[Independent Project] Work-in-Progress

Project Summary: I am writing a 6-8 page paper about how photography can be used to raise social awareness by giving a voice to individuals that are often overlooked or marginalized, namely those that are suffering from illness. With a camera in their hands, these individuals have control over how they are being perceived; this can be very empowering for the photographers and eye-opening for their audience. Through photography those that have been left in silence are able to find meaning in their lives and, most importantly, they gain a sense of hope for the future.

Outline:

• Introduction
• What is visual literacy?
• The Importance of Visual Literacy
• Applications of Visual Literacy – raising awareness, “giving voice”
• The Institute for Photographic Empowerment/ PhotoVoice
• Wendy Ewald
• “Falling Practice: What Illness Teaches Us”
• Tony Deifell
• My Client and his work
• Personal Experience - Understanding Aphasia
• Conclusion
• Direction for future work

I will also be asking my client J if I can use some of the photos that he took over the course of this semester to incorporate into my project.

Sources:
Jorgensen, Karen, and Karen Lubin. Falling Practice: What Illness Teaches Us. San Francisco:
Silent Press Books, 2005.
Silent Press Books are an indie photo-documentary publishing firm located in the San Francisco Bay Area. The beautiful images in this book chronicle Jorgensen's battle with amythropic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Much like the images that my client J has been producing, we begin to see that these individuals continue to live very full lives. Sadly, we also witness Jorgensen's slow decline as she battles with her illness. Her photos are both inspiring and unsettling; images of her limp, lifeless legs (pg. 64) contrast so starkly with the vibrancy in her eyes.
Kreisler, Harry, Letitia Carper, and Julian Bourg. "Wendy Ewald." Institute of International
Studies; UC Berkeley; 1998. Web. 12 Mar 2010.
Wendy Ewald's work was the foundation for Tony Deifell's later projects; by giving cameras to children they were able to transform their visions into beautiful works of art.
Newton, Julianne. The Burden of Visual Truth: The Role of Photojournalism in Mediating
Reality. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.; 2001.
This book discusses the role of "Visual Truth" and how it influences our understanding of ourselves, others, and the world at large.
"Methodology." PhotoVoice. Web. 12 Mar 2010.
PhotoVoice seeks to promote self-development, advocacy, and a better standard of living through photography.
Roohani, Alexis. "Seeing Beyond Sight: An Interview with Tony Deifell." Institute for
Photographic Empowerment; 13 November 2009. 10 Mar 2010.
This piece explores the inspiration behind Tony Deifell’s work, a photojournalist turned non-profit leader who worked with the visually impaired.

(possible presentation ideas)
Video - "PhotoVoice.” Photovoice. 10 Mar 2010.
Photo Gallery – PhotoVoice (Mental Wealth) page 4 of 5
http://www.photovoice.org/html/galleryandshop/photogalleries/#
COMDIS Clinic – (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnBj5GaHc6k)
http://www.youtube.com/user/UCF#p/u/24F6F0768B19F480/0/avaiaaLhzlw
UCF PROFILES (Start at 6:50 to 7:30)
Potential Source ??
Tony Deifell [official website]– (Seeing Beyond Sight) http://www.seeingbeyondsight.org/



Questions:
1. Should I highlight the organizations that engage in this kind of work or individuals like Wendy
Ewald and Tony Deifell?
2. How can I tie my clients photos to the idea behind the photos I obtained from "Falling
Practice..."?
3. Should I incorporate my own personal interpretation of some of the images that I have
gathered from "Falling Practice..." as well as my clients own work?

It has been such a pleasure working with my client J. over the course of these past few weeks. He always enters the classroom full of enthusiasm to get started and a welcoming grin. I've watched him struggle to find the words that he wants to use and through his frustration I can see that he genuinely wants to be here and he wants to get better. He has a very good handle on the camera and has consistently produced great images. Following the quick preview of his shots relating to Home, I'm very interested to see what he will bring to the table for next week's class. However, last week we brought OUR number 1 photos in for discussion. This is how it all played out:

This image was the one we chose to be my number one. As always, my client J picked up on the descriptive aspects of the photo fairly quickly. His first utterance was "curtain" followed by "brown". When we had asked him to describe particular elements within the photo, he had some struggle verbalizing "newspaper", but once we broke it apart into syllables he confidently pronounced the whole word. He also noticed the glasses perched upon the newspaper, to which he started pointing to his own glasses in excitement. We then prompted him to say a whole sentence, "The glasses are on top of the newspaper". I attribute J's attention to concrete and descriptive concepts as a product of his technical background (career). However, I've noticed that J has a much more difficult time finding the right words to interpret the photos we discuss in class. He was very puzzled when we introduced the idea of "dad" in association with this photo.

I, along with my peers, drew up descriptive words such as "newspaper", "glasses", and "sunlight" to describe the photo. We settled on "inviting", "dad", and "reading" as interpretive terms. J wasn't able to come up with the interpretive terms without excessive prompting, though he did understand where we were getting the words "reading" and "inviting" from. I can definitely tell that there is some dissonance when it comes to apprehending the deeper meaning behind a photo. I have observed that J tends to take in the photographs at mere aesthetic value. He finds them visually stimulating, yet I believe that he has yet to understand how it is that he can use the photography to tell HIS story.

There's No Place Like Home

Though at first glance this may seen like a very simple composition, I chose this photo for a variety of reasons. I liked the quality of light coming into the room though the window; it washes over the rest of the elements creating a dreamlike quality. I also like the fact that except for the newspaper on the couch, there is no other indication of human presence. And after a prolonged inspection of the photo you notice that atop the paper there is a pair of round, vintage spectacles, another personal touch that infuses life into the shot in a subtle way. This project deals with the concept of home, so ultimately (formal elements aside) I chose this photo because it reminds me of a typical weekend morning at my uncle's house. This photo reminds me of my tio and his penchant for reading the paper in the wee hours of the morning. On the particular day this was taken, I had woke up and, judging by the silence of the house, figured that everyone was still asleep, but once I carefully made my way downstairs I found him sitting there ready to greet me with his big smile and cheerful disposition.
Coming from a Latin American family, breakfast is considered one of the most important meals of the day; a time when everyone comes together to enjoy food and conversation. These fritters, known as bunuelos (the round ones) and pandebonos connect me of my Colombian heritage. I think that food tells you a lot about people through individual preferences and food is also a source of unity because every culture has their own food and tradition. This is yet another shot were human presense is implied. The vantage point makes you feel as if someone is there despite the fact that no one is present in the frame itself.
Contrary to popular belief, the child in the picture is real. That little girl is my sister and she is the first thing that I think of when I think of home. She is always the first one at the door to greet me when I come home. This photo is very peculiar, yet visually pleasing, because you can't tell where it was taken. The pillows might provide a vague hint, but otherwise it is very mysterious. To shed some light, this was taken in Kirkland's which is a store my parents go to quite often (it wouldn't be a trip back home without going there at least 2 times). My favorite part of this photo is the wall of pillows in the background.

Response to "Practices of Looking"

As a discipline of the arts, photography has always appealed to me as compared to other disciplines because of its ability to capture events, people or objects in their natural, unaltered state; a quality known as photographic truth. However, this "truth" can be very subjective. The photographer has the power to choose what he wants to incorporate into the frame, which in turn can drastically change the message being conveyed. In addition to this, a photographer must always be aware of the public that will be receiving the photograph. In this excerpt from "Practices of Looking", the argument is made that dissimilar individuals will create different meaning of a photo as a result of their own as well as collective cultural ideologies.

In this manner, a photograph has two aspects: the denotative, which concerns itself with the literal description of an image, and the connotative, which refers to the meaning that arises from cultural and historical contexts. To illustrate this concept, look at the photo below:
One might venture to say that this is a photo of a elderly man crying as he hugs a young woman (denotative). However, there are others that could attest for the fact that this is a photo of a father dancing with his daughter at her wedding. The photo itself hints at this (i.e. the white dress), but someone who shares this experience would be more apt to connect the dots than someone who has no concept of marriage (I will bargain to say) as it relates to Western society. Barthe's model breaks it down into the following model:

Image/ sound/ word ---> Signifier

------------------------------------------------> Sign

Meaning ---> Signified

In this case, the Signifier could be the man and the Signified could be father. Or Signifier = embrace, Signified = last dance. There are many possibilities! This goes to show that the old misconception that anyone can be a photographer is actually very inaccurate. A good photographer must be cognizant of all these aspects in order to use his medium, the photograph, effectively to communicate with the people. There is an underlying language of photography, hence the name of this course. Knowing what we know now, it is interesting to wonder just how much takes place on a subconscious level in our everyday lives. We live in a very visual culture in which we are bombarded with tons of images daily. Think about the last product that you bought, how much of that was due in part to an ad?