Image Annotation and Glitching Workshop
1. How were photographs used to document the experience of the 1930s?
2. What affordances do digital images allow that analog photographs do not?
3. How can we use digital methods to analyze and interrogate photographs in new ways?
Three Main Lessons:
Principles of Image Analysis
| SITE OF PRODUCTION (CREATOR) |
SITE OF CONSUMPTION (AUDIENCE) | SITE OF IMAGE ITSELF | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Social Aspects | Who? When? Who for? Why? | How interpreted? By whom? Why? | Visual Meanings |
| Composition | Genre? | Viewing positions? Relation to other texts? | Composition? |
| Technological | How made? | Transmission? Circulaion? Display? | Visual Effects? |
Table adapted from Gillian Rose, Visual Methodologies, 21.
Dorthea Lange, Migrant Mother
Migrant Mother, edited
Image Annotation
One of the affordances that digital images provide is a layer that allows us to annotate an image without actually disturbing or changing the initial document itself.
Image Glitching
From the video, who can explain what glitching is and what its practitioners use it to say?
How does Kramer apply glitching to historical documents? What can it reveal?
"The fourth image is one in which I inserted code from another photo, hoping that the two would create some sort of collage, but instead created only a more extreme version of removing code from an image as in the previous two. I interpreted these changes in the photos as history and chronicles of the past drowning in the chaos of modern technology. I imagine Leadbelly would be baffled at the transformation.”
The most compelling result I found after generating the deleted code version and the copy/paste edit of the photo was the inverse relationship the images had with each other. The former keeps most of the singer’s iconic image intact but renders her name and the publishing information at the bottom illegible. Conversely, the latter reveals her name but warps her face, making her much less recognizable based only on her appearance. These observations led me to contemplate the importance of image and persona in the folk revival—what aspect of the performer’s identity was easier to recognize and associate with her talent, her name or her appearance? For a singer as iconic in both name and appearance as Joan Baez, it’s hard to determine.
