WP1 Authors Note

The first thing I did when I was just starting with the rough draft of this paper was to come up with a thesis or direction to go with my paper. I looked back through the excersizes we had been doing for the past couple weeks and read through some of the ideas I had thrown out there already about my chosen photograph. I came down to having two possible rhetorical meaning for my photo which were highly contradictial to each other. One was that the author was making a statement about how the new elements and old emelents in Barcelona come together as one, and the other was that the author felt that commerialism was starting to overshadow parts of the city's history and culture. I ended up choosing to work with the second idea, mostly because it was the viewpoint that I figured less people could come up with themselves from the photo so I figured it would be much more fun to work with.
As far as the content of the paper itself goes, I really wanted to focus on the lighing and contrast within the photograph. Anytime you have a black and white photo, the contrast and balance of light and dark shades always plays a key role in conveying the photos meaning. My strategy was to break the photograph down into several smaller elements, analyze each of them individually, then relate them all back together to the photo as a whole.
As far as my revisions go, the first thing I did was added a meaningful conclusion which acted to tie all of the ideas throughout my paper together at the end. This included a "So What" statement as well as restating my thesis in a different way. I next added a couple photographs of parts of barcelona in which I fealt expressed some of the cities history or culture because in my paper, I am arguing that culture is being overshadowed. I slightly rephraised my origional thesis to be alittle less explicit and leave alitlle more room for interpretation on the part of the audience. On my final revision, I added alittle analysis in the conclusion of another photograph of the same area in barcelona. I fealt this helped to offer an additional perspective and also really helped build on the context of the Barcelona Nights photograph itself. I then mostly focussed on finding some additional facts about the history of Barcelona because if I was going to argue that the history was being overshadowed, it made sence to tell alittle about what that history was. I choose to incorporate most of this research near the beginning of my paper so the audience would be able to use it to build on the context behind the photo. Lastly, when analyzing the photograph one final time, I found a fw more, smaller elements, such as the lighting of the windows, which I decided also held some importance to the photos meaning so I chose to also incorporate alittle bit about that into my paper. Overall, I really enjoyed this project in comparison with writing projects I had done in the past, mostly because it left us so much room with self expression and developing our own ideas. We had some say in what we were writing about which definatly made the project more fun.

WP1 Final Draft

Barcelona, the Spanish capital, has a population of over 1,600,000 and is one of the major economic centers of Europe. One could closely compare its significance to Spain to that of New York City is to the United States because of its finance, commerce, media, entertainment, arts and international trade. The city's history is ledgendary, rumored to have been founded to Hercules, 400 years before the building of rome. While this may or may not have been the actual manner in which the Barcelona came into being, there is a definate romen influence present as anchient roman ruins can still be found there to this day. Barcelona has seen many different periods through spanish history including the spanish monarchy, civil war, Franquism and modern democracy. Today, Barcelona prides itself on the Placa Catalunya, which is known as the city's historical center where much of the old 19th century buildings and artwork can still be found. The city also prides itself on its 68 parks and 7 beaches, providing points of beauty throughout the city.(Wikipedia.com) The documentary photograph I have chosen to analyze is entitled “Barcelona Nights” and captures two of modern Barcelona’s most Iconic structures; The Torre Mapfre, a very large commercial building, and the Hotel Arts which includes a hotel, casino, shopping center and restaurants. I feel that the lighting, contrast of colors, and visual heiarchy are the elements which play a key role in expressing the argument that Barcelona's rich historical culture is fading away behind the rapid urbanization of the city.

“Barcelona Nights” was documented on May 25, of 2009 by Liam McAllister. (pool.org.au)Anytime that a photographer chooses for his work to remain in black and white, there is usually an important reason behind it, so I felt analyzing the rhetorical strategy behind this color choice would be a good place to start. In the photo, the ground and the sky are almost completely black. What seems to appear in between and almost divide these two elements is an illuminated, triangle shaped area of white light. This illusion of a triangle is formed by two very bright street lights at ground level, and then a bright display on the top of one of the towers. This works to create hierarchy within the photo where the audience first focuses on what is highlighted by the center of the triangle, the two towers, and then work their way out towards the corners. These buildings, with the exception of some illuminated windows, appear almost black within this illusion of a white triangle which create a heavy contrast and helps to emphasize this hierarchy. This lighting strategy brings logos to the piece with respect to its argument. For example at first glance, almost anyone who looks at this picture is going to see the two tall buildings due to their positioning and high contrast, but if one spends a little longer examining the photograph, they may also see a few other small structures as well as some palm trees, sort of hidden by the shadows. This in itself makes the statement that the two tall structures in the center are overshadowing and drawing attention from whatever else is in the photograph. We can also choose to view the greystyle coloring as a method to historisize the photograph as a whole. Black and white is naturally what you think of when you consider "old" photographs, and although this photo was taken this year, it is possible that the photographer wanted the audience to interprit this piece through a different context. The rhetorical strategy behind this could have been for the audience to see this photo as historical, and then easilly be able to pick out what in the photo dosnt "belong."

Next I chose to look at the sources of lighting in the photo itself. As stated earlier, the three brightest areas in the photo are positioned in such a way as to form a sort of equilateral triangle, dividing the piece, and directing attention towards the center. The manner in which the lights appear is also important. The light to the left of the photo is by far the brightest and is almost two bright to see what exactly is its source. The light near the top of the photo is caused by spotlights along the tom edge of one of the towers. The light to the right of the photo appears to be caused by two streetlamps very near each other. The fact that the light to the left of the photo is so overpowering and even drowns out some of the photograph creates a sort of imbalance and tension with what seems to be the focus of the piece. One possible explanation for the photographer’s decision to include this imbalance may have been to appeal to the pathos of the argument, or how the audience feels when they view the photo. For example, If the audience feels the photograph itself contains some tension, it is also possible they may relate this feeling of tension towards the city of Barcelona itself. If the center of focus is these two highly commercial buildings, then this tension may be a reflection upon them suggesting that they possibly don’t belong.

In a black and white photograph, the contrast often plays an even larger role in determining the photo’s meaning to the audience. In “Barcelona Nights” in particular, there are even very few shades of grey used. The photo almost seems to be divided into what is illuminated, and what is not. As I already stated, the tall buildings which are dark form a contrast with the bright sky behind them, but there are also a few multiple other dark shaded elements, which I also believe hold significant meaning in this photograph. Mostly to the right of the two towers, you can make out the outline of several palm trees. They all appear to be fairly low to the ground, and the only tall one, ironically is almost hidden as it stacks on top of the dark color of the building. It is quite possible that the photographer intended these trees to represent a certain part of Spanish culture and maybe how he feels they are becoming insignificant. Barcelona is along the coast of the Mediterranean, and possibly the meaning of these palm trees being overshadowed is that the beauty of the Mediterranean itself is now being overlooked. On the other side of the two towers is what appears to be some low to the ground, older looking structure. Even though this object is obviously much closer to the camera then the buildings, it is still nearly impossible to make out what exactly the structure is. I feel that the photographer also did this intentionally to build on the statement that the palm trees were making; that some of the historical parts of the city are falling into shadow. The fact that the audience cannot even identify what the building is possibly reflects that in Barcelona, smaller shops or businesses are losing popularity.
If one focusses on the lighting of the windows of the buildings themselves, it becomes apparent that one building is active at night and the otherone is not. In reality, this is simply because the building in the back, the Hotel Arts is a casino, and would often be busy at night time, but it is still important to analyze why then the photogropher chose to take this photo at night when one of the buildings were empty, and why the active building appears behind the empty one. I would say that his intention was to build on his rhetoric while playing with the visual heiarchy. For example, Having a building with no lights on right next to a building compltely lit up creates a very high contrast which draws attention. Then, the visual heiarchy will automaticly draw attention to which ever structure is in front. So with this contrast in the audience's mind they will naturally develop a feeling of emptness with this empty building being the highest on the visual heiarchy scale. The photographer likely wanted to use this effect to draw attention to the fact that the Barcelona night life of Casinos and hotels shouldnt be glorified, but is instead sort of an empty and dark theme, do inating the city.

So what could we say the photogropher himself truely wants the audience to take away from barcelona nights? The photograph dosnt really defame the Torre Mapfre or Hotel Arts in any way, but instead I think just tries to point out that somethings are being overlooked, or falling into the background. For example, in this last photo, we can see that the Hotel Arts and Torre Mapre in reality dont stand out nearly as much as they do in the Barcelona Nights photograph, so we might be able to assume that the photographer was trying to represent the cultural importance of the buildings as opposed to the structural. The way in which he makes them such a center of attention in the photo would imply that he believes what they represent has become the center of attention in the culture of Barcelona. We could say that he values the rich history of this historic spanish city and that he does not want to see it forgotten.