The Mirror With a Memory:
Going through this reading I was reminded of my IB art class a great deal. In this class we had to do artist critiques very often where we'd examine the works put out by the different artists we were studying and apply the different elements and principles of art to their works. Judging from this reading and from my experience looking over Riis' images I'd have to say that his work was not that of an amateur. While he claims he "had to use it [...] and beyond that [he] never went"the images he produced were so high grade that I'm disinclined to believe this. Each shot was taken with extreme care to show exactly what Riis wanted to be seen. They are both artistic and aesthetic. They show the squalor of the urban poor so precisely and meticulously that he could not have just snapped a picture and moved on.
In the case of "Five Cents a Spot" the scene is taken as a whole. It shows the whole of the room, further adding to the idea of crowded-ness. The people and their surroundings are dingy and dirty, further emphasized by the dark values in the room. Such a rendering took careful thought, obvious with the intent to provoke sympathy, so it's highly unlikely that Riis only used photography because he had to.
Any other art students/ex-students, do you agree with this interpretation? Can you find just as many artistic techniques as I have in any number of Riis' pictures?
да спаткання,
Jon
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