Week 1 assignment (Angie)

 

"Brushing my hair"
(inspired by Carrie Mae Weems's Untitled "mother and daughter" photograph)

Susan Sontag

"To photograph is to appropriate the thing photographed. It means putting oneself into a certain relation to the world that feels like knowledge -- and, therefore, like power."

    - I really admired this quote about photography. I like how it describes photography as a key to understanding your surroundings and having knowledge of said surroundings.

"It was only with its industrialization that photography came into its own as art. As industrialization provided social uses for the operations of the photographer, the reaction against these uses reinforced the self-consciousness of photography-as-art."

    -  I find this amusing in the sense that It was only with commercial purposes that photography had a shining chance.

Revisiting Carrie Mae Weems's Landmark "Kitchen Table Series"

“I think that most work that’s made by Black artists is considered to be about Blackness. Unlike work that’s made by white artists, which is assumed to be universal at its core.”

    - Sadly this is a trend that still continues to progress. I recently saw an interview with a soccer player whose nationality is from Algeria but as born in France and plays for France. He stated that when the French won a match, he was considered French by the media however if France lost a game, he would be regarded as the "Algerian" or the"Muslim" player.

“Everyone can relate to this work,” Sann said. “It’s not just Black women; it’s white women, Asian women. Men can see the women in their lives—memories from their childhood or scenes from their marriage or their family life. It’s so universal and yet representation like this is so rare.”

    - I can agree to the universal idea of the photographs. this was the main inspiration for my selfie chosen for this week especially, the mother and daughter photographs within the series.