Photography with Craig Hickman

For week 5, our guest presenter was Craig Hickman, a professional photographer. I don’t know if it was the fact that Ty was gone, or that everyone truly had somewhere else to be, but I was extremely distracted and lost in this whole lecture because half of the class got up and left throughout the presentation. Craig was obviously a great guy who knew so much about this subject matter, but his presentation was fairly quiet and sped through dozens of pictures without much of an explanation. In a way I can understand why students were getting a little bored, but I was completely distracted by everyone leaving. Having said that, I will try my best to discuss what I heard and understood of his lecture.

When one student asked why Craig chose photography in the first place, his answer really stood out to me. He replied, “The reason I enjoy it is because photography is believable, and has real world connection.” This connection was also used in the online material, especially with Errol Morris’ article that dealt with the photos released showing four missiles being launched in Iran. We look at an image, and if it’s not entirely skewed, we believe it to be real, just liked America did when the false images were released to the public. Another link between the lecture and the online material comes from the conversation between Errol Morris and Hany Farid. I wish I could copy and paste their whole conversation because I think it’s so great, but instead I’m just going to use this little bit:

Errol Morris:“It occurred to me, just with respect to the missile photograph, that if the people who Photoshopped this photograph wanted to call additional attention to it, they could do no better than what they did.”

Hany Farid: “That’s exactly right. Look at how much attention is being brought to it. At the end of the day, even though they doctored the photograph, it shows that these guys still fired three missiles, and they sure brought a lot of attention to it.”

This conversation is so important because it is the main reason people love photographs so much. I wish that Craig would have shown more of his own work, but in the photos he did show, most of them had some sort of text added to them. The text looked like it was part of the photograph taken, when in fact he edited most of them in. If he hadn’t told us, I never would have known he had added the text after the picture was taken, and I think this is the case for a lot of media today. And, going back to the main point of Thursday’s lecture, because it’s a photograph, we generally believe it represents truth. I’m not going to try and say that I don’t believe everything I see in the media today, because I do consider a lot of it to be real. This reminds me of the debate today about whether or not people who grew up with the editing technology all around them are more influenced by photos in the media, or are more numb to it. My opinion is that for an individual like myself born in the early ‘90s, I am very aware that many images that I see today do not represent the whole truth, but it doesn’t mean that I look at them or believe in them any less. Imagery in our every day lives is means a whole lot more to us than we pay attention to.

The thing that I liked about Alfredo Jaar’s work was that there was meaning behind every image. They aren’t just a collection of random photos. They all deal with real world issues and causes, and I think that is the most important thing that I took from his work. When I went to his personal website, I clicked on recent projects and jumped around through all of the images. I loved that his photos had background information given on the side, so I actually knew what was going on, and what it meant to him. I found the story behind The Skoghall Konsthall to be extremely interesting, especially because it is to be built entirely with paper products from the local paper mill. After reading through his bibliography, I was astounded at the amount of work his has done internationally. He isn’t only taking pictures; he’s trying to make a difference in the world, and that to me is an amazing artist.

My favorite photographs shown in Lecture this week were by Caleb Charland, and they were all part of the bored couple series. For looking like very serious photographs, they were incredibly humorous, and they gave me that “real world connection” that Craig said he gets when looking at photos. I think of awkward couples out to dinner, or downtown, and I can’t help but laugh at these images. My visual response for the week connects with this humor, and the photographs from this website never disappoint. My image for the week is a photograph taken from www.AwkwardFamilyPhotos.com. I honestly think this photo is true art, because the editing is done so interestingly, but it wasn't taken by a famous photographer.