Quiz2

Henry Peach Robinson

Photographer and photo- theorist. Emphasized photography's ability to enhance/change visual truth. This he claimed made photography more than a tool to reproduce reality, and elevated it to a viable art form. Uses techniques like combination printing to create complicated compositions, generally genre scenes. It was Robinson who coined the term "pictorialism."

dry-plate negative

A negative that can be developed any time after exposure; British physician, Richard L. Maddox, made the first successful dry-plate negative in 1871. Replaced wet plate collodion and was mass produced.

The little Galleries of 291 5th Avenue

Art gallery, operated by Alfred Stieglitz. Mounted exhibitions of recent and contemporary modern art and photography, of art from Europe, the US.

The Photo-Secession

Group of American pictorialist photographers whose aim was to elevate of photography to level of a fine art. Mimicked the modern painterly aesthetics of Impressionism, and the compositions seen in Japanese prints. Formed by Stieglitz and Steichen in reaction against the Photo Club of NY and other "academies" of photography.

Edward Curtis

Hundreds of photographs done in a pictorialist style, but with documentary agenda of recording the Native Americans. Financed by JP Morgan Chase. Photos of Native Americans, documenting what he described as was a "vanishing race" -- a white-American ideology that had existed since Andrew Jackson was president, and passed the Indian Removal Act in the 1830s.

amateur

In the 19th century before mass produced plates, film and processing, "amateurs" were non-professional who, out of enthusiasm had become highly skilled/inventive/innovative and sometimes experimental in their field. Most scientific and photographic discoveries had been made by amateurs. Usually very wealthy, highly educated. In the photograph, there is a tendency to experiment. Because not professional, they at times explored the medium more than trying to market it broadly, they allowed for personal, and thus "artistic" expression. Examples: Niépce, Sir John Herschel, Talbot, Cameron, Carroll (Dodgson), Lady Clementina Hawarden, Julia Margaret Cameron.

gelatin silver print or process

Invented by Richard Leach Maddox in the 1870s, and later improved to highten sensitivity. Is the photographic process used with currently available black-and-white films and printing papers. This is one of the many ways of producing a photograph. A suspension of silver salts in gelatin is coated onto a diverse supports such as glass, flexible plastic or film, or coated paper. Clear image, rapid exposure times. The higher gloss papers first became popular in the 1920s and 30s as photography transitioned from pictorialism into modernism and "straight" photography.

cropping

Isolating details of a negative for printing. Stieglitz felt this was a darkroom photographic technique that was at once medium-specific, and which expressed his vision as an artist-photographer.

Sadakichi Hartmann

Japanese-Amercian poet and art critic. His photography criticism published in Camera Work. Coined term "straight photography," which he saw in contrast to Pictorialism. He praised the former for its purely photographic forms of expression. Ultimately influences Stieglitz to champion straight photography.

Alfred Stieglitz

New York-based photographer, gallerist, and journal editor, and champion of "modern art" from Europe and the US. A pictorialist until the early 20th century, he co-founded the Photo-Secession. Images often aesthetically influenced by "japonisme" and Impressionism. Published Camera Work to promote art and photography. Work one finds first an emphasis on pictorialism, then a change to "straight photography." Married for a while to painter Georgia O'Keeffe.

Royal Photographic Society

One of the world's oldest photographic societies. It was founded in London, England in 1853 as The Photographic Society of London with the objective of promoting the practice, display, and science of photography, and in 1854 received Royal patronage from Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. Writing and photos published in a journal.

Queen Victoria and Prince Albert

Patrons of photography and the effort to "elevate" it to an art form. Queen V. purchased Rejlander's "Two Ways of Life" for her husband, Prince Albert, who was enthusiastic about modern technologies.

Lewis Carroll

Pen name of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. A British professor of mathematics, writer and amateur photographer. Amateur photography. Made photos to be displayed privately, in albums. Known particularly for those featuring children of his friends, with whom he had lasting friendships, and whom he photographed dressed-up/role playing (e.g.: Alice Liddell, the inspiration for Alice of "Alice in Wonderland", or Alexandra "Xie" Kitchin). Friends with Cameron. Learned photography from Rejlander.

photogravure

1st method of printing a photo in ink. process involving a copper plate onto which is placed a light-sensitive gelatin tissue/film that's already contact-printed with a transparency of the desired photograph image. Those are chemically etched in relation to the image on the tissue/film. This intaglio surface can be inked and printed onto paper. Thus what you see is a print which is fairly faithful to detail and continuous tones of a photograph--though grainer and, it is more "artistic" looking.

gum bichromate process

A "gum" painted don to paper and used in the darkroom to add hue and painterly marks. Photo-Secessionist technique to make the image more unique, more like painting (e.g., Steichen's works of the 1st decade of the 20th century). Someitimes referred to as chrome or gum prints.

Impressionism

A French movement in painting that sought to capture a momentary appearance of the piece they were painting. Typically light-infused, and sketchy. Emulated by American pictorialists of the Photo-Secession.

Lady Clementina Hawarden

A noted English noblewoman, portrait amateur photographer of the Victorian Era; produced over 800 photographs mostly of her adolescent daughters. She medaled at exhibitions of the Royal Photographic Society. Crisp imagery, emphasizing youthful feminity, daydreaming, of home-bound women, at times, "fancy dress" . Images w/ missing corners evidence their placement and use in albums for enjoyment of family and friends.

combination print

A photographic print made from a number of individual negatives and printed to achieve a seamless picture that otherwise could not have been shot due to lighting etc. 19th-century combination prints were typically on albumen paper and made from wet collodion glass-plate negatives. Today it is more common to use the term "photomontage."

japonisme

A style in nineteenth-century modern art that was highly influenced by the aesthetics of Japanese woodblock prints and screen paintings. Influential on Photo-Secession artists.

Pictorialism

A term applied primarily to photographic art from 1850's-1920. An approach to photography that emphasizes the beauty of subject matter through tonality, and composition, and technique, rather than as a record of reality. Claims high "art" status were made by also by choosing subject matter--such as allegories, or genre scenes--which were already found paintings. The goal to make a photograph like a picture (painting) is ultimately superseded by the stress purely photographic "straight" photography.

celluloid film

A thin flexible sheet of celluloid, coated with a sensitized emulsion of gelatin, and used as a substitute for photographic plates.

George eastman.

American inventor and industrialist who invented the dry-plate method of photography, flexible film, and a process for color photography. Named his company Eastman Kodak, maker of Kodak cameras film, and photo processing, which helped to promote amateur photography on a large popular scale.

Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood

British painting movement, that influenced Julia Margaret Cameron's style of photographing women and children. Painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti was friends with both Lewis Carroll and with Cameron. PRB Subjects stress Victorian concepts of female virtue, or feminine vice. Maiden-like, hair is down, spaces are shallow, filled with the figure, and are cluttered with natural and other symbols of "femininity". Here shown: Rossetti's "Lady Lilith"

Grafflex

Camera make that was used by Stieglitz, replacing the tripod-supported view camera. Enhanced mobility

Oscar Gustave Rejlander

Father of the concept of "photography as art." Tried to make artistic looking photographs. His "Two Ways of Life" 1858, (used 30 negatives, and was based on well-known paintings, such as Raphael's "School of Athens" and "the Romans of the Decadence "by Thomas Couture." Helped both HP Robinson Dodgson (Carroll) much about how to photograph. Most popular for his sentimental genre pictures.

Kodak One, Kodak Brownie (etc.)

First point-and-shoot Koadak the no 1, was made in 1888; the Kodak Brownie: 1900. Kodaks were the first cameras developed for the general public. Cheap. Brownie was the first camera to feature roll film, which, once used, was sent by the user to be developed by Kodak. Art photographers wanted to set themselves apart from this crowd.

tableau vivant

French term for "living picture." Scene presented on stage by costumed actors, who were in silent and motionless poses as if in a picture. This was approximated by Rejlander in his "Two Ways of Life"

F. Holland Day

Pictorialist who made genre images and images of himself as Jesus (Seven Last Words, Crucifixion). Biblical as well as mythological subjects, often with a quality of male eroticism.

platinum print, Platinotype

Process for making platinum prints was invented in 1873 by William Willis. The process depends on the light sensitivity of iron salts. Chemical reactions during developing dissolve out the iron salts and replace them with platinum. Platinum prints were popular until the 1920's when the price of platinum rose so steeply that they became too expensive. They were valued for their great range of subtle tonal variations, deep blacks, and their permanence. They are in the paper, rather than on a shiny emulsion, and thus are matte. Used by WH Emerson, Photo-Secessionists, and even by more recent photographers like Mapplethorpe in his later years.

Gertrude Kasebier

Professional NY portrait photographer whose work was shown in the first issue of Camera Work. Pictorialist. Victorian themes of feminine virtue, women and children; society portraits; portriats of Native Americans from Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Show.

Camera Work

The photographic journal published by Alfred Stieglitz from 1903 to 1917. Contained high-quality photogravures by some of the most important contemporary photographers. Editorial purpose to establish photography as fine art. Eventually emphasizes the shift from pictorialism to "straight photography."

Naturalist photography

Theory of physician-photographer W. H. Emerson, published as a book in 1889 on the artistic potential for photography. Opposed to earlier pictorialist ideas (eg: those of Robinson, which involved staging scenes, combination printing, sharp focus.) Argued that photographs should reflect nature, and should offer "the illusion of truth", based on optical fact (sight is not sharply focused all over). This is similar to how the Impressionist painters saw things. Exemplified in his book *Pictures of East Anglian Life* (book w/ photogravures of his photographs), and the *Norfolk Broads* (book w/platinum prints). Later, Emerson rejected his own theories based on new scientific evidence of limited ability to control tonal relations in a photograph with a lens and chemical processes

Julia Margaret Cameron

Victorian-era amateur photographer (amateur in the old sense of the word--a non-professional, skilled enthusiast-practitioner) now famous for her soft-focus portraits and staged close-ups of women and children. Her wet collodion negatives created prints that show "faults" in the technique, which add a personal touch that seems artistic. Subjects include biblical themes, allegories, and portraits of noted individuals (eg: Darwin). Typically has a soft focus, shallow depth of field, maybe dust or a hair, and clouded areas due to "improper" application of collodion esp. around edges where it was uneven.