Week 6

This week we began looking at photography and the work of Cindy Sherman and Henri Cartier-Bresson. When I first saw that we were spending an entire section on photographs I didn't really understand why. After, turning on the TV realized how important photography is to visual culture. Flipping through magazines it's hard not to notice that 95% of the magazine is photographs. Almost all advertisements today contain photographs. We document our lives and important moments with pictures. If I look through my mom's photo albums I can see pictures of myself when I was first born and pictures of my little sister's first haircut. It's amazing to think all I have to do to relive memories from 15 years ago is open that album.

I was watching a French movie yesterday and at one point in the movie the main character said that when you take photographs you detach yourself from the situation. She complained that instead of enjoying a gondola ride with her boyfriend, he took pictures of her smiling the whole time. That made me ask myself, do photographs always capture real memories? My mom has a picture of me that she took before I went to a school dance and in the picture I'm smiling. I remember that when she took it I was actually really upset but I smiled for the picture. Is that a false memory? Now, I remember that I was really upset when the picture was taken but in 20 years I won't.