Fieldwork with the Camera
In light of Sontag’s claims about photography, we’re going to put ourselves behind the camera. Your first task is to take you own photographs around your local neighborhood. Any kind of camera will be fine – obviously, most everyone will use their phone to make it easy. As you take photographs around your neighborhood, take notes about the process. Consider how you are making your selections. Depending on your creative process, you might take many photos or just a select few.
You’ll be focusing Response #3 on this experience and the photographs you capture while building conversation with some aspect of Sontag’s thinking.
As you “frame” and “shoot,” notice your process:
-Does photographing the ordinary space of your neighborhood bring new meaning or significance to the thing you’re looking at? In what way are you “imposing standards” on your subject as a photographer (Sontag 6)?
-How are you taking away “context” for the viewer? What impressions would viewers have of your neighborhood by seeing your photographs (particularly if they weren’t familiar with the it)?
-What makes you select or frame certain things for your photograph? In what way is your selection a “tool of power” (Sontag 8)?
-In what way is this activity an “aggression” (Sontag 7)? Does this activity subvert “normal behavior” in your neighborhood? (Notice if you get any reactions from people passing by)
Writing the Response: The Photographic Essay
For your third short project, develop a visual/photographic essay which reflects on your experience with the camera in your neighborhood and the subsequent photographic results. As you develop your reflection, include insights and connections to the Sontag text. How you focus your response is really up to you as a writer/thinker. You must, however, integrate and analyze key quotes/claims from the Sontag text while reflecting on your experience and particular photographs you took, as “evidence” for the ideas you are adding to the intellectual conversation started by Sontag.
Don’t forget to cite your quotations or paraphrases of Sontag in MLA format. Likewise, be sure to practice the “citation sandwich” move to craft the essential lead-ins and lead-outs needed to help readers navigate the pieces of Sontag’s text you are bringing in to think further about.
The Details
You’ll want to make this response a “photographic essay” by including one or two of the photographs that you took. Be sure to discuss them directly in your response. Embed them into your document as well.
If you want some specific direction here, you can use one of the following prompts to help focus your response:
What was the experience like photographing around your neighborhood (an act which may rarely take place in that context)? Did the act of photography, in the realm of an every day location, become an “experience” or a way of seeing certain things you’ve never (or might never have) noticed? How does this connect with Sontag’s claims?
Consider how your selection, or framing, of certain images changed the context of what you were looking at? Were you able to capture something unique? Through your photos, did you “interpret” the neighborhood in a certain way? What are the implications of this in connection with Sontag’s thinking?
How did being behind the camera make you conscious of the “aggression” or “appropriation” which Sontag discusses? How do these claims of Sontag’s work in today’s cultural context where the proliferation of the camera is even more widespread and commonly used? (Did anyone react to you taking pictures? Do you think you portrayed your neighborhood accurately?)
How does the act of photography further complicate with the onset of AI generated “photographs”? Consider this op-ed: Opinion _ A.I. Is the Future of Photography. Does That Mean Photography Is Dead_ – The New York Times.pdf
