Galleries

Results 801 - 825 of 1334

<< Start < Prev 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 Next > End >>
Author:Tony Bridge
  Date: Fri, 17 Mar 2000 09:50:40 +1200   Pedro: Just a short note to thank you for such a wonderful site. It has been a real joy to be able to visit it. One of the things I particularly enjoy are the articles in the magazine. I have visited a lot of sites in the course of looking for photography pages and the bulk of them seem to fall into the how-to category, or are relly opportunities for individual photographers to display their own work. Nothing wrong with that, for after all, most photographers are in that camp. But it is nice to be able to visit sites that are intellectually stimulating.   If photography is a journey then there must be waypoints. For my part, I feel my progress as a photographer and educator can be charted by the books I have purchased over the years. In the beginning I bought books on technique. That was. after all, what I needed to know ( and part of a self-generated myth that better technique would make me a better photographer. In fact all it did was give me...better technique).  
Friday, 17 March 2000
802. Statement
Author:Bill Thomas
  Regarding his Installation in the Houston Artists Windows Project, which was Censored by Foley's     March 13, 2000 I was one of 17 Houston area artists invited by FotoFest 2000 to create artwork for a display window in Foley's downtown store, as part of the Houston Artists Windows Project. Prior to installing the work, I informed Foley's PR department about my idea for the window. I explained that my piece dealt with my own family history involving Foley's, and local civil rights history which Foley's was involved in 40 years ago. After considering my proposal, they enthusiastically endorsed the project. On Thursday, March 8, around 4:30 PM, Foley's censored my installation, and concealed it from view by covering the windows with black cloth. The window had been on view to the public for five days. I was asked to de-install as soon as possible.   I was told the decision was made by company CEO, Tom Hogan. Foley's store management favored keeping the art on view. Black community leaders asked Foley's to not remove the artwork, as these historical events are important and need to be remembered. Foley's released a statement, jointly with FotoFest, explaining their reason for removing the work. It reads, "Foley's removed the artwork in response to a few complaints by African American employees who were offended by the noose imagery. While most people saw it as a very strong positive message, we believed it was important to be sensitive to those who did not."   The large black and white image referred to by "noose imagery," is titled "Racial Tensions." Seen in a bleak but formally striking landscape under a freeway, a black man and a white man, are balanced on opposite ends of a see saw. Both have nooses around their necks, attached to the concrete beam above, and their hands appear tied behind their backs. Balance must be maintained for them to survive, and any attempt by one to harm the other, will result in mutual destruction. Put simple, if one hangs, they both hang. It is understandable for someone to be uncomfortable with the vocabulary of hanging, per se. However, it is completely unfair and unreasonable to ignore all other elements in the image, except the noose on the African-American man, and then take exception on the grounds that it only references his lynching. Objections which were the result of a gross misinterpretation by "a few employees," are an absurd basis on which to silence this exhibit. The right of ojection should not transcend the right of expression.   Prior to the decision to eliminate the installation, I, FotoFest, and Foley's store management offered to meet with those who were offended, and work to resolve the misunderstanding. One of the capacities of art is that it can provide us with a neutral ground where we can safely gather and examine our differences and opinions. But, this proposal was dismissed by Hogan, along with any opportunity to reach a compromise.       http://zonezero.com/magazine/articles/thomas/thomas.html    
Thursday, 16 March 2000
Author:José Antonio Navarrete
  Part I - Part II In order to explain why the art of the media weighs so heavily in the field of contemporary art, a considerable number of reasons of a most varying nature would certainly need to be examined. Nevertheless, this is not a futile attempt. Much less if we take into account that this has to do with the profound contemporary changes in the practice, distribution and consumption of art. Nevertheless, rather than making an inventory of those reasons, here we are interested in considering how some of them, perhaps the fundamental ones, meet.   The crisis undergone by the idea of art as a self-absorbed language -centered on the investigation of its "pure", that is, formal elements, which culminated with the expansion of abstractionism-, becomes visible in the nineteen-sixties, overturning the long hegemony held by the pictorial paradigm. Among one of the things that contributed decisively to the proliferation of new ways of building artistic experience was the following: a technographic medium, a century-old, such as photography which had not achieved canonical status despite its constant insistence on producing art and its relative inclusion in the modernist aesthetic territory, as well as the then emerging video medium.   Seen from a historical perspective, the nineteen-sixties and seventies represent the moment in which Western art definitely questions its age-old hold on the notions of style and mŽtier. It was reduced it to a kind of specialized and refined craft-like practice even on an individual level and, thus, a generator of sumptuary artifacts. The problem at that time, rather than linking art with life - which was, after all, an avant-garde aspiration which has its two main motors in Bauhaus and Russian productivism and its ripest expression in the development of modern design -, was to investigate the relationship between the two.   In certain circumstances in which technographic media had reached a decisive position in constituting the experience of contemporary man through visual images; in which that specific experience had become at the same time a fundamental part of man's relation with the world, the practice of visual arts turned towards, with unprecedented attention, the exploration of these media. On the one hand, this represented challenging the up to then predominant hierarchies in the field of art. It was a way of placing oneself on the margins of institutional life and its historical preferences; on the other hand, by dealing directly with technological images it offered boundless possibilities of taking on new cultural challenges from art's standpoint: that is, locating modern culture and its legitimating discourse.   Photography and video would henceforth become media used increasingly in artistic practice; to which in the last decade heterogeneous procedures and digital mediums would be added, all of them linked in some way to cinema and television. Consequently, the leading role that the media hold in the field of contemporary art is a sign of the change of episteme undergone by modern culture, among whose multiple traits the following are found: the exchange carried out between the culture industry and high art; the depreciation of the unique and unprecedented nature of a work of art -due not only to its technical reproductivity, as Benjamin would say, but also to its possible technical nature- and the reduction of the aura to a temporary and spectacular characteristic of the work of art in the context of the exhibition.   José Antonio Navarrete     You can contact José Antonio Navarrete at: nava01@telcel.net.ve   Part I - Part II     http://www.zonezero.com/magazine/articles/navarrete/millenniums2.html        
Thursday, 09 March 2000
Author:José Antonio Navarrete
  Part I - Part II A very widespread opinion held today in the field of art –and which fuels one of the most lively present day polemics – says that the art of the media, or more precisely, art through the media prevails in contemporary artistic practice to such an extent that it defines our times and triggers new narratives. Stated briefly, the consequences stemming from this fact are as much the change in the way in which art is conceived as well as in the way it imagines and communicates things.   The matter deserves the utmost attention, because if the eighties and the first half of the nineties of the twentieth century constituted an international expansion, under the criterion of "young art" –meaning vital, contemporary-, of a postconceptualism which revealed that the conceptual and minimalist lessons of the sixties and seventies had been assimilated, the events that unfolded in the artistic scenario at the end of the past century made it clear that, perhaps without art losing its postconceptual inclination, the technological means of producing images acquired during this period an unprecedented position. The 1997 DOCUMENTA X was the show that revealed signs of the new situation.   Even if one were to gather all reservations against the prediction that says that art in years to come will basically be done with the means designed by iconographic technology -reservations which in turn are based upon the knowledge that contemporary artistic creation feeds off the most varied cultural experiences and among them the type provided by the accumulation of means and procedures linked to crafts and particular Western traditions in fine arts-, the abundant presence of these new technologies in art demands, at the very least, an analysis of the state of contemporary art in its relationships and contacts with complex processes of contemporary culture, and more extensively, with the ways politics, economy and communication articulate on a global scale, this being the space where the sensitive and creative experience of contemporary man is constructed.   As things stand now there is little use in being complacent towards the permanent inscription of technological iconography in the field of art. This is an attitude which has already been overcome by the very same dynamic of the processes that have taken place during the twentieth century, which has satisfied the desire of those who wanted to turn the media into institutionalized instruments of artistic production: creators and critics from the highest avant-garde positions, people engaged in the dehierarchization of the arts. It is even less its concern to accuse art of having forgotten its previous history, centered on the pleasure of manual work, the exacerbation of the author’s gesture and the idea of singular genius, of sacrificing its status as a sophisticated practice for the sake of the spectacular and trivially seductive "Hollywood style", of giving up its domain to technologies that weigh heavily in the mass culture industry: all this the remains of the "Baudelaire syndrome" which survives the artistic legitimation of the media. The matter, then, demands that the discursive structure in which art has been inscribed and the forces that work towards its amplification and modification be reconsidered, under today’s circumstances, in which the conventions of artistic representation are problematized, the aesthetic centralization of artistic practice is knocked off balance and this uncovers new possibilities of subverting the alliances which interact with other cultural spheres. To explore the productivity of this last perspective will be the aim of later articles.   José Antonio Navarrete   You can contact José Antonio Navarrete at: nava01@telcel.net.ve   Part I - Part II         http://www.zonezero.com/magazine/articles/navarrete/navarreteen.html        
Wednesday, 08 March 2000
Author:Harris Fogel
  Date: Mon, 6 Mar 2000 09:01:07 EST   Hi Pedro, One of our faculty members, David Graham, alerted me to your site. Bravo. It's wonderful! Very well done. Congratulations. It's been a long time since I've seen you. I hope that all is well.   Regards, Harris   Harris Fogel Chairman Media Arts Department The University of the Arts Philadelphia, PA  
Monday, 06 March 2000
Author:Pedro Meyer
    As a child I was always intrigued by those particles of dust that seemed to be tumbling their way up following the path of light beams. My bedroom became a scenario for such light shows as light rays filtered through the blinds. I would think of myself becoming very tiny and climbing on to one of those traveling particles, and going off to a different world. A world from where light came.   I could see that the light arrived from somewhere. There was something very soothing in looking at the darkened room and viewing the spectacle of light as it moved constantly to take on new shapes and directions until it would always end abruptly. The desire to stop this loss of such magic was what prompted me to want to go where light came from.   At first I discovered how the sun was the provider of such light but then one day I became very excited when I realized that the moon would also bring such gifts of light, from time to time. Light was something that I could never grasp. Every time I tried to do so it would always elude my tiny fingers as these attempted to caress the river of light coming from the window.   As I unsuccessfully explored ways of becoming smaller in order to ride the particles of dust towards the world where light came from, I stumbled upon a photograph that had an image of such light. I looked upon the picture and discovered that light always remained there, no longer would it disappear after some time. Now I no longer needed to go where light came from, after all I had the discovered the secret passage to light: a photograph.       Last week as I came into my studio early one morning, I was humbled yet again by the beauty of light just coming in through the window. This time the image was made with a digital camera (our cover). Who ever said that digital photography had nothing to do with light?   Pedro Meyer March 2000     For comments post a message in our forum section at ZoneZero.       http://zonezero.com/editorial/marzo00/march.html    
Wednesday, 01 March 2000
Author:Pedro Hernández-Ramos
  Part I - Part II - Part III - Part IV So What's The Difference? In the previous article (Part 2) I argued that learning in a new world will take place in a wider range of settings, beyond traditional education institutions. A new term, "distributed learning," is becoming increasingly popular to describe and summarize the scenarios envisioned. In brief, distributed learning assumes that an individual learner may be engaged in an in-person or a mediated (say, via computer) session ("class"), led by a teacher/professor/instructor in the same room or remotely, synchronously (in real time) or asynchronously (at a different time). Furthermore, mediated online sessions can take a variety of forms: connected to the Internet or a local network, accessing a CD-ROM or DVD disk in one's computer, or using software stored on the computer's hard disk. "Distributed" does not mean isolated, so students in distributed learning situations should have the ability to communicate with faculty and peers, and also feel that the experience of working on one's own without (or with limited) face-to-face contact does not limit one's ability to learn.   Those opposed to distributed learning, even so-called "distance learning" in its old-fashioned (but still quite common) mode as correspondence courses, raise objections to "online learning" where instead of books and papers being shipped around via mail, students and instructors are shipping bytes from their computers via the Internet. To these critics even expensive two-way videoconferencing systems that afford the closest thing to the "being there" experience are less than the ideal: a teacher in front of a group of students.   There are four main criticisms to the non-traditional learning experiences afforded by distributed (distance/online) learning. Each one of these criticisms is linked to what is presented as an inherent advantage of the interpersonal learning situation. The advantages are said to be: (1) socialization, (2) quality, (3) interaction, and (4) cost effectiveness. The argument goes that "traditional" education settings at all levels--from elementary education to higher education, and across other settings like vocational schools and corporate and government training centers--are best for learners because they are designed to yield the four advantages named above. The first three can be linked directly to the core argument that because there are face-to-face interpersonal interactions in traditional settings, that makes them better than anything else. The economic efficiencies, viewed at least from the institutional perspective, arederived from the ability to graduate (i.e., put through the system) the largest number of individuals for the least amount of money compared toother alternatives.   The interpersonal learning experience afforded by traditional settings can range in "intimacy" from the individual tutor relationship, to seminars limited to a few participants, to classes and labs (where the number or people in the same physical space may be reaching into the 40s or 50s), to the theater-like lecture halls seen in most universities where it's not uncommon for a hundred or more students to be "in class" at a time.   Distance education first came about to deal with the fact that students (learners) could not always ship themselves out to the "places of learning"--school or university most often. Thus, the institutions recognized that learning could take place outside their physical boundaries so long as the student accepted the rules of engagement. Students would follow a course of study under the supervision of a remote instructor with whom they would correspond at regular intervals, submitting their work for evaluation and accepting their instructor's assessment of their progress (or lack thereof). Except in rare circumstances where communication with others participating in a similar experience was possible, the large majority of times the student had one interlocutor only: the instructor.   The innovations that distance education introduced, even if we limit the discussion to correspondence-type courses, are worth reviewing briefly. First, the convenience of the student was acknowledged to be a reason to alter the traditional form of interaction, giving up on the notion that learning could only take place in the classroom and accepting the view that individuals could, when properly guided, learn on their own. Second, from the very beginning "nontraditional" students flocked to the opportunities created by distance learning, such that people who were unlikely to ever return to school to finish their elementary or high school education, or consider leaving jobs and families to complete a university degree, now had an option that allowed them to do so. Third, the cost-savings to the students were considerable, both in economic and in emotional terms. Fourth, innovations like individual study guides and alternative assessment methods evolved to fit the new circumstances for teaching students the instructor may never meet and learning from instructors students never saw. Fifth, demand in many cases was so great that many education institutions created entire divisions to support distance learning across a wide range of disciplines, providing custom-designed courses and recognizing a wider range of possible learner motivations: "continuing education" (for people who are required to regularly refresh their knowledge base) and "lifelong learning" opportunities for people (like senior citizens) who are still eager to learn something new to them.   The "boom" in distributed learning is well documented by now. In an article published in the January 7, 2000 issue of "The Chronicle of Higher Education," writer Dan Carnevale reported on a survey conducted by the US Department of Education. "The survey found that 1,680 institutions offered a total of about 54,000 online-education courses in 1998, with 1.6 million students enrolled. Certificate programs grew from 170 to 330 during the [1995-1998] period."   Those figures apply mainly to traditional higher education institutions in the United States. In corporations and governments around the world, the movement is even faster. Cost savings are often the main motivation in these settings, but learning "effectiveness" (or any other synonym commonly used in "training" environments) is also high. Consider these two quotes as examples. "Diane Oswell, assistant vice president, global human resources development [at Credit Suisse First Boston], estimates that the cost of delivering a Microsoft Excel technical support course is $150 per user in an internal classroom versus $300 in an external classroom. For traditional tutoring, the cost rises to $900. The cost via the Web is $2.50 per user. 'If you do a straight comparison, the savings can be incredible,' Oswell says." [From "Web Learning Starts to Pay Off--Companies Say web Training is Cheaper and More Measurable," by John Berry, InternetWeek, November 15, 1999, Issue 789, Section: Transforming the Enterprise.] And the second quote: "Businesses have done the math. They know, for example, that conventional classroom instruction costs hover around $75 an hour, with ull-week programs costing $3,000 to $5,000. Computer-based training, by comparison, costs about half that. What's more, training via the web can serve up instruction globally--there are no seat restrictions in these classrooms--around-the-clock, and without travel costs." [From "Learn At A Distance. Online learning is poised to become the new standard," by Judith N. Motti, Information Week Online, January 3, 2000.]   Businesses and government agencies may have looked at distributed learning initially to solve short-term problems (i.e., developing skills of their employees in specific areas), but along the way they discovered that there is a business opportunity as well. Companies like Knowledge Universe, co-owned by former financier Michael Milken and software mogul Larry Ellison, are not shy about their intentions to profit by offering ducational and training services, often in direct competition with established educational institutions. (See Edward Wyatt, "Investors are Seeing Profits in Nation's Demand for Education," The New York Times, November 4, 1999.) There's always been a business side to education (consider private schools), but changing demographics (according to the U.S.. Department of Education, 42.7% of students attending postsecondary institutions in 1996 were over the age of 24) and the need to look for alternative models that may be more cost-effective than traditional models of schooling are definitely shaping conversations about the future of education and learning.   The "boom" in distributed learning is also shaping up as an opportunity to review the received knowledge about learning, and to look seriously into the largely anecdotal evidence of students learning actively from peers as well as from the instructor and textbooks. Contrary to popular belief, learning distributed settings is not an isolated experience but an actively social one, even if mainly text-based given the available tools. We must, however, keep an open mind and recognize that, despite its limitations derived mainly from bandwidth restrictions and unsophisticated software, distributed (online, distance) learning can succeed where no other option would be available. While doubts remain about whether students can effectively learn math, history, physics, writing, and other arts and humanities subjects in distributed settings, there is ample evidence suggesting that there are "no significant differences" between residential (in-person) and online learning experiences even when the subjects were initially thought to be unsuitable to a distributed experience. Companies and training institutions are mostly convinced of the effectiveness of distributed learning when addressing technical subjects (e.g., Microsoft Excel or computer programming), and ongoing research in academic settings will continue to yield valuable information about how distributed learning "works" in traditional subjects. The evidence for "no significant difference" between in-person and online learning has been gathered over many years in a great web site (http://teleeducation.nb.ca/nosignificantdifference/).   The main question that comes to my mind when reviewing the studies collected by the "No Significant Difference Phenomenon" web site is: If there are no significant differences in learning achievement despite the current limitations in the distributed learning experience, can distributed learning evolve to be better than in-person learning once the major obstacles are removed or overcome?   If the answer turned out to be "yes," we would face some really interesting and difficult challenges, including of course the obvious social disparities in income that are linked to access to computers and telecommunications and support services. Pedro Hernández-Ramos   You can contact Pedro Hernández-Ramos at: pehernan@cisco.com   Part I - Part II - Part III - Part IV   http://www.zonezero.com/magazine/articles/hernandez/hernande3.html      
Tuesday, 29 February 2000
Author:Cynthia Smith
  Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2000 13:07:10 +0000   I wrote down the address for Zonezero in September when I attended an exhbition in Monterey, CA. Today I took some time to visit your site. I'm most impressed and wish I could spend more time today checking exploring further. I do plan on coming back.   About myself, I am a fine art photographer who received my MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art, and now live in British Columbia. I'm also a multimedia student, learning all sorts of techie stuff.   That's about it. Cheers, Cynthia  
Monday, 21 February 2000
Author:Britannica.com
  Date: Mon, 31 Jan 2000 19:31:57 MST   Dear Webmaster: Britannica.com is contacting you because our editors have selected your site as one of the best on the Internet when reviewed for quality, accuracy of content, presentation and usability.   As a result, we would like to offer you the opportunity to join in the launch of our new link exchange program. This program will give you and other top quality sites the opportunity to add a Britannica search box to your site and there by provide your users with direct access to Britannica's awarding-winning content, including the trusted and authoritative Encyclopaedia Britannica.   The search box will be accompanied by an award, which will tell visitors to your site that Britannica editors have rated one of the most valuable and reliable on the Internet, in the company of an elite group of Web sites. You can choose to use the search box, the award or both. Most importantly, because each will open another browser window, your users will never have to leave your site to access Britannica content.   We know quality is always difficult to accomplish and maintain. Congratulations on being a selected member of the Britannica Internet Guide. We look forward to our growing association in the future.   Regards,   The Staff at Britannica.com  
Monday, 31 January 2000
Author:Andrew Hathaway
  Date: Mon, 31 Jan 2000 11:01:01 -0700   Dear Zone Zero, Pedro and all you clever and smart folks that contribute, In an effort to research Pedro Meyer for an upcoming interview I am planning, I have fallen in love with your site and would like to be added to any email campaign for new work that you might have. Please add my two addresses to your list.   My regards to all of you and keep up the good work. Your site is a treasure which I plan to share with all my web savvy photo pals. Thanks for making the internet a fun plac to work.   Sincerely, -Andrew Hathaway  
Monday, 31 January 2000
Author:Bob Cavenagh
  Date: Wed, 26 Jan 2000 10:31:35 -0500   I am am also Bob (Robert) Cavenagh, Instructional Technologist and part-time teacher of conventional and digital fine arts photography at Dickinson College in Carlisle, PA.   I was delighted to find the ZoneZero website; I have assigned it to my students and we will look at some of the work and articles in our electronic studio during classes.   Thanks, RWC  
Wednesday, 26 January 2000
Author:Anne Williams
  Date: Mon, 17 Jan 2000 12:05:42 +0100   Dear zonezero, I run the MA Photography at the London College of Printing. Your site is really useful to both undergraduate and postgraduate students. Please add me to your mailing list. With thanks   Anne Williams Course Director MA Photography of Media London College of Printing 10 Back Hill London  
Monday, 17 January 2000
Author:Ted Hartwell
  Date: Wed, 05 Jan 2000 13:39:40 -0500   Pedro,   It's been a long time since we've spoken, and I've been meaning to compliment you and your crew for producing and maintaing the ZoneZero website. It is exemplary! And it may very well be the best site of it's kind on the www - I recommend it to everyone in the field I talk to.   Our museum is heavily into producing or own interactive history of art programs - including photography, of course, and in fact you might like to see some of what we are doing by clicking on these two urls: http://www.artsmia.org/get-the-picture/ and   The Minneapolis Institute of Arts  
Wednesday, 05 January 2000
Author:Marcela Cerda Vásquez
  Date: Sun, 2 Jan 2000 11:00:56 -0300   Estoy muy contenta que existan lugares como este para ver y saber más acerca de la fotografía. Soy periodista, y estudiante desde hace 2 años de fotografía. Aún me queda la mitad de la carrera. Y como adoro la fotografía por sobre todas las cosas, quisiera registrarme con ustedes para recibir todo lo que quieran enviarme por el correo.   Mi nombre es Marcela Cerda Vásquez, vivo en Santiago de Chile.   Ojalá que este milenio que comienza les de muchísimas satisfacciones. Gracias por todo. Marcela Cerda.  
Sunday, 02 January 2000
Author:Tom Fowler
  Date: 2 Jan 2000 04:13:05 -0500   Thank you, Pedro! I spent over two hours exploring the site and will return. I am also raising my niece, Hannah, who is 6, after her mother died 5 years ago. She's a joy. My gift to her this Christmas was a camera. And, a portable audio recorder.   All the best, Tom Fowler South Carolina.  
Sunday, 02 January 2000
Author:Pedro Meyer
  To flash version   The Zapatista movement in Chiapas invented a place in the jungle that went by the name of "La Realidad" (Reality), located in the southern part of Mexico. It became a geographic rallying point from which to launch many of their political communiqués. The Internet helped to bring much of the world's attention to what transpired in those parts no one was paying attention to. Although the place hardly existed, the fact is that La Realidad became a reality through repetition and the clever use of all media.   Around that same time, faced by the onslaught of digital barbarians who were willing to engage in what was considered a most despicable of practices -manipulating images of reality in their computers- photographers, editors and not few critics, started to rally around the notion that the "reality of the image" and thus photography had to be saved from any digital assault. The representation of "Reality" (with a capital R) had to be defended at all costs.   Documentary photographers were for the most part at the center core of those arguing against all forms of digital representation. It was considered in some quarters as the root of all evil, which eventually would erode the credibility of the photographic image.   Symposia and panel discussions were organized with photographers, editors and publishers of major publications, who would try to shame each other into acceptance as to what constituted an acceptable practice and what was not. (It is fascinating to observe how fast all the trappings of an inquisitorial practice can be erected.) It was determined for instance that images had to be labeled clearly to separate those that had suffered an alteration from those that were "pure" i.e. not modified (whatever that meant).   Since I produced one of the earliest bodies of digital work, and I did not particularly care to have any "Inquisition" pass judgment on my integrity, I devised a solution that offered two dates for all those images which had been altered by me in the computer. The day when the basic image was taken (on film at the time) and when the image had subsequently been altered in the computer. Thus, you had a guide if something had been altered in the computer by observing if I offered two dates or solely one. People would actually go around my exhibitions trying to guess if something had been done to the picture or not, and then looking at the dates.   In order to avoid any sort of manipulation with the photographic image, codes of "ethics" were drawn up using arguments based themselves on every sort of manipulation using words and ideas in very questionable ways.   The central distortion was that all the other media (written word, audio, video) were considered apparently less prone to the dangers of manipulation than those posed by photography. To extract a few minutes from an hour of audiotape or from a video interview was seen as a legitimate activity by such journalists. However if a photographer took an equivalent action, for instance that of deleting a pack of cigarettes or a telephone pole from a picture, he or she had incurred in a major sin. Never mind that by framing a picture differently at the time of making it, one could obviate the unfortunate telephone pole, without being taken to task for manipulating the representation of reality. After all a photograph had always been a proof of reality, was it not? Now it turns out The New York Times, in a very interesting article of January 13th, has just denounced CBS and their news program for inserting their own CBS logo on top of the NBC one that appears in real life in Times Sq. They did so during a live transmission at the time of the New Year celebrations in New York. The fact is that the genie of altering reality has been brought out of the bottle and nothing, I believe, will make it possible to be returned again to whence it came from, regardless if this applies to still or motion pictures.         On CBS News, Some of What You See Isn't There   To tamper with a photograph, something that is understood in most cultures as "proof of reality", is a such profound issue, that in order to deal with the ensuing problems of manipulation, these have been placed in the context of a major moral problem. In the case of photography, some have gone as far as suggesting that digital images no longer qualify for the term of being a photograph. One thus was expelled from society and declared a non-photographer. We have been told: "Thou shall not alter a photograph", and if you do, you have to place corresponding warning labels all over the neighborhood, informing of such a transgression. If you read the comments by Dan Rather from CBS, this is just what he stated concerning their own transgression in the video.   The double standards being used seemed not to bother anyone. You could manipulate anything you wanted, without it becoming a cardinal sin, as long as this happened before the legendary click. No problem in using makeup, and all sorts of cosmetics to embellish the color and tone of the skin, but if you dared to correct something once the picture had been shot you ought to make all kinds of acknowledgments that "reality" had been tampered with.   Yes you can use any filter you like, as long as these are optical and in front of the lens, but be aware that once the picture has been taken this same effort is called manipulation. Feel free to choose the film of your choice to enhance the visual interpretation of the image, but consider yourself damned if you decide upon such an alteration in a post click position using the computer.   The problem with the accusations by The New York Times, or the Dan Rather mea culpa, or the excuses presented by CBS, is that while they make all this fuss about the logo being there or not, nothing is ever discussed about the real manipulation of news behind the scenes by these institutions. It is a charade to engage with the alteration of such logos when in fact there has been ample evidence about all those news organizations' complicity with altering facts for the benefit of whatever was expedient at the time either politically or financially. Suppressing certain news is as much about manipulation of reality as sticking a logo where there was none.   Some 25 years ago, I made the following image with the man resting under his three hats. The obvious distortion of the column shooting off towards the left was the by-product of using a wide-angle lens on a 35-mm camera. I have always had a preference for wide angel lenses; they somehow bring you in closer, but they also distort reality. Do they ever! (Can you imagine if the world would really be like those wide angle lenses depicted reality, the instability of all those buildings with constructions that are always at odd angles?).         Now that I have the computer to work with, I took another look at that image, and fixed the distorted column. Today the question would be, for all those who shout foul at the very thought of using the computer to alter photographs, which "reality" is a more accurate representation of that which was. The one where the column is at an angle, or the one where it is now straight. Never mind that the picture is in black and white, which oddly enough is not a problem for photography purists. Like if the world is actually devoid of colors.       Again, as in other examples stated earlier, if the adjustment had been done "in camera" with a bellows adjustment on a 4 x 5, all would be acceptable; if done with the aid of the computer after the fact, everyone seems to be up in arms. I am sure you get the point about how we need to move forward and forget all this nonsense about the manipulation of digital photographs. Face it, all photographs are and have been nothing else but the product of manipulating reality. They are simply interpretations by the photographers who made those pictures.   As we are faced by a new millennium, to those who question the term of photography when applied to digital imagery, let me just remind you that photography means writing with light. It does not demand that such "writing with light" be accomplished through chemical means or electronic ones, we are fortunately left to pursue our own choices. As I see it, irrespective of which process we use, they are all photographs as long as they include the magic word: light.   The beauty of light as the sun sets was best described by my four year old son, when the other afternoon as we visited a friend, he was so enthralled by the colors in the sky that he declared to his mother and me, " I want to marry the sky".           I suspect that if we responded to reality with such an open mind ( that of considering marrying the sky) and allowed the emotion of light to become part of our awareness, we would appreciate the irrelevance of the present debate, as long as the image conveyed the message we wanted.   Obviously every one of you viewing this image will get to see somewhat different colors as probably no two monitors out there are identical. So which one is the true representation of the reality of that moment? What colors was Julito looking at that afternoon in Los Angeles, California as the millennium rolled around and I recorded the moment with a camera without film?   Please share with us your thoughts on these significant issues. As we start the new century we need to have a Reality adjustment with regard to all these topics.   Pedro Meyer January 2000     "One out of five cameras sold for more than $50 in October was a digital model, not film - - and of the 43 percent of Web users who plan to purchases a new camera in the next six months, 72 percent want a digital one...only seven percent of cameras sold were digital in 1998." - NPD Intelet, FIR WEEKLY DIGITAL IMAGING BRIEFING, December 31, 1999     For comments post a message in our forum section at ZoneZero.         http://zonezero.com/editorial/enero00/january.html    
Saturday, 01 January 2000
817. Yumi
Author:Yumi
  Date: Wed, 29 Dec 1999 05:16:43 +0100 (MET)   I´m really impressed by your side and I´m looking forward to see more, watch your side growing. I´m happy to see how people get a space and forum to share their personal Developpment, themes and Questioning of life, their aesthetical realities. Thank you for being beautyful.( Sorry, sounds a little bit pathetic, must be my English, my genes, the time, the days, the place, the the) .... yumi  
Wednesday, 29 December 1999
Author:Flia Cardenas Montero
  Date: Tue, 28 Dec 1999 00:36:59 -0400   Que tal? Es primera vez desde que comencé a visitar vuestra página, hace unos dos años, que decido inscribir mis datos, este espacio me parece genial y necesario para la comunidad fotográfica latinoamericana, por cuanto nos permite tener una visión respecto a lo que pasa en nuestro continente y a la vez es una retroalimentación cotidiana de las nuevas formas de enfrentar la imagen fija. Por lo demás es una buena forma de acostumbrarnos a esta nueva herramienta que a muchos les para los pelos, pensando que es el fin poco menos del arte fotográfico.   Yo soy fotógrafa, chilena, en estos momentos me he dedicado exclusivamente a la realización de mi tesis, con la cual finalizó mi carrera, que duró 4 años en el Instituto Arcos de Santiago, actualmente vivo en Valparaíso, donde desarrolló esta tesis, cuya temática se refiere a la locura a través de la locura. Esto quiere decir que dentro de un Hospital psiquiátrico he creado imágenes que se acercan mucho a lo que yo creo serían las alucinaciones o los delirios psicoticos o esquizofrénicos, estoy en proceso de edición y espero terminar a principios de enero. Por ahora puedo ofrecer mi página cuya creación es casi personal, la programó mi marido, en la cual incluyó una muestra de mi trabajo en general.   Bueno espero que contesten este mail incluyendome en su registro, Fuerza y Adelante con este maravilloso proyecto   Besos a todos Sol ------------------------------------------------------------------  
Tuesday, 28 December 1999
Author:Susie Fitzhugh
  Date: Sat, 11 Dec 1999 08:52:50 -0800   Words cannot express how delighted I am to find your site, ZONEZERO. Thank you for the heart and soul you've obviously put into this venture.   Susie Fitzhugh () Seattle, WA 98106  
Saturday, 11 December 1999
Author:Donald Tucker
  Date: Wed, 08 Dec 1999 20:52:12 -0500   Thanks for continuing to produce the most outstanding and serious photography site on the web. The final two documentaries about cancer and lupus were very thought provoking. Please continue your excellent work in showing some of the best photography in our hemisphere.   Don Tucker  
Wednesday, 08 December 1999
Author:Stefan Wulff
  Date: Mon, 6 Dec 1999 17:22:32 +0100   My name is Stefan Wulff and I'm a 31 year old photographer from Sweden. I mostly do reportage and artist portraits. Nowadays I have have it as a part time job.   My second job is in Graphic Design. I've been taken pictures since I was thirteen and I will never stop. There is always a new field to discover. What I like about ZoneZero is that you're proffesional. You have a wide range of photographers and photography. It will never get boring to enter the ZoneZero so keep up the good work.   Best regards Stefan Wulff  
Monday, 06 December 1999
Author:Pedro Meyer
      I was driving recently down one of the beautiful avenues of Washington D.C. with a friend, when all of a sudden my eye caught a billboard above that archetype of Americana, a Diner. The interesting thing was that the sign I was looking at was a bit of Americana itself, a sign made ever so present in the 1937 picture by Margaret Bourke-White (MBW), created at the time of the Louisville flood.   The billboard I am making reference to is "There is no way like the American Way". When I first saw it, all sorts of bells started to chime in my head about issues related to digital photography, obviously aside from all the social and political implications about the content of the image itself.   I was struck by how fast we read meanings into an image, meanings which are beyond the information actually conveyed by the picture. In the case of the Louisville flood image by MBW, we see a queue of black people standing in line for something. We do not know what exactly they are waiting for. It could be all the way from waiting for transportation given the floods, or for food, or waiting for a doctor, like in any other nature related catastrophe to this very day. Because they are standing in line, and because they are black, we come to view them as being "poor". What emerges is an immediate association of those that are privileged (the white people in the car in the billboard) and the poor (the black people standing in line). But look again at the picture, and you will observe that most of those folks are actually very well attired and do not give off the impression of being "poor". They could, for all I know, be professionals and middle class, if not all, then at least some of them. I could even imagine some of those very same men in the line trading places with the white man behind the wheel of the car above. As you can observe one does not need digital manipulation to alter the meaning of a picture, we do a pretty good job ourselves with just "straight" pictures.           What impressed me is that I knew the billboard above the Diner from a photograph, and I immediately associated it with the Bourke-White image. I concluded right away that the present day billboard had to be a rip-off from that picture even though I had no evidence to support my speculation. Upon further introspection about this matter, I started to reconsider my judgment. First of all, the initial billboard, the one in MBW picture, and which in my eyes "makes" her picture, was like so much in our history of photography, an image which belonged intellectually and artistically to someone other than the photographer. MBW used that billboard in a very articulate manner, to make her "successful" picture, even though it did not "belong" artistically to her.   It is only today, with so many debates going on about who has the copyright to what, and in particular under the jurisdiction of any alleged "digital rip-off", that such legal matters start to come to our attention. As a photographer these days if you would include within your picture frame such a large portion of an image of intellectual property belonging to someone else, as MBW did in hers, there would be all sorts of raised eyebrows to say the least.   The original billboard is so much part of the Margaret Bourke-White picture, that I for one had, unwittingly I must add, handed over to her the intellectual property for that billboard. So much so, that when I saw it independently from her picture, I assumed right away that it had been "lifted" from her picture. For all I know this might have been the case, but even if this was so, that billboard still did not belong to her. So did she have a right to use it? Yes in 1937, I am not so sure in 1999, and that is something that concerns me greatly.   As a working photographer I would hope that we would have the same freedom today that was prevalent then, but at the same time we have to contend with all sorts of additional issues of contemporary life related to photography (digital or not), which have not been addressed sufficiently. One could argue that the moment a sign is located on the street it becomes public domain. But is this really the case? I don’t think so, as I imagine advertising companies are very careful to defend such an issue in particular not to leave their creative efforts vulnerable to imitation.   In Mexico for instance, we have the government intervening just as nefariously as the private sector corporations in the US, with their efforts of privatizing everything visual. I dare say they (the Mexican government) even took the model from the latter. To give you an example, the huge cultural heritage of all archeological sites that exist all over Mexico, instead of belonging to "the people" as it ought to be, are off limits to anyone wanting to photograph any of those places or pieces found in them. The argument that they use to impede photography, is that they are "protecting" whatever it is that they think they are guarding. However, as soon as you pay whatever sum they deem appropriate, those concerns vanish promptly.   Imagine the French trying to regulate the imagery of the Eiffel tower, or the Statue of Liberty in the US. However that is what has happened in Mexico. You have to have a permit to photograph at any archeological site, and if you want to use your images for commercial use, you have to pay a hefty royalty fee. There is a certain logic behind trying to raise funds when the use is going to be commercial, but the argument is a very slippery one, as who has the rights to such intellectual property when you are dealing with public patrimony? This is not something that is discussed and regulated in an open forum with public disclosure.   So when and how does a "public space" become public in the physical world? When does something become "public domain"? Where on the Internet is there a "public space" if any? Given the digital tools that we have today, one could well take any picture and place it within a "street image" as if it were a billboard and then show it publicly over the Internet, would that turn it into a "public domain" image?   Do share your thoughts with us, on the content of this editorial. Let us know what you think about the public and private space as it relates to intellectual property. Let us know how you view the influence of digital photography upon these matters.   In closing let me wish all of you who have been with us here at ZoneZero during these past five years, and all those who have just logged on for the first time, the best for the upcoming millennium. May we continue to enjoy each other's company with good health and plenty of love for a long time to come.   Pedro Meyer December 99   For comments post a message in our forum section at ZoneZero       http://zonezero.com/editorial/diciembre99/december.html        
Wednesday, 01 December 1999
823. Ray Doyle
Author:Ray Doyle
  Date: Fri, 26 Nov 1999 06:52:25 -0500   As a retired history professor, I particluarly enjoy reading reading the editorials by Meyer and Hernandez. My one regret about retiring in 1995 was that I did not get the chance to fully incorporate the internet into my classes as I would have done if still teaching.   I really like the galleries as photography is my hobby. I have switched to digital camera for most things except shots requiring a long telephoto (180 to 400 mm).   Thanks for presenting a very useful and informative site.   Ray Doyle - West Chester, PA  
Friday, 26 November 1999
Author:Victor Hsieh
  Date: Sat, 13 Nov 1999 18:30:04 -0800 (PST)   I recently visited your gallery and was very impressed. Please add me to your mailing list and if possible send sample brochures and gallery cards from your past shows. As a collector I'm interested contemporary works, abstract paintings and works on paper.   Thanks, Victor Hsieh,  
Saturday, 13 November 1999
Author:Mario Bitt-Monteiro
  Date: 10 Nov 99 17:21:53 -0300   Alo amigos. Soy consultor de fotografia del Núcleo de Fotografia de la Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), Brasil. Yo y la mia equipe de estudiantes universitarios(Comunicacion, Artes, Fisica, Arquitectura, Biologia y de otras areas), estamos ferequentemente conectados com el site Zone Zero, y mucho lo apreciamos.   Queremos, si posible, participar eventualmente de muestras virtuales de fotografia, tanto analogica, cuanto digital, qui ustedes vengam a promover, o proporcionar, nel site de Zone Zero. Ademas, queremos empezar contatos mas frequentes. Saudaciones,   Mario Bitt-Monteiro Coordenador del Núcleo de Fotografia-FABICO/UFRGS www.ufrgs.br/fotografia  
Wednesday, 10 November 1999

<< Start < Prev 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 Next > End >>Page 33 of 54
Share This
|
More