Point. Click. Happy.

Tonight was the first session of my new Night Photography class at CHAW. I had been debating signing up for this due to time and money, but I'm SO glad I did it. It's just so much fun for me, and such a creative and intellectual outlet, to be having a conversation with a great group of people about a topic I love.

Tonight we watched the first hour of a PBS special on the history of 20th Century photography. It again brought up one of my favorite topics to think about, the ethics of photography. Did you know that photographic manipulation has been around since long before Photoshop? We saw examples of what were called "composographs" - manipulated images that were very common in the early days of tabloid journalism in the 1920's. One of the NY papers, for example, capitalized on the extreme public reaction (in the new age of celebrity) to Rudolph Valentino's death by running a composograph on the front page showing "Rudy in Heaven." Seriously! They had doctored up a photo to make it look like Rudy was among the angels. Crazy!

I love this topic cuz it challenges one of the very things we hold dear -- unlike most other art forms, people tend to believe that a photograph is representing reality. That if something is shown in a picture, it's true. This has huge ramifications for modern life -- think about photojournalism, advertising, sociology, cross-cultural understanding, etc. So learning all about these techniques for manipulation is helping me be more skeptical. I learned in my early class about a number of examples of manipulation in the pages of National Geographic. So it's been interesting to go to these Nat Geo photo lectures knowing that....

Another great thing about tonight's class - I got to see that my 2 images from the summer are still up on exhibit! I love seeing my own work, looking so professional hanging on the wall! If you're anywhere near CHAW over the next week or so, go check it out.