Category: New Portraits
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Ripping Reality reaction
Reading Reaction I really loved this chapter from Hito Steyerl’s Duty Free Art. My head is still spinning from how many ideas and thinkers she packed into this writing, and I anticipate I’ll uncover more ideas as I sit with the piece longer. However, the main thing I takeaway from this excerpt now is the…
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Response to The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction
Walter Benjamin’s classic 1935 essay still has more meaningful things to say about art, politics, and modes of production than most of our discourse today. I felt this incongruity between past and current thought most in his passages on the use of distraction in filmmaking. Benjamin writes, “A man who concentrates before a work of…
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Are All Images now Poor Images?
Response to Poor Image This incredible article written by Hito Steyerl in 2009 analyzed the material conditions of the poor digitized image to a tee. The analysis is so on point that I feel this piece read the trend of corporate media to invest in profiting off of the digital ecosystem. “Digital communication has also…
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Reaction to Photosculptures
The Reading My Reaction Reading about Francois Willeme’s photosculptures in mid-1800s France sparked a few reactions from me. First, I’m stunned that he and other French sculptors of the time were automating camera networks (activating quarter plate cameras with one trigger) and seeking to automate the sculpture making process. Historically, since the Industrial Revolution had…
Ryan Rotella 