Article summaries part three

I came across an article this week about the most influential pictures of all time. I thought it was a very clear and interesting way of showing photos that had a major affect on our culture. The article, "13 Photographs That Changed the World" by Alex Santoso, discusses 13 photos that range from fine art shots to a picture of the loch ness monster. One photo in this article that I thought was an interesting addition was the photo "Hindenburg" by Murray Becker in 1937.

This is a photo of the zeppelin named the Hindenburg burning up and crashing mid-flight. This photo affected society in a larger way than you might expect. Before the Hindenburgs crash, people considered zeppelins the safest form of air travel. The documentation of this event shifted the publics opinion on that. Photos of this event played a major role in the downfall of the zeppelin industry.

The photo in this article that made the biggest impact on me was "Murder of a Vietcong by Saigon Police Chief" by Eddie Adams in 1968.

This is a photo of General Nguyen Ngoc Loan executing a captain of a Vietcong revenge squad for killing a group of unarmed civillians during the Vietnam War in 1968. This photo brings the viewer to a terrifying and shocking scene. A man is about to die. Adams captured that and shed a new light on the war that our country was in. This photo did a lot to change people thoughts on the Vietnam War. When people see the things like this that so perfectly expose the dark brutal side of war, they are more likely to think about what their country is really doing. This shot did much more than affect our culture though. This photo affected the general's life forever. After this picture was taken Loan had to live with the fact that the entire world had seen him kill a man. Adams later commented on his feelings about this saying "The general killed the Vietcong, I killed the general with my camera."

Another article that I thought was interesting was "Photography's influence on Painting" by Jill Markwood. This article brought up a new aspect of culture that photography has shaped that I hadn't even thought of looking for. Until the dawn of photography, all art was done by either a brush or a pencil. Artists had to recreate scenes that sat before them. Markwood uses a quote by art historian Peter Kalb to express how photography has affected this aspect of art. "The most immediate an obvious impact [of photography] on painting can be seen in the works of artists eager to achieve a special kind of optical veracity unknown until the advent of photography..." Before photography artists had to sit in front of a scene or picture it in their heads to create a picture. This resulted in changes in what the scene would look like. The painter would have to make up a moment to create a picture of. When cameras began to become more and more popular the art world discovered that they could capture a single second and reproduce it with a never before seen amount of truth to what the original scene was. Another point that Markwood brings up that I hadn't thought of is that before the camera, pictures had a somewhat theatrical feel to them due to the arrangement and settings that people used in their art. With photography artists began creating art out of simple every day scenes. Pictures became much easier to make a connection to because they had a sense of realism that was impossible to capture without a camera.

Before reading Markwood's paper, I had only really been thinking about how photography had affected our culture's people or industries. I hadn't really thought about its impact on art itself! As I look into this subjet more and more I am coming to realize that photography is one of the most influential things we have in the world today. It has shaped every aspect of culture and will go on to shape our culture even more in the future.