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Sources of Fame: Photographer or Subject?

Laura Thain — Sat, 27 Apr 2013 21:47:13 +0000

An Arnold Newman "selfie" from 1987. Image credit: The Jewish Museum

One of my favorite parts of the Harry Ransom Center’s current exhibition on Arnold Newman is the way it resists chronology. Newman’s photographs are organizes by particular attention to one of ten elements of Newman’s photography as artistic practice: “searches,” “choices,” “fronts,” “geometries,” “habitats,” “lumen,” “rhythms,” “sensibilities,” “signatures,” and “weavings.” What results is an exhibit that resists a notion of Arnold Newman’s transformation over time. Instead, the exhibit suggests, audiences might read Newman by his unique manipulation of photography’s formal elements throughout his entire career.

The resistance to chronology is apparent, too, in the weaving, wandering nature of the physical exhibit. Temporary half-walls throughout the exhibition space designate no beginning or end point for audiences. Instead, the exhibit inspires audiences to accept Newman’s particular artistic practice across ten themes as definitive criteria for photographic excellence, and therefore evidence for celebrating the photographer himself.

Such a construction has encouraged me to think about the relationship between celebrated photographer and celebrated subject. Are there ways that these two categories inform each other in the case of Arnold Newman? Can we trace, even amidst the Harry Ransom Center’s achronological curation, a chronological shift in fame from photographer to photographed? How does fame work as a mechanism for those who garner fame by representing it and perhaps cultivating it? Can those who represent fame create it as well?

To accomplish such a task, I’d like to begin by examining some of Newman’s early portrait subjects. I’ve limited myself to what the Ransom Center has included in their exhibition in the exploration below. Each portrait contains a “fame ratio” rating, which I’ve calculated by dividing the amount of google hits the portrait subject and the search term “Arnold Newman” receive by the amount of google hits the portrait subject alone receives. The closer the fame ratio gets to one, the more, we might infer, that the fame of the portrait subject from a 2013 perspective depends on their portrayal by Arnold Newman.

Image Credit: Chris Beetles

Yasuo Kuniyoshi, 1941 [Fame ratio: .46]

[Google search results in 55,300 results]

[of those results, 25,600 included reference to Arnold Newman.]

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Without doing further archival research, I can say little about Kuniyoshi other than to assert he was an arguably minor figure in the New York art scene, especially in 1941, ten years after producing his most well-known works. Newman’s portrait of Kuniyoshi was probably mutually beneficial for Newman early in his career and Kuniyoshi late in his; now, evidence from Google suggests that Kuniyoshi is more reknowned for being Newman’s photographic subject than for his own innovating work in photography and lithography.

It is no coincidence that Newman was interested in Kuniyoshi; the two shared a similar interest in employing the naturalistic tradition in urban spaces.

Other portraits included from 1941:

Image Credit: iCollector

Raphael Soyer [Fame ratio: .22]

[Google search results in 77,500 results]

[of those results, 16,800 included reference to Arnold Newman.]

--------------

Image Credit: Phillip Koch Paintings

Edward Hopper [fame ratio: .03]

[Google search results in 1.76 million results]

[of those results, 49,200 included reference to Arnold Newman.]

--------------

Image Credit: Artnet

John French Sloan [Fame ratio: .02]

[Google search results in 300,000 results]

[of those results, 5,000 included reference to Arnold Newman.]

--------------

The trend of this data suggests that during 1941, Newman was able to establish a presence in the New York art community and transition from photographing minor figures to more major ones. However, the more famous the artist at the time Newman captured his photograph, the less their fame (present and future) depended upon their role as Newman’s photographic subject.

The exhibition also suggests that Newman’s 1941 photographs had a dramatic effect on the demand for his portraiture. Having achieved a reputation with his iconic 1941 photos, by 1942, Newman was no longer photographing minor figures. His subjects included arguably the most popular artists of the mid-century: Marc Chagall and Max Ernst.

Image Credit: Anthony Luke Photography

Marc Chagall, 1942 [Fame ratio: .01]

[Google search results in 4.2 million hits]

[of those hits, only 65,700 contained reference to Arnold Newman.]

--------------

Image Credit: Rice Cracker

Max Ernst, 1942 [Fame ratio: .004]

[Google search results in 2.34 million hits]

[of those hits, only 9,800 contained reference to Arnold Newman.]

--------------

By 1946, Newman was photographing the likes of Igor Stravinsky (perhaps Newman’s most iconic photograph) and Gore Vidal; figures of such fame seem to indicate that Newman’s portraiture had, by the mid 1940s, become an emblem or indication of celebrity, rather than a component in the creation of celebrity for the photographic subject.

This is not to say that Newman lost interest in photographing people who did not enjoy mass fame. Over the course of his career, Newman continued to photograph subjects whom he thought were influential or significant to modern life. Not all of those figures were vindicated by the test of time.

I would like to close, however, by suggesting that Newman’s own work enjoys an iconic status in its own right, even when the significance of the photographic subject has been forgotten. (We might, for instance, return to my first example of Yasuo Kuniyoshi.) Newman often insisted that his photographs must speak as both textually (that is, technically) and contextually competent objects. This is how we might define “iconic” in the case of Newman. The object must communicate meaning both in its composition and in its subtext. As Newman argues, "Successful portraiture is like a three-legged stool. Kick out one leg and the whole thing collapses. In other words, visual ideas combined with technological control combined with personal interpretation equals photography. Each must hold its own." In this way, a viewer might experience the lesser-known figures of the Newman exhibit as a sort of “death of the subject” akin to Foucault’s “death of the author.” In relieving the subject as the primary element of a photograph, we might, in the case of Newman’s archive, let the photographer speak.

The opinions expressed herein are solely those of viz. blog, and are not the product of the Harry Ransom Center.

Oddities Caught in Street View

Jay Voss — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 15:00:00 +0000

Image Credit: Google

I had ten minutes to kill yesterday afternoon, and I spent them clicking around on The Guardian’s website. And while I was thinking about posting on something else today, this weird collection of images came across my screen and I thought it’d be fun to put them up. They’re a collection of images amassed by Jon Rafman of people and animals doing funny and/or stupid things when the Google Maps Street View van drove by. Some of them are really quite entertaining, and I encourage you to take a look if you haven’t seen them already. Most of the images have correct corresponding addresses and can be found in Google Earth Street View, which confirms for the weary that these things actually happened. Some of the addresses are ambiguous (e.g., “Victoria Highway, Gregory, Australia”) and it’s hard to find their corresponding images on Google Maps, which is a shame. Sometimes you wish you could move up and down a given location and discern how a given scene developed. In addition to the selections that can be found on The Guardian’s website, even more can be found on Rafman’s website here.

Image Credit: Google

One of the things that emerged as I was viewing some photos in the collection are the marked differences between how humans and animals might respond to the Google Maps Street View van. As seen in the images above, animals almost always run away from the Google Maps street view van. (Understandable, of course, as the Street View van must be an odd sight. Rafman’s website’s header features an image of the Google Maps Street View van’s camera, and it looks like a fly-eye themed lollypop.) Humans who see the van coming often arrange their situation or friends into seemingly ironic scenes, all for good fun. This wit is notable and smart, and many instances are small works of art in their own way. They’re also a happy reminder of human consciousness.

Image Credit: Google

I’ve never been one of the lucky enough to see the Google Maps Street View van drive by, and after seeing these photos I wonder what I would do if I did. I’d probably wave. After enjoying the images posted on The Guardian I clicked over to Rafman’s website and found the image above. I found it touching that Google had blurred out the eyes of the fully veiled Muslim women. While I haven’t read enough of the Quran to have some sense of the theological justification for mandating that women cover themselves in Arab countries, blurring out these ladies eyes gave them a sense of autonomy that might otherwise be said to be threatened by their clothing. By blurring these ladies’ eyes, Google seems to be saying that even if you cover a majority of a person’s face, eyes still can speak.

SOPA and PIPA; Or, If It Weren't For The Internet, We Would Have No Idea What Was Going On

Marjorie Foley — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 20:31:47 +0000

Image Credit: Wikipedia

If you didn't see this image last week, you may have been hiding under a rock. Wikipedia reports that 162 million people viewed this image on January 18 as a result of their protest of the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act, which involved blocking all English-language content on the website. As a result of the blackout, 8 million people looked up their representatives in Congress, and a unknown number of people tweeted amusing and seeemingly illiterate things. (Mildly NSFW content in full post.)

Image Credit: Twitter

One collection of these amusing tweets can be found at herpderpedia, where one can read tweeted criticisms of the Wikipedia blackout, many of which profess to know absolutely nothing about the reasons behind the protest, even though users have just visited the site, which explained the reasoning behind blocking content. If one thing is clear from all these tweets, it's that students don't know how to function without Wikipedia. And, I confess, it was a tough day for me, too. There are just so many things to look up!

Criticisms of online protests by Wikipedia and other major websites like Google and Reddit were not just limited to the herpderps of high school and college students trying to complete their homework. A particularly nasty editorial from the Boston Herald describes the protests as a "hissy fit" that would only effect college students who should really be doing their research elsewhere. The Herald is among a reduced number of papers that still supports SOPA, that reduction being a direct result of internet protests.

Image Credit: caffpowered via reddit.com

And, as is usually the case when the internet gets something done, those involved were pretty proud of themselves. One Reddit user celebrated the sea change with this Photoshopped image of a still from 300 (making the image an adaptation of an adaptation of an adaptation), which likens himself and other users to a few Spartans defending their homeland against invasion by a vast number of evil forces. While from the outside, the image may seem pretentious (you might notice that the shields, made from web browser logos, exclude Internet Explorer, which only a rube would use), the celebration and self-congratulation are not unfounded.

Image Credit: Google

This infographic from Google shows how the internet response triggered mass protest in the forms of 887,000 telephone calls to Congress and telephone and 3,000,000 signatures on anti-SOPA and anti-PIPA petitions, and this image is a few days old already. Opposition to the bill is credited to the availability of information on the internet, and many news sources and protest websites credit their actions with educating the American public about SOPA and PIPA, even if herpderpedia shows that many Americans still did not understand the protests.

Image Credit: ProPublica.org

The most telling image comes from ProPublica, a non-profit internet news publication that won the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting in 2011, the first time that a non-print publication won. The infographic details who supported and opposed SOPA and PIPA prior to and following the January 18th protest, showing just how effective the January 18 actions were.

Bringing the Streets Inside - Google Art Project

Cate Blouke — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 14:06:03 +0000

While the google “street view” feature has certainly revolutionized the way we look at maps, they’re now taking that technology a step further – over the threshold and into buildings. The “Art Project,” powered by Google, has partnered with museums all over the world to bring not just the art, but the museums themselves to your computer.

Screen shot of The Art Project home page

The street view technology enables viewers to explore the museums’ galleries in virtual space. Moving from gallery to gallery, they can zoom in on the works of art. While not all of the works are available for viewing (some of the pieces have been blurred for copyright reasons), the project enables people to explore museums they would never otherwise be able to see – since the museums involved are scattered across the globe (from New York to Madrid, Prague to Berlin).

Screen shot of street view tour of Gemalgalerie; Berlin, Germany

Although at times I find myself a bit dubious about the fact that Google seems to be taking over the (virtual) world, I’m all for increased accessibility and availability of artistic and cultural commodities. In addition to the museum tours, the project includes high-resolution images of some of the museums’ prized possessions. Selected and curated
by the museums themselves, the images include varying amounts of background information including “Viewing Notes, Artwork History, Artist Information,” and
“Tags.”

Screen shot of Art Project's high-resolution image of Boticelli's The Birth of Venus

Over the past year or so, the viz. team has been working with The Blanton Museum here at UT on the Steve in Action Project – a collaboration between a variety of institutions who are exploring the value of social tagging to increase access and engagement with museum collections. While The Art Project doesn’t seem to allow tagging by visitors, and the tags currently seem rather limited, it will be interesting to see how this aspect evolves.

A third feature of the site enable viewers with google accounts to “create an artwork collection” from the available images. This is certainly a much more interactive experience than flipping through the pages of a book, and it opens up untold possibilities for art history classes, let alone the everyday art enthusiast. It’s also pretty cool in terms of preservation and proliferation of works of art.

Warren Avenue at 23rd Street, Detroit, Michigan

noelradley — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 19:28:16 +0000

Image Credit: Joel Sternfeld Via The Getty

H/T Seeing and Writing 3

For the past few years, I have started my course using the Joel Sternfeld photograph above. Class members usually list as many observations as possible, and then we start to hazard inferences about what this photo signifies...what the items of this environment present. I have a heart for this image. The scene invites us to narrate, but it also refuses to tell us the whole story (one part of which is the police beating and death of Malice Green in 1992). Today, I was reading Laura Smith's latest post on Googlemap pedagogy, and I wondered what would happen if I put in the address, which is also the title of the photo: "Warren Avenue at 23rd Street, Detroit, Michigan, October 1993."

View Larger Map

The search results in the map above, which I think shows some potential uses for Googlemaps streetview function as a way for students to connect to documentary photography. Does this help us locate the documentary photo? Does it give a greater sense of the place's materiality? Does this complicate or compound Sternfeld's original message about urban decay and social injustice? In what ways is the place the same, and how it is different?

Googolopoly

John Jones — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 20:56:24 +0000

If you teach rhetoric and technology, you might be interested in “Googolopoly,” a version of the classic Parker Bros. game that charts the search giant’s quest for web-wide domination.

FYI: Rich Uncle Pennybags’ pitchfork is a clue that the creators are ambivalent about Google’s quest to “organize” your data and “make it universally accessible and useful.”

Those of you who have time to kill in during these last few weeks of class can download the entire game here.

via TechCrunch

Wikipediavision: Visualizing anonymous edits to Wikipedia

John Jones — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 15:31:46 +0000

László Kozma, a grad-student at the Helsinki University of Technology, has created Wikipediavision a mashup of Wikipedia edits and Google maps reminiscent of Twittervision and Flickrvision.

Here’s part of the description from the site’s FAQ:

WikiPediaVision is a visualization of edits to the English Wikipedia, almost the same time as they happen. . . . For each wikipedia edit I display the title of the article, the summary of the edit (if the person who made it gave any summary), link to the changes that were made to the article, geographical location of the wikipedia user and the time the edit happened.

Apparently, Kozma’s site skips a lot of edits:

First of all, edits on wikipedia happen at a faster rate, than what could be comfortably readable, so I have to skip some of them. Second, a good part of the edits are done by registered users. Their IP address is protected by wikipedia, therefore I could only display anonymous edits. Thirdly, those edits, where the IP address could not be located are skipped. Fourth, edits that are similar or identical to recent edits are often skipped. This still leaves more than enough to be visualized.

However, the project is still interesting. Hopefully he will expand it in the future.

via Brady Forrest at O’Reilly Radar