Transcript Photography - College of Alameda

Photography
The Camera before Photography
• Before the invention of film and light-sensitive paper,
Renaissance painters sometimes used a camera
obscura to help achieve realistic representations of
space and depth.
• The camera obscura was a large box with a lens to
control light, and a ground glass at the back on which
image could be traced.
• Louis J. M. Daguerre (1789-1851) invented the first
practical system for producing permanent photographic
prints in 1839. He first used the camera obscura to help
him paint gigantic backdrops for opera, this led him to
experiment with photography.
• When the photograph became widely available in the
1840s and 1850s the images printed on paper were in
black and white or sepia (brown and white).
The Power of Representation
• The success of photography in reproducing realistic
scenes and people had an instant impact on painting.
• One French painter after seeing the daguerreotype
process demonstrated in 1839 stated, “From today
painting is dead.”
• He was quite wrong, but he was responding to the
realistic detail Daguerre’s almost instant process (like the
modern Polaroid) could extract from the world.
• Even today realism remains among the most important
resources of the photographic medium.
Photography And Painting: The
Pictorialists
• Pictorialists are photographers who use
the achievements of painting, particularly
realistic painting, in their effort to realize
the potential of photography as art.
• The pictorialist controlls details by
subordinating them to structure, thus
producing compositions that usually relied
on the same underlying structures found in
most late nineteenth-century paintings.
• Generally, the pictorialist photograph was
soft in focus, centrally weighted with its
subject, and carefully balanced
symmetrically across the frame.
• By relying on the formalist qualities of
some nineteenth-century paintings,
pictorialist photographers were able to
evoke emotions that centered on
sentimentalism.
The Emotional Power of Photography
• Photography has the power to evoke horror as well as
pleasant sentiments.
• The natural question to be asked is whether a journalistic
photograph of this kind (fig.12-11) can be considered
from the point of view of art.
• Were you to examine Carter’s photograph from the point
of view of its organization of individual details, you would
see that the intersection of lines flowing from body to
body, including the body of the Bophuthatswana soldier,
link each figure conclusively and emotionally, while the
open doors divide the photograph into powerful visual
units.
• The lighting is harsh, the colors earthy and bleached,
intensifying the mercilessness of the scene.
The Documentarists
• Time is critical to the documentarist, who
portrays a world that is disappearing so
slowly (or quickly) we cannot see it go.
• Not all photographs are decisive; they do
not all catch the action at its most intense
point.
• The best documentarist develop an
instinct - nurtured by years of visual
education… even in the midst of disaster.
James Van Der Zee
• James Van Der Zee worked in a somewhat
different tradition. His studio in Harlem was so
prominent that many important black citizens felt
it essential that he take their portrait. (Fig. 12-20)
• There is the contrast of soft focus for the
background and sharp focus for the foreground.
• Thus the couple and their new car stand out
brilliantly. The car has been selectively framed
front and rear, reminding us that this is, first, a
portrait of a couple. Their style and elegance
are what Van Der Zee was anxious to capture.
• His directness of approach puts him in the
documentary tradition.
The Modern Eye
• The art of photography is young, and the
mood is often rebellious.
• Some rebellion has produced unusual
subject matter. Some rebellion has
produced novel approaches to the
composition of shapes... and some
rebellion has produced serial photography.
Color Photography
• Color photography has special problems
because color tends to limit the photographer’s
ability to transform the subject matter.
• Therefore serious photographers often choose
apparently inconsequential subject matter in
order to release the viewer from the tyranny of
the scene, thereby permitting the viewer to
concentrate on structure and nuances of lighting
and texture.
• These are expressly photographic values.
Summary
• Photography’s capacity to record reality faithfully
is both a virtue and a fault.
• It makes many viewers of photographs
concerned only with what is presented (the
subject matter) and leaves them unaware of the
way it has been represented (the form).
• Because of it fidelity of presentation,
photography seems to some, to have no
transformation of subject matter (the content).