Photo Essay- Symbolic Action -Women Wearing Jewelry

Jewelry.  In some cultures and lifestyles, jewelry is a girl's best friend.  Wearing jewelry that looks expensive could symbolize higher class or wearing something that seems older looking could mean it was from a family member or an antique shop. And any type of jewelry could have a deep meaning to it.  But jewelry is the symbolic form of beauty.  Women wear jewelry to feel beautiful.  It attracts the eye and gains attention.  There are also many different ways that women wear jewelry.

  One way women wear jewelry is by completely covering themselves with it.  You can hear a women coming before you see her with all of the jewelry she is wearing  and the way it clangs together.

Other ways women wear jewelry is by only wearing the least amount that they can.  Some women don't want to be overly flashy or stand out so they wear just enough to make themselves feel gorgeous, while still blending in the surroundings.

There are also times when women don't wear jewelry at all.  Sometimes women feel that they don't need jewelry to feel beautiful and that naturally they are confident and feel gorgeous all on their own.  Also, women are sometimes just lazy and forget to put the jewelry they usually wear on before leaving the house.

There are times where women only wear jewelry to special kinds of occasions and events.  For example, weddings or parties or any type of celebration.  While some women wear jewelry everywhere and everyday no matter where they go.  There are so many reasons women wear jewelry and one reason why I wear this necklace in the picture above is because this necklace belonged to my great Aunt Margaret.  She and I were very close and wearing this necklace reminds me of her everyday.  So women have their own reasons to wear jewelry, whether it be an everyday occurrence or only once in a while or to remember a loved one or family member.  Wearing jewelry  can symbolizes beauty and personality.

America, Seen Through Photographs, Darkly-Susan Sontag

 In this essay, Susan Sontag talked about many famous photographers and other artists. A few that caught my interest are:

• Edward Steichen: He was able to take a photo of an everyday object or a place or person and make it beautiful even if normally it is not.
• Walker Evans and Alfred Stieglitz: The two people captured the "real thing".  They stayed with the poor farmers and learned their hardships.  They lived the life of the farmer and took that back to show the world.
• Diane Arbus: Arbus' photos create almost a world within a world.  A place where people who don't exactly fit into the "Norm" in society can go and live freely.
• Walt Whitman: Similar to Edward Steichen, Whitman could take an "ugly" picture but in the way he took the "ugliness" seemed meaningful and beautiful.
• All these photographers are able to create importance and meaning with their photography.  They make people look and make people care just by taking a picture at the right moment.

A Guide To The Unexpected Candid

Thesis Statements

William Eggleston's work captures the social and cultural aspects of life in the south by giving off a sense of loneliness in a world full of color and life.

"A pictures says a thousand words." Whether Eggleston wanted too or not he told a story through his photography and in that story he captures the social and cultures aspects of life in the south.

Susan Sontag refers to photography as a way of life, and Eggleston shows life in his photography. In a way photography can be classified as an open door to a world where a picture is more important than the real thing. Where people spend more time photographing an object rather than admiring and absorbing the beauty of the object itself.

Helen Levitt

Helen Levitt

Born: August 31, 1913

Lived in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn.

Dropped out of High School her senior year and started working for J. Florian Mitchell, a portrait photographer in the Bronx.

Her first camera was a Voigtlander and she would shoot photos of her mother's friends.

In 1935 she met Cartier Bresson and accompanied him on a photo-shoot along the
Brooklyn waterfront.

She began training herself as a photographer at museums and galleries.

Fortune Magazine was the first to publish one of Levitt's photographs in 1939.

The next year one of her pictures was included in an exhibit at the inaugural exhibition of the Museum of Modern Art.

1943 she had her first solo showing of her photographs at the same museum.

She lived a long live and recently passed away at the age of 95.

Photo Essay

While looking at Eggleston's photos I recognized a pattern.  I saw memories. Eggleston's memories.  I feel that in his photography he shows his audience what his life was like.  He shows important people and places and things that might have reminded him of his childhood.  This is why I chose to post a picture of my music box.  This music box was given to me as a young girl and I would play the music over and over until I fell asleep at night. This is an important memory to me that I captured to remind me of my past.

Vocabulary From Eggleston's Guide.

1. Vernacular: any medium or mode of expression that reflects popular taste or indigenous styles.
2. Servile: extremely imitative, especially in the arts; lacking in originality.
3. Consonant: in agreement; agreeable; in accord; consistent.
4. Ephemeral: lasting a very short time; short-lived; transitory.
5. Puerile: of or pertaining to a child or to childhood.
6. Synthetic Cubist: Fine Arts. The last phrase of cubism, characterized chiefly by an increased use of color and the imitation or introduction of a wide range of textures and materials into painting.
7. Insular: detached; standing alone.
8. Intrinsic: belonging to a thing by its very nature.
9. Bucolic: of or pertaining to, or suggesting an idyllic rural life.
10. Romantic: the adoption and adaptation of large public issues, social or philosophical, for private artistic ends. Expressed ion a style heavy with special effects: glints and shadows, dramatic simplicities, familar symbols, and idiosyncratic technique.

Photographers mentioned in the Introduction of William Eggleston's Guide

Robert Adams
Alfred Stieglitz
Eugene Atget
David Octavius Hill
Brady
Irving Penn
Marie Cosindas
Eliot Porter
Helen Levitt
Joel Meyerowitz
Stephen Shore
Alfred H. Barr, Jr.
John Szarkowski

William Eggleston's Guide: 5-7 sentences on photography in general.

Page 5: "We are accustomed to believing that the meaning in a work of art is due altogether to the imagination and lederdemain of the artist."

Page 6: "Photography is a system of visual editing.  At bottom, it is a matter of surrounding with a frame a portion of one's cone vision, while standing in the right place at the right time."

Page 6: "By means of photography one can in a minute reject as unsatisfactory ninety-nine configurations of facts and elect as right the hundredth."

Page 7: "...That a photographer wants form, an unarguably right relationship of shapes, a visual stability in which all components are equally important."

Page 8: "For the photographer who demanded formal rigor for his pictures, color was an enormous complication of a problem already cruelly difficult.  And not merely a complication, for the new medium meant that the syntax the photographer had learned-the pattern of his educated intuitions-was perhaps worse than useless, for it led him toward the discovery of black-and-white photographs."