Overview
- Notions of consulships and truth
- the indexical qualities of photography in rendering truth
- photographic manipulation and the documentation of truth
- censorship in advertising
- censorship in art and photography
Ansel Adams
- Moonrise Hernandes New Mexico, c.1941-2
- Moon over Half Dome, 1960
- Aspens
- Exposed photo negatives for different amount of times to get different effects - makes the images look like they are taken at different times of year/day etc.
Pravda
- Five years before coming to power in 1917 October revolution, the soviets established the newspaper Pravda.
- One sided truth
- One side that the government wants you to see
Digital
- Photoshop makes it easy for anyone to manipulate photos
- People making fake advertising playing on images - 9/11 images
- Kate Winslet on cover of GQ magazine - legs elongated in photoshop
- Is the representation of truth an important factor? Can you manipulate to sell?
- Iraq war - two images combined to create one image - not representing the truth - can combine different images to change the message
Robert Capa
- Robert Capa is a pseudo name - built up an identity
- Death of a Loyalist Soldier, 1936 - is this the point of moment of death or is it set up? Does it matter?
'At the time (WWII), I fervently believed just about everything I was exposed to in school and in the media. For example, I knew that all Germans were evil and that all Japanese were sneaky and treacherous, while all white Americans were clean cut'
Jean Baudrillard
- Simulacra and Simulations, 1981
- It is a reflection of a basic reality
- It masks and perverts a basic reality
- It makes the absence of a basic reality
- It bears no relation to any reality whatever
- The Gulf War Did not Take Place, 1995 - It is a masquerade of information
- Caused a lot of offence to people who had relatives who died in the Gulf War - they mistook his comments as saying the war never happened without reading the book
Peter Turnley, The Unseen Gulf War, 2002
- There was censorship in the first gulf war
- Photographers in the first war were controlled by the US forces and had restrictions on what they could photograph & represent
- 'The mile of death' - on the last day of the war - no photographs were published at the time
Ken Jareke
- Iraqi Soldier, 1991 - image was put in newspapers - one of the first truly shocking images captured in colour and put in the newspaper - british press was criticised for it - depicted a gruesome reality
Do you want an accurate gruesome truth?
- An-My Le, Small Wars
- An-My Le, 29 Palms: Mechanised Attack
- An-My Le, Small Wars
Censorship in Advertising
- To ban or cut portions (a film, letter or publication)
- Morals & Ethics
- Cadbury's Flake, 1969 - played on sexual ambiguity - a questions of other connotations to it - does it say more about the certain individuals or a universal?
- United Colors of Benetton adverts, 1992 - stereotypical uses shocking adverts - racism & religion
- Opium advertisement, Stephen Meisel, 2000 - most complained about advert in five years (2001) - sexually suggestive and likely to cause 'serious or widespread offence' thereby breaking the British codes of advertising and sales promotion.
- Agnolo Bronzino, Venus Cupid, Folly & Time, 1545 - as a mythological subject does that make it acceptable?
- Does painting make certain types of scenes more acceptable than photographs?
- Balthus, The Golden Years, 1945 & Therese Dreaming, 1938 - represents an uncomfortable ground
- Andy Earl recreated Manet's 'Dejeuner sir l'Herbe' with Bow Wow Wow record cover, 1980
- Does a piece of fine art photography change the way we view it from commercial photography?
Amy Adler
- The Folly of Defining 'Serious' Art
- Professor of Law at NY University
- 'An irreconcilable conflict between legal rules and artistic practice'
- 'The requirement that protected artworks have 'serious artistic value' is the very thing contemporary art and postmodernism itself attempt to defy'
- The Miller Test - 1973 - asks three questions to determine if a piece of work is seen as obscene
Obscenity Law
- To protect art whilst prohibiting trash
- The dividing line between speech and non-speech
- The dividing line between prison and freedom
Sally Mann
- Candy Cigarette, 1989
- Immediate Family, 1984-92
Tierney Gearon
- Untitled, 2001
- News of the world - upper crust art lovers are paying £5 a head to ogle degrading snaps of children plastered across the walls of Britain's art galleries
Nan Goldin, Klara and Edda Belly-dancing, 1998
Richard Prince, Spiritual American, 1983
Richard Prince, Spiritual American IV, 2005
Final thoughts
- Just how much should we believe the truth represented in the media?
- Should we be protected from it?
- Is the manipulation of the truth fair game in a capitalist consumer society?
- Could art sit outside the censorship laws?
- Who should be protected, artist, viewer or subject?
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