This weeks topic was pretty expansive but what I concluded from the end of the class is that expanded photography has been a term coined to represent the substantial increase in quantity of photographs over the last few decades that are available to the masses and how this increase has pushed the limits onto what ‘photography’ is and what genres those photographs might fall into. I think it also addresses the argument that this idea that originality or authenticity is somewhat lost when anyone could call themselves a photographer these days with their revolutionary smartphones. In The Truth of Experience: Notes on Expanded Photography, Cramerotti (2011) says, “photography may no longer be subdivided and talked about according to genres…it’s various categories have been reconfigured, blurring the boundaries”, in which I believe he’s referring to expanded photography transcending into this idea of new or contemporary media which is more experimental and perhaps strays away from a photograph being needed to be documentary and more conceptual.

We got a chance to see some previous years works for the major assignment and I found it really intriguing to see the different ways that people interpreted this idea of expanded photography. I loved the project ‘Astromood’ by Margo Tanjuto and the way she used colour and editing to tell her story and I also thought the the project ‘Movement of water’ by Zane Chang was really well done. I’ve documented over the last few weeks the shutter speed and me don’t play together very well…but I thought Chang nailed it!

For my project I think I’m going to stick to commercial food photography like I did for the Mimesis project, but maybe have a focus more on it’s place on Instagram and the technicalities behind the aesthetics specific for the grid.

References:

Cramerotti, A., 2011. The Truth Of Experience: Notes On Expanded Photography. (online) Digicult | Digital Art, Design and Culture. Available at: <http://digicult.it/digimag/issue-066/the-truth-of-experience-notes-of-expanded-photography/> (Accessed 30 November 2020).