Writing this post after our class discussion today I’m going to try and follow Barthes’s guides on how to study a pictures.

First, studium- how is the photo constructed

Composed of two separate parts the photo is a negative. On right hand-side we se a cactus, done in black and white, where the contrast between the darkest and the lights places are blown out of proportions.  The picture on the left represents a cooling tower also done in black and white.

Second, punctum- a personal reflection

In this “collage” John Wood presents two not related items: a cactus and a cooling tower. At a first glance one would look at it briefly and continue slowly toward other pictures at the exhibit. But if one decides to stop, and think about it a little bit more there is an entire world of ideas that can be based just on these two pictures.
I was that one, when we went to the ICP together with our class. First I briefly looked around the room taking in simply the icons that were presented on the wall. Everything changes once we started talking. Pop, pop, pop…the ideas kept popping out of our mouths. Knowing that John Wood is a photographer whose pictures deal with topic such a war in Vietnam or ecology, we quickly started finding those subjects in his pictures.
This picture that represents a cactus and a cooling tower is a metaphor.
Cactuses just like nuclear plants are usually present in deserted areas. They are unfriendly to people. Cactus unlike rose repulses people, so does the cooling tower. As portrayed on the photograph both have similar shapes, solid and very static.

“…Maybe the time has come for creative photography to encompass the large problems without propaganda or journalism…” Wood said in 1970.
Seeing his exhibit made me understand his quote even more. Normally when we see pictures in support of a certain cause they are very literate- a spot of oil a river, or a body of a soldier. He on another hand tries to send his messages “in between the lines”. It doesn’t strikes you right between the eyes but makes you think. It doesn’t impose any ideas it simply provides you with direction.

The exhibit we went to see, made me realize how much a picture is different from a picture; not by its content but by what it represents, how it is presented. Even the artist himself used a photograph takes from a journal and adjusted it so it would take on another meaning. By changing brightness, cropping or zooming a picture can change from a frozen moment into a story.