Akihiko Miyoshi Lecture Summary

Professor Miyoshi started his lecture by explaining his background in computer engineering and photography. Once he began branching out into fine art photography, he wished to find out how "photo relates to art", and the nature of photographic images. He introduced the work of Sehgal, noting how the photographer banned any photos or documentation of his work. Miyoshi also spoke about some of the photographers that he respected, and how, when seeing prints of the work outside of the museum, they seemed cheap, poster-like, and confusing. He then presented two facts: photos need context, and they always point to something. With his own work, he wished to blur the lines between photography and other artistic mediums, such as painting. In his photo "Ode to the Pictoralists" (which we viewed in class), he took two simultaneous photos from different cameras with different shutter speeds, then overlayed them to produce a very "painterly" image. He then showed his photo called "18% Gray", which (in the first image) showed a card with many red, green, blue dots arranged in a pattern. In the second image, the focus was on the background, with the card blurred, and the card now appeared to be solid gray, rather than component dots. He played with this theme of component colors in his gray photographs, which he briefly talked about.
      Later, he began talking about how there is no more material substance in this digital age of photography, and how photos are now about the transmission of information. He wanted to investigate this loss of control, and find out why people go to see pictures in places like galleries. Pictures used to be rarer, and were an experience to be visited, whereas now all the pictures come to us. In his "Webcam Series", he took low-quality images shot by webcams, and painted them pixel by pixel. His presentation of these works were interesting as well. Though they are too complicated for me to explain fully, many involved cameras viewing the work being displayed, and having the display of the image projected as a new, modifiable artwork in which the viewers can literally "inject themselves" into the art. Lastly, he explained his exploration of reconstructing images on different mediums, such as laser etching on paper and aluminum. He concluded his lecture with the idea of the suspension of disbelief that is now present in photographic appreciation; fakes are now easy to produce with photomanipulation, and there is the conflict between truth and doubt. He finished with a very true statement: "a picture can support itself either way."