The Renaissance (1300-1600) The Search for RealismDuring the Renaissance Era, there were various influences of an increased awareness of nature, a revival of classical learning, and a more individualistic view of man. During this period, artists also became increasingly interested in exploring and representing the reality of nature. A technique that was commonly used was using the Camera Obscura. The early Camera Obscura was a dark room or space where an inverted image was reflected onto a surface so the artist could trace the image to create a real representation of the scene they wanted to portray.
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Industrial Revolution (1700-1900)The Industrial Revolution had a vast impact and transformed the world of Photography. Various artists and scientists started to experiment with chemicals and create new techniques to produce new types of images.
Louis Jacques DaguerreLouis Daguerre was a French artist and photographer, recognised for his invention of the daguerrotype process of photography. He became known as one of the fathers of photography. He formed a partnership with Nicéphore Niépce in 1829 on how to make a permanent image using light and chemistry. The two together made a Daguerreotype which is a one-of-a-kind photographic image on a silver-plated sheet of copper sensitized with iodine vapours, exposed in a large box camera, developed in mercury fumes, and fixed with salt water. The Daguerreotype created sharp and detailed prints. These were faster to make and cheaper than portraits. However because of the very long exposure time, the slightest movement would cause the image to blur. It could also not be duplicated as the print that came off was a one off.
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Henry Fox TalbotWilliam Henry Fox Talbot was an English scientist, inventor and photography pioneer who invented the salted paper and Calotype processes, precursors to photographic processes of the later 19th and 20th centuries. The Calotype is made by washing paper in nitrate of silver then with potassium iodide, forming silver iodide. Then the paper is coated with a compound of acetic aced with silver nitrate and gallic acid, rinsed and dried. Next the image would be exposed to light and again washed with the gallo silver nitrate, then a hot solution of fix. This produced a negative image which can also be duplicated onto a positive print. The Calotype was more successful as you could reproduce the print as a negative as opposed to being a single and they weren't as fragile as prints from the Daguerrotype.
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Early years photographers continued to focus on traditional fine art themes such as landscape and portraiture but during the 20th century, photographers started to break away from traditional art and experiment more with what they could do with the camera and different techniques. They started to assert their own identity, separate to that of contemporary artists. As cameras developed and got more technologically advanced, the range of themes in photography got even wider.
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During late 19th & early 20th century, Pictorialism became a big movement and had a huge impact on the art world. They focussed on open composition and emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities, often accentuating the effects of the passage of time, ordinary subject matter, inclusion of movement as a crucial. The invention of the camera meant that artists no longer had to depict the world in a realistic way.
The Pictorialists focused more on capturing the changing qualities of light and the atmosphere. As the world of art developed and photography began to change, it became seen as uncreative and impersonal that it wasn't considered a true art form. This was where photographers hoped to express and engage feelings and sense in their images and worked to establish photography as a true art form. |
The Pictorialism movement came to an end as more photographers wanted to appreciate the camera for what it was.The Photo Secession movement was founded by Steiglitz in 1902. It had the ideals of Pictorialism but the concerned photographers also wanted the mechanical origins to be apparent. ‘Dream World’ floating existence.
The Photo-Secession was an early 20th century movement that promoted photography as a fine art in general and photographic pictorialism in particular. A group of photographers, led by Alfred Stieglitz and F. This begun the photo secession which aimed to promote the mechanical side of photography and to get the people in the early 1900's seeing photography itself as the art form. Photo secession ended because WW1 made people more conscious of their lives and started to focus less on leisure time and art. This meant a shift in ideology as more people wanted art to portray life more realistically in a candid way. |
Straight PhotographyAfter the end of the photo secession came straight photography which put forward that how the image was composed by a photographer was the true art form in photography. They emphasised and engaged with the cameras own technical capability to produce images in sharp focus and rich in detail. The images showed subjects from different viewpoints as each photographer composed their images in their own way, faithfully reproducing an image of the world. Paul Strand - Sharp, detailed images, took things the way they were. Face reality. Investigation of abstract form. Sharp, focused Realism which shaped other photographers' work, new vision.
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Paul Strand - 1916 |
Following from the Straight Photography movement came a group called F64, who used high aperture setting to create images with a strong depth of field. The F64 group put emphasis on sharp images with the maximum depth of field promoting the unique qualities of photography. The name F64 came as they used the smallest aperture holes to create their images.
Imogen Cunningham - 'Two Callas' 1929 |
Edward Weston - 'Pepper' 1927One of Weston's most famous images, it depicts a solitary green pepper in rich black-and-white tones, with strong illumination from above.
Ansel Adams - ‘Frozen Lakes and cliffs, Sierra, Nevada’ 1932 |
Futurism, 1909Futurism was an artistic and social movement that originated in Italy in the early 20th century. It emphasised speed, technology, youth, violence, and objects such as the car, the airplane, and the industrial city.
Futurism was launched by the Italian poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti in 1909. On 20 February he published his Manifesto of Futurism on the front page of the Paris newspaper Le Figaro. Futurism developed in Italy at the beginning of the 1900's, it set out to use photography as a way to capture reality. Futurism was about capturing the movement of people, artists such as Edward Muybridge and E.J Marey started out in he movement. The futurism movement then developed further with artists such as Marcel Duchamp and Umberto Boccioni using the ideas of Muybridge and Marey to create images around movement, speed and technology. |
Edwaerd Muybridge 'Woman Walking Downstairs' 1880. |
The New Vision & Constructivism, 1916In the 1920’s artists began to use the camera lens to present a new vision of the world. This new way of looking emerged in Russia through the work of figures such as Rodchenko, and in Germany through the methods of the Bauhans. Constructivism was a movement that begun in Russia during the time of the revolution and unrest founded by Vladimir Tatlin and Alexander Rodchenko. The constructivists believed art should directly reflect the modern industrial world, incorporating high and low vantage points and oblique angles.
Aleksander Rodchenko - 'Pioneer with a Trumpet' 1930 |
El Lizzitzky - 'The Constructor' 1924 |
Dadaism, 1916Dada was an art movement formed after World War 1. The movement challenged the traditional ideas of Art, Poetry, Photography and performance, displaying art can be anything u want it to be. The war made people question every aspect of their lives including art, so the Dada movement set out to break out of traditional art values and explore new attitudes to the art world, seperate from Pre-War. Marcel Duchamp is a key example of Dada as his famous photograph 'Fountain" challenged new perceptions, as something like this wouldn't of been considered 'beautiful' or Art.
Hannah HochArtists Hannah Hoch took new found materials such as newspaper cut outs and made a collage to create a powerful meaning.
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Marcel Duchamp 'Fountain' 1917 |
SurrealismA twentieth-century artistic movement that explored the workings of the mind, the subconscious and the irrational mind. Surrealist artists liked putting objects together that wouldn't usually be considered in the same image, this brings in a surrealism element. They were experimenting with ways to capture those subconscious thoughts and dreams, not quite reality.
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Man Ray - 'Violin D'ingres' 1924 |
Herbert Bayer is one of the individualists who by 1920 enrolled into the school of design called the Bauhaus. The Bauhaus came to represent an almost utopian ideal and world that "modern art and architecture must be responsive to the needs and influence of the modern industrial world". The Bauhaus movement evoked new ideals of socialism in Berlin, despite there being political unrest at the time in which the SDP left a coalition government.
The photograph 'Lonely Metropolitan' by Herbert Bayer is a photo montage representing the personal effects of the move to the city. The move came along with the feelings of claustrophobia, insecurities, loneliness, isolation and depicting an almost nightmarish scene. The image was presumably taken from a balcony similar to the ones visible. In the foreground, the photograph portrays a pair of hands with eyes placed on both palms. They are cropped at the cuffs and super-imposed in front, casting a shadow over the building. The height of the building gives the impression of claustrophobia due to cramped living conditions. The eyes and hands both appear to be from different subjects, expressing this sense of detachment being a collective feeling, which applies to all the peoples' move to the city, which includes Bayer who moved in 1928. When Bayer moved to Berlin, he became increasingly alarmed with with the political situation in Germany at the time, which caused him to then move to New York in 1938. |
'Migrant Mother', 1936 |
Her most emotive and iconic photograph was the 'Migrant Mother'. In 1936, Dorothea Lange captured the image of a mother and her children living in poverty which became one of the most defining images of the Great Depression and an infinitely reproduced symbol of courage and endurance. Using her 4x5 Graflex camera, Lange took six photographs of Thompson's family and with each exposure, she gradually framed them closer until taking the final beautifully shot photograph known as the 'Migrant Mother'. In a single photograph depicting a mother overcome with distress, bound with her children by her sides, Dorothea Lange not only illustrated the message of family without taking the focus away, she imbued the difficulty many migrant communities faced during this devastating era in American History. After the image was published in a San Francisco newspaper, the government sent over 20,000 pounds of food to the migrant camp.
However, before releasing the final piece, Lange had a darkroom assistant manipulate the image and remove the woman's thumb to keep that centred focus on her dominant hand touching the face. Documentary Photography is supposed to illustrate a candid truth to an image and create spontaneity, but for Lange, her visual manipulation does not diminish the power and importance of this photograph. |
'Migrant Mother' 1936 is the most subjective photograph in my opinion. Dorothea Lange captured an image depicting a mother overcome with distress, bound with her children by her sides, Lange not only illustrated the message of family without taking the focus away, she encapsulated the difficulty many migrant communities faced during this devastating era in American History. It became one of the most defining images of the Great Depression and an infinitely reproduced symbol of courage and endurance.
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'US 285, New Mexico' 1955
The photograph portrays an ominous road leading to a path of uncertainty. The ambiguous angle and composition created by the photographer, allows the viewer to feel certain emotions and interpret to where it may be following. |
'Renee Perle', 1930-1932 by Jacques-Henri Lartigue.
Lartigue generates a photograph invoking feeling and emotion. He uses his creative style to capture an image of beauty but also connotative meanings behind them. |
'The Young House Builders', by me.
I wanted to reflect a parallel between the architect and their house, and explore the mirroring between the two and a sense of identity hidden in the houses. The colour palette and imagery can be used as a key element when reading into an image. |
'Los Angeles' 1955-6
The photographer has to create a set of subjective choices, in this case, waited to no one to be on the street other than the man walking in the direction of the arrow. The arrow could signify as the guidance of the person, leading them to a certain place. This allows the viewer to make their own decisions, and create your own story into what the image suggests. |
Paul Strand photographs something as normal as architecture but instead captures interesting reflections, shadows and ambiguous shapes within them.
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Frozen Lake and Cliffs, Sierra Nevada, 1932, printed 1974 by Ansel Adams.
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Construction of the Empire State Building, sep, 13. 1930
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For the most objective photograph, I chose an image of the moon. Objectivity in photography is an impersonal image not effected by interpretation, so this photograph is showing you the beauty of something factual like the moon.
Objective |
'A photographer must be prepared to catch and hold on to those elements which give distinction to the subject or lend it atmosphere. They are often momentary, chance-sent things: a gleam of light on water, a trail of smoke from a passing train, a cat crossing a threshold, the shadows cast by a setting sun.
Sometimes they are a matter of luck; the photographer could not expect or hope for them. Sometimes they are a matter of patience, waiting for an effect to be repeated that he has seen and lost or for one that he anticipates. Leaving out of question the deliberately posed or arranged photograph, it is usually some incidental detail that heightens the effect of a picture – stressing a pattern, deepening the sense of atmosphere. But the photographer must be able to instantly recognise such effects'. - Bill Brandt |
In what sense do all photographs contend with chance?
A photograph captures a split moment in time, these chance-sent details highlight key moments where it would not meet the eye usually. They represent a millisecond in time when everything aligns; lighting, framing, composition, responding instinctively to the world. - In most cases photographs represent a fraction of a second of lived experience and often result from the photographer responding instinctively to the world of things. - Cameras 'see' the world differently to human eyes. Unlike human eyes, the camera is monocular. What the photographer sees the camera interprets. - A photograph is (usually) produced by a machine operated by a person. Both are fallible. - A photograph of a thing is not the thing itself. It is a new and different thing. 'Photography is the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event as well as of a precise organization of forms which give that event its proper expression.' - Henri Cartier-Bresson
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Cartier-Bresson always emphasised the importance of composition, and liked to “instinctively fix a geometric pattern” into which a chosen subject fitted. The idea that he lay in wait for someone to walk into a precomposed frame may explain his extraordinary hit rate – but it runs contrary to the French title, Images on the Run, which suggests exactly the opposite.
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