week8:Photography: reconceptualising culture, memory and space

Photography is a fascinating thing. Being a photographer is even more fascinating. Although everyone has its own perception to every photograph, “The photographer has the power to sway viewer with pictures of people or situations taken out of context.”(Lou Jacobs Jr. 1979:131). Since photographers have the power to sway views' perception, they also have obligation to deliver certain messages to the viewers in the photographs.  They can use the photographs as a cultural critique, or "bring social or political issues to the attention of the viewers".(Terence Wright,1999,136) Moreover, photographers have obligation to concentrate the issues that are always overlooked by people.


Here is the photo I took in 2009 Chinese New Year Festival in China. I’m not sure whether I’m a good photographer but I hope that you can have the similar perception as mine.

Do you know what New Year Festival means to a Chinese? New Year festival is to Chinese what Hari Raya is to Malay. New Year Festival is the most important festival in the year and family members gather together to celebrating the upcoming New Year. But this old man, has to collect the scraps for miserable money. Where is his family? No one knows and no one cares. The reason why I choose this photograph is that it show strong social critique, which can be stated as follow.

This photograph can be analyzed through the semiotic approach, which we have already learned before.

Sign: an old man is collecting the scraps

Denotation: an old ,poor man who is wearing threadbare clothes is collecting scraps and looks lonely.

Connotation: Poverty, Minor group ignorance, wealth gap in China

Maybe this phenomenon is not familiar to you, but it’s quite familiar to me. Old men collecting scraps is common in China. This old man is merely, one of the minority group of the society. He represents the group of people who live under the poverty line in China. China is becoming more and more powerful, but at the meantime the gap between the rich and the poor is wider and wider. The government keeps repeating their plan of narrowing the gap. But the truth is, it never works. Minority group is always overlooked. I hope that this photographer can arouse people's awareness of helping those who are suffering. What's more, I hope that Chinese government can stop talking the nonsense and take proper action to help these miserable people.

References:

1.Lous Jacobs Jr.( 1979). Expressing Photography. California. Goodyear Publishing Company. Pp.131
2.Wright,T.(1999). Photography Handbook.London, Routlege, Retrieve Octocber 20 from http://site.ebrary.com.ezproxy.ubd.edu.bn/lib/ubdlib/docDetail.action?docID=10054800&p00=semiotics%20photography