Beginnings

             I believe it is no random occurrence that Fried combined Sherman, Wall, and Hiroshi into the same section of this reading. Though Fried hints at the connection of Hiroshi and Wall regarding the mesmerizing connection of their work. Hiroshi, on one hand, draws on the fleeting of reality/loosing focus of the absolute reality of oneself and others around, and Wall focusing on the audience who have left reality, too, with the desire to be in that exact reality they are experiencing on the screen, possibly heaven or in Hiroshi’s case the sitter being drawn into the “light”. What Fried forgot was the necessity of Sherman in the picture. For without one of these elements the others are insignificant in the cinema atmosphere at least. For Sherman needs the audience (Wall), Hiroshi needs a projected movie (Sherman), and Wall needs a theater (Hiroshi) to enjoy the movie. I am not sure if this is relevant to the importance of this chapter I just thought it was fairly intriguing.

            Fried starts to distinguish the importance of the onlooker having just as much responsibility for the work as the artist through Bustamante’s work, which is also distinguishable through the other photographers represented in certain aspects. The largest connection I realized was between the painter Andrew Hopper and Sherman. Through Sherman’s Film Stills series we are as she stated, the moments of expressionless, representing the nothingness or in between state of happenings. Like Hopper, Sherman is leaving the viewer without an answer to exactly what happened or will happen in the next second. It is as if a game to the viewer to have to immerse themselves into the scene and decide the outcome. I must say this connection should also be added to Bustamante’s work as well.

            I must have to agree with Fried about the minimalist sculptures being awful, I do want to know how he would feel about Walead Beshty… I feel that the theatricality of a print or story insisting the audience to conceptually and/or visually become involved is what Fried is appealed to rather than the audience literally and physically. For when the audience begins to act with the object through our senses we don’t need to use our minds to contrive ideas or feelings, only our physical nature. Susan Story’s point of Wall’s Dead Soldiers Talking print that we don’t know how it feels to die and even though we are seeing this atrocity, that is obviously false, we cant say that it is wrong. In a way there is no way to display a false photograph due to the fact that no one will understand an occurrence until they experience it. Leading from this I was fascinated of the story of “Adelaïde” and, as Fried put it, the second visual scene. The way that our minds automatically transmit ideas into instances, even descriptions that come from no evidence. This connection of literature to photography, though short as of now, is a large interest for me. When thinking of a story and being able to visualize the scene, thinking that the author created the scene, his/her own world, so that others can see; poets being the possible pretext of photographers.