Transcript Photography: A Critical Introduction Thinking About Photography

Photography:
A Critical Introduction
Thinking About Photography
• What is this lecture about?
– Debates and key writings on photography.
– Changing ideas about photography.
– Some history considered alongside art history,
theory, and cultural history.
– Divided into four sections:
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Aesthetics and Technologies
Contemporary Debates
Photography and Social History
Histories of Photography
Part 1: Aesthetics and Technologies
• Photography was hailed as a great
technological invention
• Became the subject of debates concerning
its aesthetic status and social uses
• “New machinery is normally presented as the
agent of social change, not as the outcome of a
desire for such change.”
• Particular cultures invest in and develop
new machines and technologies in order
to satisfy social change:
– Photography is one such example
• Why did photography become an active
field of research during the 1800s?
– Expanding middle-class demand for
portraiture outstripped available painted
means
• Once a technology exists, it may become
adapted and introduced into social use in
a variety of both foreseen and unforeseen
ways!
• Art or Technology?
– The fight to certify photography as a fine art
has been among the medium’s dominant
philosophical preoccupations since its
inception.
– Photography’s legitimacy as an art form was
challenged by artists and critics who seized
upon the mechanical and chemical aspects of
the photographic process as proof that
photography was, at best, a craft.
– Often called “a handmaiden to the arts.”
• Photographers responded in two main
ways:
– Accepted that photography was something
different from art and sought to discover what
the intrinsic properties of the medium were.
– Pointed out that photography was more than
a mechanical form of image-making, that it
could be worked on and contrived so as to
produced pictures which in some ways
resembled paintings.
• To prove that photography was indeed an
art, photographers at first imitated the
paintings of the time.
– Blurring of images to achieve a painterly
softness of line for example.
Julia Margaret Cameron
• Julia Margaret Cameron (1815 - 79) is
recognized as a pioneer of photography
and one of the great portrait
photographers of all time.
• Cameron's sophisticated use of lighting,
selective focus and literary allusion
resulted in a powerful portrayal of Victorian
womanhood.
• In the other camp, photographers were
interested in photography’s ability to
provide apparently accurate records of the
visual world.
• Referred to as “straight photography.”
Paul Strand
• Straight photography refers to
photography that attempts to depict a
scene as realistically and objectively as
permitted by the medium, forsaking the
use of manipulation both pre-exposure
(e.g., filters, lens coatings, soft focus) and
post-exposure (e.g., unusual developing
and printing methods).
• The power of the photograph was
demonstrated in 1872 with what was referred
to as documentary photography.
• Born in Keeseville, New York, on April 4, 1843,
William Henry Jackson was a self-taught artist
who, at the age of 15, was working as a
retoucher in a photographer's studio.
• He was successful in this pursuit and later
moved to a more prosperous studio in Rutland,
Vermont. He honed his artist's skills with the
retouching work, but also learned a great deal
about the young art of photography, a skill that
would stand him in good stead later in life.
• During the summer of 1869, Jackson began
photographing the construction along the new
Union Pacific Railroad.
• His work came to the attention of Ferdinand
Hayden who was organizing a geologic survey
to explore the mysterious lands known as
Yellowstone, and he was asked to accompany
the expedition.
• As a result, William Henry Jackson became the
first photographer to successfully capture the
wonders of Yellowstone on film.
• Jackson's photographs were an important factor
in convincing Congress to establish Yellowstone
as the first national park in the U.S. in 1872.
• Photography and the Modern:
– Photography was a major carrier and shaper
of modernism.
• Modernism is a cultural movement that generally
includes the progressive art and architecture,
music, literature, and design which emerged in the
decades before 1914.
• It was a movement of artists and designers who
rebelled against late 19th century academic and
historicist traditions, and embraced the new
economic, social and political aspects of the
emerging modern world.
• Photography included access to visual
information about the past and detail over
and above that normally noted by the
human eye.
• During the 1920s and 1930s, the putative
political power of photography and its
status as the most important modern form
of communication were at their height.
• The Postmodern:
– It is an important, and much contested
philosophical term, which emerged in the mid
1980s.
– New forms of social organization emerged.
– In the early 1980s, the role of the photograph
underwent a fundamental change. Although
the Pop Art and Conceptual Art of the 1960s
and 1970s had begun to make use of
photograph in artistic expression, it was in the
1980s that it was moulded into a
postmodernist tool thus breaking new ground
for visual artists.
• The objectivity of the photograph and its weight
as evidence were no longer regarded as a fact.
The meaning of a work and its interpretation was
increasingly often bound up with the context in
which it was shown and how it was displayed.
• Young visual artists in particular were fascinated
by the way the photograph destroyed the
traditional status of art and artist associated with
modernism: a photograph could be copied
endlessly, and its size and presentation could be
altered.
• Photography has always been caught up
in new technologies and played a central
part in the making of the modern world
• People have a loss of confidence in the
medium because of the ease with which
images are altered and presented as
accurate records
Part 2: Contemporary Debates
• All discussions of photographs rest upon some
notion of the nature of the photograph and how it
acquires meaning.
• Two strands of theoretical discussion have
featured in recent debates about photography:
– Theoretical approaches premised on the relationship
of the image to reality.
– The importance of the interpretation of the image by
focusing upon the reading, rather than the taking, of
photographic representations.
• Modern Western philosophy, from the
eighteenth century onwards has been a
positivist approach to research in the
sciences and the social sciences and
photography has been centrally implicated
as a recording tool.
• Photography Theory:
– Difficulty in establishing photographic theory
• Lies at the cusp of the scientific, the social
scientific, and the humanities
• As such, contemporary debates are divergent
• Up until 1980’s, photographic theory within
education had been taken to refer to technologies
and techniques such as optics, colour temperature,
optimum developer heat, etc.
– In essence, theory related to the craft of photography
• Victor Burgin (1982):
– Argued that photography theory must be
interdisciplinary.
– Only photography criticism existed.
– Warns against confusing photographic theory
with a general theory of culture.
• Critical Reflections on Realism;
– A number of critics have focused on the realist
properties of the image.
– Susan Sontag wrote a book called “On
Photography.”
• Discussed photographs as traces of reality and
interrogated photography in terms of the extent to
which the image reproduces reality.
• A series of interconnected essays.
• Emphasized the idea of the photograph as a
means of freezing a moment in time.
• Her book is an attempt at a sweeping critique of
everything photographic.
• Her interests range widely from detailed
analyses of individual photographers to why
people fear having their photographs taken; from
historical development in photographic
equipment to why people take pictures of any
and everything: tourist to scientist, artist to
technician, surveillance photography to medical
examinations.
• The debate about whether photography is an art
or a tool weaves its way in and out of the various
essays.
• Sontag’s discussion veers between the reasons
for taking photographs and the uses to which
they are put.
• “To collect photographs is to collect the world.”
• Sontag sees that photography, leveling
everything, also beautifies. Let the subject be
what it will - pollution, death, war … photography
will tend to make it look aesthetically pleasing.
• “The image is fundamental to the cultural impact
of the camera.”
• Mary Price (1994):
– In her book, “The Photograph: A Strange,
Confined Space,” argues that the meaning of
the photographic image is primarily
determined through associated verbal
description and the context in which the
photograph is used.
– No single meaning of a photograph.
• Theory, Criticism, Practice:
– What has all this got to do with making
photographs?
• 19th century desire for empirical evidence
• Criteria for what makes a good photograph
• Key point is that theoretical assumptions founded
in varying academic fields, from the scientific to the
philosophic and the aesthetic intersect to inform
both the making and the interpretation of visual
imagery
• Photography criticism similar to other
fields of the arts, evaluating work in
relation to established traditions and
practices
• At worst, criticism masks personal opinion
with the overall aim of impressing readers
Case Study: The Migrant Mother
• 1936
• Working for Farm Security Administration
• Stopped on road to investigate group of
people employed to pick peas
• This photo, one of many, became the most
reproduced image in the history of
photography.
• A number of differing approaches may be used
to analyze photographs, each model reflects its
own particular concerns and priorities:
– Viewed primarily as social or historical evidence
– Investigated in relation to the intentions of the
photographer and the particular context of its making
– Related to politics and ideology
– Assessed through reference to process and
technique
– Considered in terms of aesthetics and traditions of
representation in art
– Discussed in relation to class, race, and gender
– Analyzed through reference to psychoanalysis
– Decoded as a semiotic text
• The Photograph as Testament:
– Why is it this image which has become so
famous?
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Compelling presence of the woman
Central position of the mother
Absence of the father
Direction of the look
Direction of the children
– All add to emotional and sentimental register
– Woman viewed as a symbol
• The Photographer’s Account:
– Was not interested in name or history
– Took a series of shoots
– Implied that the pictures might help her so she
helped the photographer
– 50 years later said she did not receive a
single penny.
• Genre and Usage:
– FSA was documentary but released photos
for other uses
– Lange had no control over usage of photo and
not control over if it was retouched
– One principle of documentary aesthetic was
that no photograph should be retouched
• Image in Context:
– FSA project a response to economic crisis of
1929 and depression of the 1930s
– Aimed to document and record the position of
the poor
– Photographers favoured works that stressed
the depiction of human destitution and
distress and were clearly political
• Image-Text:
– Titled Migrant Mother
– Title and organization of photo are key
elements of its appeal
– Same picture captioned in 1965 read Seasonal
Farm Labourer’s Family, not as powerful
• Aesthetics and Art History:
– Concerned with composition, subject-matter,
and organization of pictorial elements and
techniques.
– Many of Lange’s prints were poor
– Many art historians commented that image is
related to many paintings of the Madonna and
Child in Western Art
• As Gendered Image:
– Number of feminist photohistorians have
looked at the FSA in terms of participation of
women photographers and the gendering of
the image
• Reading the Photograph:
– In 1960s and 1970s, images were read as
cultural, psychoanalytic and ideological signs
– Centers on the female body, the body that is
socially constructed through the gaze
– Children turned heads (shame or shyness?)
– Arm up to indicated tentative thought
• Image as Icon:
– Image entered Western consciousness
– Part of iconic power is from multiple
appearances over the years and in other
forms
Part 3: Photography and Social History
• Popular photography is increasingly used
as social-historical evidence.
• Visual anthropology.
• Photographs are commonly used as
evidence and used to investigate the past.
• Photography was used throughout the 19th
century in the service of political and
industrial change.
• Landscape photography used for civil and
military mapping purposes.
• Many ways in which photographs can be
read and understood and we often rarely
see photographs in their original state:
– Advertising for example
– Context influences our perception
• Artistic nude versus one in questionable magazine
Part 4: The History of Photography
The Early Years
Beginnings - 1841
• Architecture and Still Life:
– Architecture is built into early photography
and helps frame a discussion of how this
revolutionary image-making system was
invented
– Still lifes stood still for the long exposures
required by photography in its infancy
• Nature morte – photographs are far from dead
• It may seem strange but cameras existed
long before photography. It had been
observed as far back as the 5th Century
BC that an image of the outside scene
was formed by sunlight shining through a
small hole into a darkened room.
– Mo-Ti (5th Century philosopher) called this
room a “collecting place.”
– Camera Obscura means “darkened room”
• Greek Philosophers (Aristotle) described
the basic principles of optics and the
camera obscura during his life (384-322
BC).
• 10th – century Arabian scholar Alhazen
described the effect in detail and told how
to view an eclipse of the sun in a camera
obscura (dark chamber)
– Camera means “room” in latin
• In 1490 Leonardo Da Vinci gave two clear
descriptions of the camera obscura in his
notebooks.
• By the time of the Renaissance (15th
Century), a lens had been fitted into the
hole to improve the image
• Many of the first camera obscuras were
large rooms like that illustrated by the
Dutch scientist Reinerus Gemma-Frisius in
1544 for use in observing a solar eclipse.
• In 1666, Isaac Newton demonstrated that
light is the source of colour. He used a
prism to split sunlight into its constituent
colours and another to recombine them to
make white light.
• The term "camera obscura" was first used
by the German astronomer Johannes
Kepler in the early 17th century. He used it
for astronomical applications and had a
portable tent camera for surveying in
Upper Austria.
• The development of the camera obscura
took two tracks. One of these led to the
portable box device that was a drawing
tool.
• The other track became the camera
obscura room, a combination of education
and entertainment.
• In the 19th century, with improved lenses
that could cast larger and sharper images,
the camera obscura flourished at the
seaside and in areas of scenic beauty.
• Device also was size of a small box by this
time
• It had become a drawing aid used by
artists
• What remained was a way to fix the
camera obscura image permanently
• In 1802, Wedgwood, an amateur
scientist, presented a Paper on his
experiments in photography to the
Royal Institution.
• He hoped to be able to mass-produce
photographic images on porcelain for
his business.
• He sponged nitrate of silver onto paper,
wood and leather, which he exposed to light
through an image of a painting on glass.
• He was able to produce an images, with
particular success on leather, though he did
not know why the leather worked so well. In
fact it was because the leather contained
tannic acid, which had properties similar to
gallic acid, used in later years in
photography.
• However Wedgewood was unable to fix
his images to make them permanent.
• He concluded that there was no future
in photography.
• Joseph Niépce began his photographic
experiments in 1816, and became the
first person to produce a permanent
photograph in 1826.
• It was produced using his camera
obscura.
• Joseph Niépce experimented with silver
chloride which he knew darkened on
exposure to light but then turned to a kind
of asphalt that hardened when exposed to
light
• Placed sheet in camera obscura and
exposed image for eight hours and got
permanent print (heliography or sun
drawing)
View from the Window at Le Gras (Gernsheim Collection, University of Texas at
Austin). By Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, 1827. This is the first known photograph.
• Louis Daguerre wrote to Niépce and became his
partner
• Daguerre perfected his process in 1839 and
called it the daguerreotype (under 30 minutes to
expose)
– The Daguerreotype photograph, discovered by Daguerre
was a delicate single image produced on metal.
• Daguerre eventually discovered a more
permanent and clear method of exposing
images, and his procedure was given as a gift to
the world by the French government in 1839.
• Daguerrotypes took Europe and the United
States by storm, preserving memories for
thousands around the world.
Photography took over what previously
had been one of the main functions of
art – the recording of factual visual
information
• At the same time Daguerre published his
process, an Englishman named William Henry
Fox Talbot was perfecting his own procedure of
photography, the first direct predecessor of
today's method.
• Talbot created the basic negative/positive
process, which today enables multiple prints to
be created from a single negative.
• His process, called the calotype, eventually
gained predominance over the daguerrotype.
– This became the basis for photography over the
next 150 years and beyond.
– Patented his Calotype process in 1841
Reduced
exposure to 5
minutes.
• 1840 - Wolcott was an American Daguerreotype
photographer and instrument maker. He is
particularly remembered for having invented a
camera which, instead of a lens, had inside it a
large concave mirror which reflected intense
light on to the plate, thus greatly lessening the
required exposure time.
• It also had another advantage for Daguerreotype
photographers in that the image was no longer
laterally reversed. The disadvantage was that
the size of the pictures were limited to 2 square
inches.