T4|Contextual Knowledge.

Cornelius, Robert. The First Light Picture Ever Taken. 1839. Daguerreotype.

At first glance Robert Cornelius’ self-portrait seems like an insignificant instance in time.  He is the only subject against the plain, monochromatic, background.  The lens is straight on, but because he ran around, he is slightly askew to the right.  It is obviously experimental, the product of a curious man.  When I look at the picture, I think it almost empowers him.  He looks confident and he has a certain air about him.  The old daguerreotype is reminiscent of a sepia-coloured selfie like the filter-laden Instagram posts you can find plastered over the internet today.

However the significance of this picture is much more than it appears.  Cornelius, being an amateur chemist, was fascinated with exploratory photography.  We do not perceive his portrait as “self-obsessed and tacky” (Mirzoeff.  63) like we would Instagram selfies.  This is because the daguerreotype was a modern invention using the most advanced technology and science of the time, instead filtering your selfie to look aged.  Photography was not readily available to everyone when it was first introduced so to take your own portrait was by no means a common activity.    I doubt that his experiment was intended for any particular audience, more to quench his curiosity.  However Cornelius’ daguerreotype is publicised today on the internet as a historical moment in time as the first photographic self-portrait.

 

Texts Referenced: Mirzoeff, Nicholas.  How to See the World: A Pelican Introduction. Pages 31-69. Print.

http://publicdomainreview.org/collections/robert-cornelius-self-portrait-the-first-ever-selfie-1839/

T3| Looking Closely.

Task A.

Ashford, Peta. Kim K Brainstorm. 2016. JPEG.

 

Task B.

Cornelius, Robert. The First Light Picture Ever Taken. 1839. Daguerreotype.

The First Selfie.

Taken by amateur chemist Robert Cornelius in 1839 out the back of his family store, it is the result of daguerreotype (the process used silver-plated copper sheets, iodine, mercury, and saltwater). Cornelius removed the cap, ran to sit in front of the camera, and then ran to place the cap back on.  If her were not an amateur chemist the one-of-a-kind picture may well not exist.

Our eye is drawn to him as he is the only subject against the plain, monochromatic, background.  The lens is straight on, but because he ran around, he is slightly askew to the right.  It is obviously experimental, the product of a curious man.  When I look at the picture, I think it almost empowers him.  He looks confident, but not macho – he has a certain air about him.

I wonder if there was an intended audience, or was it just to see how it would turn out?  Today’s audience is anyone looking into the history of portrait or photography, and can be found on the World Wide Web if you ask Google nicely.  The original currently resides in the Library of Congress.

Without context, like many unexplained portraits, you would otherwise look at the frame and ask yourself “who are you.”

 

Task C.

Ashford, Peta. First Selfie Brainstorm. 2016. JPEG.

 

Task D.

How Has This Helped?

This processes has forced me to hone in to potential texts that I could use to answer my chosen question.  Furthermore it has helped me to delve into the history of photography in relation to my question, and bridge the gap between the New Era and the Industrial Revolution Era.  It helps broaden the context of self-portrait, and how we have captured ourselves over time.  Where Cornelius was experimenting with a relatively new and incredibly harmful technique in order to capture his likeness, we have the action of a selfie down to an art.

 

Texts Referenced:  http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/dagu/hd_dagu.htm

http://publicdomainreview.org/collections/robert-cornelius-self-portrait-the-first-ever-selfie-1839/

Rose, Gillian. “Visual Methodologies: A Review.” Visual Methodologies: An Introduction to Researching with Visual Materials. 3rd ed. London: SAGE, 2012. 346-347. Print.

 

T2| Shock Tactics.

Sturken, Marita, and Lisa Cartwright’s Practices of Looking is about the image, power and politics of visual texts.  Upon finishing the text, what stood out was the two incidents were photographed and publicised in the mid-nineties using shock tactics.  The first image depicts “neibourhood dead-end kids” (Sturken, Marita, Lisa Cartwright.  10) “gawking… with morbid fascination” (Sturken, Marita, Lisa Cartwright.  10) at a murdered gangster, while the only two adults avert their eyes.  The second is of the “shockingly graphic” (Sturken, Marita, Lisa Cartwright.  11) brutalised corps of a young racially-targeted black man.  I am disgusted.

What disgusts me is how raw the images are, because of how true they are.  We have been so desensitised to brutality and fatality since these photographs, that our generation has created a market for it.  Furthermore we have had to imagine new scenarios that are more brutal than the last.  But it is imaginary.  We are too busy trying to think of something more shocking to attract attention, we do not look back to when reality was far more shocking than any video-game concept.

 

Texts Referenced:  Sturken, Marita, and Lisa Cartwright. “Images, Power and Politics”. Practices Of Looking: An Introduction To Visual Culture. New York : Oxford University Press, 2009.9-48. Print.

T1| Fact Vs Fiction: Your Conviction.

The Power to Tell the Difference: Visual Literacy in a Visual Age by Don Levy. 

In this text Levy speaks of the distinction between fact and fiction in a visual world and just how distinct this line is.

What I was left with after watching Levy speak was your belief in whether the visual information is factual or fictional lies with your conviction of the text.  The creator of the text wants to persuade you, and you have to decide whether or not you buy into their argument.

 

For example.

Rigard, Hyacinthe. Portrait of Louis XIV. 1701. Oil on Canvas.

Fact: he is the King.  He is an Absolutist.  Fact/Fiction: he was Absolute.

In King Louis XIV’s time he was perceived as not just the King, but the be-all-end-all.  The logos of his Majesty’s ethereal power exudes from the portrait.  People of the era, with the technology and knowledge available to them, believed that he was Absolute.

 

Texts Referenced:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f09ybYDJoSE