3.5 Larry Sultan and Mike Mandel. Evidence. 1977

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From the course by The Museum of Modern Art

Seeing Through Photographs

1865 ratings

The Museum of Modern Art

Seeing Through Photographs

1865 ratings

Although taking, sharing, and viewing photographs has become second nature for many of us, our regular engagement with images does not necessarily make us visually literate. This course aims to address the gap between seeing and truly understanding photographs by introducing a diversity of ideas, approaches, and technologies that inform their making. In this course you will look closely at photographs from the collection of The Museum of Modern Art and hear a variety of perspectives on what a photograph is and the ways that photography has been used throughout its nearly 180 year history: as a means of artistic expression, as a tool for science and exploration; as an instrument of documentation; to tell stories and record histories; and as a mode of communication and critique in our ever increasingly visual culture. Learning Objectives • Develop skills to better examine and understand the differences between photographs and photographic images. • Discover how context influences the production, circulation, and reception of photographic images. • Learn about different modes of artistic and technological experimentation and innovation in photography. • Investigate photography’s role in our increasingly visual culture.

From the lesson

Documentary Photography

Explore a variety of approaches to documentary photography, from those that aim to produce objective records to those that critique the reliability of photographs as evidence.

3.4 Dorothea Lange. Migrant Mother. 19361:55

3.5 Larry Sultan and Mike Mandel. Evidence. 19774:40

3.6 Susan Meiselas. Carnival Strippers. 1973-755:07

Meet the Instructors

Sarah Meister
Curator
Department of Photography

I'm Mike Mandel and I work together with Larry Sultan for

almost 25 years but, I think the work that were most known for

is a project that we did back in 1977 which is called Evidence.

And Evidence is a way that Larry and I came to understand that we could look at,

extend photographs in primarily industrial archives.

And that we have an opportunity there to take them out of that context and

represent them so they might have a very different kind of message than

they were originally intended to make.

There were about 80 different places that we went to visit that were either

corporations or government agencies that had archives of photographs that they were

making for their own purposes to document their various engineering projects.

Over a two-year period we looked at over 2 million photographs, and

we would just make notes of pictures that we thought could be taken out

of context and turned into a narrative that might speak about this idea

of our faith in progress, and solving all of our problems.

We recognized that we wanted to look at photographs that people

probably wouldn't normally have access to.

And it was kind of interesting at the beginning because we didn't really know

what to look for.

It's hard to find pictures that have this kind of poetic sense about them

until you look for them and you look at everything.

The first photograph is of footprints that police have dusted in the sidewalk.

And then you see that the footprints go deeper into perspective.

But the footprints have changed, the left foot's on the right,

the right foot's on the left.

Now that's a way for us, at least, to start the piece,

saying what you see is going to be going awry.

Things are a little wrong here and it kind of moves from

individual objectifications of things to the landscape, and there's all these

odd things that are happening in the landscape which you can understand.

There's trees that are in a big box that are being tended to by people.

There is hospital beds that are sitting outside on the grass.

There's a picture of a flash going off in a reflection of a window

with a man in a controlled panel and it looks like he's just set off for

atomic bomb, although obviously it's just a flash in the window.

After seeing all these other photographs, you start to work with and

hopefully play with the photographic language that we've employed here.

The book itself is the artwork, so you look at this blue hardbound book, and

it has some words Evidence on the front.

It looks like it's kind of a library binding, and it's made so

that you would think that it is some kind of evidentiary document,

maybe produced by the Berkeley Law School, or [LAUGH] something.

And then when you look at the book there were no captions,

there was no reference to which picture came from what agency.

We were relying simply on the power of the photograph to communicate something on

a psychological level.

Then we were very much of the understanding of how a picture has a power

to work in relationship to each other so, a facing page would be really important

way to think about how one picture relates to each other,

how would one picture can influence another.

Everything is a two page spread, two images that are bouncing

off each other and making you have a response from that dynamic.

There's this kind of utopian idea that we are looking at something that really

happened.

When you look at a photograph, we are here right now, [LAUGH] but

we are looking at something that happened there and then.

And that all of these feelings we have,

all of these connotations that we have are then kind of jammed up against the fact

that it's something that really happened.

They we're looking at something that really happened.

And I think that's such a great power, that's such an incredible

manipulative power that photography has over any other kind of medium.

And that's why there's such a thing as what people call documentary photography,

that is a way to try to show us something about the truth.

The idea of whether or not a photograph is any longer going to be a pointer

toward something that we can believe in is probably, really up for grabs.

The photograph is a complete abstraction, really from the get go,

from the fact that we use different f-stops to create different depths of field.

Different illusions of motion,

and different dark room capabilities of enhancing contrast,

and all the things that are kind of built into photography that people just totally

ignore, and just read right through, and just go, oh, that's what really happens.

[LAUGH] Though it's not what really happened,

it's a picture, it's just a picture.

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