So I decided to write a blog about my media artifact. I’m not doing this is simply write a blog, but more so because in being sick I did not really have much of a voice and may not have hit upon my topic they way I had wanted to.
My artifact was the picture of two men in a field taking pictures. I found it to be an extremely interesting picture because to me it hit upon so many of the topics that we have been discussing in class. The first and somewhat more obvious one is the issue of subject. We have seen this theme touched upon in books and movies on how subjects are used to create an “other” or an exotic. To emphasize this point I decided to put a piece of white cardboard to in the picture to represent the emptiness or “hollowness” of simply being European/western has. Yet the white was also supposed to represent how pictures are just random and it is the photographer that decides what is important. What I love about the picture is while these men are looking into the field, right behind them is just as beautiful as in front of them. It shows that not only beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but that pictures themselves are simply the perspective of the photographer. The picture may seem “honest” yet it is not in that no matter what the photographer has an influence as impartial as they may try to be.
With the tinfoil I wanted to represent the point of how pictures themselves show us more about the photographer and society that the picture is being taken for more than the actual subject itself. By taking pictures of certain things in certain ways it shows the ideals, values in that society it is being taken for. The picture is almost more honest about its audience than it is about the subject it is in fact of.
With the recording I found it to be fun and fitting and in the end decided to add it to emphasize the point of how we take from media not only what we want to, but also what w put in. I thought the songs match up with the whole picture explorer theme but also in that with a re-recordable button people can leave any mark as they so wish to leave.