Blog #4 Alfredo Jaar, Photography as a Weapon, & Craig Hickman

Photographs have been used for many purposes. Where they be used truthfully or falsely, a photograph can be a powerfully charged story. Helmut Herzfeld aka Heartfield, was an artist during the World War I. He presented the idea of photo montage, inspired by the lack of truth in the news, he says, "The main thing is that I saw both what was being said and not being said with photos in newspapers... I found out how you can fool people with photos, really fool them... you can lie and tell the truth." (Photography as a Weapon pg.11) Heartfield  really saw how he could manipulate the news' lies into telling the truth just by changing the caption on a photograph. He believes that, "We should be suspicious of what we see and what we read-- of what we are told." (Photography as a Weapon pg.11)

Craig Hickman, a digital photography professor at the U of O, says that he too, through Photo Shop, also uses manipulation to tell a story that might of otherwise been untold. He presented a number of photographers, all with their own style. I was most attracted to the photographers who chose to use cheap, plastic cameras; Nancy Rexroth, Diane Arbus and Julie Mihaly. Their photos were all in black and white, giving that old timing look--almost mysterious. It made me want to know the story more, feel emotion for them. Some were disturbing, while others were endearing. I could see the ebb and flow of both extremes."We see beauty all around us, and we should never forget the beauty of life. But that doesn't mean that we should just stay with beauty. We should not be afraid sometimes to confront beauty and horror." (Alfedo Jaar, The Gramsci Trilogy interview)

These are a few examples of black and white photos taken with a cheap, plastic camera, that I was drawn to.

For Alfredo Jaar, a world renown artist, its all about a real-life event or a real-life situation. " That's the magic of art-- and I think it's extraordinary-- the power to create connections, make bridges. It fascinates me." (The Gramsci Trilogy interview) Heartfield has similar views with Jaar, "The essence of his art is an attempt to take images--usurp them and use them to tell a different story. He is asking us to think of images as images-- to think of them ironically-- and  to make connections where connections were not made before." (Photography as a Weapon pg. 12-13) The connections we make with the photographs are just as important as the photo it's self. Sometimes the image is just not enough to fully grasp the connections though. There needs to be some kind of written word that guides you in some cases. "I'm trying, always to create a balance between information and spectacle, between content and the visuals, I think that balance is very difficult to reach. But the only way for you not to dismiss this image is to understand the story." (The Rwanda Project interview)
People generally have an easier time relating to others on a deeper, more personal level, by interacting  one-to-one. This being said, Jaar tries to utilize this idea in hopes that he will hit that deeper emotional level in people with his art. While creating The Silence of Nduwayezu, he explains, "Basically, when we say one million dead it's meaningless, So the strategy was to reduce the scale to a single human being with a name, a story. That helps the audience to identify with that person. And this process of identification is fundamental to create empathy, solidarity and intellectual involvement." Its amazing to me that you can take something so massive, like the number of deaths in a war or natural disaster and squeeze it into just one idea or image.  "The Vietnam war, the war abroad and the war at home, has been reduced to a few iconic images-- the Napalm girl, the girl at Kent State... What seems to emerge from major events and eras are one or two images that effectively embody the emotion and rage, the happiness and anger. The whole thing somehow is enfolded in there." (Hany Farid, Photography as a Weapon pg.4)

All these photographers have the same thing in common, the drive for the image to tell a story. To show the connectedness between. "The relationship to the world, even if you manipulate it, it has that real-world connection." (Craig Hickman)