Video from the BBC series called Ways of Seeing
Following a lecture by Dr Steph Cosgrove entitled Photography the Shapeshifter a particular passage resonated for me.
‘John Berger calls attention to the shifting contexts and meanings of photographs, saying that “An image is a sight that has been recreated or reproduced. It is an appearance, or a set of appearances, which has been detached from the place and time in which it first made its appearance and preserved – for a few moments or a few centuries.” He reminds us here that photographs are made things; however simple or transparent they might first appear, they are constructions. Just like a painting, photographs are the result of choices made by a photographer. For example: the subject matter; what’s included inside and outside of the frame; the aesthetic sensibilities and accompanying technical decisions being made’.