Lesson Two Notes.

Critical Studies Lesson Two: Documentary Forms

Aims:

-How Benjamin contrasts traditional art forms with mechanically reproducible ones, consider how this facilitates the development of documentary.

-Consider historical forms of documentary, contrast these with more recent, models where the status of the image is questioned.

Questions:

1. What does Benjamin consider to be happening to art at the beginning of the 20^th Century?
2. What is the effect upon notions traditionally associated with art?
3. How does he consider that these changed transform the ways we come into contact with art?

Answers:

1. Art is becoming less authentic because of its reproducibility. Technology advances allow you to reproduce art works more easily and cheaper.
2. Usually associated with pieces of art. No original pieces of work, jeopardise the authenticity of art, jeopardises the notions traditionally associated with art. Genius, one of a kind etc. Disregards the terms creative.  Photography does something to the act of recording, it makes everything quicker, if you drew an image it is very time consuming. Where as with a photograph you just click the shutter which takes a second.  If someone copies your art it is known as a fake or forgery.

Photography brings the location to you; you don’t need to go there anymore as the photograph brings the place to you. Our experience of the place is therefore transformed by photography.

Authenticity: The essence of all that is transmissible from the scene of the works production time and place.

Original: Preserve the scene of its making I.E. by painting a scene in 1999 preserves that scene in that specific time. Exists outside the technical reproducibility. Presence is depreciated through reproducibility a copy of an image lacks the essence of that scenes time and place.

Reproduction (Photograph): Locks the originals original presence in time and space. The original becomes detached from the scene it is/ is of. The original becomes not about what it shows but what it is, as a photograph is a piece of art.

Aura: The presence of an object before us, original, uniqueness, presence. Space, time and being removed from it. Two examples of a mountain and a shadow of a branch. We can sense the presence of the mountain before us but we are physically distant from it.

How is aura/uniqueness linked to ritual?

Uniqueness is inseparable from tradition, magical, religious, reality. Aura based in ritual function. A statue of Jesus transcended its status as stone to take on a human form. The idea of aura/authenticity is used in many other social projects over time. The aura embodies something else. Difference between film and paintings, films are made with more than pone camera, therefore you have different viewpoints. Films move they play and then they go whereas the painting always stays the same. Many pieces of equipment are used to make a film but when you watch it all those pieces are subtracted, you do not see them. The camera throws you into reality, a camera man is like a surgeon, and he slices you into reality. The cameraman does not face you; a painting does not do this. Film is distracted, raises us to a level off consciousness.

Painted faces the scene he paints but remains distant from it. Captures that moment in time from his own perspective which is why he is like a magician.

Documentary photographers include: Robert Frank, Dorethea Lange, Cartier Bresson, all documented the great depression in the US in the 1930’s. Wanted to let other people aware of what was happening. People at that time trusted photography what you saw was completely the truth. It depicted reality, photography is considered to be indexical. Photography is a trace/ recording of that event, people began to use photographic images to draw work events to the attention of mass audiences.

Allan Sekula, how documentary could be re appraised of re applied in the late 1970’s. Martha rosier re appraised the status of the documentary genre, they places value against the capacity of photography to bring attention to social injustices, but considered that documentary images should be reference, the conventions through which they are produced the social framework through which they operate, and the mechanisms of knowledge production in relation to which they were produced.

Other artists such as Hito Steyeri choose to focus more closely upon conventions and social codes that infuse documentary. For Steyeri the intentions of the film maker affect the way that production of the film can compromise the truthfulness.