Monday 21 April 2008
Women in art morphing video
A friend sent me a link to a morphing video called Women in Art... Worth a look if you have 5 minutes.
Thursday 17 April 2008
The value of a face...
It seems I only post to this blog when the ABC sends me an interesting article, apparently I'm living vicariously through our national broadcaster! This article though pricked my interest as it relates very closely to my thesis and scarily closely to an article I'm currently reading...
The Australian War Memorial is calling for portrait photographs of Australian service men and women, to match with an immense number of names on the honour role, for which the don't currently hold images. Matching names to faces they say, in order to increase research value and create an invaluable record.
I think this is an interesting and incredibly worth while project (given my interest in national collections I'd be a hypocrite to say otherwise!) I will be checking with my parents and Grandma to see whether any of my relatives died during battle and whether we can gather the photographic evidence required to assist the AWM with their project. I urge any wayward reader chancing upon this entry to do likewise...
Although it gets me thinking, in relation to my research and this article, why do we value the photographed face as a way to remember a person?
As infants we look to our parent's and relatives' faces for love, trust, recognition, to know we are valued and also to justify or modify our behaviour. A mother/father smiles at their adorable baby and (when capable) the baby smiles back, a mother/father frowns at their naughty toddler pouring a cup of cordial on the floor and the toddler (hopefully frowning back) knows they're in trouble!
Capturing the faces of our loved ones, so we can preserve them for eternity seems natural given our fondness for (and attachment to) faces and the importance we place in their features: eyes, wrinkles and smiles.
Photographs enable us to capture faces, quickly and easily. They are stuck in albums, hung in frames, crunched into wallets or hidden in lockets or under pillows. We believe in the photograph's precise rendering through it's mechanical and scientific (now digital) nature, making it a 'true' likeness. This accuracy is photography's greatest gift. A portrait photograph, more than any other medium (even the finest sketch) refers so closely to the sitter. Also, the person was once there - sitting in front of the lens - just slightly out of the viewers reach but glued to the paper for ever.
The most amazing thing about portrait photographs though is the way they trigger memories, as Thierry de Duve writes in his article, portrait photographs are funerary items, which we use to memorialise the referent. That person once sitting there, will remain that age for ever and are here with us today (even if long gone). They can filter back and forth through time when needed, as we gaze at the image.
This could be the most important reason to assist the AWM with their project (and what appeals to me) - so the men and women who payed the ultimate sacrifice can revisit us through their photographic portraits and be preserved for eternity in a national collection.
The Australian War Memorial is calling for portrait photographs of Australian service men and women, to match with an immense number of names on the honour role, for which the don't currently hold images. Matching names to faces they say, in order to increase research value and create an invaluable record.
I think this is an interesting and incredibly worth while project (given my interest in national collections I'd be a hypocrite to say otherwise!) I will be checking with my parents and Grandma to see whether any of my relatives died during battle and whether we can gather the photographic evidence required to assist the AWM with their project. I urge any wayward reader chancing upon this entry to do likewise...
Although it gets me thinking, in relation to my research and this article, why do we value the photographed face as a way to remember a person?
As infants we look to our parent's and relatives' faces for love, trust, recognition, to know we are valued and also to justify or modify our behaviour. A mother/father smiles at their adorable baby and (when capable) the baby smiles back, a mother/father frowns at their naughty toddler pouring a cup of cordial on the floor and the toddler (hopefully frowning back) knows they're in trouble!
Capturing the faces of our loved ones, so we can preserve them for eternity seems natural given our fondness for (and attachment to) faces and the importance we place in their features: eyes, wrinkles and smiles.
Photographs enable us to capture faces, quickly and easily. They are stuck in albums, hung in frames, crunched into wallets or hidden in lockets or under pillows. We believe in the photograph's precise rendering through it's mechanical and scientific (now digital) nature, making it a 'true' likeness. This accuracy is photography's greatest gift. A portrait photograph, more than any other medium (even the finest sketch) refers so closely to the sitter. Also, the person was once there - sitting in front of the lens - just slightly out of the viewers reach but glued to the paper for ever.
The most amazing thing about portrait photographs though is the way they trigger memories, as Thierry de Duve writes in his article, portrait photographs are funerary items, which we use to memorialise the referent. That person once sitting there, will remain that age for ever and are here with us today (even if long gone). They can filter back and forth through time when needed, as we gaze at the image.
This could be the most important reason to assist the AWM with their project (and what appeals to me) - so the men and women who payed the ultimate sacrifice can revisit us through their photographic portraits and be preserved for eternity in a national collection.
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