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Positive Images

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     Jan Grover's "Framing the Questions: Positive Imaging and Scarcity in Lesbian Photographs" delves into the representation of lesbians in photography, particularly focusing on the dynamics of positive imaging and scarcity. Grover explores how societal norms and power structures influence the visual portrayal of lesbians, impacting their visibility and representation within the medium of photography.      Generally, I don’t believe photographs are parallel reflections of reality, but much like Grover I believe photographs to be more “alternative/enhancements” to reality. Photographs are interpretations, more specifically the interpretations of the person capturing the moment. Photos, essentially, are what we want them to be. Alternatively They can also be easily altered, causing false representation(s) or used for manipulation to fit a narrative. It’s the two sides of the same coin. Therefore, photography can be used for a multitude of purposes: comparis...
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Indigenous Methodologies

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     Margaret Kovach's "Indigenous Methodologies: Characteristics, Conversations, and Contexts" explores the distinct research paradigms and methodologies in Indigenous knowledge systems. She challenges the conventional Western research frameworks and delves into the significance of Indigenous ways of knowing, being, and researching. In our Chapter 3 reading, Kovach delves into the intricate interconnections of Indigenous epistemology and how it varies from Western epistemologies.      Kovach begins Chapter 3 by underscoring the centrality of relationality in Indigenous epistemology. She emphasizes that Indigenous research is embedded in relationships— “non-fragmented, holistic nature, focusing on the metaphysical and pragmatic, on language and place, and on values and relationships… these are aspects of Indigenous Epistemologies that consistently emerge…” (57). This relationality shapes the research process, necessitating respectful engagement, reciprocity...
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Authorship

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     "The Death of the Author" by Roland Barthes challenges traditional literary criticism by questioning the authority and importance of the author in interpreting their text. He advocates the separation of the author’s identity from the interpretation of a work, arguing that the traditional approach to understanding a text unnecessarily and excessively emphasizes the author's intentions and biography. Barthes states, “a multi -dimensional space in which a variety of writings, none of them original, blend and clash. The text is a tissue of quotations drawn from the innumerable centers of culture“ (146). in which he centrally means that the reader's interpretation will take precedence over the author's intended meaning.      He claims that the author's presence within a text creates limitations on its interpretation. Barthes asserts, "To give a text an Author is to impose a limit on that text” (147). He suggests that attributing a single, definitive mean...
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Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema

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     Laura Mulvey explains in her essay “Visual pleasure and narrative cinema” how psychoanalytic theories, like those suggested by Freud, influence the creative process in gender roles, themes, camera movement and angle, and plot choices in traditional cinema. Mulvey also addresses in particular the dimensional discrepancy between male and female presence in acting roles, how their cinematic presence is absolutely necessary but it “tends to work against the story-line” and how women are only allowed a presence on screen for the male satisfaction, reinforcing gendered norms as set through the male gaze.      At the heart of Laura Mulvey’s argument is the concept of “male gaze.” Based on the assumption that classical Hollywood operates within a scopophilic framework, she explains how the perspective of heterosexual men dominates and more so influences film making as well as spectatorship. As mentioned in her essay, Mulvey identifies two contradicting aspect...
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Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?

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     Linda Nochlin’s essay, "Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” examines the limitations and discrepancies preventing broader recognition of women’s success in visual arts, analyzing the historical and institutional factors that played a role to their inhibition, rather than presumptions of feminine inferiority or lack of talent that have held them back. Nochlin addresses how societal structures, cultural norms, and institutional barriers of these times debatably continue to play a restricting role women from artistic opportunities.      “There are no women equivalents for Michelangelo or Rembrandt, Delacroix o Cezanne, Picasso or Matisse…” (Nochlin 5). Each person is a widely, greatly recognized male artist. However, what defines the female equivalent? Why is there no great female artists equally recognized? What in fact, is a great artist? To answer the latter is to discover the root of what is wrong with the question “why are there no great wom...
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Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

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     As stated in Walter Benjamin’s “Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” “In principle, a work of art has always been reproducible" (2): Apprentices replicate their masters’ work, and historically civilizations minted coins and woodcut. When photography and technology surpassed all other reproductive capabilities, it virtually took over the artistic process in creating art. The difference between a student replicating the work of their educator to learn and a machine reproducing work is intent. What causes controversy in replicating work is the underlying exploitation of said work(s), devaluation of the originality of the first, and decrease in it’s “cult value” by promoting exhibition capable traits. Benjamin’s publication goes over how reproducing artworks devalues the original artwork which then influences it’s “aura” but also acknowledges how there is no such thing as a perfect replication.      When an artwork is reproduced, it changes...
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Beauty Discourse and the Logic of Aesthetics

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     In a general, casual conversation, beauty is as subjective as the individual. Therefore, a mutual consensus of what is and isn’t beautiful isn’t necessarily prioritized, but is ultimately impossible, regardless. Arts’ beauty from a professional perspective like those with jobs of an art historian and art critique, however, tend to abide more traditional guidelines which give arts their status and value.      What we read in “Beauty Discourse and the Logic of Aesthetics” by Amelia Jones addresses the falsehoods made by Dave Hickey in claims of being an absolute authority in the judgment of creative beauty as implied in his book “The Invisible Dragon: Four Essays on Beauty” and contending it against some of the world’s most influential, notified artworks that contradict his claims. Jones later in her paper suggests a more politically conscious perspective in an attempt to shift from the traditional but ineffective approach to aesthetics.    ...
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