Realism and the Invention of Photography

Realism

A 19th century artistic movement in which writers and painters sought to show life as it is rather than life as it should be

albumen silver print

A photograph made from a solution of egg white, salts, and silver nitrate; a common printing method in the 19th century.

daguerreotype process

A photographic process invented by Lois Daguerre; it involves the use of silver-coated copper plates, with images being developed by combining silver iodide and warmed mercury

Honore Daumier, Nadar Raising Photography 1862

Context: Nadar was famous for taking aerial photos of Paris since 1858. Daumier depicts Nadar as a bizarre, daring photographer; Nadar's hat is flying off, and in his own excitement to capture the perfect shot, he almost falls out of his balloon. Daumier mocks the new declaration that photography could be equal to "high art;" it's an ironic artwork. Appeared in a journal called Le Boulevard. Content: All buildings in Paris below have "Paris" written on them. Form: Lithograph (printing from a stone or smooth metal plate to produce mass images.) Function: To mock Nadar; to show that ridiculous and dangerous means have to be used to elevate photography to the height and importance of "high art." Serves as a commentary on the 1862 court decision permitting photography to be seen as high art. Also foreshadows modern aerial-surveillance photography; Nadar's balloon was used in the 1870 Siege of Paris for intrusive photography.

Timothy O'Sullivan, Field Where General Reynolds Fell, Gettysburg, 1863

Gardner titled the plate Field Where General Reynolds Fell, Battlefield of Gettysburg. But the photograph, its commemorative title notwithstanding, relates a far more common story: six Union soldiers lie dead, face up, stomachs bloated, their pockets picked and boots stolen. As Gardner described the previous plate, aptly titled The Harvest of Death, this photograph conveys "the blank horror and reality of war, in opposition to its pageantry."

Gertrude Kasebier, Blessed Art Thou Among Women, 1899

Gertrude Käsebier was a photographer working in a Pictorialist style influenced by her earlier training as a painter. She was familiar with Friedrich Fröbel's pedagogical theories investigating the importance of the mother's role in child development, and dedicated a significant number of photographs to the subject of motherhood. In Blessed Art Thou Among Women, the biblical-sounding title (from the Hail Mary prayer) accompanies two characters positioned in an archetypal image of motherhood. As was often the case in Pictorialist photography, the models were people known to the photographer; in this case the wife and daughter of photographer and painter Francis Watts Lee. Her goal "to bring out in each photograph the essential personality" of the subject made Käsebier one of the most respected portrait photographers of her time.

Clarence White, Ring Toss, 1899, Gum birchromate print

Highly reminiscent of William Merritt Chase's painting of the same subject made three years earlier, "Ring Toss" is an ingratiating vision of youthful feminine grace in a domestic setting. It signals a remove from the modern urban world and demonstrates White's ability to find sentiment even in the commonplace. The light orange gum bichromate of this print resembles pastel or red chalk, making the photographer's emulation of the traditions of art all the more salient.

Julia Margeret Cameron, Vivien and Merlin, Albumen silver print, 1874

In 1874 Tennyson asked Cameron to make photographic illustrations for a new edition of his Idylls of the King, a recasting of the Arthurian legends. Responding that both knew that "it is immortality to me to be bound up with you," Cameron willingly accepted the assignment. Costuming family and friends, she made some 245 exposures to arrive at the handful she wanted for the book. Ultimately—and predictably—she was unhappy with the way her photographs looked reduced in scale and translated into wood engravings, and she chose to issue a deluxe edition, at her own risk, that included a dozen full size photographic prints in each of two volumes.

Julia Margeret Cameron, Zoe, Maid of Athens, Albumen silver print

Julia Margaret Cameron (1815-1879) is noted not only as one of the few female photographers of the Victorian age, but also as a bold innovator and entrepreneur who tirelessly campaigned to raise the new science of photography to a higher realm. "My aspirations are to ennoble Photography and to secure for it the character and uses of High Art," she declared. Cameron is now regarded as one of the most important figures in the history of photography. She was one of the earliest photographers to consciously reject meticulous detail in favor of a luminous, dreamlike soft focus, evoking feelings rather than showing facts. Cameron initiated a series of large-scale, close-up heads. These fulfilled her photographic vision, a rejection of 'mere conventional topographic photography - map-making and skeleton rendering of feature and form' in favour of a less precise but more emotionally penetrating form of portraiture. Cameron also continued to make narrative and allegorical tableaux, which were larger and bolder than her previous efforts. The title here refers to Lord Byron's poem Maid of Athens, ere we part (1810). The soft, moody lighting conjures the poem's theme of romantic longing. The embroidered cap is probably meant to suggest Greek folk costume. The last line of each stanza of the poem is 'Zoë mou sas agapo', which Byron translated as 'My life, I love you'.

Edouard Manet, Olympia, 1863

Manet was born into the Parisian bourgeoisie and was a pivotal figure for the transition from realism to impressionism. Influenced by the old masters but believed that one's art should reflect the ideals and ideas of the present. Rebelled against conventional academic art. The artwork borrowed the pose from Titan's Venus of Urbino except it was contriversal because of the lack of academic technique and mythology and depicted a prostitute whose features weren't 'perfected'. The audience was Academic artists, critics and the public. The painting was larely unpopular but its unconventionality became popular with the avant-garde. Immediatly roused caricatures and paintings, other artists also appreciated the painting. Raised the issue of prostitution in contempoary France. Olympia's Her sparse jewellery and small amounts of clothing accentuate her nakedness and comfortable lifestyle. The orchid, black cat and bouquet of flowers are all symbols of sexuality. The African-American servant suggests hyped up sexuality. Olympia is ignoring the flowers and supposedly looking in the direction of the door where a customer has barged in.

Eadward Muybridge, Horse Galloping (1878)

Prepared glass plates could be purchased, eliminating the need to fool with chemicals. In 1878, new advances decreased the exposure time to 1/25th of a second, allowing moving objects to be photographed and lessening the need for a tripod. This new development is celebrated in Eadweard Maybridge's sequence of photographs called Galloping Horse (1878). Designed to settle the question of whether or not a horse ever takes all four legs completely off the ground during a gallop, the series of photographs also demonstrated the new photographic methods that were capable of nearly instantaneous exposure.

Gustave Courbet

Realism The Stone Breakers

Edward Steichen, The Flatiron, 1904

Steichen added color to the platinum print that forms the foundation of this photograph by using layers of pigment suspended in a light-sensitive solution of gum arabic and potassium bichromate. Together with two variant prints in other colors, also in the Museum's collection, "The Flatiron" is the quintessential chromatic study of twilight. Clearly indebted in its composition to the Japanese woodcuts that were in vogue at the turn of the century and in its coloristic effect to the "Nocturnes" of Whistler, this picture is a prime example of the conscious effort of photographers in the circle of Alfred Stieglitz to assert the artistic potential of their medium.

Honore Daumier, The Third-Class Carriage, 1862

The Third-Class Carriage demonstrates Daumier's renowned sympathy for the poor. Although a bitter caricaturist of the bourgeoisie and politicians, Daumier drops the satire and draws a sensitive picture of the poor. A family sits together in the third class car, folded in on themselves, isolated and absorbed in thought. Daumier intended to capture the plight of the working-class not through drama but through the quiet moments of their everyday lives. One sees the hardness of their lives through their clothes, the weariness of their posture and their facial features, particularly the grandmother as she confronts the viewer head-on. Composition: The background takes up more space than the foreground and is unusually detailed for Daumier. The third-class family faces away from the rest of the passengers, which emphasizes its isolation and rejection from the rest of society.

wet collodion process

The first practical means of coating glass plates for recording images; discovered by Frederick Scott Archer in 1851; exposed plates also had to be developed, fixed, and washed before the collodion dried.

Nadar, Pierrot Laughing, 1855.

This photograph captures the great French mime Charles Deburau, who acted at the Théâtre des Funambules in Paris. His father Baptiste originally took on the role but after his death in 1846, his son Charles, who looked just like him, continued the tradition. In this image he plays the character Pierrot, a classic persona from the commedia dell'arte tradition. Literally, "comedy of professional artists," commedia dell'arte is a theatrical form dating from the 15th century, characterized by improvised dialogue and a cast of colorful stock characters.

Jean-Francois Millet, The Gleaners, 1857

Unlike Millet who was known for depicting idealized, hale and hearty rural folk, Courbet depicts figures who wear ripped and tattered clothing. None of Millet's mythologized farm workers appear here. Courbet wants to show what is "real," and so he has depicted a man that seems far too old and a boy that seems still too young for such back-breaking labors. The hill reaches to the top of the canvas everywhere but the upper right corner, where a tiny patch of bright blue sky appears. The effect is to isolate these laborers, and to suggest that they are physically and socio-economically trapped by their work. Like the stones themselves, Courbet's brushwork is rough—more so than might be expected during the mid-nineteenth century. This suggests that the way the artist painted his canvas was in part a conscious rejection of the highly polished, refined Neoclassicist style that still dominated French art in 1848. Perhaps most characteristic of Courbet's style is his refusal to focus on the parts of the image that would usually receive the most attention. Traditionally, an artist would spent the most time on the hands, faces, and foregrounds. Not Courbet. If you look carefully, you will notice that he attempts to be even-handed, attending to faces and rock equally.

Pictorialism

a school of photography that employed soft focus, special filters and lens coatings, darkroom manipulation, and innovative printing processes to try to match the aesthetic effects of painting and printmaking

Timothy O'Sullivan

photographed battles & human casualties of the Civil War

photography

the art or practice of taking and processing photographs.

William Henry Fox Talbot, The Open Door (1844)

wanted to create photo that mimicked paintings to give it artistic quality. light and dark contrast like that of the dutch school of art. bring importance to the artist/photographer

Jean-Francois Millet

was a French painter and one of the founders of the Barbizon school in rural France. Millet is noted for his scenes of peasant farmers; he can be categorized as part of the naturalism and realism movements. "The Gleaners"