For Tuesday: Morris, Believing is Seeing, Chapter 4, Part 2

NOTE: Remember to choose an iconic work of art for your next paper soon! Once you pick an image, everything will get so much easier. Start researching slowly, reading an article or a website here and there. Before you know it, you'll have enough to write a paper--or two! 

Answer two of the following:

Q1: In talking to some of the experts, one of them tells Morris that photographers at that time sought "the kind of expression people are supposed to wear in documentary photos dealing with social problems" (161). What kind of expression is he talking about? How might this relate to the Migrant Mother image we looked at in class on Wednesday?

Q2: On page 173, Morris quotes Rothstein who writes of his own photo, "This picture was not controversial; it was informative--the dust storm picture. In the beginning, it was a record; after that it became a news picture, it then became a feature photograph, eventually it became a historical photograph, and now it's considered a work of art in most museums." How does a picture go from being an informative photo to a work of art in a few decades? What changes? What makes people see a different 'truth'?

Q3: If photography is art, and art is a series of rules that you  make up yourself and "follow slavishly" (167), what does it mean to make a photo 'artistic'? Should paintings and photos all follow the same rules to make them 'true' and 'legitimate'? Or can every artist follow their own rules as long as they show the world what they feel is real and true? What might be the problem with this? OR, what might be the advantage of this? 

Q4: How does the modern picture of Florence Thompson and her grown children change the context (or belief) of the Migrant Mother photo? If we put them side by side, what would we now see? Should we know the future (or the past) of an image? Or just its present?