Exercise 6—Candid portrait

This exercise came at a good time because my subject had been wanting an updated headshot that she could use online. My simple ‘studio’ was just that: simple. I had my subject sit on a stool with her back to a large window and lit her face obliquely with a single LED light source through

Exercise 5—Privileged

Colour / race Ethnicity Sex / gender Sexual orientation Education Socio-economic status Social networks Shelter / accommodation / stability Employment Mother tongue Relationship status Physical health / ability Mental health / ability I have seen Peggy McIntosh’s list before, so the content and concepts are not new to me. My employer has also made a

Exercise 4—Hoek answers Wolukau-Wanambwa

Stanley Wolukau-Wanambwa’s article (2015) raises a number of pressing questions about the portrayal of The Other in photography using examples drawn from recent publications by photographers Jan Hoek, Viviane Sassen and Cristina de Middel. In this specific case, The Others are Black Africans and the photographers are White Europeans. Wolukau-Wanambwa’s primary objection to the work of

Exercise—Ideology

Disclosure: I tend to vote the issues rather than along party lines and have voted for a range of Canadian political parties in federal and provincial elections. Print journalists in Canada’s mainstream media are commonly held to be left-of-centre in their politics, although this requires two caveats: 1) this is clearly not the case for

Exercise 2—Kept from view

A list, in no particular order: Immigrants, particularly non-white/non-European Refugees Indigenous people The poor People with moderate political opinions (media likes extremes) People of faith, unless they are promoting something benign or (approvingly) holding non-controversial opinions or are (disapprovingly) culturally inappropriate and therefore a good spectacle People who are LGBTQ2, unless they are entertaining and/or

Research point—Photograph used to make a political point

Anyone who was old enough to read a newspaper or magazine, or watch the TV news in Canada in 1990 will remember this image. It was taken by Shaney Komulainen, a Canadian Press photographer, during what came to be known as the Oka Crisis, ” a 78-day standoff (11 July–26 September 1990) between Mohawk protesters, Quebec police, the RCMP and the Canadian Army”

Project 2–Everything affects everything

I can understand how Jeff Mitchell can claim that “[t]he people in the photo have been betrayed by Ukip, rather than me personally. […] I was busy on another job when I heard they’d used it, and carried on with my work as normal. My job – telling the story of the migrants – had

Reflection point: Encoding and Decoding in the Television Discourse

I took the time to find a copy of “Encoding and Decoding in the Television Discourse” (Hall, 1973) and read it through to make sure that I had adequately understood the author’s concepts and how he had arrived at them. Stephen Bull (2010: 70) places his reference to Hall’s work within the context of a

Exercise 2.1—National Press

The example below is taken from a recent article in the online edition of a Canadian weekly newsmagazine, Maclean’s. The image, taken by the writer of the article, is a picture of Dave Resser, sheriff of Benewah County in northern Idaho. Preferred reading: Adnan Khan has portrayed Sheriff Resser in what looks like a self-satisfied

Reading task—Human rights, human wrongs

The essay by Mark Sealy, Director of Autograph, for the Human Rights, Human Wrongs exhibition is no longer available on the website of The Photographer’s Gallery. Instead, I reviewed an interview with (Seymour, 2015) and listened to a short video associated with the exhibition of some 250 photographs from the Black Star photo archives, hosed