Taryn Simon and James Nachtwey Ted’s Talk
The world of photography is wide and have different concept. As we can see, there are nature photographer, traveler photographer, photojournalist, documentary photographer, and etc. As we know, they have different purposes and objectives. In Ted’s Talk, two people from the photography world spoke about their journey and experiences. Taryn Simon who is a photojournalist and James Nachtwey who is a Documentary Photographer (War Photographer). Both of them shared their experienced during their works as photographer.
Taryn Simon is photojournalist. As a photojournalist, she documented anything that is related to news and current issue. Regardless as being a photojournalist, Taryn Simon works are mostly to undercover specific things and event in the field. She believes that a photograph has the ability to blur the reality, resulting in ambiguity meaning. As like in her works the Innocence, whereas she explains about how a victim can be wrongly convicted. And in the “An American Index: The Hidden and Unfamiliar” where she wants to undiscovered Disney but getting a rejection instead. Disney afraid of the power of photograph that could change the people perspective when they visit Disney. In this matter. A photograph can be really lethal weapon; it can easily change the whole meaning of something if we changed some elements on it. Disney aware of this and they choose not to allow the documentation. They are afraid of children changing their perspective and it could destroy the whole process that Disney built.
James Nachtwey, in the other hand is a Documenter Photographer. He works a lot in war documentary. James Nachtwey explain a lot about his job during the war and how he captured every pictures that he creates a story behind it. Documenter Photography creates a story behind their works and thus making it different from Photojournalist. Although the different is not really that significant, but we consider about the effect and the process. James Nachtwey works mostly on war and he specified every details about his photographs. He wants to get the world attention to help and to see the world as it is. In his previous works, he documented the family in Indonesia that strives even the father has no hands. After he published his works, people began donating for the poor family and now they could live better. As we can see, he tried to make a changes in the world by letting people to see what the world is. His intention is to make people see through the scope of his lens. In the world of semiotic, we can see that he restraint the originality of his work. Unlike in photojournalism, most of the works can be staged and edited to gain better result, photo documenter itself let the originality. However, the originality restrains and added new meaning because the photographer adding the meaning by adding more pictures that makes it into sequences.
Photography is not the same as painting, it is a picture, yes, but both of them are different in contextual meaning. In this time, photography can be a weapon to start a changes. As what Taryn Simon and James Nachtwey did. Both of them pursued a purposes of their works and they created meaning in their works. Photography is not always about capturing moments and then its done, but sometimes it is more than that. You can create more meaning on your works, we create story and illusion whereas people could believe on us. We could also use a photograph as a weapon to attack someone. A photograph can be a strong weapon during argument. Photograph also can be really dangerous. Therefore, both Taryn Simon and James Nachtwey use the photograph as new method to view the world, to make people believe of their works.
References;
taryn Simon Ted Talk
James Nachtwey Ted Talk
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