3SCL2
HUMANITIES 1: Art, Man, and Society
Laurel Nakadate's project entitled 365 Days: A Catalogue of Tears, shows her attempt of exploring the world loneliness by documenting a year-long performance of herself before, during, and after crying. Her project began in 2010 and ended a year after.
The images were photographed at different locations such as the bedroom, the train, comfort rooms, inside the airplane either dressed or half-naked. The techniques she used ranged from close-up body shots to the standard zoom of the camera. The photographs are printed at 8x10 [40x50 inches] dimension and was featured at MoMA in Long Island. An example of her photograph shows Nakadate holding her wrist while screaming in pain. Another image shows her half-naked body and is facing away from the camera as if she was avoiding it. Furthermore, the overall appearance of the photo gives of Nakadate's …show more content…
To photograph is to appropriate the thing or idea photographed. This means putting oneself into a certain relation to the world (e.g. knowledge and power) (CITE). It provides "most of the knowledge people have about the look of the past and the reach of the present." In line with this, she questioned the authenticity of the “result of photographic enterprises” by alluding Plato's allegory of the cave. The allegory reflects the idea of deception wherein cave prisoners learn and discover shadows of objects from the fire casted inside the cave, making them see and mislabel these images. Sontag argued that just like paintings and illustrations, photography gives us an incomplete representation to the world, which will likely to be falsely interpreted. Despite providing an “anthology of images”, photographs give us miniatures and glimpses of reality about the world (1). Images taken by the camera cannot fully capture the beauty and reality of the