28/11/13 - Censorship and 'Truth' Lecture

by Roxxie Blackham on Thursday 28 November 2013

Health warning!!!!
Some images might be found distasteful or shocking.

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Ansel Adams, Moonrise Hernandes New Mexico, c. 1941-2
Essential fine art photographer
Classically beautiful image

Ansel Adams, Moon Over Half Dome, 1960
Years before digital photography - film photographs couldn't be manipulated.

Ansel Adams, Aspens

Slight difference - use of the same negative over and over again, but processing the film with different amounts of time to create completely different images.

For more than seven decades, until the fall of Communism, Pravda, which ironically means 'truth', served the Soviet Communist party

Stalin with, and without, Nikola Yeshov


Stalin with, and without, Trotsky



9/11 photograph
manipulated in photoshop, to make it look as though it was taken on 9/11.


Manipulating also occurs in advertising and on the covers of magazines.

Kate Winslet on the cover of GQ magazine had her legs elongated in photoshop.


Robert Capa, Death of a Loyalist Soldier, 1936


If you research into Robert Capa, he isn't even called Robert Capa at all - this was a pseudonym that he made up in order to create photographs. In folklore, Robert Capa was American, but he was actually European.

Death of a Loyalist Soldier is an image that Capa created - is this an actual image of the death of a soldier, or has it been set up? Apparently, it is the actual death of the soldier, as they found a contact sheet displaying a series of photographs of how the soldier died. However, the soldier wasn't killed in mortal combat, but during the siesta when he was seen running down the hill by the enemies - he was running down the hill for Capa to photograph.

Capa's photograph was published in a number of French magazines, such as Vue Magazine.

"With lively step, breasting the wind, clenching their rifles, they ran down the slop covered with thick stubble. Suddenly their soaring was interrupted, a bullet whistled - a fratricidal bullet - and their blood was drunk by their native soil"

Jean Baurillard, Simulacra and Simulations, 1981
Post-modern thinker who writes about representation in the post-modern era.

1. It is the reflection of a basic reality
2. It masks and perverts a basic reality
3. It masks the absence of a basic reality
4. It bears no relation.....

'In the first case.......

Peter Turnley, The Unseen Gulf War, 2002
He writes substantially about the first Gulf War. Talks about how photography was controlled and censored in order to portray the representation of truth that the government didn't want you to see.

Talks about the "mile of death" which took place when the war ended and about the scenes of carnage that he witnessed and the fact that he wasn't allowed to show them.

'I feel it is important and that citizens have the right to see these images.'

The "mile of death" happened during 25th and 26th february where an allied aircraft strafed and bombed a stretch of the Jahra Highway.


'It is a masquerade of information: branded faces delivered over to the prostitution of the image' - Baurillard, The Gulf War Did Not Take Place, 1995

Turnley is trying to get away from the idea of a simulated war - the media event - and show real images of carnage and death.




None of these images would usually be shown in the image, with the exception of one image by Ken Jarecke.

Ken Jarecke, Iraqi Soldier, 1991


One of the first truly shocking images captured in colour and placed on the front of newspapers. It was thought of as too true, as people don't want to know about reality and what goes on.

How much truth do we want? Do we want an accurate representation of truth? Or do we not want all the details to be revealed?

An-My Le, Small Wars
Uses a mixture of black and white photography and colour.
Beautiful images, yet showing carnage and destruction. Is it hiding the truth of war?



Very different representation of war.

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Censorship

Theodore Levitt, The Morality (?) of Advertising, 1970
Bleak perception of the world and life

Censorship in advertising goes back a long way.

Cadbury's Flake, 1969-1982



Played on sexual ambiguity. Or does it?......
A lot of it is seen as rantings from certain individuals.

Advertising as an industry is self-guarded in terms of censorship. 

Oliviero Toscani, United Colors of Benetton, 1992




Questioning notions of racism, religion and sexuality.

Cook, G (1992), The Discourse of Advertising

Phillips, M.J. (1997), Ethics and Manipulation in Advertising: Answering a Flawed Indicment

Opium advertisement, photographer Stephen Messeil


Sexually subjective - caused a lot of offence across the media. Seen as being quite sexualised as an image, and the notion of being in some sort of ecstasy because of the drug opium. A big issue with the photograph was that you could see a nipple - it isn't as offensive if you take the nipple away.

Agnolo Bronzino, Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time, c. 1545, Oil on wood


Famous for a number of reasons - culturally significant as it was used in Monty Python. The bodies have been distorted and aren't anatomically correct.
A feminist points out that what you are seeing is mythological subject matter, but it is representing the idea of Venus and Cupid being mother and son yet they're being sexual with one another - is it acceptable to look at pictures of incest in the art gallery?

Balthus, The Golden Years, c. 1945


Balthus, Therese Dreaming, 1938


Highly sexualised images of young girls - hints of sexualisation going on. Represents an uncomfortable ground.

Amy Adler - The Folly of Defining 'Serious' Art
- Professor of Law at New York University
- Looks at 'an irreconcilable conflict between legal rules and artistic practice'
- The requirement that protected artworks have 'serious artistic value' is the very thing contemporary art and postmodernism itself attempt to defy.
- Jeff Koons' artwork stands up as an example of this, but who is it to say what serious artistic value is?


'The Miller Test', 1973 - asks three questions:
1. Whether the 'average' person, applying contemporary community standards' would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest
2. Whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct
3. Whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value

Obscenity Law
- 'To protect art whilst prohibiting trash'
- 'The dividing line between speech and non-speech'
- 'The dividing line between prison and freedom'

Sally Mann, Candy Cigarette, 1989


Picture of a child not actually smoking a cigarette, but is this encouraging smoking?
Photographs her own children and documents their childhood.

Sally Mann, Immediate Family, 1984-92



Documenting her family growing up - been questioned whether it is damaging to the children or not? Is it almost a kin to child pornography?

Tierney Gearon, Untitled, 2001


Displayed in the Saatchi Gallery - had to close the gallery whilst police investigated the photos as they received a lot of complaints.
Completely innocent photos, apparently never staged. A lot of elements of gaze theory tie in with the photos - but really it's just photos of her children naked on the beach or in the bath.
Questioned by the Protection of Children Act.

Nan Goldin, Klara and Edda Belly-dancing, 1998


Image of friend's children playing. Removed from the gallery as it was too revealing.

Richard Prince, Spiritual America, 1983


Photoshoot of Brooke Shields, which her mother allowed to go ahead.
Appeared in an adult men's magazine - not strictly pornography, but veered that way.

Spiritual America, as censored in Tate's Pop Life exhibition catalogue

Richard Prince, Spiritual America IV, 2005


To address the balance, Brook Shields asked Richard Prince to photograph her in 2005 to claim back her own body. Is this addressing the balance at all?

14/11/13 - Ethics: What is Good? Lecture

by Roxxie Blackham on Thursday 14 November 2013

We live in an unfair capitalist system and society, based on expectation and inequality - how can we exist within this society?

What is it to be an ethical creative?

A lot of writers conflate the creative acts of advertising with the evils and problems of the consumer system and the related systems of poverty, exploitation etc. Some of the writers blame advertising for the whole of the world's problems.

First Things First by Ken Garland, 1964
- Less of a manifesto in a political sense, but was a manifesto in the sense that it was signed by a bunch of famous designers, advertisers and art directors of the time.
- Produced in the 'boom' of consumerism - post war affluence.
- All of the creatives genuinely felt frustrated that creatives were wasting their talents on market-less commodities.
- A celebration of the designer, but also a sigh to the exploitation of creative talents in the capitalist system.
- 'We're proposing a reversal of priorities' - Pointless to waste talent, and talent should be used in a more whole hearted way.

First Things First Manifesto by Adbusters, 2000
- Talking about advertising through spoof adverts, not through poverty.
- They think of themselves as a very political group
- Journal of the mental environment
- Decided to redraft the First Things First Manifesto - the tone changes so that it isn't just a cry about wasting creative talent, and becomes more critical and venomous
- Tempting to smash the advertising system

"We, the undersigned, are graphic designers, art directors and visual communicators who have been raised in a world in which the techniques and apparatus of advertising have persistently been presented to us as the most lucrative, effective and desirable use of our talents. Many design teachers and mentors promote this belief; the market rewards it; a tide of books and publications reinforces it."
- Designing is about earning money and big glamorous jobs.


"Encouraged in this direction, designers then apply their skill and imagination to sell dog biscuits, designer coffee, diamonds, detergents, hair gel, cigarettes, credit cards, sneakers, butt toners, light beer and heavy-duty recreational vehicles. Commercial work has always paid the bills, but many graphic designers have now let it become, in large measure, what graphic designers do. This, in turn, is how the world perceives design. The profession’s time and energy is used up manufacturing demand for things that are inessential at best."- All in a professional manufacturing demand for nothing, making people but things they don't need. They are accusing you of being complicity in perpetuating a meaningless consumer system.
- Roping you all into global expectation.


"Many of us have grown increasingly uncomfortable with this view of design. Designers who devote their efforts primarily to advertising, marketing and brand development are supporting, and implicitly endorsing, a mental environment so saturated with commercial messages that it is changing the very way citizen-consumers speak, think, feel, respond and interact"- You are actually affecting the way people think about each other and themselves, and how they interact with one another. Meant to be a negative effect on how people interact amongst themselves.

"There are pursuits more worthy of our problem-solving skills. Unprecedented environmental, social and cultural crises demand our attention. Many cultural interventions, social marketing campaigns, books, magazines, exhibitions, educational tools, television programmes, films, charitable causes and other information design projects urgently require our expertise and help."- How do you judge worthy? And by who's standards do you decide what is worthy and what is unworthy?

"We propose a reversal of priorities in favour of more useful, lasting and democratic forms of communication – a mindshift away from product marketing and toward the exploration and production of a new kind of meaning. The scope of debate is shrinking; it must expand. Consumerism is running uncontested; it must be challenged by other perspectives expressed, in part, through the visual languages and resources of design."- If you work to market, advertise or brand a company, who make any sort of consumer items, you are being unethical. You are perpetuating consumerism and capitalism, ruining the world.
- You shouldn't be doing so, you should be using your talents to smash capitalism and start a revolution.
- Use your visual communicative talent to show everyone the evils of capitalism.

The tone throughout the manifesto becomes very tutorial, preachy and judgemental.

- To be an ethical designer, you have to be anti capitalist (under the First Things First Manifesto, 2000)

- Many of the people who signed this new manifesto are very wealthy and successful designers, for example Milton Glaser. These people don't need to worry about paying the bills or where the next job is coming from, because they are all successful with studios and famous. It's easy to have ethics if you have more money than other people. Much more of a problem if you're an emerging designer. Sometimes you don't have the luxury to chose who you're working for, and who you don't. An unfair, blanket of judgement, to look down at people.

- If this is a call to rebalance or create a fair system, then there is a total agreement. The blame should not be just on designers. There needs to be a balance.

- It's not fundamentally unethical to have a symbolic mind of protest. Who cares if you choose not to work for, let's say Primark, or buy from them. Ethics do not change through buying one or two socks, it's the system that is in place.

- To be an ethical designer / advertiser is to aim to have more with your talents than just have a job.

- 'Culture Jamming / Meme Warfare' - Adbusters & Kalle Lasn

“A meme (rhymes with dream) is a unit of information (a catchphrase, a concept, a tune, a belief) that leaps from brain to brain to brain. Memes compete with one another for replication, and are passed down through a population much the same way genes pass through a species. Potent memes can change minds, alter behavior, catalyze collective mindshifts, and transform cultures. Which is why meme warfare has become the geopolitical battle of our information age. Whoever has the memes has the power.”- A meme is something that sticks in your head, for example the song for McDonalds "I'm loving it". This circulates the world virally.
- Given that power that creative advertisers have over the world, what happens if something great comes from that talent and a message overthrows capitalism?
- Replacing the system of capitalism

A lot of theory came out in the 70s, which tried to formulate a broadly anti-capitalist theory of design. The Adbusters theory is a lightweight version of these.

Design For The Real World by Victor Papanek, 1971
"Most things are designed not for the needs of the people but for the needs of manufacturers to sell to people" (Papanek, 1983:46)
- Made the same argument that most design was wasteful, exploitative and creative talents didn't enrich the world.
- Behind the whole book is a cry for ethics.
- Conflated advertising with the 'horrors' of capitalism.
- Seeks a grander purpose for creative individuals - he wants people to use their skills to do something more important in the world.
- Sensationalist tone.

- An American multinational car company created hard, unsafe bumpers on their cars, but didn't want to change how they created these as it would cost too much money. Papanek placed beer cans on the front of his car to create a safer bumper for little to nothing money and then tested it out. His idea is that people are ignoring design solutions for the profit.


- Came up with this diagram as a cry for ethics and how we're just touching the surface on issues. There are more urgent things that need our attention.

We can't just escape Capitalism, we live in this system.

Ultimately we are going to have to work in the consumer system, we have no other choice.

How do we determine what is Good?

 Subjective Relativism
- There are no universal moral norms of right and wrong
- All persons decide right and wrong for themselves
- This would result in social anarchy, with no form of debate. The idea of society breaks down.

Cultural Relativism
- The ethical theory that what's right or wrong depends on place and / or time.
- Flawed in the sense that not all cultures are the same.
- Cultural irrelevances can't marry the ideas of other cultures.
- In a globalised world, we have to share some idea of values.

Divine Command Theory
- Good actions are aligned with the will of God
- Bad actions are contrary to the will of God
- The holy book helps make the decisions
- Not based on reason, it is based on dogma and rules that you have to follow.

Kantianism
- Immanuel Kant (1724 -1804) a German Philosopher
- People's wills should be based on moral rules
- Therefore it's important that our actions are based on appropriate moral rules
- To determine when a moral rule is appropriate Kant proposed two 'Categorical Imperatives'.
- Unlike animals, we consider every action we take. We don't just murder someone when we're angry, we think about how to deal with our anger.

Two formulations of the Categorical Imperative:

 Act only from moral rules that you can at the same time universalise
- If you act on a moral rule that would cause problems if everyone followed it then your actions are not moral.
e.g. 'I am never going to give any money to charity' - If no one gave money to charity, then this comes unethical. The idea of charity is something we all rely on in our live at some point. Charity can be being nice to you as a child, or helping you when you're old.

 Act so that you always treat both yourself and other people as ends in themselves, and never only as a means to an end.
- If you use people for your own benefit that is not moral.
e.g. you should not lie to or deceive other people to further your cause. This imperative is flawed.

Utilitarianism (John Stuart Mill)
Principle of Utility (aka Greatest Happiness Principle)
- An action is right to the extent that it increases the total happiness of the affected parties
- An action is wrong to the extent that it decreases the total happiness of the affected parties
- Happiness may have many definitions such as: advantage, benefit, good or pleasure

Rules are based on the Principle of Utility
- A rule is right to the extent that it increases the total happiness of the affected parties
- The Greatest Happiness Principle is applied to moral rules

Similar to Kantianism - both pertain to rules
- But Kantianism uses the Categorical Imperative to decide which rules to follow

Social Contract Theory
- Thomas Hobbes (1603 - 1679) and Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712 - 1778)
- An agreement between individuals held together by common interest
- Avoids society degenerating into the 'state of nature' or the 'war of all against all' (Hobbes)
- "Morality consists in the set of rules governing how people are to treat one another, that rational people will agree to accept, for their mutual benefit, on the condition that others follow those rules as well."
- We trade some of our liberty for a stable society.
- We have laws and regulations for the sake of the stability of the world.
- To be ethical is to think about the common good, more than individual gain.

Margaret Thatcher came up with a formulation that said that there is no such sense of society, and that individuals are just trying to find their way in the world. She said that if everyone became rich, then society will be happy.

Whether presented with problems that are easy or difficult to solve, the four workable ethical theories (Kantianism, Act Utilitarianism, Rule Utilitarianism and Social Contract Theory) could provide us with possible solutions to many of the problems that are raised by the 'First Things First' manifesto. We should all be aiming for socially and ecologically responsible design.

 Papanek - A workable radio which can be made from rubbish and powered on elephant dung, so that anyone can make it for themselves and use it, in places like Africa. Designed not for profit, but for the greater gain.


Papanek suggested the Social Tithe. The fact that there is more stuff we can do to change the world and not waste our talents. A Tithe is an old term for something that you would give away for free, something that the state determined e.g. a land owner could give 10% of their corn for the poor to stabilise society. Papanek says that designers should devote 10% of their time to really work while ethical causes. If everyone did that, the whole world would be improved. Ethical in terms of social contract as it helps to stabilise society and build links.

Stefan Sagmeister spent an entire year in sabbatical, to explore the world and be useful. That is his 10%.

Something needs to be done to change this perverse world of Capitalism.

Capitalism Statistics:
  • The assets of the worlds top three billionaires are greater than those of the poorest 600 million on the planet
  • More than a third of the worlds population (2.8 billion)live on less than two dollars a day
  • 1.2 billion live on less than one dollar a day
  • In 2002 34.6 million Americans lived below the official poverty line (8.5 million of those had jobs!) Black American Poverty double that of whites
  • Per capita income in sub-Saharan Africa =$490
  • Per capita subsidy for European cows = $913
  • Would basically be cheaper to eat Africans than a cow - totally unethical!

07/11/13 - Cities & Film Lecture

by Roxxie Blackham on Thursday 7 November 2013

Cities and Film

  • New York watching the fall of the World Trade Centre. Images taken by people who were there at the time. 
  • The lecture looks at the city of modernism, the beginners of an urban sociology, the city as public and private space, the city in postmodernism and the relation of the individual to the crowd in the city.




  • Trade fair that attemps to celebrate the city in the part of the early 20th century
  • Public health and safety, education
  • Simmel reverses what he is asks to do and decides to focus on the city
  • Leading up to the time when Freud's psychoanalysis theory


  • Concern that the city might swallow up individuals
  • Overwhelmed by the techological things in the city
  • A worker engaged in the construction of the city
  • No health and safety measures in place here
  • Vulnerability presented in Hine's images


  • The rise of the city that we know and recognise now
  • Pioneered by architect Louis Sullivan
  • Form follows function


  • Although it is very decorative, the way that the form follows function applies is in the organisation of the building
  • The basement is where the mechanics are so they are unseen


  • Influenced the city sky line because of the fire which clears a lot of the city centre buildings and makes way for his new buildings and this new landscape


  • Silent movie which illustrates the city



  • Looking at the production line
  • Production line is designed and set up to involve the repetitive movements
  • Mass production and mass consumption
  • The Ford production of cars
  • Fordism comes to relate to the whole motion
  • You are maintaining the system by earning the money as an employer and then putting it back in to the company - repetitive action


  • A critique of the idea of the production line
  • He physically gets stuck in the machine himself
  • A typical Chaplin film
  • He is bad at the production line and messes it up causing chaos
  • Suffers a mental breakdown and goes crazy all over the factory
  • He gets accused of being a communist
  • As a waiter he performs a pantomime which becomes a hit
  • At the end of the film we get art over industry


  • In the factory the machine makes use of him
  • MI5 spied on Chaplin


  • Juxtaposition of the people in the food queue
  • We have this questioning of the American dream
  • The promise that was offered to immigrants and people in rural areas



  • The Flaneur is a bourgeois figure
  • He experiences the city from a removed point of view because of his class and position, so he is an observer


  • The idea that art should capture this and we see it recorded in impressionist paintings at the time
  • Gentlemen are sitting down and observing this scene
  • They are part of the crowd and apart from the crowd


  • Attempts to categorise and organise the planet
  • The arcades that Benjamin investigates is designed for a view of the city that is uninterrupted by the weather so there is a protected environment
  • This would be an ideal spot to observe humanity
  • There is also an attempt to incorporate this with urban planning


  • Presents the photographer as the flaneur
  • Observing but not participating
  • This is particularly important in street photography
  • Appears to be an observed moment that is in fact a constructed moment


  • Repeat of this motif of a grainy black and white experience of the city
  • Started to look at it as a drunken flaneury
  • He is looking a this particular district of Toyko
  • Fascination of the slightly darker side of the city



  • Streets of New York in 1950


  • Wolff says that there should be an investigation of the female figure on the street


  • Susan investigates Walter Benjamin and the Arcades
  • She suggests that often there is a suggestion that the only representation of the female in the street is that they are either a bad lady or a prostitute


  • The blackness is heavier around her body
  • We are getting a still from the story
  • Something has happened or is about to happen
  • We are not told what that is but there is an implication of darkness


  • Documents the black and white photography at a distance
  • Writes a diary style entry to accompany it


  • She knows that the story isn't going to end it is going to continue and at some point she will be confronted by the person that she is following
  • The idea that is looked at in the film 'Don't look now' a couple who go to Venice to recover after the loss of a child and they are haunted by a figure with a red cape, this is a way of explaining a metaphor of the mind - a state of grief which they are trapped in and they are not sure what is real and what is imagination and what is fantasy


  • She hires a private detective to follow her and pays someone
  • She records him following her
  • This is another feature of her work
  • His diary of her is shown in the final exhibit
  • Tries to appear as though she is leading him around like a love story almost


  • Film still rely of a film noir stereotype
  • Beautiful but trapped by her desire
  • The woman dwarfed by the city


  • World Trade Centre - shot at the base of it
  • Wanted to make it look unidentifiable
  • The experience of the city is played upon
  • It is about imagery of the city rather than the city itself


  • Taken again at 911
  • The expression of the woman on the street is uncannily similar to Cindy Sherman's image from 1977
  • Even the camera angle is the same



  • Dark experience of the city
  • Reporting on emergencies in the city
  • Photographs in the way that we see here
  • His name comes from the fact that people thought he had a weegee board
  • Got there before the press as soon as the crime is committed
  • He has a radio in his car which is a centre for all of the action
  • He also develops his films in the back of his car in a dark room
  • Two way access to these events
  • These kinds of images influence the film noir genre


  • A book developed in to a film


  • The first video game showed at the Tribecca film festival
  • Film set in LA 
  • You play as the crime investigator
  • Players much investigate
  • Sophisticated level of game play


  • Modernism in film
  • Although picture in 1929 is a city of the future
  • Image of the skyscrapers appearing
  • They are also appearing in Bladerunner
  • Borrowing from historical periods
  • The aesthetic goes back to the film noir aesthetics



  • The face in the crowd
  • The idea of the individual and the relation to the crowd
  • Something only experienced in the city
  • Investigates in several different cities
  • He hides lights in the pavement and sets up a trip wire system that illuminates individuals
  • At this point he photographs them
  • They almost look like film stills


  • There is this kind of detachment created by the lighting
  • Singling somebody out with the lighting
  • The loneliness of the city in the crowd


  • Work was backed up by the legal system
  • As it was made for artistic purposes and not for commercial gain he was allowed to use the individual's image
  • There is a separation made there of financial gain for commercial reasons


  • People directly staring in to the lens, they are unaware that the photograph is being taken
  • Moments of between
  • Neither here nor there
  • A limbo
  • Everyone in the image appears to be alone


  • Ideas investigated suggesting that buildings constuct our behaviour
  • The idea of an unseen seer who is seen


  • Investigates New York looking at colour images
  • Different to the black and white images in modernism
  • Lack of direction in the framing here
  • We are not told where to look


  • Dark and dramatic image
  • Detachment from something you would expect people to react to


  • The event is recorded almost endlessly on film but also through a type of journalism
  • Means that the city and the observes become one in the collapse of the building



  • She re edits the film so that it runs backwards
  • The footage of the towers falling was shown again and again to the point where you can no longer relate in any kind of describable way what it happening
  • Idea is child like


  • The image that you see is purposely over pixelated
  • Using google images
  • Photography is no longer enough to reflect such an event