Chapter 3

1. Do you think that our move to digital photography has drastically changed the nature of family photo collections? As images are increasingly stored in their digital form (and sent via email or uploaded online) as opposed to printed out and put in an album, how does that change the nature of photography archives for future generations?

2. Has seeing yourself in a personal photograph influenced the construction of your own identity? Has it played a larger part in that identity construction at certain points in your life?

3. When you view family photos or personal photos as a reader rather than a user, what do you find? Bring in an example of a personal photo that may exhibit interest for both a user and a reader.

Chapter 2

1. Watch the following interview with Taryn Simon, photographer of the series An Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar and The Innocents. She touches on a number of topics that we discussed during class, such as the historical documentary role of photography and the context in which her photographs are viewed. Do you agree with her statement that "the museum is the purest form in which to show work"? What about her statement regarding collaboration with her subjects? What other points did she bring up that were of interest to you?

http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/8366


2. Answer the following questions that were recently posed in a public forum about documentary photography (from the "What is Real?" symposium at the ICP, December 2008)

Does the blurring of “documentary” and “art” attest to the failure of traditional documentary forms, or does it merely evince a drive to produce socially and politically relevant work, whatever the context?
Have documentary tendencies in art diluted the effectiveness or truth-value of socially engaged, “concerned” documentary?
Has the very impossibility of objective truth itself become a trope?


3. Do you think that Humphrey Spender's Mass Observation project bears any resemblance to the current proliferation of blogs, Facebook, etc. in which in which participants may share details of their daily life? How are they different?