The monstrous in photography Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

The monstrous in photography - Essay Example Many products of painting have documentary and informational value. Our epoch is distinguished by the tendency of showing the reality. However our reality is not always pleasant to look at, that is why critics and psychologists, painters and photographers argue about the representation of monstrous and the taboo in respect of this representation. The body in modern American art is shown as defenseless, injured, sexual, disjointed, dreadful and supernatural. There are a lot of unquotable elements. This concerns the artists like Mike Kelley, John Miller, Kiki Smith, Robert Gober, Cindy Sherman, Andres Serrano, Barbara Nortfleet and others.It is really impossible to forget the shocking gesture of Andres Serrano. In 1991 in the Austrian gallery he exposed a composition "'Piss Christ'" The crucifixion written by urine (yellow on red) was showed in gallery no more than for three days - they were afraid of pogroms. On the first day the 51-years Catholic tried to break a frame, but he was dragged back by the guards. On the second day two teenagers managed to do that. The next fascinating sight can be found in the book of Barbara Nortfleet "Looking at Death". Nobody would dare to remain indifferent looking at this astonishing book, a collection of over a hundred fascinating and often scandalous photographs. After looking through at l east several of them one will never be able to look at death as he did before. Here you will find different kinds of death: on the stage and in war, by violence and in medicine. There is absurdity and tragedy, knack and pretense. This book makes us look at our life differently and inspires to appreciate every moment of living. The creativity of the abovementioned authors is actively discussed by many critics; different opinion was formed about their work. However what does the person feels looking at such images Are they criminal and must be forbidden or can they just serve as a cause for thinking What do they really represent The concept of representation is a key concept both for a paradigm of "cultural researches" and for feministic criticism. At the same time it is one of the most problematic concepts in terms of definition. Stewart Hall says that the representation has two main meanings: 1)"speaking for somebody" representation or somebody's interest; 2) representation in art or philosophy (as a representation of something existing by other means). Stewart Hall considers it to be possible to reduce all the variety of cultural approaches in the decision of this problem to three basic models of interpretation: reflective (mimetic), intentional and constructional (including semiotic and discursive approaches). Hall defines the representation as a process by means of which subjects of culture use the language (any system of marks) for values manufacture. Objects of representation have no sense: it appears during the interpretation and the communications, coding and decoding of texts and depends on the cul tural context. Photography is philosophical observations and reflections. The photographer is not an operator, he is a producer, he creates and organizes a situation, he is a stage manager, the thin psychologist penetrating into the depths of human soul. From this point of view a completely necessary condition of perception is a certain preliminary cogitative gesture, some kind of "hidden manner". It is important not to refuse the experience of our inherent photography