Jeff Whetstone

It was very interesting to listen to Jeff Whetstone talk about his work. Not being familiar with what he does made me learn a lot more about him. His work shows his work with zoology, which is a large influence on his photographs.   Whetstone talks about how the landscape is ecological and how humans are animals. The way he takes his photographs seems incredibly different than the way others do. While taking landscape photographs, Whetstone wanted to create a different type of wilderness, one that involved humans. He also stated that landscapes have character. So when he was photographing in eastern Kentucky he wanted to show that the geology was indeed very rich but the people were very poor.

I really enjoyed Whetstone’s portraits of people in the South. They were in some ways comical because the lives lived there are so different from the ones in the city. Camouflage, which was a big trend a few seasons ago, really is a way of life in the South due to hunting.

These two photographs from the New Wilderness series depict a different way of life. These two photos are kind of eery. Especially the second one when you can barely see the mans face. I find them really captivating because even though they are posed they are not staged. This is something that goes on every day, or at least every day during hunting season.  Whetstone stated that he wanted to focus on gender and sexuality. In the South there does seem to be traces of hyper-masculinity. Whetstone also stated that he was around a lot of masculine women growing up. He stated that when taking photographs of these men they knew how they were being depicted so it was an interesting experience. 

Whetstone tends to focus a lot on hunting. We were able to see a clip from a movie he had made. It showed hunters making female duck mating calls. There was a humor aspect to it because the mating calls would be translated into what someone may actually be saying to attract someone else. It is funny to see men dressed in full camo whispering things to get ducks attention. I wonder why Whetstone was so interested in duck hunting culture. Is it because of where he is from? Does he have some sort of personal attachment to it?

Whetstone created false horizons for the photographs shown above. He stated that these were contemporary landscapes and played with space and perspective. I remember him saying something about living in a collage in relation to these photographs. I like how Whetstone was able to manipulate reality with creating these photographs. Not only are they visually stunning but you have to look closely to see how Whetstone creates the horizon. It is interesting because the pieces used look like they were already in the picture. For example, the broken wood in the second photograph looks like mountains for a quick second because you realize what the object actually is. The colors used are also important, specifically in the first photograph. The green/blueish metal or paper matches very well with the mountains in the background. It almost blends into the photograph. 

week 11/ Barthes Reading

I found this text very difficult to read and saw that I was re-reading the same paragraphs and sentences over and over again. While reading this text I kept trying to relate it to photography. One of the quotes I found, “As soon as a fact is narrated no longer with a view to acting directly on reality but intransitively, that is to say, finally outside of any function other than that of the very practice of the symbol itself, this disconnection occurs, the voice loses its origin, the author enters into his own death, writing begins.” I feel like can be directed towards photography.

            Photographs always have a narrative and once the narrative is no longer seen through the photo it is no longer there. This is a long shot but in essence the photo is dead such as the author is dead. I remember spending a lot of time in photo 1 learning how to explain the photos we were taking. Yes, you could take a pretty photograph but without a basis or explanation all the photograph really is, is pretty.

            While explaining work Barthes states, “The explanation of a work is always sought in the man or woman who produced it, as if it were always in the end, through the more or less transparent allegory of the fiction, the voice of a single person, the author “confiding” in us”. Once again I feel that this is true for both authors and photographers. The explanation, while sometimes not given, is crucial to the work shown. If an explanation is given it should add more to the work and not take away.

            The author, much like the photographer, is trying to convey an image to an audience. This is why it is incredibly important for the author or photographer to have a message that they want to display. It is interesting to think about the similarities between authors and photographers because there are a lot more then I had thought of.

            Thinking about this text not in relation to photography I this quote, “Thus is revealed the total existence of writing: a text is made of multiple writings, drawn from many cultures and entering into mutual relations of dialogue, parody, contestation, but there is one place where this multiplicity is focused and that place is the reader, not, as was hitherto said, the author.” was interesting. This quote displaces the author. It is only focused on the text, which can stand on its own without an author. The text is still readable and viewers can still draw emotions from piece. If this statement were made about a photograph and how it could stand alone without a photographer, I would disagree.  Yes, there are photos, which we do not know who has taken them but there still is a specific aesthetic shown in the photograph. A photo taken without a photographer would be so incredibly boring to look at. I feel like photos taken with recording devices set on self timer are not interesting at all.