Word: photographs
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...million, the Cultural Revolution and the recent opening to the outside world--the disruption of the dam is relatively minor from the Chinese perspective. And he sees that the quaint old houses built on the cobbled streets leading up from the Yangtze--the structures Western tourists like to photograph--are in fact dirty, cramped and without running water or toilets. Many Chinese prefer to move to the industrial new towns built in all their tasteless utility. Writes Hessler: "In some ways it was like the American generation of my parents, who grew up on stories of the Depression and World...
...invent surfaces and how that's in a sense inventing ourselves. In a way, it's hard to say there's anything more than surfaces, that kind of manifestation of fantasy in the surface. "The idea of fantasy is a recurring theme in Wang's work. In another photograph, a young girl in a ballerina dress sits on a counter in the middle of a kitchen. "It's about fantasy," says Wang "the fantasy of femininity...
Some of the photographs depict breathtaking landscapes rendered with great artistic flare and attention to aesthetics. One landscape of a pyramid taken by Francis Frith depicts the subtle beauty of the pyramids of Saqqara. His use of light and shadow rivals many Ansel Adams landscapes. The printmaking is of such high quality that the footsteps and the tracks of the cart Firth was pulling his camera equipment in can be seen snaking through the photograph. In spite of these few photographs made with great artistry, most of the images in display seem to be staged, trite, commercialized depictions...
Other works in the exhibit reveal how photographers leveraged religious notions and imagery to sell their images. Photographers would often photography various sites from Christianity as a way of validating the Biblical record. One such example is a photograph of the city of Jericho depicting the city as a dry, barren landscape. This photography was received as physical proof of the validity of the Biblical account of Joshua cursing the city causing it to dry up and be unfruitful...
...exhibit does a very good job of providing the viewer with detailed explanations of the history behind each photograph, and teaches the viewer a great deal about the various ways the Middle East was constructed and interpreted in Europe in the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th...