Viewer or Voyeur? The morality of reportage photography

Third post on My Course, looking at the moral ethics of Photography. 

Don McCullin 

Farah Abdi Warsameh's Stoned to Death, Somalia, 13 December

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2010/mar/08/world-press-photo-sean-ohagan
http://www.iwm.org.uk/exhibitions/shaped-by-war-photographs-by-don-mccullin

My Response 
Photography can be any where at any time, allowing us to see the world for many different things from beauty to blood shed, but when do you stop and decide what should or should not be photographed or seen. 
Personal the Guardian article did not shock me as much as I thought it would, having watched the news form an early age and being exposed to such images and truths of humanity I became some what desensitised to the idea of the death and killing. However this does not mean that I did not find such an image up setting. 
The work of Don McCullin is not as shocking, the images might show war but they do not show too much of the harshness of war. Such as blood and direct death. 
Over all I feel that over the past few years the world has become harder, the images that McCullin produced, the the time would have shocked and upset. Where as now we need to see the worst of the war to be shocked, However even now this is hard with the amount of death that we are exposed to. Not just through the News but in film, Tv and Video Games.  

This image was found on Tumblr of an ex-soldier who lost both his legs, this image is as far as I understand it is an re-enactment of when he lost his legs. However when I first saw this image I have to say that I was more shocked then seeing Warsameh's image. 
The reason for this is that, in Warsameh's image we know that the man is dead from the body langue of the others and the man that is deceased. What makes this image shocking this that the soldier seams un-fazed  that he has lost both his legs, he is calm smoking his cigarette and looking directly at us. In some ways it make this image very intense to look at, we almost feel that we should not be looking at him.  

Layered Drawings - Nobuhiro Nakanishi

Nobuhiro Nakanishi works with photography and sculpture, creating large works that 'float' off the wall. The images a compressed much like the idea of a giant flip book. 

As the audience looks the the work, it begins to blend together creating silhouettes of the landscapes that are printed onto the  Plexiglass acrylic. 

"In a foggy landscape, we no longer see what we are usually able to see - the distance to the traffic light, the silhouette of the trees, the slope of the ground. Silhouettes, distance and horizontal sense all become vague. When we perceive this vagueness, the water inside the retina and skin dissolve outwardly toward the infinite space of the body surface. The landscape continues to flow, withholding us from grasping anything solid. By capturing spatial change and the infinite flow of time, I strive to produce art that create movement between the artwork itself and the viewer's experience of the artwork." -  Nobuhiro Nakanishi  

Sand Art - Andres Amador

Andres Amador creates his work using the beach as his canvas, where by he carves floral patterns into the sand. The work is created in only a few hours before it is last forever to the sea. The beauty of this work is that it is lost to sea, its only by the reproductions through photographs that we can see and appreciate these works.  
What's fascinating about the way that Amador works is that he uses Google Maps to find areas that have large areas of sand. 

The work is crested with the aesthetic quality in mind, each image is unique. What is hard to get across in the images is the actual scale that Amador works. 

                                                                             

The Language of Water and Adrift With Flowers - John Grant

The Language of water 
The body of work 'Language of water' by John Grant looks that that way in which water moves, the way in this is explored is by using die to see the different currants that have been made by the water as it moves around the canister. 
This work again requires the attention of the viewer, by looking at the work you can begin to see the different shapes and patterns that are made by the dye in the water.   

'My interest is to create imagery that holds attention. Speaking out from a source of 

wisdom, connection to self, or from some seemingly important question or even simple

wonderment.

I express myself using contemporary photographic tools, but stretching them as

imagination allows.' - John Grant, Artist Statement. 

Adrift with Flowers 

The second body of work that looks at creating abstract images that look more like detailed illustration. 

The flowers are submerged in tanks of water where they are suspended in ghostly formations. 

The use of water in Grants work could be seen and represented as many different things. Water is a powerful force, but it has calming qualities that relate to nature and life.  

'In my photographic work I seek to distil and dramatize natural elements, transforming them into symbolic metaphor. I embraced the often clichéd or sentimental botanical portrayal, presenting objects in ways that infuse them with an enigmatic quality that expands expectations and tweaks the imagination.'  John Grant - Statement.         

Murmur - Richard Barnes, 2005

Murmur - Richard Barnes, 2005

The work of Richard Barnes looks at the patterns of starlings as they fly. These patterns are known as a 'Murmur'. As the birds fly the create synchronised motions though out the sky, as they do this they are feeding covering large amounts of sky as they do.  What makes this work is that its simple and  aesthetically pleasing to the eye. A work that requires looking and studying. 

This work was a reminder of the work of Rinko Kawauchi and her work Murmuration.  The work was created for BPB 2010 (Brighton Photo Biennial).  Kawauchi produced this body of work along with Stephen Gill and Alex Soth. Each artist was curated to create images as their views of Brighton. Each artist looked at Brighton in very different ways.

Murmur - Richard Barnes, 2005

Rinko Kawauchi Murmuration

"Acclaimed Japanese photographer Rinko Kawauchi has been drawn to the spectacle of flocking starlings at Brighton Pier. Here during the winter months at dusk, the birds gather in their tens of thousands, wheeling around to create a mesmerizing swirling cloud called a murmuration. Kawauchi is fascinated by the ephemeral nature of this phenomenon and, continuing with the theme of the flock, she has also trailed groups of people through the city. This commission, her first in the UK, is supported by funding from The Japan Foundation, The Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation and The Daiwa Anglo – Japanese Foundation." - http://www.bpb.org.uk/exhibitions/9148/bpb-curated-strange-familiar-three-views-of-brighton/

Frozen in Time - Riusuke Fukahori

The work of Riusuke Fukahori looks at sculpture in a very different way, through 3D painting. The work at first looks just like the fish have been trapped inside the resin. 
The box is created with a layer of resin poured into the base, from here Fukahori paints the underside of the fish, so the fins and tail. The the next part is the body and so on and so on, until you get a full 3 dimensional fish trapped in time. 
The images look as if they are still moving, the motion is still visible to the eye, misleading you into thinking that they are real fish. 

Blackfield - 2008, Zadok ben David

Zadok ben David is an Israeli artist that works with sculpture big or small. His series Blackfeild is made up of hundreds of sculptured flowers embedded into sand. On one side the flowers are painted black and on the other is full colour. The sculptures are only a few centimetres high and resemble the hight of a real garden of flowers. 
The work looks at the ideas of human behaviour and feeling's, the black is one side of our self's while the colour is the other. 

"It's a metaphor for human behaviour and feeling. In hard times, it's easy to see the world as black and depressing, but with a little effort, if we view things from a different angle, we can find the same world much more positive and optimistic" - Zadok Ben David. 

Blackfield - 2008