#1-C “Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth.”

“Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth.”

— Pablo Picasso

Critical Response:

When I first waded in to the murky waters of photo sharing, my thoughts turned to my mom’s old brownie camera that had faithfully recorded our celebrations and seasons from the 1950’s on. The first camera I ever clicked. Easy: point and click. Technology a 5 year old could master.

Yet as wonderful as those old Brownie black and white and then coloured prints are, they do both reveal and hide the truth.

Where was my mother? Always behind the camera. Ever-present, yet recorded as absent.

Another partial truth: those gorgeous golden harvest scenes where we would bundle up the hot four course supper in the green GMC and drive 4 miles up to the West field.

The pictures that show us kids happily sitting with Dad as he stopped the combine to sit in the back of the pick up and eat roast beef, fresh garden new potatoes, thick brown gravy and freshly picked corn on the cob with us, belied the long anxious days of squinting for thunderclouds, the aching necks from craning to watch the hopper unload, the gritty teeth filled with gravel road dusk from the one tonne truck relaying back and forth to the granary, the late night worry checks for signs of an early frost…these truths were never revealed. From a 7 year old’s point of view, this was all a great fun picnic. The camera lied but it became my truth.

So as I approach the photo-sharing chapter of this course I do so as both a participant and an observer, mindful of the power of the presented image in the partial telling of the truth. It is not the creation of the photo I fear. That is the creative expression of a point in time from a particular perspective that is wonderfully satisfying; rather it is the presentation part that is frightening.

I emailed a recent photo to my husband who in turn edited it and re-presented it online. Hey that’s mine! I shouted, greatly offended.

Artistic ownership is forfeited once you hit send! he rejoined fiendishly.

And therein lies the problem. What will my students make of this when we set up our photography blog? Even so often one comes to me in tears wailing, I took some pictures of myself and sent them to my boyfriend and now they are all over the school!!
Yes she was posing provocatively. Truth. No they weren't intended for the wider audience. Also truth. The audience has changed their perceptions of her. Forever. Also truth. She's not a bad girl. Also truth. She is seen as slutty. Truth. Yes, Richardson, there is the creaton of community but there is also potential for the destruction of another.

But let’s back up. This piece is to be about the process, but these thoughts provide a context for the process. So on to the process:

What I did: Reflection on the process of learning this tool:

• Went to Google and found that Picasa was the suggested mate to BlogSpot for photo sharing. By now you know my penchant for easy, so I bit.

• Clicked, browsed my picture files, uploaded...and Bob’s your uncle, there they were. So far so good!
• Went to Share and it wanted an email address. Now that won’t work.
• Then went to Trailfire to actually view the video. Wouldn’t download.
• Remembered one of my bright classmates suggestion Youtube.
• Googled Youtube ant there it was. Great!
• Came back to Picas, tried again. Failed.
• Went to HELP section, tried again. Success
• Made cheat sheets on paper.
• Now here is where I get hooped. The fiddling starts.
• How to I change the name of my album?
• Opps forgot to put captions.
• Comments! We get to comment! Another 2 hours rolls by.
• How do I edit? Made a diagram on paper for that one.
• Do you see how unintuitive this all is? They assume if you know how to drive an automatic, you know how to drive a stick!
• What a movies section! Wow! I really don’t care about the class “schedule” I’m on a roll. Remember, I don’t wear a watch…
• My process is very much one of “keep rolling”. Just like learning a foreign language, if I don’t keep at it and at it I forget totally where I was and don’t have the intuition or muscle memory to just do it the next time.
• Whoa…..!! Now there's a map option for my photos. Did this one twice, no three times. Satellite? Terrain?...Heck, let’s try them all!
• Two more hours roll on by. Supper is not ready. Dogs look hungry.
• Time to check how the blog looks
• Oh no, have to rearrange. But I forgot all that I did yesterday.
• Go back to cheat sheets, re-learn, rearrange the blog furniture, just cause I can.
• Everyone’s hungry. Time is up!

Suggestions:

• Clean up my photo files! There is so many flotsam and jetsam in here I take forever to navigate through and find that just perfect photo I knew I took last.um January?
• Going to Events helps but I really must house clean in here.
• Go through iPhotos first; pull photos to desktop, way easier and more efficient to put on Picasa.
• Now the desktop’s a mess. Start shoving picks, docs, and cheat sheets into file folders. Much better! This is fun.

What would the real Picasso think of all this photo sharing that bears a resonance of his name? Well as the artist who created his own rules, then broke them and developed Cubism, as a means to depict different viewpoints simultaneously, he may have been amused by our display. His later years’ mass production of sketches foreshadowed in some way our own online perpetual digital exhibition.

What will we remember? Was the bucolic autumnal repast a picnic or a much needed breather, cleaving a 14 hour day? Which memory is true? Which is disposable?

In the end, my mom’s old brownies still works. We are now on our fifth digital camera.

On June 22, 2009, Kodak officially retired Kodachrome color film after 74 years.