Critical & contextual perspectives.

In my last blog piece I mentioned the common phrase 'a picture paints a thousand words', deconstructing an image is the art of reading the words the image paints. Deconstructing an image is something that is done subconsciously every time we look at an image for any longer than a passing glance. It is something that can be refined by educating ourselves in all areas, basically the more you understand about the world around you, the more you can read into what an image is trying to say. With this in mind you could say that photographs are a language all of their own. When reading a photograph there are 3 steps we must take in a specific order to deconstruct it accurately. First, we must describe what we see, in the example below we can see tulips in the foreground with a joyful couple behind the tulips, the male is kissing the female. An example of how education can allow you to make informed descriptions is that tulips flower in April, allowing us to add a time of year to

Post modernity (approx. 1940-2001+) comes from the idea that we have moved past the earlier ideas of modern era. It signifies an end to both religious and non-religious meta-narratives. This is reflected in the world of art, and particularly photography. 'Post modern art' expresses a concern with 'representation and an ironic self-awareness' (Kirby, 2006). In the early days of photography , the belief of western civilisation was still influenced by the church. things such as nature was captured very much in the style of oil paintings of that time, showing foreground,middle and background in an attempt to capture a feeling of depth and greater power. This belief, is a link from nature to the almighty power, is an example of a meta-narrative. A set of guidelines that society generally accepts and adheres to. The examples below show how early landscape photography was very receptive to the notion that there is a higher power, this is done using scale. Especially in