Firing Squad
Categories: China, Photography, Tourism
Category Archives: Photography
What The Photograph Takes, What the Photograph Misses
Fujiazhuang Beach in Dalian presents a dizzying array of of activities and actions, social and personal trajectories of participation and involvement—all jostling up against one another on a small strip of sandy shore. My first day there, as I walked its length I saw a huge group of Russian children having a squirt gun fight next to Chinese couples cuddling nearly fully clothed on beach blankets. While some young men fished at the shore, a large group of retirees sat sunning […]
Categories: China, Mythologies, Photography, Scripts • Tags: Dalian, wedding photographs, 婚纱
Not Playing Ping Pong Playing Ping Pong
“The territory no longer precedes the map, nor survives it. Henceforth it is the map that precedes the territory—precession of simulacra—it is the map that engenders the territory and if we were to revive the fable today, it would be the territory whose shreds are slowly rotting across the map. It is the real, and not the map, whose vestiges subsist here and there…” —Jean Baudrillard (1988: 166). Yesterday a student forwarded an image to me that she found on […]
Categories: Games, Photography, Representation • Tags: analog games, Jean Baudrillard, ping pong, simulacra, simulations, skeuomorph, video games
Faux Vintage Photos and Profound Academic Labor
Weekly field assignments are making for a very interesting and useful pedagogical experiment in this Fall’s Introduction to Anthropology class. Reviewing and scoring the field journals each Tuesday, however, makes for some intense grading. At least taking a fake Daguerreotype photo of the pile of black Moleskine notebooks, and posting it on Facebook makes it feel like the work of grading is more profound than it might otherwise be. UPDATE: Last night I finished evaluating the last of the journals, […]
Categories: Introduction to Anthropology, Photography, Representation, Social Class • Tags: assignments, faux vinage, school
