Reading

First week:
How do we read a photo?
The text was about how reading a photo is a complex thing, not passive, but affected by cultural, historical and personal experiences. People often see photos as a "mirror", but he deconstructs this, to show that culteral genre (like, a portrait, or landscape) tells us firstly how to read a photo. Then our own experience and opinions also affect what we see and therefore what the photo means to us.
Beyond this, Barthes is used to show how we read a photo; the denotative and connotative things within the photo, and also the "stuctium", the general passive viewing, and the "punctum" which is the things in the photo which might lead us to a deeper, critical viewing. I liked this idea, as it gives a nod to both forms of looking at photos and also because it is true that when you view a photo, often there is something "not right" which makes you look twice, and then the further you look, the more idea of the what the photo means, or what the photographer is trying to say, becomes clear.
final note of that the photo is not just about the "eye" but about the "I"; photographers are always trying to show something; which codes and conventions are included? i thought this website, photos of 2011, was particularly interesting for this.
http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.buzzfeed.com%2Fmjs538%2Fthe-most-powerful-photos-of-2011&h=_AQG0TG2k
The website was funded by a rich USA company; the images are very (sinisterly) focused on America. However, as important news photographs of the year, they are also good to look at to see the dominant conventions/ideologies in America, as well as the world.

A way of seeing
I really enjoyed reading this. The text writes about how art has been mystified by art critics and the upper class to give it value now its uniqueness has been ruined by postmodern developments in technology which allow for reproduction. As pictures can be reproduced over and over, they loose the cultural, unique, upper class ideologies- the picture can be viewed anywhere, by anyone, and people can read it in such a multitude of way, in so many different time scales, that the art looses its original meaning. The writer claims that now art is defined by who owns it and how much money it costs, allowing for the "borgeois" to keep control of the art world, which once only belonged to them. (postmodernism) Therefore, the way pictures are descirbed panders to brgeios values and perceptions of art, allowing them to keep it within their own power. The writer wants to bring art "to the public" and stop allowing hegemony over pictures. Anarchist reading, very interesting.