Today's post is a group-post, so make sure to include all your names at the beginning or end of your post.
1. Choose one photograph from Walter Martin and Paloma Munoz's series titled Travelers.
2. Write a paragraph analysis of that photograph in which you answer the following questions:
a) what is the photograph about/what theme(s) does the photograph convey?
b) how do the artists use symbols and archetypes in order to evoke/convey meaning in the photograph?
3. Your analysis must use three quotes from Ariadne's Clue:
a) quote with introductory phrase;
b) quote with independent clause and colon;
c) pieces of quote incorporated within your own syntax.
Ariana Branson, Nicole Lackey, Cristina Elizondo
ReplyDeleteTraveler 170 at Night, 2005
This photograph taken by Walter Martin and Paloma Munoz shows a house on a cliff that seems to be falling forward. There is what looks to be an old man sitting on the edge of the cliff. This photo displays a few different themes. It seems as if the elements are surrounding him and he has no reliable shelter from these. One archetype the photo conveys is a broken down, seemingly abandoned house. This demonstrates the man’s loneliness, loss of protection and shelter. There are many ideas conveyed through the archetype of a house: “a sense of containment and enclosure, providing warmth and protection from the elements, a place of domesticity, intimacy, and nurturance” (Stevens, 1998, p.153). Another archetype portrayed in this photograph would be the color red. The house is red and according to Anthony Stevens (1998), “red was the colour of blood (representing life and the warmth of the body) and fire (activity and mental excitement).” (p. 148). In the photograph the red is being blanketed by the white of the snow which is demonstrating the loss of warmth and life from the house as well as the man. While the meaning of the color white is “associated with the light, sun, air, holiness, perfection, and innocence” in this photograph the snow is white and taking away the life from the photo therefore the color white “denotes truce, surrender, friendship, and goodwill” (Steven, 1998, p. 148). The man outside the house is surrendering to the elements and allowing himself to be overcome with them in goodwill and without a fight.
Ashley Corvera
ReplyDeleteMarciela Isarraras
Diala Nimri
Walter Martin and Paloma Munoz
Traveler 79 at Night, 2003
Traveler 79 photograph symbolizes the human nature of attachment to others and objects. According to the author, “as a species we are predisposed to form bonds of attachment to crucial figures in our lives” (p. 48). The artist projects symbolism of attachment by presenting a couple struggling to keep the household intact. The idea is complex: “the symbolic association of union with the notion of wholeness and joy, and of separation with division, loss, and longing is beautifully represented in Plato’s myth of the original human beings” (p. 48). Even though these two ideas are similar in that they both “masculine and feminine are incorporated within a circle,” the first idea is more important in that “T’ai Chi, with its interlocking elements of light and dark, Yang and Yin” (p. 49).
Javier, Joanna, Kevin
ReplyDeleteWalter Martin and Paloma Muñoz
Almost Human, 2004
This photograph represent, the innocence of childhood, represented by kids playing in the snow. The children reflect the need for growth. According to Stevens (1998), the author of Ariadne’s Clue, “[…] imagination is given free rein to complement the realities or compensate for the deficiencies of everyday existence.” (p.420)
The artist conveys the archetype of childhood by having boys involved in a snow fight. The games boys play are often more aggressive than those played by girls: “Organized men’s team games are, in fact, symbolic wars. They provide an opportunity for males to band together into squads which then go off to play (‘do battle’) against one another on a pitch (‘battlefield’) divided into opposite ends (‘territories’)” (p.421). The title of the picture, Almost Human, refers to children’s constant “struggle” to grow into a full-grown human, and gain “dependence.” (Stevens, p.420) The symbolic representation that this artist gives is childhood. The children are exposed playing in the snow, showing the act of play. The act of play is a step into which a child begins to develop and learn new life experiences.
Regina Gottwald
ReplyDeleteGonzalo Heredia
Calie Wright
Most people are familiar with the phrase from mothers “I gave you life and I can take it away.” Mothers can represent life, love, and comfort. Mothers can also represent dark and sinister elements within them. Anthony Stevens (1998) states, “where the Good Mother’s symbols are the flowing breast, the abundant cornucopia, the fruitful womb, the terrible mother is the bloodstained goddess of death and destruction”(p.176). Walter Martin and Paloma Munoz’s, “Traveler 264” shows us the evil side of a mother. The archetype of Mother may be like that of, “Kali dancing on the hapless form of Shiva,” she is conniving and dangerous, “she is ‘dark, and all-devouring time,” there is no escaping her as shown in “Traveler” 264” (p.176). This image also represents the archetype of the spider, and how the evil mother is similar to the elements of the spider: “It is also sinister, a dangerous, mindless beast of prey, sometimes processing a lethal bite” (p.351). Evil mothers share elements of danger and death and the feeling of no escape.
The snow globe Traveler 170 at Night by Walter Martin and Paloma Munoz it has a red house falling from an iceberg and an old man sitting at the edge of it. The old man is turned away from the house and with his head hanging low. We think that the authors are conveying a sense of loss, hopelessness, struggle by having the old man wear black. According to Stevens (1998) the color black “is universally associated with darkness, death, sickness, and evil” (p. 147). The house is falling, it’s a cold environment, and the old man is by himself turned away from the house, which gives a sense that they are both on the edge of their existence. The idea of the house falling is: “Symbolically, it represents loss of social, spiritual, or moral status – as in fall from grace, pride going before a fall, a falling women etc.”(Stevens, 1998, p. 418). The snow globe is surrounded by white because it’s on the ice berg, there snow floating around and the man’s hair is white, this color “can be associated with death” and “holiness” so we think he is ready to let go and die (Stevens, 1998, 148). – Rosa, Lauri & Zully
ReplyDeleteRoy A., Baleria A., Patricia A.
ReplyDelete2. Walter Martin and Paloma Munoz’s photograph shows dominance in a relationship, women not submitting to men and not following gender roles. The man being tied up shows how he feels tied in to the relationship and the woman is empowering. According to Anthony’s Stevens book, Ariandne’s Clue, he argues, “to feel the power of a symbol is to enter a world of make-believe”(pg 76). The woman is a spider, symbolizing the life of a female black widow. The female black widow eats the male after her eggs are fertilized showing her independence and domination from the male. Humans and animals use the same survival methods because “nature provides the mean of training behavioral systems that are vital to life – social intimacy, cooperation and conflict, ranking behavior, sexuality, the control of aggression and so on”(pg 77). When the viewers may look at the photograph it may mean nothing to them but depending on their perspective and gender they may be influenced to establish an opinion: “In themselves, images are meaningless; they acquire energy-with-meaning only when we grant it to them, by laying ourselves open to their influence” (pg 81). Therefore, this image is alive and stand out to those in that position.
Chika Nwanonenyi
ReplyDeleteAshly Anfield
Francisco Hernandez
The picture we chose to use is named Alone Together by Martin and Paloma, which symbolizes a marriage in despair. The artist uses the archetypal setting of a cold snowy forest, which symbolizes the state of their marriage. Although they are alone in their despair, they are still attached through the marriage they have committed to. Furthermore, this picture also shows both humans dressed alike emphasizing their marriage, which according to Anthony Stevens they have decided to “negate one’s individuality and to assert one’s conformity to an ideal or a role” (Stevens, 1998, p. 400). While the author describes the eyes as being the “windows of the soul”, they can also “receive close attention during social interactions, to read the mental and emotional state of the other person” (p. 404). The artists, Martin and Paloma, depict the couple as being bounded together by shackles. The husband wants to leave the marriage, but the wife wants to stay, which is signified by him standing and her sitting down on a rock. To Stevens, the couple chained together by the feet illustrates them as being prisoners of their own marriage, and in this case, it is the wife who wants to stay grounded: the foot is “The lowest part of the body through which one is related to the ground (to fundamental reality)” (p. 406).
Sandra Garcia
ReplyDeleteHilda Nieblas
Thalia Rios
The photograph by Walter Martin and Paloma Munoz of Traveler, 264 consists of a female spider and a man entangled by her web. The theme of this photograph symbolizes marriage and how the man is tied down by her. The artist uses the spider as an archetype because it is seen as evil and poisonous from culture to culture. However, they use the woman disguised as a spider as a symbol of a conniving woman. According to Anthony Stevens (1998), “its inexorable mode of locomotion makes it an object of fear, in many instances amounting to frank phobia” (p. 351). Many men become afraid of women because of their conniving ways which implants fear in them just as a spider does. The spider in the photograph also represents a sexual anima. For example, men are drawn to women who have an aura of a sexual being: “Sexual anima: as with Eve, this figure motivates man’s biological instincts” (Woodman, 2011, slide 36). Women are a symbol of the existence of humanity by suffering through child birth. Women also weave their fate by deciding who they will marry. This symbolizes spiders because spiders “weave together with weblike threads the existence of humanity” and they are like “spinners and weavers of fate” (Stevens, 1998, p. 194-195).
The picture by Walter Martin and Paloma Muñoz demonstrates marriage where the woman is the one in control. The spider is an archetype used by the artists to represent authority from a woman to man. According to Stevens (1998), author of Ariadne’s Clue, “the spider’s life of weaving and killing, creating and destroying, is an allegory of the opposing forces on which the existence of the cosmos depends” (p. 351). The two opposing forces could be interpreted by the male and the female in a relationship, where they have different points of view. The man in the picture is wearing business attire with a hat that can represent the struggle between home and work: “fear that an attachment bond may be under threat can result in anger and aggression, as well as anxiety, while loss of an attachment figure is associated with grief, despair, depression, and sometimes suicide” (Stevens, 1998, p. 48). While the spider is “[has] inexorable mode of locomotion” she feels trapped at home which “makes [her] an object of fear”(Stevens, 1998, p. 351).
ReplyDeleteMaria G.
Serena D.
Marco A.
Stephanie Pickens and Melissa Sherman
ReplyDeleteIn the picture, Traveler 126 at Night by Munoz and Martin, many archetypes emerge for analysis. The child represents the “explorer” archetype, and there is also a “protective mother.” The tree is done in a vertical manner that according to Anthony Stevens, (1998) ”Vertical projections from the horizontal […] carry the eye upward to the top” (p. 103). By focusing on the top of the tree, the child emerges in a precarious position due to its natural curiosity. Mother, being on the ground, recognizes the danger, and fears for her child’s safety. The protective mother is genetically conditioned to save her offspring when a dangerous situation emerges. For example, the mother is reaching up for her child that is in danger of falling: “Through the genome of our species we inherit the archetypal predispositions of our ancestors, and it on these basic and universal, and persistently active themes that individual cultures work out their sets of variations and transmit them from generation to generation” (Stevens, 1998, p.82.) The mother and the child are the perfect example of Stevens’ idea that “Biology has decreed that the very continuance of life is dependent on the ability of organisms to replicate and regulate themselves”(p. 83.) The mother is protecting her child to ensure that in the future the child will grow and then feel protective toward its own offspring.