree with what Hayley said how a photo is essentially capturing a point in time and is physical proof of something that actually happened. That even though the photo is of what the person taking the photo wanted us to see, its a lot more accurate then lets say a painting. In a painting the artist can choose to leave out things that the artist disliked proving that it is less accurate form of realism.
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