Photography Workshop

A few of Janelle Covino’s ideas about the uses of photography in oral history were really inspiring, especially her outline of how photographs can be used to document the process of interviewing, which includes getting to the interview, researching the person, corresponding—in general, collecting and creating artifacts that add to the contents of the interview.

I also really like Janet Cardiff’s audio walks. After listening to a few excerpts from her website, I wish that there were fewer explanations of emotions, and somehow the evocation of memories seems a little wrong to me—I guess I wish she spoke in the first person instead of the second. But the overall idea of multidimensional audio and retracing paths is really exciting to me. The National Park Service recently started doing audio tour podcast projects, and I have listened to some of the tours for lower Manhattan for the New Amsterdam Tour. Steve Laise narrates on these tours, which is a little funny to me—as if I haven’t listened to this person’s voice enough!

♥ What is the image’s documentary potential? How does it present fact to the world?
- August Sander, The Last People
- Reneke Dykstra, The Bathers
♥ Does the image contribute to the audio? Does it express posture, body?
♥ Does the image display an artifact? How can a person be defined by objects?
- impact on the grass: traces of the body
♥ Does it illuminate the environment of the interview?
♥ Does it convey the passage of time?
- Nicholas Nixon, The Brown Sisters
♥ Does it convey my relationship to obtaining information?
- route to a person or place
♥ Does it represent content: symbol of the past, symbol of memory?
- Gerhard Richter
- Alan Berliner, Family Album
- Janet Cardiff, Her Long Black Hair walk