The History
Birth of photography
Birth of photography
1838 Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, this could be considered the first photograph but the process isn't quite the same.
1839 was the birth of photography/ first permanent image by Louis Daguerre which was printed on metal coated with chemicals.
1841 Henry Fox Talbert. He created negatives, with his process the calotype/ calo is Latin for beauty, a process using paper with silver iodide.
John Herschel gave photography its name:
photo=light and graphy=drawing
photo=light and graphy=drawing
when photography was first introduced the called it 'The mysterious black art'; people where so used to paintings its no wonder they where frightened of this new and astonishing invention.
Hippolyte Bayard
Bayard's somewhat surreal self-portrait (October 1840), depicting him as a drowned man, is by way of protest against this injustice of having been piped at the post because he had kept quiet about his invention. He also wrote on the back of the picture a suicide note. furthermore this picture was classed as the first photograph of a nude man.
Drowned Man- 1840.
Jacques-Louis David
Jacques-Louis David was a highly influential French painter in the Neoclassical style, considered to be the prominent painter of the era.
Death of Marat- 1793.
Sam Taylor Wood
Sam Taylor-Wood's photographs and film installations depict human dramas and isolated emotional instances. This image reflects the work of Jacques-Louis David.
- The arm hanging lifelessly
- The pain in the face of the subject
- The panoramic below tells the viewer a story
Soliloquy 1- 1998.
Alison Jackson
Alison Jackson is a notorious British photographer, who is best known for her photographs of celebrity impersonators in compromising, shocking or vulnerable positions. She shoots images, which mirror our darkest suspicions about celebrities. No one is spared, not even President Bush, Tony Blair, and the Queen of England.
Alison Jackson is a notorious British photographer, who is best known for her photographs of celebrity impersonators in compromising, shocking or vulnerable positions. She shoots images, which mirror our darkest suspicions about celebrities. No one is spared, not even President Bush, Tony Blair, and the Queen of England.
The likeness between the lookalikes becomes real and borders on believable. She creates scenarios we have all imagined but never seen.
Jackson raises questions about whether we can believe what we see when we live in a mediated world of screens, imagery and internet.
Jackson comments on our voyeurism, on the power and seductive nature of imagery, and on our need to believe. Her work has established wide respect for her as an incisive, funny and thought-provoking commentator on the burgeoning phenomenon of contemporary celebrity culture.
Alison's images themselves have become just as much a part of popular culture as images of the real celebrities.
How art made the world:
Dr Nigel Spively
Dr Nigel Spively
In Dr Nigel Spivelys documentary he shows how the world is dominated by images/ photographs, and in a sense mould and define us and the way we live. The images tell us how to behave and what to think and even feel about ourselves. ‘When our ancient ancestors first created the images that made sense of their world they produced a visual legacy which has helped us shape our own.’ Says Nigel Spivelys. The human body, no other image dominates our lives in its entirety, pictures of the body are everywhere we become obsessive of it as did many of the worlds greatest artists. The range of the body they have created all have one thing in common, none resemble a real human being.
The Venus
The Venus of Willendorf is the mot famous early image of a human, a woman. It was found on the 7th of August 1908 in Austria by the archaeologist Josef Szombathy; pulled from the mud completely intact they named her, The Venus of Willendorf; 4ins high and made of limestone; she stays in the Natural History Museum in Vienna and is worth about $60million dollars.
Her great age, of approximately 15,000 to 10,000 BCE, and pronounced female forms promptly established the Venus of Willendorf as an icon of prehistoric art. Being female and nude she perfectly fitted into the patriarchal construction of the history of art, and displaced other previously used examples of Palaeolithic art. As the earliest known representation, she became a fascinating reality of the female body.
Different Venus seemed to pop up around Europe:
Venus of Moravany
Venus of Moravany is a small female figurine, 7.6 centimeters tall. Was found by the village of Moravany nad Váhom, Slovakia, in 1938.It is made of mammoth ivory and is dated to 22,800 BC, which places in it upper paleolith. It currently resides in the Bratislava Castle exposition of the Slovak National Museum.
It was ploughed up in a field in 1938 and later appeared in Paris and sent to the world famous scientist Abbe Breuil. Finally it was returned to Slovakia due to the work of Zotz and Freund, and Dr J. Barata. Usually the Venus figures faces are depicted in a minimalist way or obscured in some way, it is possible with this Venus the sculpture was created without a head.
Venus of KostenkiA figure of a naked woman, her head is covered with rows of shallow teeth cuts, indicating hair or a closely fitting head-dress. She was made out of a mammoth's tusk, height of 114 mm. Found in 1936, excavation made by P.P. Efimenko, who thought it to be 'one of the best creations of that period, known to us'.
when comparing the venues’ they all have the same enlarged bodys never a realistic view, but how the nomads indicated what they thought to be important.
1. The Couple, or the Double Venus
2. Woman with the perforated neck
3. The Two-Headed Woman
4. The yellow steatite statuette, or the Venus of Menton
5. Pulcinella or the Venus of Polichinelle
6. Brown Ivory Figurine
7. The Venus el Rombo, or Venus de Losange, (the diamond, or rhomboid, or lozenge shaped venus)
8. The Bust
9. The ivory figurine in red ochre
10. The flattened figure
11 The Negroid head
12. The Hermaphrodite
13. The Woman with goitre
14. Undescribed figure
The Venues’ are why the modern world is so dominated by unrealistic images of the body. Clearly the Venus is unrealistic, her stomach, hips, and thighs are grotesquely big, even her sexual organs are pronounced, she may have been a symbol of fertility, but it doesn’t explain why her arms are nonexistent; why her face is hidden. She has been made with the upmost care and skill, she didn’t end up looking like she does by accident. The nomads deliberately exaggerated parts and ignored others completely.
The Herring Gull theory
One man, a brain scientist, Professor Ramachandran has found an answer, he questioned, why is art beautiful, what is art, what going on in the brain when we look at art; Professor Ramachandran realized a clue might come from research on seagulls, over 50 years ago at oxford, the research is to do with the gulls chicks; the chicks when stimulated peck at the read on their mothers beaks to get food; they tested this by showing not the mothers beaks but a yellow stick with a red strip on it, and the chicks peaked at it; they then got another stick with 3 red strips on it and they tapped more, and enthusiastically. But how does this shape the Venus of Willendorf; Professor Ramachandran explains that they think the stick with 3 strips on is amazing, the Picasso, it would be a great piece of art but they don’t know why, it doesn’t resemble anything; there is an analogy that the brains of our ancestors, where producing grossly exaggerated versions equivalent for their brain of what the stick with the three strips on did to the chicks.
The Greeks
Greeks where fixated with the human form, they thought the better the body the more godly like you where, physical perfection was key and they showed this though there sculptures. They made their sculptures look more realistic, but they exaggerated features, why recreate something that is real when you already live in 'reality'?
- Doryphoros 430 BC created by Polykleitos.
- Polykleitos sought to capture the ideal proportions of the human figure
- He developed a set of principles to control the proportions that was known as the Canon or “Rule.”
- In formulating this “Rule,” Polykleitos created a system based on a simple mathematical formula in which the human body was divided into measured parts that all related to one another.
- The body of the Doryphoros, for example, stands in what is termed contrapposto, meaning that his weight rests on his right leg, freeing his left to bend. In the process, the right hip shifts up and the left down; the left shoulder raises and the right drops.
- His body is brought into a state of equilibrium through this counterbalancing act.
- The Kritios boy belongs to the Late Archaic period
- Is considered the precursor to the later classical sculptures of athletes.
- The Kritios or Kritian boy was named because it is believed to be the creation of Krito, the teacher of Myron, from around 480 BCE.
- The statue is made of marble and is considerably smaller than life-size at 1.17 m (3 ft 10 ins).
- The muscle groups are described with accuracy, and the skeletal system of the figure is well understood as a shaping force.
- Riace Warriors
- The Riace Warriors are made of bronze.
- The muscles were enhanced and the legs made longer to balance with the top half of the body.
- looking at something more human than human.
- OVER EXAGGERATED
Art movements in the period 1850 to 1900
Neo Classical
Jacques-Louis David
Jacques-Louis David was a highly influential French painter in the Neoclassical style, considered to be the prominent painter of the era.
Death of Marat. 1793.
Sir Henry Raeburn. Portrait of The Reverend Robert Walker Skating.
Skating on Duddingston Loch 1784.
Sir Joshua Reynolds
The Bather of Valpinçon. 1808.
Thomas Gainsborough
Mr and Mrs Andrews. 1748
Arnold Bocklin
The Sacred Wood, 1882.
Romanticism
Casper David. The Garden Terrace, 1812.
John Constable. The Haywain
Although the painting evokes a Suffolk scene, it was created in the artist's studio in London. Constable first made a number of open-air sketches of parts of the scene. He then made a full-size preparatory sketch in oil to establish the composition.
Realism
Hudson River School
The Hudson River School was a mid-19th century American art movement embodied by a group of landscape painters whose aesthetic vision was influenced by romanticism.
Thomas Cole, The Oxbow. 1836
Impressionism
Edgar Dagas
The art of Degas reflects a concern for the psychology of movement and expression and the harmony of line and continuity of contour. These characteristics set Degas apart from the other impressionist painters, although he took part in all but one of the 8 impressionist exhibitions between 1874 and 1886. He manages to crate depth of field to capture a some what realistic scene.
Die Tanzklasse. 1875
Impressionism
JMW Turner
- Artist J.M.W Turner 1775- 1851.
- One of the most famous English Romantic landscape artist.
- He became known as 'The painter of light'.
- This picture is perhaps the best known of all Turner’s pictures, and it is one which, like “Crossing the Brook,” appeals to all.
John Martin
- Visionary
- Eccentric
- Populist
- Epic
Within his images he creates almost biblical refrences. He depicted when he saw the future holding while the industrial revolution was going on. He was a romantic painter, and had metaphoric meanings, beautiful landscapes, changing them into a wasteland, frightening full of darkness and pain; showing the industrial revolution as a bad change the the natural environment.
In the video below this is an adaptation to show how his images draw you in and fill you full of possibility but also dispear.
Edgar Degas
I recently went to the exhibition at the British art academy of London, and saw the works of Edgar Degas. The use of colour he uses in his art works is astonishing, and even more so when you see them in real life. His wonderful studies of dancers show his obsession with capturing movement, a marvel that he believed photography could not possibly capture.
Top left: The Rehearsal 1877.
Top Right: The Cotton Exchange In New Orleans 1873.
Centre left: The Absinthe Drinker 1858.
Centre Right: Dancers In Pink 1883.
Bottom left: Cafe Concert Singer 1878.
Bottom Right: Dance Class 1 1874
When he started taking photographs, in 1895, Edgar Degas was 61 and long established as one of the great French painters.
The animated figures appear to move in consonance with each other within the unfolding choreography.
With their familiar subjects of ballet rehearsals, horse racing and women at the bath, Degas’ pastels are beautifully drawn, innovatively realized and striking in their graphic power.
Degas also drew beautifully in other media, and was accomplished at etching, lithography and sculpture.
I think Degas influenced me the most by his pastel drawings, the use of the bright colours give it a life like affect, especially in the top left, the rich greens and blues, really feel like you are on the stance with them; I hope to convoy in my final images this affect, to draw the viewer into my images.
Claude Oscar Monet
Oscar-Claude Monet (1840-1926) is a famous French painter and one of the founders of the Impressionism movement.
Monet rejected the traditional approach to landscape painting and instead of copying old masters he had been learning from his friends and the nature itself. Monet observed variations of color and light caused by the daily or seasonal changes.
Wild Poppies 1873
Impression sunrise 1872
Pre- Raphaelites.
Henry Peach Robinson.
- Henry Peach Robinson was the first to make photography an art form.
- Robinson was influenced by the aesthetic views of john ruskin.
- He created fashionably morbid themes.
- There were strong links between Robinson's works and Pre- Raphaelitism.
- In his Pre-Raphaelite phase he attempted to convey this contradiction by representing moments of timeless significance in a "mediaeval" setting.
- He was a follower of the pre-Raphaelites and was influenced by the work of Julia Margaret Cameron, as well as that of Rossetti's followers, Burne-Jones and other Symboilists.
Fading Away 1858
The Lady of Shalott, 1860
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
- Dante Gabriel Rossetti was born in London.
- Though his work is steeped in Italian traditions (both poetical and pictorial), Rossetti never visited Italy.
- He is first and always an English - more, a London - writer and artist.
- These three images express Pre- Raphaelitism; the auburn hair, the women's heads tilted showing elegance and femininity.
Images:
Bottom Left :Bocca Baciata (1859) signaled a new direction on Rossetti's work.
Bottom Right: Proserpine (1874)
Top Left : Lady Lilith (1868)
Top Right: La Pia de' Tolomei. (1868)
Eugène Delacroix
Delacroix's use of expressive brushstrokes and his study of the optical effects of colour profoundly shaped the work of the Impressionists, while his passion for the exotic inspired the artists of the Symbolist movement.
Delacroix, Death of Ophelia 1843
John Everett Millais
- Shakespeare was a frequent source of inspiration for Victorian painters. Millais's image of the tragic death of Ophelia, as she falls into the stream and drowns, is one of the best-known illustrations from Shakespeare's playHamlet.
- He uses lush colours; contradicting the scene of death.
- Suggesting death he includes scattered poppies witch is a symbol.
- Not only did this influence people in those times but has carried on influencing people today of example, Gregory Crewdson
Ophelia- 1851
Millais tries to capture this through her expression on her face as she lies in the water; her arms poised in a helpless manner: almost as if to say woe is me.
The Flowers that lay with her bear significance; she often mentions flowers throughout the play : “There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance; pray, love, remember.” & ”There’s a daisy: I would give you some violets, but they withered all when my father died.” Flowers across a wide range of species bear a number of different meanings; many of which used by her represented, life, death & chastity.
Gregory Crewdson
- Gregory Crewdson doesn't so much take pictures as make them; he likes that photography limits him to choose only one moment to convey a narrative.
- Each photo is polished and technically perfect, but still in a way undone i find myself imagining what comes before and after.
ophelia 2001
Tom Hunter
Tom Hunter recreated the painting by John Everett Millais, in a completely modern context.
Julia Margaret Cameron
Julis Maragret Cameron first got a camera on her 48th birthday from her daughter. From that she was fascinated with photography. I love the way she positions her subjects, witched ranged from her daughters/ family members, servants and even celebrities of her time; Thanks to her sister.
Call, I Follow, I Follow, Let Me Die
1867
Her portraits were ethereal, soft-focus, and sensual. She produced close-cropped portraits of children and young women, as well as dreamy allegorical and historical tableaux, all in the pursuit of “arresting beauty,” as she would write later, as if she wanted only to preserve her subjects in amber for all time.
And of course that’s why I love 19th century portrait photography because it does preserve the faces of the past with an immediacy and an intimacy that even the best oil or pastel can’t give you. Most portraits from this era, in fact, can give you that startling jolt of recognition, of seeing human eyes peering back out at you from the past, which makes old photography so compelling.
Julis Maragret Cameron first got a camera on her 48th birthday from her daughter. From that she was fascinated with photography. I love the way she positions her subjects, witched ranged from her daughters/ family members, servants and even celebrities of her time; Thanks to her sister.
Beatrice
1866
Ellen Terry at the age 16
1864
1867
Her portraits were ethereal, soft-focus, and sensual. She produced close-cropped portraits of children and young women, as well as dreamy allegorical and historical tableaux, all in the pursuit of “arresting beauty,” as she would write later, as if she wanted only to preserve her subjects in amber for all time.
And of course that’s why I love 19th century portrait photography because it does preserve the faces of the past with an immediacy and an intimacy that even the best oil or pastel can’t give you. Most portraits from this era, in fact, can give you that startling jolt of recognition, of seeing human eyes peering back out at you from the past, which makes old photography so compelling.
Motion/Futurism
Painting and photography allow the artist to capture a moment in time. Numerous artists have attempted to depict motion and to show movement over time. Look at the pictures below to see all of the different ways that artists have tried to make a visual suggestion of motion.
Marcel Duchamp
In Marcel Duchamp's Nude Descending A Staircase from 1912, the person is painted as if there were multiple depictions of the same person going down the stairs; the viewer can see each step being taken.
Painting and photography allow the artist to capture a moment in time. Numerous artists have attempted to depict motion and to show movement over time. Look at the pictures below to see all of the different ways that artists have tried to make a visual suggestion of motion.
Marcel Duchamp
In Marcel Duchamp's Nude Descending A Staircase from 1912, the person is painted as if there were multiple depictions of the same person going down the stairs; the viewer can see each step being taken.
Giacomo Balla
In Giacomo Balla's Dynamism Of A Dog On Leash, also from 1912, one can almost feel the frantic energy of the little dog, it's feet shuffling quickly, it's tail wagging excitedly, and the hurried footsteps of the person trying to keep up.
Hokusai
The Great Wave, from 1823, by the Japanese artist Hokusai. This wave has reached its peak, and is starting to curl into a downward movement. The impending crash of the wave creates a tension in the picture.
Frederic Remington
Frederic Remington's painting The Cavalry Charge from 1907, doesn't use any abstract tricks to suggest motion; instead, the painter has captured the horses at full speed, and the expression on the lead horse's face shows the urgency with which they are running. It's interesting that the energy and action in this picture comes from the horses; the men riding them are in rigid and seemingly calm positions.
Harold Edgerton
In this photograph from 1938, one can see Harold Edgerton's technique of using multiple flashes during the process of taking the picture, which allowed the camera to capture high-speed motion. Here we see the golf club during the full range of its swinging motion.
Umberto Boccioni
Boccioni has a very noticeable style, its unique forms of continuity in space.
- Abstract
- motion
Umberto Boccioni's sculpture, titled Unique Forms of Continuity from 1913, also shows a person in motion. The sculptor's aim was to illustrate the interaction of a moving object with the space that surrounds it.
Unique Forms of Continuity in Space
1913
Jamie Kingham
Edward Muybridge
Honore Daumier
1863-65
Luigi Russolo/ Futurism
Art Nouveau
Art nouveau, new art in its short lifetime, because of the war. A style of decoration and architecture of the late 19th and 20th century.
Reification : To regard or treat an abstract as if it had concrete or material substance. For example belief - what is belief? belief as a substance, is not anything.
- Post Impressionism
- Arts and Crafts movement
- Realism
- Romanticism
- Impressionism
- Shell Design
- Sinuous Lines
- Women
- Aurburn Hair
- Surreal
- Metal and crome
- Plant structure
- Abstract
- Sexually Suggestive
- Insect Design
- Linier
Vincent Van Gogh
Van Gogh was an angry man and he reflects this into some of his works.
Hector Guimard/ Castel Beranger
where architects, who is now the best-known representative of the French Art Nouveau style of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Alphonse Mucha
Alphonse Mucha helped to shape the Art Nouveau movement through his own stylish illustrations which typically captured classicly-dressed women in full length poses. Many of Alphonse Mucha's prints and illustrations featured extremely detailed backgrounds to add more to each work, with some also benefiting from poster art typography. At the start of his professional career, Alphonse Mucha produced many poster advertisements to promote various businesses that had offered him valuable commissions and these posters quickly gained attention within Paris where contemporary art was popular and encouraged.
For the time Muchas' work was considered quite erotic and temptations, tantalising the audience to bring you into the image.
'Dance'
'Reverie'
Art Nouveau in modern photography
Madalina Lordache- Levay
These beautiful images reflect the art movement of the 19 century, the lush reds and greens captivate the viewer; the composition of the girls also reflect the femininity of the art nouveau style.
Horst P horst/ Helen Bennett
Horst had a particular style and stuck with it; He manages to create goddess images with his use of continuity. he mages to show the body and a great structure.
Aubrey Beardsley
'The Climax' 1893
Gustar Klimt
Gustav Klimt (1862-1918) was one of the most innovative and controversial artists of the early twentieth century
DADA
At the beginning of the 20th century something changed the world, world war 1, a cattolist for big change. And from this huge change though out the world, Bauhaus art was created; a form of art and design by Walter Gropius.
When creating art they used geometric shapes such as triangles, squares and circles. They also don't get their inspiration from nature but their individual feelings at the time; a way of expression/ expressionism, a big shift from Art Nouveau.
Anti art. Means dark horse. Time for change, a new way.
American Art News stated that 'DaDa philosophy is the sickest most paralysing and most distractive thing that has ever originated from the brain of man'
Damian Hirst
Hirst creates pieces of 'art' cut up animals, creating a different way to look at them.
Otto Dix
I find his work comes across as messy, confusing, a lot to look at. He managed to depict how shocking it was within the war and the casualties that came after. in his time it would have been a new thing and shocking to see people with no limbs.
The way she is depicted in this painting looks evil; she's made to have elongated hands and face. But also shows she's a lady of distinction and wealth.
Francis Picabia
George Grosz
Grosz' work is dark and haunting; like a nightmare put on paper.
'Suicide' 1916 red light district
'Lovesick' 1916
Surrealism
At first glance surrealist works looks quit random, but to look deeper you find meaning, not drawn from rationalism
Hans Bellmer
Rene Magritte
Film
Francias copper
made a film in the 1980's, it has no sound though out the whole film, just moving images and music. Farst paced music reflecting it. though out it shows the contrasting sciences and colours we live in; lush green meadows, to tall buildings and grey factory smoke.
Sean Ellis- 'Cash Back'
Visual Communication
Isambard Kingdom Brunel
Brunel was one of the most versatile and audacious engineers of the 19th century, responsible for the design of tunnels, bridges, railway lines and ships.Brunel was a man with confidence, wouldn't take no for an answer; he liked to do extravagant works to show that the impossible was possible. A big achiever. Also very impatient he was known to get angry if the work wasn't done in time with his schedules.
Denotation
• Chains
• Top hat
• Bag
• Dirty clothing
• Cigar
• Facial hair
• Heeled shoes
• Pocket watch
• Slouched position
Connotation
• Non caring attitude/ his stance
• Bag/ includes his cigars. He smoked 40 times a day
• Top hat/ Shows his wealth
• Heeled shoes/ To make him look taller/ He was known to be a small man
• Chains/ His hands on attitude to his work
- Dirty clothing/ He likes to work and be on the scene of his works
Rodger Fenton
Roger Fenton was the fist photojournalist in the Crimean war. He took his own darkroom with him, this is because he used the wet plate process; this process had to be done in the dark and processed before the plate got dry.
Madonna and Child Raphael
1503
Annibale Carracci
David Morgan Pieta
http://www.zenithgallery.com/shows/out_of_context/morgan1.html
William Tecumseh Sherman
Matthew Brady1865
Matthew Brady photographed the American civil war, 1861 - 1866, along with photographing celebrities. The reason for the civil war was that the east of America believed that slavery should stop but central and western America disagreed, this dispute resorted in violence. Brady photographed the aftermath, dead bodies. Matthew Brady produced this portrait of William Tecumseh Sherman, he served as General in the Union Army during the American Civil war. From this portrait we can learn a lot about what kind of a person he was. He has been photographed in uniform, as General, with a war medal attached, he is a very honourable man. He sits with a black ribbon of mourning on his left arm which is for Presitent Lincoln. He is sitting down, showing that he has authority. Brunel's hair is quite messy, and his clothes are not as perfect as they could be, he has not taken much interest in his appearance for this portrait. He has a stern facial expression, arms are folded and he is facing away from the camera, this gives me the impression that he does not want to be photographed. Although this isn't an environmental portrait, by what he is wearing and his body language, you can create an understanding of what this person does and what he is like.
Alexander Gandener
But there is nothing ordinary about Alexander Gardner’s Antietam series. The citizens of the United States certainly didn’t think so. Gardner arrived at the battlefield shortly after September 17th, 1862 – just in time to photograph the grim work of war. Most of his shots were “stereographs” which means he took two images (with a special two-lens camera) of the same view to be shown through a special viewing device creating a 3-d image.
But here’s the real kicker. His images were reproduced and spread throughout the states – where they became all the rage. Matthew Brady’s gallery in New York City displayed Gardner’s original images for public viewing – a showing that created quite the stir. Americans (civilians, anyway) had never really glimpsed the horrors of war in such a realistic fashion. For the first time, the war hit home. New Yorkers were shocked and appalled. The New York Times stated that Brady was able to “bring home to us the terrible reality and earnestness of war. If he has not brought bodies and laid them in our door-yards and along streets, he has done something very like it…”
War photography, what most would consider part of our daily dose of the world beyond our immediate surroundings, is everywhere and readily available to all. This was not the case in 1862.
Timothy O'sullivan
Dorothea Lange
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/awhhtml/awpnp6/migrant_mother.html
' I saw and approached the hungry and desperate mother, as if drawn by a magnet. I do not remember how I explained my presence or my camera to her, but I do remember she asked me no questions. I made five exposures, working closer and closer from the same direction. I did not ask her name or her history. She told me her age, that she was thirty-two. She said that they had been living on frozen vegetables from the surrounding fields, and birds that the children killed. She had just sold the tires from her car to buy food. There she sat in that lean- to tent with her children huddled around her, and seemed to know that my pictures might help her, and so she helped me. There was a sort of equality about it. (From: Popular Photography, Feb. 1960).'
The images were made using a Graflex camera. The original negatives are 4x5" film.
Migrant Mother- Florence Thompson- Family of seven/ Series.
The photograph popularly known as “Migrant Mother” has become an icon of the Great Depression. The compelling image of a mother and her children is actually one of a series of photographs that Dorothea Lange made in February or March of 1936 in Nipomo, California. Seeing the photograph in the context of related images, understanding the purpose for which it was made, and knowing something of the photographer's and subject's views of the occasion amplify our perspectives on the image, and, at the same time, suggest that no single meaning can be assigned to it.
Lange made the photographs toward the end of a month's trip photographing migratory farm labor for what was then the Resettlement Administration, later to become the *Farm Security Administration. Her work was part of the administration's larger effort to document economic and social distress among the nation's agricultural workers and to advertise the agency's relief programs and the measures it was taking to address underlying causes of the dislocation.
Farm Security Administration:
Initially created as the Resettlement Administration (RA) in 1935 as part of the New Deal in the United States, the Farm Security Administration (FSA) was an effort during the Depression to combat American rural poverty.
The FSA stressed "rural rehabilitation" efforts to improve the lifestyle of sharecroppers, tenants, very poor landowning farmers, and a program to purchase submarginal land owned by poor farmers and resettle them in group farms on land more suitable for efficient farming. Critics, including the Farm Bureau strongly opposed the FSA as an experiment in collectivizing agriculture — that is, in bringing farmers together to work on large government-owned farms using modern techniques under the supervision of experts. The program failed because the farmers wanted ownership; after theConservative coalition took control of Congress it transformed the FSA into a program to help poor farmers buy land, and continues in operation in the 21st century as the Farmers Home Administration.
The FSA is famous for its small but highly influential photography program, 1935–44, that portrayed the challenges of rural poverty.
Documentary Photography
Raghubir Singh
William Eggliston
Paul Graham
Rinko Kawauchi
Joel Meyerowitz
Stephen Shore
Phillip Lorca Dicorcia
Historical Events/ PhotoJournalism/ 1960's
Robert Capa
'If your photographs aren't good enough, you aren't close enough'
Robert Capa was a Bulgarian-born photographer. Extremely famous war photographer; taken combat photos during both the Spanish Civil War in 1939 and during D-Day on the beaches of Normandy in 1944. Was always on the front line, and in the end he got killed by a land mine. He managed to show intensity, bond, reliance.
Joe Rosenthal
Rosenathal took the most famous images from the war, 'IWO Jima US Flag Rising Feb 1945' it seems that if he took the picturea moment before or one moment later it wouldn't have been that beautiful, influentional
War Imagery:
- Don Mc Cullin
- Tim Page
- Larry Burrows
Don Mc Cullin:
The story behind the image.
Don McCullin is one of the most important photographers of our generation. For more than 50 years, his uncompromising black and white photographs have shaped our awareness and understanding of modern conflict and its consequences.
Together, they tell the remarkable story of his life and work, including his most famous assignments in Berlin, Vietnam, Cambodia, Biafra, Bangladesh and the Middle East.
McCullin has covered ecological disasters and the war-torn regions of the world, documenting events normally hidden from view. His work proved so painful and memorable that in 1982 he was forbidden to cover the Falklands war by the British government of the time.
Phalangists with the body of a Palestinian girl, Beirut, Lebanon, 1976
Body of a North Vietnamese soldier, Hue, Vietnam, 1968 - Don McCullin
One does not need to contrive images of war. The scenes that you witness as a war photographer are horri fic and dramatic enough not to warrant any doctoring.
As Don McCullin insists, ‘Things happen very fast. People die in front of you. People scream. People claw at you to help them.There’s no need to go around arranging still life on the battle field.’
He does, however, make one exception. His image of a dead young North Vietnamese soldier was slightly arranged in order to, as McCullin explains, articulate the things that the
soldier was no longer able to express.
‘He deserved a voice. He couldn’t speak so I was going to do it for him. I shovelled his belongings together and photographed them. That’s the only contrived picture I’ve taken in war.’
McCullin saw two American soldiers looting the booby-trapped body, and suddenly became protective. Hearing them refer to the young man as a ‘dead gook’ enraged McCullin, who was
faced with a torturous dichotomy. He saw himself as part of the soldiers’ team; sharing their uniform, their food, their routines, and yet he detested them.
Should he allow these men, as one of whom he was ashamed to count himself, to desecrate the body of a man he regarded as ‘an innocent young man fighting for national reuni fication’?
He decided to right this wrong the only way he knew how. He arranged the trampled pictures of the soldier’s mother, his sister, and the little snapshots of seated children, and gave the man
an immortal voice; something that could never be looted or trodden into the mud. Such images o ften meet with unfavourable responses, or their fabrication is kept a secret by the photographer.
McCullin was not apologetic and he made no secret of his actions. ‘That’s the only time, truthfully, I’ve ever done that. Many people ask me about that photograph. I have no shame in saying: “Yes, I did it.” He couldn’t speak. I spoke for him.’
Tim Page
Tim Page: War chose me. I was given a camera to cover Laos for six weeks. I took some pictures of an attempted revolution and got exclusive pictures out of the country.
Then UPI [United Press International] offered me a job in Vietnam from that point. After that, I became a freelance photographer for Paris Match. The correspondent left me in the middle of an ambush by myself, and I sold those pictures to LIFE Magazine.
The week after that I had six pictures in LIFE from another battle, and I haven’t had a job since, I have been freelancing since August 1965.
Larry Roger
Historical events:
- President Kennedy Assignation, 1963
- President Lyndon Johnson
- Cuban Missile Crisis, 1963
- Martin Luther King Assignation, 1963
- Civil Rights Riots, Birmingham Alabama, 1963
- Cyprus Civil War, 1964
- Vietnam war
- Death of Che Guevera, 1967
- Six Day War Jerusalem, 1967
- Vet Cong (Vietnam) assignation, 1968
- Student Protests in Paris 1968
- Czech invasion by Soviet Union, 1968
- Earthrise, 1968
- Northern Ireland, Resistance to home rule
- Kent state massacre Ohio US, 1970
- Dawson Airfield Jordan, PLO hijack, September 11 1970
Neal Boenzi
By the 1960s, two-time Presidential candidate (and two-time loser) Adlai Stevenson was considered America’s elder statesman. The relationship between him and John F. Kennedy to whom he lost Democratic nomination in 1960 was not cordial, and this led to Stevenson being passed over for the Secretary of State position. However, he was appointed American ambassador to the UN.
At the UN, he disagreed with many of Kennedy’s actions. In April 1961, Stevenson suffered the greatest humiliation of his career when he unwittingly denied that the Bay of Pigs attack was financed by the CIA. Misled by the White House, and forged photographs, he considered to resign the ambassadorship. It was fortunate that he didn’t, because a year later, Stevenson would get his finest hour.
On October 25, 1962, during the Cuban missile crisis, he gave a presentation at an emergency session of the Security Council. Stevenson, already known for his wit and rhetoric, gave one of the speeches of his political career. He forcefully asked the Soviet representative, Valerian Zorin, if his country was installing missiles in Cuba, punctuated with the famous demand “Don’t wait for the translation, answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’!” Following Zorin’s refusal to answer the abrupt question, Stevenson retorted, “I am prepared to wait for my answer until Hell freezes over.” In a diplomatic coup, Stevenson then showed photographs that proved the existence of missiles in Cuba, just after the Soviet ambassador had implied they did not exist
Eddie Adams
David Rubinger
Death of Che Guevera 1967- Bolivian Military display his body.
William Anders
Earthrise 1968
Joe Rosenthal
Student Riot Paris- 1968
John Filo
Kent state 1970
Robert Frank
Portraiture
Painters and Portraiture:
- Albrecht Durer
- Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger c1592
- Nicholas Hilliard c1599
- George Gower c1588
- John Taylor c1610
- Diego Velazquez
- Francis Bacon
- Rembrandt
- Thomas Gainsborough
- Aubrey Beardsley
- Chuck Close
- Francis Bacon
- Lucian Freud
- Napoleon Sarony
- Frederick Evans
- Julia Margaret Cameron
- John Collier
- Joshua Reynolds
Albrecht Durer
Self Portrait 1493
Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger c1592
Elizabeth 1
Elizabeth 1 c1575
Nicholas Hilliard c1599
Elizabeth 1
George Gower c1588
Armada Portrait. Elizabeth 1
John Taylor c1610
William Shakespeare (from Life)(First NPG Portrait)
Diego Velazquez
King Phillip IV 1625
Infanta Margarita 1636
Pope Innocent X1650
Francis Bacon
Study of the pope innocent X1953
Yasumasa Morimura
"Art is basically entertainment," says Yasumasa Morimura, "Even Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci were entertainers. In that way, I am an entertainer and want to make art that is fun."
1989
Rembrandt
Thomas Gainsborough c1759
Joshua Reynolds c1747
Self Portrait
John Collier
Charles Darwin 1881
Julia Margaret Cameron
Frederick Evans
Aubrey Beardsley 1894
Napoleon Sarony
Lucian Freud
Self Portrait
Francis Bacon
Self Portrait 1980
Self Portrait 1987
Chuck close
Chuck Close is one of the world's leading modern artists. His art focuses on portraits of himself and his family and friends, often produced at a very large scale. Close typically begins with a photograph of a face, creating a painting or print through a complex grid-based reconstruction of the image that he accomplishes by hand through one of many techniques that are unique to Close's work. His paintings are even more impressive, given that Close had to relearn how to use his hands following a 1988 spinal infection that left him a quadriplegic.
Self Portrait 1967
Emanation of light
Postmodernism
- Originality
- Authenticity
- Reproduction
- Quality
- Cultural Identity
- Not who but why?
- Not Classical or modern
What words would use to describe this work?
Classical: 1839-1910
Classical: 1839-1910
- Formal
- Pictorial
- Reflective
- Historic
- Traditional
Modern:1910-1980
- Mechanical
- Geometric
- Shapes
- Simple
- Graphical
- Technique
- Quality
- Experimental
- Political
- Objective
Postmodernism:
- Reproduction- The action or process of making a copy of something.
- Originality- The ability to think independently and creatively.
- Authenticity- The quality or condition of being authentic, trustworthy, or genuine
- Quality- The standard of something as measured against other things of a similar kind; the degree of excellence of something: "quality of life"
- Simulation- The act of imitating the behavior of some situation or some process by means of something suitably analogous.
- Simulacrum- An image or representation of someone or something.
- Value- The regard that something is held to deserve; the importance or preciousness of something
- Aura- The distinctive atmosphere or quality that seems to surround and be generated by a person, thing, or place.
- Ontology- The branch of metaphysics dealing with the nature of being.
Cindy Sherman- Reproductions by Yasumasa Morima
Always been copied
Richard Prince- Took pictures of someone else's work from the TV. Is that fair? Is that legal?
Sherrie Lavine-
The original is how you see it and where in your head. you've seen something your copying what you are seeing. Our conception. Tecnecly shes right
Trish Morrissey-
Nikki S Lee- 1998
Andreas Serrano- challenging the taboos the truth knowledge appears to be secular the title is provoking.
Alexander The Great
- King Philip II of Macedonia (His Farther) wanted to free Greek cities in Asia Minor from Persian domination, to extend his league's naval power.
- First Representation of a King like figure.
- This mosaic from Roman Pompeii shows how ancient artists might interpret contemporary circumstances by referring to events that were already ancient in their own time.
- It depicts a battle between Alexander the Great.
- He is shown as young, unhelmeted, and aggressive on a rearing charger.
- The Achaemenid Persian king (Darius III), shown as graying, alarmed, and looming over a horse’s hindquarters while his charioteer lashes his team in retreat.
This Mosaic shows Alexander as a powerful figure and the persian King as week. Its a great way in political terms; It creates the viewer to choose side. Who's side would you choose? The heroic figure of Alexander, with his flowing hair, fixated eyes on his enemy, no sense of fear but threat and determination.
Dennis Stock
James Dean:
- Actor
- 1955
- New York
- Only person in the frame
- Raining
- Taken in the morning/ Mist/ Bright
- Good looking
- Lonely
- Young
- Quite short
- Insecure
An element of loneliness, and the city is alien to him compared to the small town he lived in. The shadow to me seems to reflect the emptiness he's feeling. Smoking the cigarette of the 60's, a Chesterfield, hanging loosely out his mouth, in a cool slick manner, how he was portrayed in the media and to the public. This image represents the levels of stardom and has a sinister feel, seeing as the cinema that his walking past was to show the film he would never see, due to the car crash he would later be in.
Dean was young, short and had trouble making friends. Dennis Stock said that they made the trip to his home town and took a series of images, some of which they took in a funeral parlor where James got into the coffin, Which to me seen very peculiar to then think that he car accident, and death was soon to come. Dennis also said that they had an ‘Equal to his temperament to each other’
The placing is perfect. Just placed between the polls, his head lining up with the sign behind him. It helps your eye follow around the image.
Alfred Stieglitz - The Steerage
- 1907
- Immigration
- Coming back from the united states
- Divisions of society
- White gangplank
- Upper and lower Class
- Composition
- Full range of blacks and whites
This picture serves as a comment on economic divisions of society. The white gangplank that divides the picture into two parts, upper and lower, also serves as a symbolic divide for the people in the picture. Below the line is the steerage, one big hold reserved for people who couldn’t afford staterooms. Above the line is an observation deck for everyone aboard the ship. Alfred Stieglitz graphic vision of shapes and balance and the social conditions are united in one significant picture.
It shows the people leaving the Promised Land; It makes you wonder if the travelers had become discouraged and homesick in the face of American loneliness, or if they had been defeated, or just disgusted at the excesses and inequities of capitalism.
He described the moment he saw the picture, on a boat headed for Europe: “The scene fascinated me: A round straw hat; the funnel leaning left, the stairway leaning right; the white drawbridge, its railings made of chain; white suspenders crossed on the back of a man below; circular iron machinery; a mast that cut into the sky, completing the triangle. I stood spellbound for a while. I saw shapes related to one another–a picture of shapes, and underlying it, a new vision that held me: simple people; the feeling of ship, ocean, sky . . .” (Weston Naef, ed., In Focus: Alfred Stieglitz, 1995)
Citizen Journalism is when individuals do, essentially what professional reporters do. Report information, either being imagery, video clips or audio. Photographing incidents like the Twin Towers attack, or the War in Syria.
But there is always the possibility that if the papers or News reporters keep taking the images from the public what will happen to the professionals?
Some examples Aperture image:
Concorde 203 - Flight AF4590 25th july Paris to New York.
- The first section shows the four, now infamous, still pictures of the aircraft in flight and on fire.
- These were taken from a car park and from a 747 on a nearby taxiway.
- Some grabs from the amature video are also shown here to view, along with some stills taken from the otherside of the airport.
- Uncomposed.
- Grainy.
- It is real, heat of the moment.
- Appreciated that someone documented this incident.
London Underground Bombing
7th July 2005 -Adam Stacey
- Grainy.
- blurred.
- Green.
- Real image from someone who was there, who witnessed the surreal moments.
Atocha Train Station - Madrid Bombing - 11th March 2004 - Reuters Pablo Torres Guerrero EL Pais
Edited version, for the Guardian News paper.
