Spectacularizing the Everyday: Notes on the World Press Photo “Daily Life” Category
Lecturer: Li-Hsin KUO | Critic, Associate Professor of Department of Radio & Television, National Chengchi University
Time: Saturday, April 29, 2017, 14: 30-17: 00
Venue: TFAM Auditorium
Co-panelist: Yin-Hua Chu l Artist
Synopsis
What is the “everyday”? Is it political in nature? And how have the mechanisms of modern capitalism shaped it into an established concept? Considering several award-winning works from the “Daily Life” category of the Netherlands-based World Press Photo contest, this lecture analyzes how the mechanism of the Western news photography competition guides and shapes the concepts of “life” and “everyday” in photographic images. We first trace back to how the American magazine Life shaped the “tradition” of news photography, “inventing” an imagined mode of life in both the United States and the world, which has influenced the direction in which World Press Photo and other institutions encourage the interpretation of “daily life.” By virtue of their chosen subject matter, angle of view, image style, and anticipated viewers, the winning “Daily Life” photos transform images of everyday life from all over the world, but particularly non-Western societies, into visual and cultural spectacles. Using concrete examples, this lecture will explore the elements and methods by which this spectacularization takes place, as well as its cultural and political effects.
Li-Hsin KUO earned a Ph.D. from the Department of Media and Communications,
Goldsmiths College, University of London. An associate professor in the Department
of Radio and Television, National Chengchi University, he also works as critic of
documentary photography and documentary film. Kuo is the author of Writing
Photography (1998), and More Writing on Photography (2013). He has written on
various individual artists, photography theory, photography and society, politics,
broadcasting, and the media.
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