How do you define photography? Is it merely taking a picture with a point and shoot? Or is it snapping a shot with a piece of equipment that already has disposable in its name. Photography can be self expression, or a glimpse at reality for others who might not be able to see things from a first hand point of view. A photographer should open their lens so that the world may see what they see, they should publish their photos so that others who do not have the ability to travel may see what else is out there in the world. But more importantly photographers should put their work out there so we as a society can take a step back from ourselves and see the whole world in the greater picture of things and not just what’s right infront of us. Because if you become comfortable with a situation then you become jaded to it and when you become jaded towards something then you stop caring and you should never stop caring.
Elliot Erwitt is a famous photographer that mainly worked in black and white photography. A picture that almost everyone is guaranteed to have seen is his “segregated Water Fountains” a photo that appears in countless US History Textbooks. I am a child of a generation that did not have segregation, to me segregation is just a piece of history that I wasn’t a part of . Just stories. However, it is photos like this photo here, capturing a colored man at a water fountain that is blatantly not equivalent to the water fountain next to him labeled “white”
Besides that Erwitt has many other beautiful candid pictures of different people ranging from president John F. Kennedy to Arnold Shwartzenager. His use of lights and shadows helps create astonishing pictures with very distinct silhouettes.
He has a photo collection called Phototoons and although I am not a strong advocate for this collection I do believe that it would have been good to use during the imagined reality project. He took simple situations such as men looking at art vs women or a bird in comparison to an airplane and you got that there was humor behind his photos. Some of the photos in this collection that I did not like were the photos where he replaced a human head with a bulldogs head.
His portrait collection of strangers has a very interesting feel to it I can’t tell if he knew all of these people in it and each scene was set up or if he just went into different neighborhoods and took pictures candidly of people. Capturing the simplicity of children in the moment without them reacting to the camera is very hard and i believe he did it in a beautiful way.
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