History of Photography Final Images!

Edward Weston, Pepper #30

"It is the job of the photographer to capture tht thing itself but the added benefit of a skilled photographer is that they can also render the things life force and its essence." TONS of bell pepper photographs. Elevates humble subjects and shooting the things that are around him. He spent two weeks photographing a toilet. He's just shooting the things that are there. This pepper is in a sink. He really emphasizes the way in which objects can be anthropomorphic. It has a human quality the way it's curved in. He also loves that he doesn't have to pick a perfect pepper. Some people would want a supremely perfect rounded pepper but this is a spoilaged pepper. He wants to capture this pepper in all of its peppery goodness even if that goodness isn't perfect. Leaving in wrinkles and spoilage is part of the object so it deserves celebration. He uses all natural light. Camera should be used for a rendering of life, whether it be polished steel or palpating flesh.

Karl Blossfeldt, Blumenbachia Hieronymi OR Closed Seed Capsule

- A totally artistic and architectural structure. He's shooting flowers because they have an internal structure that is intriguing and of aesthetic interest and value. - He uses a handmade rigged magnifying camera, blowing up photographic content. - He's not a biologist. They feel very scientific though. He's an art teacher and a photographer. - - He says we can also find great beauty in thinking about compositional aspects of art making saying nature is the best teacher for artists. - To make the imperceptible perceptible by blowing them up in the lens. Essential scientific information which could serve as a document. - He eliminates all of the non-essentials and confirms a link between art and nature. It's just about the beauty of the natural form.

Diane Arbus, A Jewish Giant at Home

- For her the subject of the picture is always more important and complicated then the picture. - She seems to suggest that she intends for us to dig into them and should see them as more than simple images. - Arbus humanizes those that may not always be photographed in society. - They give off a sense of snapshot despite really careful consideration on her part. They have almost a mythic quality. - HIs parents stare up at him and mimics how we stare up at him, so many gaze upon him like that. They echo the way he feels. - The owrld is not always aesthetically pleasing, filled with folkd that don't easily fit in society. - She did a whole host of transgender individuals. A whole series of the inhabitants of Coney Island and freakshows that existed. - Photography was a license to go wherever I wanted and do what I wanted to do - for her the camera was a passport. - In her insolated wealthy upbringing that she had never felt adversity in her life and felt immune to it. - She felt compelled to image those who may have faced adversity that she didn't face. - She does say these are not images that are intended to be a mockery or to be for laughs or show any horror. - Weegee and Arbus give us these slightly darker and urban views of humanity during this period. But with very different approaches. Weegee is journalistic. Arbus is almost presenting to us something that's rather surrealist. Objetreuve, the found object, reminiscent of the dream or unconscious that we find in reality.

Carl Chiarenza, Untitled Triptych 1998

- He talks about that these for him are images of inner emotional states. Most of them are untitled so what that emotional state is is hard to detect for the viewer. - This is kind of a new, post modern means of working in abstraction. - He creates a three dimensional collage but that makes it flattened and 2 dimensional. - Compared them to landscapes. A lot of them are in this long landscape format. - The framing adds this impression of a natural content or context. - Is this a photograph or a collage? - This rejects the notion that the photo is a window into the world because it's a totally created thing to photograph. - He rejects the notion that photography is related to the past or memory. - There's a strange kinship to Rayograms. The textures they capture is quite interesting.

Gerhard Richter, Uncle Rudi

- He uses photos as a source in order to escape the process of "what to paint." - He paints these in a hyper realistic way but then he uses a squeegee to blue the surface. - Not being able to easily determine what the medium is is also a part of post - modernism. - He wants us to question what reality is, who defines reality, he questions the role of the photographer as a document of truth or all things for all followers. - Gerhard Richter was born in Dresden, Germany right before WWII. He has two uncles who were killed as Nazi soldiers. - - His family revered these uncles, despite the fact that they were Nazi soldiers they were seen as heroes. - He had an aunt who was born with down syndrome and she was euthanized. - The title implies connection for him. As we tease the image apart that this means explicitly different things than our reaction to Uncle Rudi versus his. - It feels like a family snapshot but he's a participant in Nazi violence, he's wearing a uniform. Is he a good man? A bad man? - He's questioning the promise of truth that we place on a photograph. Can a photograph really bring us or all viewers closer to the thing represented? - The camera is not capable of giving a total un-interpretative depiction of reality because we interpret them, because they're images.

Charles Sheeler, Criss-Crossed Conveyors, Ford Plant

- He's being paid to shoot the exterior of buildings but he's obsessed with the interior and the details and he starts zooming in on things. Factory like things become an interplay for light and shadow. - Sheeler spends 6 weeks in the late 20s at the Ford plant near river rouge. He's hired to produce photos for a promotional campaign for the soon to be produced Model A. - Sheeler spends his entire time shooting the factory and these strange angular details. Not on the human process of making these things but instead the gleaming processes that produce this stuff. - Sheeler writes "I favor the photo that's planned and executed with the same precision as a watch or airplane." - He works photographically first and then those photographs become the basis for later paintings. - These photos are not studies for paintings. He feels photos and paintings highlight and suggest different things according to the medium - they're different. - The mechanized present is what is modern in all else. He goes on to a long career in commercial photography. First photographer hired by MOMA for documenting art and stuff.

Martin Munkacsi, Lucille Brokaw OR Photo Shoot for Harper's Bazaar

- Martin says a good fashion photographer should never pose his subjects and a good photographer lets his models move naturally. - He tries to capture dynamic action and worked both in fashion and sports photography. - He tended to choose very athletic models and would shoot them outdoors - suggested naturalism was a great benefit to the shot. - Always used candid's. Lucille was a model and also a very well-known socialite who's very beautiful and very real. - Wearing an odd fashion arrangement - a swimming cape and captures her running on the beach. Munkacsi talks about preferring fashion photography that has a naturalism and says he chooses models who are "real women" and seeks to make fashion more relatable through models and staging.

Catherine Opie, Being and Having series

- Opie says she knew she was gay from a very young age but this wasn't an identity available to her at the time. - Sets out to document in a similar mode as Lewis Hine. - She comes to wide scale attention for the first time in 1991 for this series. They are part of a larger body of work that image so called "queer subcultures" she said this is an image of our America expanded to show a full range of the members that inhabit it. - Being and Having was a solo gallery debut and a break out moment. It includes 13 images, a plain yellow background, close in shot of the face, framed in black. Members of an LA Drag kind community. - Not performance photos but individuals inhabiting this version of themselves. She shows them in this "truth to their presentation" but also includes their stage names (Papa Bear, Chicken, Chief, etc.) - She wants to expand lesbian identity and show it as more complex. - She goes on to display particularly club communities she was a prt of. She wants to show us how gender identification is not a notion of definition etc.

Andreas Gursky, 99 Cent

- Subject matter tends to be global economy and commerce. He creates dazzling panoramas, capturing the fast paced world of commerce and the economy. An image of a 99 cent store on Sunset Boulevard. - When Gursky displays these images they're huge, about 7 feet by 11 feet. There are mirrors on the ceiling, he's apmlified the reflection in a digital afterprocess and flattened the perspective, amplified the color. It's also very interesting how tightly focused all of the things are. The level of clarity in the object four rows deep, this is not how the eye or the camera sees normally. - He is not altering his images to clean up the image but rather to reconstruct reality. By flattening this out he's commenting on the façade of stuff we encounter in our daily lives. Not blurry in real life. These things are going for ridiculous amounts of money.

Larry Burrows, Reaching Out

- The military gave the press unprecedented access to the war. - Berger talks about how images are really arresting and they stop us in a moment. Pushes us to realize that seeing a photograph is nothing like being there. - He became one of the major documenters of the lives of soldiers and the particular horrors of fighting in this environment. - An injured marine with a damaged head is inexplicably drawn to another stricken comrad who lays leaning against the earth. - Both an ability to capture utter tenderness and camaraderie but also truly captures the horror of fighting in this local. - An image that captures both desolation and fellowship. - He spoke a lot about this image and why he chose to send it to his editors, the power of a gesture and to infuse an otherwise normal landscape. - The color choice is very interesting. A lot of the iconic images from Vietnam are in color. - You don't see that as much even with other photographers working in types of conflict in the era. This wasn't common. Something compelling about the use of color in so many of these images.

Andy Warhol, Marilyn

- Warhol really establishes a mode for the use and reuse of photographic content. - Most of the photographic content that's the basis for his work are not his own - He silk sheets these images. - He wants to make the process one that mimics how we consume culture, mass produced, packed for consumption. - Warhol says he wants to be a machine, he doesn't want something to show his touch. - Pop art is so strongly interested in the popular. - The art world for so long has been so concerned with high culture and low culture. Screen actresses and models are part of that low culture so by putting her on a huge canvas she is suggesting there shouldn't be these differences between high and low and perhaps raising her levels of culture. - These correlate with Barthes stuff, they destroy the context of the image with repetition. - This repetition signifies the way we encounter celebrities and imagery in that lived experience and some of this is intentional. - His choice of color palette works distinctly to destroy her image. - He has to register the image to makes sure colors align and Warhol asks his assistants to consciously register them incorrectly to make us question what that means, what Marilyn means. - He turns people into things. And he also calls attention to the way in which photographic imagery is a mode of culture and serves and the popular risings.

Douglas Huebler, Variable Piece No. 44

- Works that track everyday places and sights and utilize photographs, maps, and descriptive texts. They're like something you'd find in some weird evidence file. - This piece: Is a piece about changing human appearance. It's a collaboration between the artist and the owners. The way this works is there was a limited edition set. -vHuebler's pieces always have a set of instructions. They are instructions about the creation of the work. -vWill exist as a work in progress for 10 years. Will be sold only during 1971. Although initially identical, through 1980 owner will arrange to have an explicitly sized photograph made of his or her face. He will send one copy to the person that owns the piece that preceeds his in the series and another to the one who follows him (mails out a photo to 45 and 47 since it's 46). - They'll uphend the appropriate squares. In order to facilitate this they must keep each other aware. The next owner will replace the original owner if someone dies, etc. - He's creating something that changes over time, that's never static. Numbers in the series changed hands. Eventually sells one piece to another dude but he keeps his. It's a photographic record of faces and buying things.

Sherrie Levine, After Walker Evans

A distinct Evans photo working for WPA etc. She takes a photo of it, calls it After Walker Evans and calls it her own. This is appropriation. - She wants to condemn the concept of originality and how much the art world values originality, original styles, original forms and art and etc. - She's really interested in examining the codes of representation. She started her career not as a fine artist but a career in commercial art. - Working in the ad agencies: "If they wanted an image they just took it, never an issue of morality just utility" IMAGE: She uses this term after a lot, "signals her act of rephotographing, calling attention to it." Refers to her images as "ghosts of ghosts" and considering whether we can capture or understand the past.

Gertrude Käsebier, Blessed Art Thou Among Women

A lot of women working in the Stieglitz circle with Pictorialism. Probably the most well known of the women. Of the 105 members of the photo succession 21 were women. Suffregiate movement. Takes parts in a lot of rallies for equal treatment and is vocal in photo successionist groups about not segregating the work of women from men. She fights to have her work shown with the men and refuses that kind of segregation with showing work. Known for really simplified, soft, almost quant portraits She doesn't use scenic backdrops and shoots in homes and places and spaces where individuals usually live. Says that in her images she makes likenesses of biography. Insists they have a sense of soul and humanity that a typical portrait photographer cannot capture. Known for images of mothers and children. They're not typicaly portraits - they evoke intimicay and connection. Often times she uses vaguely biblical titles.Speak to Victorian values There's also a lot here underlying images despite biblical titles that speak to her feminist streak. IMAGE: Photograph of a Boston based photogaphers wife and daguther. We see them in doorway to the home. Coming into one's own, a moment of transition. Intennded to read symbolism of daughter, mother pushes young daughter forward to step through th edoorway - a child's indpednence. Runs incredibly counter to all notions of parenting at this point. Subtle streak underlying these images of rocking the boat just a little bit. She couches it in soft images.

Alfred Stieglitz, Equivalent

A series of images. By 1918 he's left behind pretty much all of his work - he's spent most of his energy on running the gallery, writing for camera work, and writing for other artists and in 1918 he wants to return to his photographic work on his own. He's reading lots of psychology - wondering whether or not the photograph can capture emotive states that can emotionally manipulate the viewer but still in a straight format. "Hold a moment. How to record something so completely that all who see it will relive an equivalent of what will be expressed." These are photos of clouds. They're shot in a way with no physical reference to anything else besides sky and cloud. While it is a photograph that is captured in a straight, objective mode it's rendering an image that is at once abstract and mysterious and suggestive. Vaporous intangible forms represent the intangibility of the experience and metaphysical. Suggesting one can find the spiritual in every day vision. He's suggesting that a straight photographer can photograph something in a straight format and that there may be no literal translation.

Albert Renger Patzsch, Echeoeria OR Flower

Associated with an interwar art movement that's known as new objectivity. You can represent an object objectively as the thing itself but also present a vision of that thing that present visual interest and abstraction through the use of framing and thinking about how closely you shoot an object you can create a good deal of interest. You can still tell what this is. He wants to take an image particularly in these plant shots where the plant is not in the image but it is the image. He wants to make art that is also objective. Suggesting it in straight photography. He publishes these in a book: DIE WELT IS SCHON (the world is beautiful) He's shooting objects that you can identify. Cuts out the background and focuses on the image itself. This book includes both the industrial realm and the natural plant realms. Tend to have the clarity of science but also the beauty and framing of art. Photographs will last. The photographer doesn't need to manipulate the image particularly in post-production or in the beloved photographic mistakes like Man Ray was using. The photographer can simply make a photograph and that can have a great deal of beauty.

Ed Ruscha, Twenty Six Gasoline Stations

Associated with popular culture Ruscha wants to think about repetition and constants. Twenty-Six Gasoline Stations was printed as a book. - The book and the photographs contained in it documents a road trip between his home town in Oklahoma and driving to LA. He's primarily on Route 66 to make that drive. - What Ruscha says about this is that he's not taking these photographs of 26 gasoline stations for aesthetic purposes. - - He's pointing the camera to fulfill a prompt and idea. - 5 of them are out of order. He suggests the work of art can simply be a record. - - Shot in the same way, name of the station with information about the location. - Ruscha is disrupting both the notion of the photograph as art and the notion of art itself. - He's simply recording or following through with an idea. He's describing the eye of the artists. Showing homogeneity and repetition of our landscape. It becomes tremendously monotonous. - Ruscha is overtly critical of the landscape of the popular and everyday experience and he reveals that monotony in a more explicit way than perhaps Warhol does.

Frank Eugene, Adam and Eve

Born in New York in 1880 he takes up photography for fun. Dabbles in photo and 18999 begins showing his work to Camera Club. Founding members of photo succession Creates "Unphotographic photography" Wants to make photographs that don't feel like photographs. Pictorialist image (involving levels of manipulation) Scratching the negative in pretty aggressive ways

Richard Drew, The Falling Man

Controversial: -Because it's an intimate moment, the subject is also questionable - The subject is not able to give their consent to this image. - This specific image construes it because it's an aesthetic image and it makes it look so much more graceful than it was. - 10 or 15 jumpers before the first tower fell. This one has that body perfectly aligned and doesn't show the tumbling of the situation. - Makes it look like a suicide attempt opposed to 9/11. Who is this guy, there is no context. Having to document regardless of the horrors and terrors you're facing. On page 7 of NYT. Widespread criticism and anger. One of the only images that was published widely that included an image of a victim. Any other images that were published were rescue workers and etc. Great deal of controversary in terms of trying to figure out who this person was. Is this kind of photograph is exploitative. He is a stand in for all those that died who couldn't be photographed.

Walker Evans, Allie Mae Burroughs OR Alabama Tenant Farmer Wife

Cotton tenant farmers in Alabama. They are in Hail City Alabama and they come upon a small, four room cabin inhabited by Allie Mae and her husband Floyd. Allie Mae and Floyd doesn't own the land they farm, the home they live in, or the mule they use. They pay their landlord half of their earnings. These people were essentially put in a system that was built to fail. No opportunities to buy into the system. Allie Mae has a very defiant look on her face. There's something very set about her. She looks scrappy, you don' t want to mess with Allie Mae. It gives a face to the description of the lower class. He's supposed to be documenting the farms but he photographs the inhibitors. A dignity even in utter hardship. Compositional economy, close cropping down to the face. He takes four total shots of Allie Mae. The one on the left is the compelling stare. Image on the left she's directly facing the camera and looking into a light source and it gives her a more worn appearance.

Lewis Hine, Girl Working in a Carolina Cotton Mill

Creates this illusion that it goes on forever. There's an older woman in the back, there's a progression of time symbolic content to dig into. It looks bleak because there's nothing in there but machines and wires hanging down, looks like a very hopeless place. Imagine being in this place - VERY loud. Machines fill most of the space. You're there because of the small little hands can reach into small places, small bodies crawl under machines and it's cheaper. Kids don't enough to complain about work conditions. These are children who don't know any better. This is just the scenario of their lifetime. When congress passes the act they speak specifically about Hines's images and how it helped push for full passes of the bill and bring reality to the situation.

Barbara Kruger, Untitled OR Your Body is a Battleground

Early feminist photographers who use either appropriated photographer or photos that appropriate films and etc. She wants us to see them as art objects. She typically uses red frames so you notice the framing element. She wants to make a visual distinction because at first we say "this is an ad" but "wait it's not an ad" but "oh I know how to read this, because it's an ad" but "wait it's not an ad." She uses stock photos. The kinds she would've used a designer. She always uses the same typeface and same color scheme: All black and white or black, white, and red. THIS IMAGE: First released in 1989 but utilized as one of the primary advertising images and poster images for the 1992 march on Washington to uphold abortion rights. They believe the power of words and art systems to ploy activism and such

Irving Penn, Vogue Cover

He doesn't want his works to feel naturalistic. Everything he does feel highly staged. But not in a way where there's a great background - he hones in on the subject. Penn is trying to bring out the black and white contrast in the outfit. He wants to make you want that outfit. It matters very little who the model is. Focusing on the thing itself. She has an emotional detachment so the viewer can contemplate her surface versus who she is. He was very directive with his models in terms of getting them to meet the needs of his shoot. A sharpness and a crispness to his works. The use of plain backgrounds is typical to his career. Allows his subject to wear interesting things and pose as a revelation to their personality but that also has a crispness to the exterior presentation of the person. Big new photo catalogue that came out about his work.

Andrés Serrano, Piss Christ

He has taken a vat of his own urine and placed a crucifix in it. Without that title you might not figure out that it's piss. Without the title it's hyper beautiful and fascinating. Rendered into this ethereal other worldly context. He's obviously also using lighting. It's a work that became the midst of a major controversary. Late 80s are the culture wars, government often became very involved in the rights of art and art culture. In 1988 he receives a national grant by the NEA. He finishes the immersion series. He debuts an exhibition in 1989. All of this pertains to government funding. This sets off a fire of response. The "American Family Association" was a hyperreligious political organization. They make a vert interesting argument here - Serrano should be forced to pay back the funding he received and the Southeastern center should have its funding revoked for giving this award. This image defies notions of the separation of church and state. Their argument is not that this is an offensive image but: He's using government funding to make a religious image. It gets very muddled and unclear but it's also very clear this is being made in moral ground (they see this as an attack on Christian moral beliefs, anti-Christian bigotry). Is he setting off to offend? He's not blowing it up on the side of a building or advertising it, he's just exhibiting it. He's certainly looking to shock his viewers and looking to offend, is that okay? He sees this as a work deeply engrained in personal reflection. He grew up completely inside the Christian tradition. He's a member who's commenting on that impact on his life whether it be positive or negative. He was widely attacked for this work ("Distinctly setting out to degrade the art world") Inspired very strong physical reactions to the piece. A teenager came in and destroyed this with a hammer. Attacked in 2011 with an ice pick. Led to a lot of legislation about the rights of artists to use government funding and leads to a set of tighter restrictions. "Sure an artist can do whatever they want but if they sign on to use funding from the NEA it requires certain rules."

Robert Rauschenberg, Retroactive I

He says meaning is the most important thing in a work of art. He calls a lot of his works combines. Especially in part because they combine a lot of media such as silk screen and photographic content in this work. He wants to combine components of pop culture and visual experience. Our brain wants to connect these images and use visual cues to understand the story here. Rauschenberg refutes this and wants to suggest that putting these together can have a number of meanings and we shouldn't necessarily be so concerend with these meanings or concerned with his authority over said meaning. Iconic image of JFK (Progress and promise!) and an astronaut and we associate JFK with the support for NASA. But then there are all of these oddities, weird image of upside down fruit. Red thing is a reproduction of a very early Italian Renaissance image called Expulsion Meaning is temporal, associative, differentiated by viewers and their experiences.

Weegee, Their First Murder

He uses flash technique that yeilds images that are very unrefined but feeel raw, spontaneous and titilating in terms of asking us to interpret. A woman relative cried but neighborhood dead end kids enjoyed the show when someone was shot and killed. What we're seeing here is a huddled crowd of people at a crime scene - a murder scene. A racketeer (a mobster) was murdered. He provides a very revealing and unsettling vision of how humans respond to tragedy. Certainly documents the kind of rubbernecker identity - when you see tragedy and look. Utter lack of compassion or horror from those gathering around the scene. At one point published besides the actual bloodied body. Weegee manages to give us this view of human experience without a filter. He's using a relatively new camera called a Speed Graphic camera, wielded a 4 X 5 image with an automatic flash. He's not using some great big technical camera, a small point and shoot format.

Atget, Balcon 16

He's just a guy who did street photography. Man Ray ends up being his neighbor and spends time talking to him about his career. The surrealists take these images that perhaps had other meanings and the Surrealists repurpose these images. Taken in the early morning hours - he'd walk the streets of Paris and take these haunted indie street photos. He uses vinetting so there's this softness and darkness around the edges. Often seen as some sort of evocation of memory or the past. Aging the image to an extent. A connection to memory and therefore a connection to the mind. Deeply in touch with his subconscious - they kind of distort time and space. It has everythnig to do with the subjects he chooses also. All he wanted to do was to preserve images of the streets of Paris Labels all of his images with the address. He says Man Rays camera is too fast. His images are ghostly and strangely empty, shop windows that are suggestive. Perhaps based on looking at what Atget is able to do and what Man Rays next step can be what other technical manipulations can he use to suggest Surrealist intentions.

Joel-Peter Witkin, Still Life, Marseilles

He's known for working in Tableaux, making surreal and such tableaux's. It's about questioning what is off limits. He uses actual corpses and body parts. He's American but he works in Mexico City because he's found it's easier to get body parts. Art historical reference to a long history He typically uses bodies that are unclaimed and bodies that been through autopsies so they're kind of already altered.

Ansel Adams, Mono Lake Reflections, CA

His dad would read him Ralph Emerson. He loves a modest life. When he's 17 he joins the Sierra club - longest serving board member. When he's in his 20s he works as a part custodian in Yosemite. He's really wrapped up in nature and surrounded by it. He says he wants to capture "how it felt to me" - how nature impacted him at any given moment. He was waiting for the perfect light conditions and uses a lot of filters to accommodate light conditions and then he meets Strand and Stieglitz and shifts to a straight function.

Bruce Davidson, National Guard Soldiers Escort Freedom Riders

Images of the Civil Rights movement. Berger suggests these are images for white viewers. Most of these images were taken by white photographers. He suggests there's a level of power at play despite trying to come from the right place in taking these images that they still are strucured with notions of power. They've promoted non-threatening images. Show black subjects as non-threatening and then to limit the power of the black subjects, they are an exercise of white power and shw the suffering of black subjects in a way that has complicity to the era. Some of these images, Berger I.D.s that the encoded meaning is that "they're just like us" what do those pronouns meana dn where does the power li in that. Representations of power: For one thing the white people in the image have guns, white people with guns standing up and over black subejcts who are sitting with looks of surprise. An image coded for white viewers that reinforce notions of power? Younger riders that "need more protection" "white savior complex." Davidson wasn't workign for anyone but doing this of his own accord. Part of his dedication to the causes of the Civil Right smovement, he thought documenting it was the way he could contribute BUT He still is a white man with a camera and he whas power in the situation. However willingly it is at play in these images.

Lejaren à Hiller, Etienne Gourmelen

In the 20s there's not much of a distinction between art and commercial photography Surgery through the ages - produced for a company that sold surgical stuff. He shoots great moments from medical history. This is an image of a 16th century doctor who helped treat plague patients. He didn't have surgical stuff originally. All of the plague victims are like dead and the doctor can't do anything. It's for a medical company! It's sexy and weirdly historical and has no real objects. It's really weird in terms of its choices. Has to be presented in a very particular way otherwise you're not successfully selling anything with this image on its own.

Paul Outerbridge, Ide Collar

In the 20s there's not much of a distinction between art and commercial photography. Outerbridge is a photographer who works almost solely in advertising images. His work often shows transdental trends in modern art. He's American, started as a designer and illustrator but later moves to photography. Ide Collar is one of his most iconic photos, very first advertising assignment published in Vanity Fair. Isn't shown performing its function. This is a collar that attaches to the shirt. So, he's taken the collar, in the way he's layed it out it's creating a very strange curvature. He shoots it against a checkerboard background. It feels like it's floating because of shadows, position, cropping, it looks very abstract. The collar against the hard edge of the checker board pattern. Distinguishes itself as an ad because you can read the name of the maker very clearly. It's central in the image, Idestyle so you know the branding of it. Creates something that feels sculptural, dramatic angles, echoes of modernism for mass consuming society. And it's a very simple image. Tasked with making something simple, mundane, and commonplace and gives it more complex composition, is supposed to make it glamorous.

Jacob Riis, Bandit's Roost

Interested and assigned to this area of Tenement slums on the lower east sides Dedicates himself not just as a crime reporter but seeking to expose these conditions - thinks written word is too conceptualized Not coming at this as an artist at all - using it as a tool and for evidence. Very small hand held camera and typically shoots at night and uses a new photographic aid called flashlight powder. Ignites and burns a very pure white light. The smoke is harmful for the photographer and the noise sounds like a gunshot it's so loud. He was at one point almost blinded by using this material. He uses "Hit and Run Style Photography" In many cases his subjects don't know he's photographing them until after. His primary argument using these images is that crime and ignorance and vice are the effects of poverty not the cause of poverty. IMAGE: Riis says he does not see himself as a photographer - he's a documentarian. Something awkwardly romanticized - for viewers who might see it outside the reading. They're all looking at the camera which suggests something telling, there's a notion there. There's a push and pull because there's also three blurry guys. There's a push and pull about what his intentions are and what he says his intentions are. He's going to draw attention to himself especially if he's walking around shooting chemicals. - A community of convenience - they just kind of coexist but there seems to be visual tension at play. Suggestion of being below the light, buried in grunge. A lot of people read this about like the Jets about to rumble, there's an aura of menace. Is that the case or are we making assumptions of the subject. - If this is really a gang would they actually pose, let their faces be recorded? Hell no. Teddy Roosevelt refers to Jacob Riis as the most useful person in New York. His photos were actually used to track suspect individuals...Despite the fact that he didn't want it to. - It is still an image and one open to interpretation. May not be singular, static, fixed, or the same for all viewers.

Should we see Holocausts images?

It's forgotten that during most of the war, Americans and even American soldiers were largely unaware of the horrors that were happening in these camps. Most American citizens had no clue or context that these things were happening. Even soldiers didn't believe what they saw when they came upon these camps. The imagery of what they found in these camps was truly unimaginable and horrifying. Death on a scale that people certainly can't wrap their brains around. Photos have historically been used as a means of awareness and teaching. It's easy to read about the Holocaust it's so horrifying that it's easy to write that off and not fully conceptualize the terror and horror of it all. Maybe we need to see these photos as a means to make them real but these are unwilling subjects - they've given no consent. She questions whether we should look at these images and she further questions if it's okay to choose not to look at these images. As long as images are presented with the right historical analysis and the images are taken out of context. She decries this notion that they are simply used to illustrate but they need to be viewed with discussion.

Nikki S. Lee, The Hispanic AND Hip Hop Projects OR The Projects Series

Lee sets out to practice and perform the codes and visual signs of varied Americna subcultures. Most of the photos are not taken by her, she's typically the subject of the photos. Carries around a point and shoot cameras and gives them to people. She gets to know members of the community and tries to attune her physical representation to match the communities she's a part of. She's openly working with these communities to try to understand, some of them it's about transforming self in dress and appearance. Some of these are very physically demanding. Lee's photos are certainly performance based - performing identities, cultures, and thinking about what it means not just to transform your exterior performance but what it means to become something or someone else.

Alfred Stieglitz, The Steerage

Major champion of the style pictorialism and how it involved some levels of manipulation (whether it's in post-production, cropping the image, or Franke Eugene). Around 1807 there's a major shift in Stieglitz's thinking. The Steerage has interesting things going on compositionally. He suggests that if photography can continue to grow into its own medium that it must be direct and unmanipulated. He suggests the photograph has an eye for things and makes certain choices but there is no active manipulation. There's a clarity of details. Some people see this as some sort of artistic attempt to discuss things such as social class In fact, this is a boat going back to Germany and he's a passenger on board He had a very nice state room and was well appointed. It cost more money for you to ride higher and higher on the ship and to have nicer and nicer rooms. He first publishes it in Camera Work (journal of 291) but it becomes popularized in the following years. He weaves a tail of walking around the ship and argues for the photographer's eye. He sees the photograph and immediately runs back to his room and he is elated to see the image that he saw still exists and he snaps the photo. It's not intended to have this kind of social critique. He says it's an image based in compositional interest and play. Plank creates a composition based on recession, depth, and compositional complexity. It turns simple terms into geometric complexity. He argues that the people are much less important here but the physical elements of the ship and the people are less important. He talks about how this is a full frame image and that the photographer's ability to create an image with this compositional value without cropping is a badge of honor - you didn't have to fix it. He insists that we must trust the eye of the photographer as finding these moments of interest. Stieglitz says that photographs should only look like a photograph. He does an about face on Frank Eugene and says it shouldn't look like another medium it should look like a photograph. Suggests that the photographer should be valued for his or her technique. This photograph rose to its ascension as an iconic image in part because of how it was embraced by people of other mediums (Picasso said "the photographer is working in the same vein that I am" - cubist style being similar to compositional themes Stieglitz suggests here).

Man Ray, Dust Breeding

Man Ray is drawn into the surrealist circle. It's also the work of Man Ray which suggest possibliities of photography as a productive medium for these purposes. This is an image that typically is suggestive of a landscape but it's not. He loves taking photos of real things in reality but rendering them unsettling and etc. It's the glasses from Duchamps Large glass stuff, Duchamps work is the subject but it's rendered into something otherworldly, dust collected over time.

Charles Moore, Protestors in Birmingham

Moore was present at some of the protests in Alabama, there was this major Souther Christian Leadership conference seeking to bring attention to issues related to segregation. MLK led the charges at this conference. Resulted in a series of nonviolent protests that took a turn when they became very pubilic confrontations. Students and young people had been trained to participate in non violent ways and many were jailed Despite the fact tht these people were being nonviolent and legal thpolice were doing very innappropriate actions. The protestors overwhelmingly do not have the power others do. These people are victimized here. This is horrifying . But we don't see the person with the hose . The person with the hose is almost certainly white. One of the things Berger points out is to document this. But the images that becomes so iconic doesn't figure the bad guy in this scenario. It shows black victims. It does NOT show whit oppressor. Pictures convinced Senators to change and fight the problem.

Gregory Crewdson, Untitled

NOT THE CORRECT IMAGE!!!!!!!!!!! - He stages very dramatic and highly cinematic photographs. He talks about how he was inspired by Stephen Spielberg, watching all of those great films, he's thinking about trying to create something with that same visual quality of film in a still photograph. - These are highly staged, he's using the same tools and trappings and settings that a film crew would use. - His primary focus is trying to show images of the familiar made strange. THIS IMAGE: - These are shot digital, uses a lot of post productions to tune of the image and to hyper infuse the images with that cinematic quality. They are insistent upon these narratives that are never explicit, require a lot of interpretation. Made blue by the glow of a television accept we can't actually see it. - He talks about the way he wants to create images that are open ended - wants the viewer to imagine the setting/scenario. Presenting a narrative that can be interpreted. - Highly invested tableauxs but utterly still, no movement.

Moholy-Nagy, Light Space Modulator and Still from Lichtspiel

Not a photograph - a moving kinetic sculptural thing. He uses it to make a film called Lichtspiel in 1930. An experimental film that captures the use of light and shadow. Intended to be set up with light. Moholy doesn't determine one set of lights. Sometimes, like at Harvard, it's set up with colored lights but also white lights. Iinteresting juxtaposition between shadow and abstracted play with the walls surrounding it. He doesn't care what the sculpture itself looks like he's thinkging about the interplay with light. He wants an immersive environment with light. Super honed in on the reflections of light off of individual components of the sculpture or he's pulling out and looking at the shadows created on the wall. He says it's the only way to express modernity.

Paul Strand, The Lathe

Photographer working in this Precisionist mode. These are "straight shots" with no manipulation and one is able to capture these interesting images through unusual angles and etc. Spends time studying with Picasso. How you build a picture? How shapes are related to each other, how spaces are filled, how they must have a certain unity. Wants to capture in his photography a machine focused era. "Photography and the new God." For Strand the trinity is: God the machine, the sun, and the something damn it Worship at the altar of the beauty of the machine. An image of a Lathe and it's just a big piece of heavy machinery. He's turned a fairly utilitarian object into this magical thing of beauty. Neither emotional or irrational they're direct vision. He sees aesthetic beauty in a language based on technology.

Frederick Evans, Attics (Kelmscott Manor)

Read a lot about theories of beauty and aesthetics The greater exponent of architectural photography - Stieglitz He's thinking about the level of detail in photomicrographs. Aesthetic value and possibilities in images that are straight and of real life. Notable for its greater renderings of tonality. They're darker definitely, a blackness to them - soft darkness not black. Platinum prints are a notion of softer artistic images. People get priced out of this technique. English Manor houses - countryside grand english homes. Image is really soft, it doesn't feel like a photograph at all. Pillars are warped, habd tooled polls Thinking a lot about light, thinking about depth and shadow, a very tight space, repeated linear interest, a sense of "Chiaroscuro", Ethereal sense of uplift. He doesn't want any mark of the contemporary. Spends all of this time taking photos of cathedrals and then goes to worn older hand rot homes and he wants to create the same sense of awe in an attic space that one might have for soaring ceiling of a cathedral. Tries for a record of emotion rather than a piece of typography. Waits until the building makes you feel heavy. Not about documenting the architecture, he's thinking about the evocation of mystery or spirituality.

Robert Capa, D-Day, Omaha Beach

Rode in with the first wave of allied forces during D-Day Normandy invasions. He was positioned with E company. Capa was positioned in the very back of the landing craft. The particular craft he was in accidentally comes to shore at a point that they had intended to avoid, nicknamed "easy red" (to get dead). There was no ground cover at all. He manages to find a piece of metal on the ground which he uses for cover. He snaps a series of photos of the others who were trying to climb ashore looking for cover themselves. In this short amount of time he manages to capture these four rolls of film - approximately 106 shots. These were rushed to a photo editor with the AP who's choosing the images. Fairly quickly after the landing this was known to be a success but there were no images. It's rushed to this darkroom tech and he leaves the film in a drying area too long and it heats up and melts the photo emulsion. They managed to save 10 of the images. Seems very chaotic because even the photo itself was blurry All of this debris in the background. There's something almost otherworldly and surreal about it because of the blur - also suggesting chaos and confusion. So many obstacles. They're each just aiming for the shore. In particular you read people's accounts they talk about this ringing in your ears where you're totally unaware of everything happening you're on autopilot and you're running just trying to get though that moment. This sense of panic and self-preservation.

Rodchenko, Demonstration

Seeing a political march and political action. Rodchenko is best familiar with the kind of shots that we'd see in photojournalism. If you were a photojournalist you would be going out onto the street itself. You'd be down on the street. You'd seek to get wide shots and also single individuals. Doesn't give enough detail to support what they're fighting for. He's taking these oblique views from the roof of his apartment building. Rodchenko says with all constructivist work is that it's OUR DUTY to experiment. Reconsideration of traditional approaches in media is a means to be political and radical. He's always shooting from weird angles this is his vein. He's always looking for the possibilities for abstraction in everyday experiences. Just a woman and child walking he can turn this into something different. Very early in the constructivist project they use abstraction because they think this also makes a parallel to communist pursuit. Ability to find abstraction in the real world pushes this forward.

Lee Miller, Buchenwald: Dead Prisoners

She becomes Vogue's war photographer. She's one of only two female combat photographers (her and Margaret Burchwieght - who documented Auschwitz). Her images were both reproduced in Vogue and in Life. This became one of the first images reproduced in Life Magazine as the truth and reality of the Concentration Camp and Nazi atrocities. Horror, outrage, disgust. Miller felt compelled to capture these as a part of her photographic assignments but also to work in this way. She interestingly was one of the first photographers to arrive in 1945 at Hitler's former private apartment in Munich. She and another photographer were visiting the apartment that had allied people holding the location. Lee remarks that it was so strange because nobody had moved anything even though it was filled with allied officers.

Imogen Cunningham, Calla

She works on subjects that are most readily available to her. Earliest photos are plant studies. Cunngham Callolily is that the softness of the color in O'Keefe transforms the flower into this interpretative abstraction and this is very obviously and distinctly a flower. Works in collaboration with a lot of really important women artists. One of her most famous photo series were a set of images of Martha Lamb who was a huge figure in modern contemporary dance practice. Her use of lighting and intensely focusing on individual parts of the images really create an evocation. She helps just to transform shots into something otherworldly. Simple shots but in terms of framing and use of light and shots they're evocative.

Cindy Sherman, Untitled Film Still

Sherman is a photographer. She produces staged photographs in which she is almost always the model (photographer and model). She takes recognizable troupes from media and recreates them in ordert o ask us to reconsider particularly the female presence in film. 137 images overall. She tries to take on images of women in film - deconstruct the movie version of women in film. She thinks about the way women are portrayed but she notes that it's continuously moving and she likes that photography freezes that movie so there's an opportunity to think it through. IMAGE: Feels like a heroine in an Alfred Hitchcock (like low key weren't that though they're always damsels in distress). What is that perceived horror, disgust. Also a troupe of the young woman working in the city. It draws attention to the experience of being a woman in an urban space, looking over your shoulder, constant awareness.

Sally Mann, Candy Cigarette

Some viewers read this kind of as "hooker on the side of the road." She gets attacked for these images. "This is dangerous iconography of children" but that Mann is a bad mother for choosing to produce these. Mann is very explicit in the process about how she realized at the moment Jessie was beginning to move into puberty that there was something different at play in the camera so she then chose specifically to not produce images after she's 10. Mann says sexuality in a chid is an oxy moron and these were images created naturally in the eyes of the mother. These kinds of cases pop up all of the time.

Nick Ut, Napalm Girl OR Terror of War

South Vietnamese planes drop napalm on this village. It was a mistake. They had poor intelligence suggesting there were North Vietnamese in the village but there were likely none. Kim Uk was 9 years old. Her clothes had been burned off from the napalm. Nick helps save these children, they get water and there skin is washed. This was an image that was particularly loaded and controversial at the time it was released. President Nixon questioned its authenticity. The use of Napalm was highly controversial. He questioned its authenticity. He tried to twist the truth to make the U.S's use of Napalm look terrible. He thought he was giving fodder to protestors against Vietnam. This is a moment where we've been at war now for almost 10 years at this point with no particular end in sight and no forseeable outcomes at this point. Ut dismissed his citizenship and now lives in Canada in part because of the outcry surrounding this image. The real focus is on the children not the heroic people.

Robert Mapplethorpe, Self-Portrait (from the X Portfolio)

Suburban America "It was a good place to come from in that it was a good place to leave." He was a gay man in the late 70s and par tof the BDSM community. Underground leather bars etc. He decides to bring the camera to this community, envisioning a community he feels was otherwise hidden or unknown. "I don't like that word shocking, I'm looking fro things I've never seen before" Highly sexually charged images in the X Portfolio. Technical abilities that he demonstrates, he's incredibly aware of the history of pose, reflecting in a whole series of male nudes that he does that there's a hyperawareness of the history of the nude, it's use, it's pose. He thinks about framing and lighting in all of these contexts. There's nods to age old compositional trends. - He produces these works to not a lot of fan fare or much commentary at all in the very late 70s and early 80s. They intentionally set out to make you uncomfortable. The history of these photographs are also deeply engrained in the history of the aids crisis. There's a buildup of the aids crisis. It was deeply misunderstood. The government was openly mute particularly during the Reagan office. Very little government support for education or treatment. Mapplethorpe is an openly gay man diagnosed with aids at a time of complex homosexual hysteria and a great deal of discrimination. He dies the following year in 1989. The second stop after the Whitney was the Corchran gallery in Washington D.C. As hysteria surrounding images of obscentity and the aids crisis and they decide not to show them and to sensor them. This was a major point of controversary. This traveled to Ohio in Cincinnati. He put the show up and charged with criminal charges. THe director was charged with pandering (display of obscenties) and using minors in photography. Eventually the director was found not guilty. The jury and the judge were faced with a notion of whether this was obscene or of artistic merit.

Hans Bellmer, The Doll

Surrealist He is adamantly anti-Nazi so he builds these dolls - sculptural constructs that are often missing limbs or heads or a series of combinations of torsos, He claims his doll is a rejection of the perfect human body, he's rejecting the ideal body. He photographs them and hand tints them with color. Dolls are in museum collections and he's experimenting with the plastic forms that he's using, they're all of these weird joints. They're super popular in pop culture references. Bellmer also had a long career in illustrations. This notion of preferred sexual behaviors and the unbidden behaviors and desires that live in the unconscious.

Alfred Stieglitz, Winter on Fifth Avenue

Switched to an early hand held camera - loves ease and mobility of this small box camera. Taken in 1893 and it is a scene of the intersection of fifth avenue and 35th street in New York City. February 22nd there was a pretty awful blizzard and Stieglitz stood in it for three hours waiting for the perfect images to reveal itself. He's insisting on this process of selection. He's insisting you can't just run out and shoot. He would release images well after they were taken. Careful sense of selection and guardedness. Left with a lot of reliance on what Stieglitz tells us about this image. One can probably guess he did take several images over the course of the three hours. This art of lis cropped - selection and active interest. Takes out extraneous content in some ways. Intrinsic element of photographer, the snapshot can yield art if an inspired artist takes the image. Has to do with the person taking the image and how they produce the snapshot.

Robert Demachy, Speed

Taken around 1890-sh. Tries to argue that photography is a professional field. Leader of a French circle of pictorialists. Publishes six books on photography and aesthetics. Argues for aesthetic implications for the medium. Making the choice to take it out of focus, grainy effect feels pictorialist/painterly perspective - less about a car going down the road but more conceptual than descriptive. Not an image of a car realistically, an image of a car meant to give off the impression of high speed. Renders things in very basic shapes. He is manipulating the image to get this texture. His family was one of the first French families to own an automobile Some said it had a pointillist feel but also impressionistic - soft and hazy Conveying speed and motion - taking this beyond just a straight photograph. Argues that a work of art must be a transcription of but NOT a copy of nature. Interpreting nature opposed to just rendering it.

Nan Goldin, Nan and Brian in Bed

The ballad of emotional dependency. These are images that deal with love and abuse - the dangerous middle ground between those two categories. Many of them deal with her extended relatoinship with a man named Brian. You can see them in this early morning moment or perhaps even a post-coital moment. A lot of interesting story lines and narratives - her staring at him him not staring at her.

LaToya Ruby Frazier, Grandma Ruby and the UPMC Braddock Hospital on Braddock Avenue

The notion of Family, it details her experiences growing in Braddic Pennsylvania. Just outside of Pittsburgh. The steel industry began to fail over the course of the 70s and 80s, a community in a deep deep state of poverty. She seeks to turn the camera to her experiences in Braddick. Also a story of three generations of women living in this town. She sees her photographic series as an intervention into the region's history. It's also a means to reveal classicism, socioeconomic decline in small town America. She shoots herself in failing buildings, destroyed sites in Braddock. THIS IMAGE UMPC Braddock was the regions only hospital in the city and it was shuddered and demolished in 2010. The people who ran the hospital claimed that they built a really shiny hospital in an affluent neighborhood 20 miles away but the members of this community don't have a means of access. She captured her grandmother where they didn't have easy access to health care at the end of her life. Her mother ended up with breast cancer and she also had health issues growing up. What it means to live in this kind of community.

John Heartfield, Have No Fear, He's a Vegetarian

The rooster is France!!!! Hitler gets it for a little while at least. Heartfield was putting his life at risk with these images. His rise to power is cemented in 1933 and just after this he calls for the arrest of John Heartfield. Puts out a public call for his arrest because of how active Heartfield was. After Hitler puts out this call he literally jumped from his bedroom window to escape the cops who were coming after him and manages to flee to Czechoslovakia. He eventually flees to London. Hitler's reach is expanding and he needs to get to London. He survives all of this. A great sense of life or death in this imagery.

Sandy Skoglund, Revenge of the Goldfish

These are not photoshopped - they're tableauxs!!!! Room sized createds that are grounds for wonder. This image in particular feels surreal. Particularly because of the sleeping figure it's suggesting a dream world, not being our reality. Whether this is internal or external, everything is either found and painted to fit the motif or she creates these fish that are terracotta. Potentially a mom and a child.

Bernd and Hilla Becher, Water Towers

They seek to celebrate and document architect and architypal contexts. These structures become these kinds of anonymous sculptures supposedly. A very encyclopedic compilation, we try to understand put this together, etc. In the long run, do these photos provide us with anything? Not really. A suggestion of meaning and documentation and scientific study (particularly in the presentation of a grid pattern) and yet provide very little meaning. Over 5 decades the bechers take photos of this same subject repeatedly. They're project is kinda alligned with memory but memory distinct from nostalgia, There's never any captions

Bragaglia Brothers, Change of Position

They tell Boccioni (the sculpture) to move in front of the camera. Not because this is an attempt to capture motion study but because they feel this long exposure photography will somehow capture his hidden essence. A means of formulize motion. To investiage the meta-perceptive - the in between, the stuff that the human eye cannot see normally. Experimenting ways to use the photographic medium to capture these moments beyond human vision. Super long exposure and then move in front of the camera. You can see the entire progression rendered. Not an image of a beginning, an end, or any particular moment in a sequence but rather a continuous trajectory. They want to capture the full range in a continuous movement. They argue that they're rendering the camera something that is dematerialized/invisible otherwise.

Mike Mandel and Larry Sultan, Baseball Photographer Trading Cards

They took portraits of really famous photographers playing baseball and mocked them up like old school baseball playing cards. Celebrated as the stars of photography. They tell what kind of film they typically used, cameras, photographers. It's an homage to the photographic elite but usually people wouldn't really know what these guys looked like. They're using appropriation for really specific both humor and stature of various types of celebrities. They seem to question why artists can't have the same celebrity status and they question the cultural value that we place on art.

John Coplans, Self-Portrait 1994

This is a very frank vision of age. He, earlier on, takes Polaroids, he needs to see the output immediately (before Digital Cameras). He then shifts his practice and starts using a regular black and white camera and takes a video camera and points it at the back of the camera so he can see what it sees in the moment. He tries to get in touch with a "preconscious, prelingual" with the body. He wants to provide images of what he calls " A neglected and taboo subject - one of age." This has been left out of a history of the nude and the body. This is my 70 year old nude body and I can make it interesting. The belief that the classical tradition of art from the Greeks is a load of bull shit. Turns the body in to weird contortions, never including the face. He wants us to focus on the body and its wholeness. Some viewers might even find this repulsive but he turns it into something abstract, strange, and interesting. A real, true reflection on age.

Laurie Simmons, Woman Opening Refrigerator

This is from a series of photos she produces that look at dolls in dollhouses. In the early 70s Simmons says she was living and painting houses for money and she walked by a toy store every day and in the window they have a vintage 1950s dollhouse. - She was really taken by this 1950 notion of domesticity so she purposes it and 1970s feminism they talk about how female behavior is coded into women through toys growing up. - There was a lot of disdain for these kinds of things. She wants to use it as a tool for concepts of larger understandings. She takes the concept of young female imagination and she wants us to understand how culture is structured. - She feels because she's using artificial components it allows us to get meaning more easily. - The women in these always feel frozen, they're sort of stuck in this work a day house wife life. - She spends a good deal of her career working in these troupes and toys.

Alvin Langdon Coburn, The Temple of Ohm OR Grand Canyon

Through tight shots that don't try to convey all the canyon he conveys immensity. Serial images - in series - in order to convey the image of totality instead of just one image of the whole thing. He's using platinum prints. They have a real griddiness to them. Slightly painterly feel. He shoots in a very soft focus technique. Coburns images are not meant as a scientific rendering of what the canyon is like but to give an experiential notion of place and immensity Suggestive of old historical time. Thinking about the canyons origins. Notable for a really dramatic use of shadow. Thinking about how sunlight plays accross the canyon. They become almost abstract in some ways as swell. He's creating something with visual evocations of abstraction but it's still an actual things. Coburn is recognized for his "Tonalistm" provides idealized, muted, romantic interpretations particularly of the landscape that convey a spiritual trandsendence.

Man Ray, Untitled OR Woman

Tonal Reversal This had been discovered in 1862 Reversal of light. Happens upon the effect in another darkroom accident. Another nude of Le Miller. He prints the image anyways and it becomes one of his signature techniques in the late 20s and early 30s until they're 1932 breakup when she decides to pull the curtain back. S he goes it was me, I was exposing the image, a mouse ran across my foot I got startled and screwed up and Man Ray thought it was awesome so we started doing it more. Photographic mistake creating suggestive poetic reality. He, over time, learns to control and manipulate this mistake as a primary component of his technique. He finds that using paper negatives works quite well. He does do a lot of technical manipulation in terms of how to use it.

Lewis Hine, Steelworker

Was, at the time, tallest building in the world. Very impressive and the speed at which It went up was very impressive. Hine is 56 years old and rigs up harnesses and pullies and he'd almost jump off, swing out to capture these images to capture these workers. Workers are NOT harnessed in at all. Hine has a really impressive eye especially considering the danger he's putting himself in and the conditions he's working in is amazing.

Eleanor Antin, Carving: A Traditional Sculpture

Ways in which society has expectations for female beauty. A lot of ideas about identity. She is literally carving her body. Over 37 days she puts herself on a very very strict diet and every day she takes profile shots. There's a literally carving down of her body. We see the transformation of her body and the way in which the body becomes the matrix and ground for making art. The photograph simply records that process.

Man Ray, Untitled

What he's done is create a cameraless photograph. He names it after himself. Talbot and Lazlo Maholy-Nage are doing the same thing at the same time but Man Ray will literally fight about this. Man Ray realizes over time that manipulating whether the objects are on top of the paper or below the paper and he makes things that are incredibly abstracted. Sometimes you can figure out the subject matter other times you cannot. These images draw him into the Surrealist movement - drawing from the unconscious mind and always point to this notion and idea that there are these hidden spaces of the mind - Freud was very important. Tapping into this through dream interpretation but the surrealists think there can be creative means to tap into this. What they see is they read into this as a pictorial revelation of this other realm because of supposed otherworldliness.

Arthur Rothstein, Steer Skull, Badlands, SD

Works between 1945 and 1940. He was primarily assigned during the Prairie states to document the dustbowl consequences. It's his best-known photograph but also his most controversial. He says he was driving, saw a skull on the side of the highway. Photographed the skull. Then he moved the skull ten feet and re-photographed the skull. Everyone said it's completely fake. One of the nails in the coffin for the RA. Congress argues that they're not photographing reality and toying with reality and suggesting a reality that is not the truth.

Patrick Cariou Yes Rasta! AND Richard Prince Canal Zone

Yes Rasta is the original, a coffee table of books released by Patrick Cariou in 2000. In 2005 Prince purchases Yes Rasta! And beginning in 2008 releases new "paintings" under the title Canal Zone with direct quotations from Cariou's book. He adds paint or other found imagery in other places (here he's added in an image of a guitar and blue dots over the face). This comes down to transformation. The initial ruling suggested that Prince's work didn't have a message which the judge suggested art communicates. Explaining the process: Prince vaguely mentions being inspired by a movie about Post-apocalyptic lesbians on an island, "You're guess is as good as mine I make things up." 35 images were altered. In 2011 the initial ruling was in favor of Cariou but Prince's lawyers pushed back. Of the 35 images only 5 were not transformative. Needing to pay back Cariou.

Raoul Ubac, Untitled

erman-born, he's a poet and combined a range of technqieus. He often created photomontages, or "baus low relief works" and then would photograph them and solarize the image. He wants to use technique as a means to disentigrate form. Battle of the amazons, a series of images. For this, he takes photos of female nudes, prints the photos, cuts them up, collages them, rephotographs it, and then solarizes the image. Multi-step process. Reuses and remanipulates it so there's a distance between it and reality that is suggestive of another reality.