The genius of Photograpy

Saturday, 24 March 2012

Snap Judgements

Around 80 billion photographs are taken every year.
Gregory Crewdson artwork

Gregory Crewdson creates his images by setting up a film-like scene, using a production team and cinematic lighting to create the perfect moment he wants to photograph. Crewdson also uses a photography director, and doesn't take the photograph himself. This is because he see the art as the scene he creates, and uses photography as a way of recording this.
The prints that command the highest price are those that are rare vintage print with a perfect pedigree and an interesting image, crafted by the photographer. One example of this is Edward Steichen's “The Pond-Moonlight” (1904). Only three were ever produced, and is one of the world's highest priced images.
John Kerry and Jane Fonda's fake
photograph

A fake photograph is a print that has been made from a photo, instead of from negatives. They also include photos that have been edited together, whether with film or using Photoshop, and passed off as one complete image. One example of this is the image of John Kerry and Jane Fonda at a Vietnam anti-war rally. The image was created by fixing two separate images together, made to look as though they are sat next to each other. It was later revealed that this was a fake photograph.
Photography in China use to be heavily restricted and used a lot for propaganda. Li Zhensheng is a Chinese photographer who during the 1960 and early 70s, was a Red Army news soldier, a photojournalist covering the new revolutionary changing occurring in China.
Founded in 1947 by photographers like Henri Cartier-Bresson, the photography association Magnum is seen as the photographers “holy of holies”. Martin Parr is also a member of Magnum, but unlike other members, he had to fight hard to get his type of photography recognised by this association. This was because his work was very different from any of the work produced by other Magnum members.
Jeff Wall's "The Destroyed room"

Jeff Wall is a Canadian large scale photographer who constructs his images. When looking at Wall's work, Ben Lewis believes he has taken photography back to the 19^th century to be painting-like, where everything is constructed for meaning. Lewis also says that Wall's feeds in a lot of concerns such as concerns about gender and racial stereotypes.
The famous photograph, “La Vall'e du l'Huisne" was originally taken by “Frank Mustard”, but was originally believed to be taken by Camilli Silvy. This is because Silvy edited this photo in the 19^th century. He dividing the classes so they are on separate parts and the river. He also added in an artificial sky and added more leaved to the trees so the image looked how he wanted it to look.

Friday, 23 March 2012

Documents for artists

Photographic typologies are a series of images that are of the same subject/theme or related object theme. They are all photographed in the same way as they are about comparisons within the theme. The same object/ place can also be repetitively taken.
“The face of the times” is a series of photographs by the German photographer, August Sander. He was a commercial photographer until he created his human typology of German worker, when he was then considered to be a modernist. Sander categorised his human typology into social types.
Photo-montage by
Alexander Rodche

Alexander Rodchenko was a Russian photographer who took advantage of the flexibility of the Leica camera. Photographs could be taken from any angle, instead of the usual “belly button photography”, where photos were all taken from the same level (belly button level). Rodchenko designed the “USSR in construction” magazine which contained propaganda, glorifying the Soviet system showed their successes.
A photo-montage is a graphic technique, taken from cinema montage. They are created by collecting, cutting, pasting, editing and re-photographing images to create a new, unique photograph.
In the 1920s, Eugene Atget used albumen prints to create a typology of Paris. Taking over 10 000 photographs, he tried to preserve society in the areas of Paris that were going to be destroyed due to redevelopment.
Man Ray-solarization example

Solarization was discovered in the 1920s by Man Ray, and gives images a metallic look and making people look as though they are made from aluminium. With a Solarisation print, dark tones appear light and light tones appear dark. This method was discovered when Ray experimented with placing objects on light sensitive paper, switching the light on for a few seconds and then seeing the print that had been left behind. This is known as a photo-gram.
Bernice Abbott was an American photographer, who was introduced to Eugene Atget and his work through Man Ray. Abbott was one of Ray's assistants, and in 1927, Abbott took Atget's portrait. He took one standing, one sitting and one in profile.
Walker Evans worked for the FSA (Farm Security Administration ), documenting the effects of the great depression. He was fired in 1937 because he couldn't make his images of “moulded reality” fit with the propaganda requirements of the FSA.

We are family

In the early 60s, Diane Arbus roamed the streets of New York. She said “ The camera gave me a license to strip away what you want people to know about you, to reveal what you can't help people knowing about you”.
Diane Arbus-Colin Wood
photograph

One of the biggest controversies among photography is whether or not some photographers prey on vulnerable people. In the depressions era, many people immigrating from the mid west and west coast were photographed a lot. This was because they were easy to get access to as many were living on the streets. Diane Arbus was often accused of preying of vulnerable people due to the types of people she use to photograph, however she photographed them due to her curiosity of peoples originality.

In 1962, Arbus took a photograph of a young, skinny boy in Central Park called Colin Wood. The boy is clutching a toy grenade in one hand, and clutching the air with another where the other grenade (which he had lost a few days before) should have been. Even though she took a number of photos of Colin Wood on that day, she chose to use that particular photo represent the recent violence in America.
In 1971, Diane Arbus committed suicide. Many people believed she did this because she wanted to be anyone but her self, which was often represented in the images she took.
Larry Clarke-Tulsa
book front cover

Larry Clarke's “Tulsa” photos were all about his own life in Tulsa, Alabama. His life consisted of hanging out with friend, taking drugs, sex and guns. Unlike photographers like Walker Evans and Diane Arbus, he was an insider. The images were viewed like a visual person diary, because he was just like the people he photographed, as seen as one of them as they were his friends.
Confessional photography was largely influenced by by the work of Larry Clarke because it has an insiders account, . Nan Golding considers herself to be a confessional photographer, as she has an insiders account of transsexuals, transvestites, drug addicts and 24 hour party people. She tries to show the normality of people who are often considered freaks.
The Japanese photographer, Arabic will photograph everything around him like Japanese people, as well as taking promiscuous images. He also photographed every detail of his 20 year relationship with his wife, including his wedding, honeymoon and his wife's funeral. Arabic documents his life in such detail because he believes that otherwise he won't be able to remember it, especially in so much detail. He shoots every part of his life,other than the moments he doesn't want to remember.
The premise to Post-modernism is that we live in a culture saturated with media images and models. It is filled with ideas of how we should live our lives and who we are. All of this is influenced by media myth.

Paper Movies

Garry Winogrand image

Garry Winogrand took photographs because he wanted to see what the world looked like. He spent a lot of time documenting the streets of New York, as well as getting a lot of his material from New York zoo. He liked to take photos that would upset liberal and educated people, as well as politically conservative people, such as his “couple in Central Park zoo”. Winogrand like to startle people out of what the thought was true.
Due to photographic technology improving and catching up with the times, street scenes no longer needed to be staged. The reason they were originally staged is because cameras couldn't capture movement without there being blurs in the photograph.
The “much misunderstood theory” is Henri Cartier-Bresson's concept of the decisive moment, where you press the button at your chosen time to capture the moment you want. Like with John Meyerowitz's New York street photography, a photographer's presence can influence the way people act, so you don't always need to wait for that decisive moment.
Garry Winogrand is seen as the godfather of street photography in the USA, documenting the busy life of the streets of New York. Taking hundreds of images, his work has inspired many other photographers and street photographers, including Joel Meyerowitz.
In 1896, photographer Paul Martin documented the beach in Great Yarmouth, He was able to photograph people looking natural because he disguised his camera as a brown paper parcel.
In the 1960s, Ed Ruscha documented gasoline stations, travelling a lot to take his photos, particularly among route 66. This images were about things not people, surface not soul. Unlike photographers like Gary Winogrand, he didn't want to show the human drama of the streets, but instead the backdrops of which these dramas occur. Ruscha has also documented parking lots from the air view and all the buildings on sunset strip. All of these locations are usually taken for granted by most people. Ed Ruscha said “when I was growing up photographers were either nerds or pornographers”.
William Eggleston tricycle photo

William Eggleston photographs his work in colour, which use to cause slight controversy because many photographers, artists and other people believed that only apertures produced colour images, whereas professionals should produce black and white photographs. Eggleston photographed in colour because it required different structuring to black and white images. Colour can cause specific areas to be more dominant.
William Eggleston's photographs shows he is at war with the obvious. His images are dominated by colour, but the subject matter is still important. He documents the world around him, including people, objects and landscapes. Wherever he goes, the world travels with him.

Right time, right place

Henri Cartier-Bresson's
most famous photograph

One of the most familiar concepts in photography is “a decisive moment” in which you press the button at your chosen time to capture the moment you want. Henri Cartier-Bresson, the godfather of photojournalism, and his photographs was well known for using this concept. His most famous image of a man jumping over a puddle shows Cartier-Bresson's decisive moment to capture that specific moment in time. Taken a second later, is photo would look very different, and wouldn't be as successful.
War created the start of photojournalism, and was used to explain the reasons for the war. However, trusting a photograph is now seen as a huge mistake from the beginning. With the introduction and development of Photoshop, people are trusting photography less and less, as it is now much easier to manipulate images. Despite this, some people do still trust photography.
The Leica introduced in 1925 was revolutionary because it allowed photographers to to photos of movement, without any blur. This was very important for Henri Cartier-Bresson as some of his work contained movement, including his most famous image of a man jumping over a puddle.
People trust photos much more than any other art form. We use photographs in our passports and not paintings for this exact reason. George Bernard Shaw said that he would trade all paintings of Christ for one photograph of him, as photography is much more trustworthy.
Tony Vaccaro war image

Tony Vaccaro's was a soldier who photographed the war whilst on duty, as well as developing them wherever and whenever he could. However, before returning home from duty, his negatives were all destroyed by the army censors because they believed that the world wasn't ready to see the destruction and aftermath of war.
Henryk Ross was a Jew who was incarcerated in Woodge, a Nazi ghetto in Poland. He was incarcerated there with 164 000 Jews. He was one of the ghetto's official photographers, and as well as documenting the everyday life of the people who lived here, he also photographed the production of goods made here to make money for their captors.
“The Family of Man” is known as the world's most successful art exhibitions. With 500 images in the show, chosen from thousands of photographs, it acted as a public statement on behalf of humanity. There were five travelling versions, and was known as the “sticking plaster for the wounds of war”. By 1964, “The Family of Man” had already been viewed by 9million people. The “cliché” the show ends on is on W. Ugene Smith's optimistic image called “A walk through Paradise Garden” which shows his children walking through the darkness of the trees, into the light.
Joel Meyerowitz-Ground Zero

Joel Meyerowitz was one of very few photographers who had access to and was allowed to take photos of ground zero whilst the rubble was being cleared. He wanted to photograph this because it was it is a key aspect of history, and needed to be documented in order for it to be remembered like it is. Meyerowitz decided to photograph it in colour because “ to photograph it in black and white would be to keep it as a tragedy”.

Fixing the Shadows

Photography's true genius is its ability to reveal the secret strangeness that lies beneath the world of appearances.
Henry Fox Talbot was a proto-photographer who experimented with ways of fixing the shadows. He wasn't very good at drawing, which caused him to start thinking about the camera obscurer and chemical processes. Talbot experimented with paper coated in silver salts and shoe-box sized camera, nicknamed mouse traps. The images he produced were negatives that could be continuously reproduced.
An example of an 1860s
daguerrotype

In the 19^th century, Louis Daguerre created the daguerreotype, a way of fixing the shadows on a mirrored metal plate, which is why is was known as “a mirror with a memory”. Daguerreotypes cause the ink to sit up in the surface, instead of sinking into the image like a photograph, which is why light is reflected back . Unlike Henry Fox Talbot's method, it didn't allow an image to be reproduced as it didn't create any negatives.
Vernacular photography is amateur photography. Even though the photo has been purposely taken, the artistic nature of the image is often accidental or unintentional. Vernacular photography includes every type of art and photography, with categories including everyday life like family portraits and school photos.
Fixing the shadows is done by using a camera obscurer and light sensitive chemicals. At the time of the invention of photography, there were two people who were in competition against each other to be the first to “fix the shadows”. These were Henry Fox Talbot and Louis Daguerre, who invented different ways of doing this. Henry Fox Talbot used paper coated in silver salts and shoe-box sized camera (mouse traps). Louis Daguerre created the daguerreotype, a way of fixing the shadows on a mirrored metal plate. Talbot's method proved to be more successful because it allowed him to make multiple reproductions of the same image, unlike the daguerreotype.
The carte de visite was created in 1854, and was used to produce portraits. A person is photographed eight times in rapid sequence with a camera that has eight lenses, meaning the photographer could take several images with different poses in a few minutes. These photographs where printed on to small pieces of card.
An example of pictorialism.
"Fading away" (1858) by
Henry Peach Robinson

Nadar is well known a was very successful because he was able to take photographs of people with natural expressions, Also, he photographed up and coming stars of that time.
Pictorialism is a type of photography that where the images are mean, moody and occasionally magnificent. It started when a number of the top photographers of that time wanted to try and bring photography into the fine arts. Pictorialism was photography at its most po-faced.