Pictures of Emma (by me)
Pictures of me (by Emma)
Mass Media At Large:
I think my picture of Emma holding a Starbuck's coffee cup speaks a lot to the current state of the advertising world. Everything in our lives has some kind of advertisement in it, whether it be while we're listening to the radio on the way to work or looking through a magazine in our spare time. Everything has an ad that is trying to persuade you to buy this product or that product that will supposedly make your life so much better than it is now. But in the end, these things don't make us happy and I think this picture shows that, because of Emma only looking superficially happy, not truly happy.
This painting is "Venus of Urbino" by Titan. I think it demonstrates the opposite point of Emma's first picture of me, the one where I'm hiding behind my hands. In this picture the woman is open and showing herself fully and she seems to be pleased with how she appears. It goes back to the Renisance ideal of the body as the measure of all things (Da Vinci's Vitruvian Man). Emma's picture, however, is the opposite. It shows a woman who does not want to be seen, who does not think her body deserves to be praised and admired and who, in general, does not like her appearance.
My interpretation was that the first photograph was "real" and the second was "ideal". Seeing her eating the lemon struck me as a little masochistic. "When life gives you lemons, make lemonade"; yet she is doing the opposite and eating it. I assumed she was in a dorm, surrounded by probably hundreds of people, but she is alone eating a lemon, perhaps symbolically bearing her burdens alone.
ReplyDeleteIn the second photograph she is in the dark holding out a Starbucks cup with a huge (forced?) grin. I saw this as her attempt to show everyone around her that she can handle whatever is given her; she is so strong and able that she doesn't even need to rest as long as she's given a bit of caffeine.
I like reading Erin's comments because it is fun to see what someone else interprets the pictures to be. For me the first one or the real one was about capturing a raw emotion. As cliche and corny as the quote "when life gives you lemons make lemonade" is, i love it. And for me this was life giving me lemons. I wanted to capture a moment where I was raw and not really in control of what I was feeling so the trueness of it came out. Honestly, I would have liked the editing to be different on the picture and liked to play around with a couple things a little more. I think the colors are a little blah and boring.. but overall I like the photo.
ReplyDeleteThe second picture for me was supposed to be more of a showing of happiness. I wanted it to be fun and capture who I was and I don't think this picture really did that. Going into this I had a couple ideas in mind about what I wanted to do for the ideal picture but they never ended up working out due to time and stuff. I like what erin had to say about it though and never really thought about it that way but it definitely makes the picture more interesting when thought about like that.
I still love the pictures you made of Emma. You seem to be surprised by that. But I think they're pretty fresh and original as a solution
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