Spring 2013 History of Photography

I believe both Robert Frank’s as well as Will Counts news photography are equally effective and important visual documents of the social inequities in American society during the Fifties. Robert Frank’s “The Americans” show the ugly truth behind “American Dream” showing the everyday life of the working class, segregation, as well as many other social issues that many Americans did not want to “look at”/accept. Will Counts photography of “Elizabeth Eckford” in my opinion is very effective and successful because he was able to captured history as it happened, the way he captured Ms. Hazel hatred, and the fear in Ms. Elizabeth’s face expression it my opinion there couldn’t had been a better way to capture the event. Even though many people wanted to hide the truth of the events occurring in the US, I believe Robert Frank’s as well as Will Counts photography played a major part in showing the public what was really going on and demonstrating that something had to be changed/ something had to be done, therefore two different photography styles, by two different photographers showed equally powerful work in documenting the American society during the Fifties.

I’ve never heard of JR before but I think his work is amazing and has a good cause. I did not have the chance to go to the Photo Booth in Times Sq but actually in my neighborhood there is a wall covered with photos from the inside out project. The first time I saw the wall in my neighborhood I thought of it as something interesting and cool, and went close to it to look all the pictures and there were a couple of people that I know. What I think is the coolest of all is the diversity of people in the photos, like all the photos in my neighborhood wall were from people from different nationalities, there were white people that are actually Italians, and Albanians since I live in an Italian neighborhood, there were Hispanics, Black people, young and old people. It is a very colorful, diverse wall of black and white photographs. I think JR is doing an amazing job with incorporating photography with street art and taking this project to different parts of the world and mostly rural areas. It is nice to see photos of ordinary people like me, and not having walls covered with celebrities ads and stuff like that.

I think Hetherington’s vision was to show to the world kind of the behind the scenes of war. We know that soldiers are just as humans as us and they are heroes because they risk their lives for their country but deep inside their hearts they have feelings, emotions and every other necessity that any human has. Junger said that Tim had this idea of making a film about young men and violence and how they act in ways that emulate images they’ve seen. I think Tim wanted to specifically follow and tell the stories of young man in combat and how vulnerable they are when it comes to war. Because, in war the only family a soldier has is other soldiers, and they feel hurt when other soldiers are hurt. I do not really see Hetherington’s vision as heroic, even though I think he is very brave to risk his life in documenting the war but I do not think his vision was to show the heroism of soldiers , either their patriotism. By looking at his photographs I can tell that he was more interested in capturing moments when soldiers where not in combat and in other actions such as sleeping.

we can easily tell the photo is staged or not, because in the photo we can not see any blood from the solider if he got gun shot.  and the way that solider fall to the ground.  i think the authenticity of the photo is depend on what situation, for Capa’s case, during the war is really hard to catch the photo that really have the pose like this one, but no matter the photo is fake or not he is showing how the war looks like to the entire community.

i think this movement is really creative, because it make other people who are not  photographer have more knowledge of how photo become art. i went there last time just want to see how it really work in the public. from what i saw, i feel that anyone who took the photo was really enjoy and have a lot of fun with it. for other people, they might feel wired to have their photo on the ground and let people step on it, but overall i think this project is really successful.

Robert Frank’s image and Will Count’s image are both very powerful. I’m not sure if it matters that one is art and one is news photography. You can still see that same theme or message in both. In Robert Frank’s image the segregation of the trolley is very clear, the white people are in the front and the black people are in the back. I think its interesting how the children are in the middle. Children are usually more oblivious and innocent because of their youth. It is also interesting how some of the subjects in the photograph are looking into the camera. Will Count’s photograph still has a similar vibe even though it is a “news” photograph. Elizabeth Eckford certainly stands our since everyone else around her is white. But what catches my attention second, is the facial expression of the woman standing behind her. She looks so disgusted by the presence of a black person. Elizabeth’s face doesn’t look too pleasant either. Both images capture the emotion that came along with segregation.

I have heard of JR before in another photography class but I never thought that they would bring this project somewhere so close to us. I really like that they are images of people in the community instead of people who are well known like all the celebrities in the tabloids. I never got a chance to visit the photo booth in Times Square but I think it would be awesome if they came to my neighborhood in Queens. A lot of people usually think that my neighborhood mostly consists of Indians but in reality it is very diverse. There is an even mix of Chinese, Indian, Hispanics and even white people. I think a project like this really shows diversity in communities. It also does a great job in bringing all these different people together. The combination is street art and photography is one of the best I’ve seen, in my opinion. It has a real message that a lot of people can relate to.

I think that Hetherington’s vision was to communicate the soldier’s lives to the public. He wanted to bring more attention to the lives of those people who were risking there lives. I think Junger thought of him as a risk taker. He would be prepared for anything. I’m not sure if heroic is the right word, however, he was very brave to do all the things he did and go to all the places he went.

I wasn’t too sure what his vision was when I was looking at his photographs at the Yossi Milo Gallery website. In almost all the photographs, the men were sleeping. The trailer did seem interesting, though. Reading Junger’s obituary helped me understand the importance of the film a bit more.

I feels interesting by looking at the photographs that taken by both photographers. But if you ask me which one I like the most, I would say is the Swiss -born photographer Robert Frank. Because we can see he tried to to using his photos to the American society in that time period which is 1950’s. Even though there some photos is kind of fizz, but it still can tell the story behind it or the thing that he want express out. The one photo I like the most is Trolley, New Orleans, 1955 from The American. Because we can see through this photo to know there many people or many or the people are been racism in that time period, Back people were siting on the back of the bus. Also, we ca get the sense of the how mean of the White people were, for example the woman sat in the middle of the bus, and the two black men were looks like very innocent. In addition, I think the photo of Hazel Bryan and Elizabeth Eckford, is very point out the main problem of the racism of that time period. Because there was the white girl was yelling at the black girl that walked in front of her. Overall, I think these photos is so stand out and captured people attention.

I looked over to Hetherington’s photographs at the Yossi Milo Gallery website, and I really like his style to photograph of the soldiers. As we can see he was using different vision to took photos. By thoes photos he has taken, I think he wants to show the other side of the soldiers which not heroic or be patriotic. because many photos at the beginning was taking while soldiers were sleeping, which we could not see the other side of the soldiers; calm, pace and quiet. Also, I think he was very working on hard of his photos, it makes me feel that soldiers are no different than the other people, cause we are all human we do have sense of emotion and feeling. To being a soldiers doesn’t mean that they are much much strong than the other people, even though they fight for their countries, but might still have fair and scared. And this makes these photos are different than the documentary, beccause many documentary are shows soldiers are patriotic and fight real hard, sometimes it makes me feel sick, cause this maybe just only few of the soldiers felts that way, I don’t believe that they won’t have fair to fight and lose their life and families.