Test 2 Important Themes

What role should photography play?

- From Pictorialism to the Russian avant-garde, the individuals and movements we have covered have each had different ideas regarding the purpose/appropriate functions of photography. For each major figure/movement we've looked at, how would you summarize their ideas regarding just what they thought photography should do? ----------------------- Pictorialism: -just as the fine arts had inspired some Victorians to devise High Art photography, turn-of-the-century photographers contrived pictorialism-- that is, a kind of photography that rejected industrialization for evocative, often hand-painted photographic images -amateurs of art photography creatively misunderstood Emerson's writings to authorize moving away from faithful depiction toward more evocative and expressive photographs -the resulting international photographic movement known as Pictorialism gathered strength in the mid-1880s, peaked in the 1900s, and persisted into the 1920s -Pictorialists adopted Emerson's disgust with industrialization and mass-produced goods, as well as his belief in photography as a fully fledged modern art form -they embraced his choice of subjects, but jettisoned allegiance to recent science -in Pictorialist hands, Emerson's selective or differential focus became a dislike of the distracting details associated with vulgar commercial photography -Pictorialist photographers favored scenes infused with fog and shadows -in contrast to their simple subjects, they strove for tonal complexity, choosing techniques such as platinum printing, which yielded abundant soft, middle-gray tones -they favored procedures that allowed for handworking of both negatives and prints -their results were in obvious visual opposition to the sharp black and white contrasts of the commercial print -Pictorialist photographs were frequently printed on textured paper, unlike the glossy surface of commercial photographs, so that they resembled watercolors, evoking the earlier Victorian photographs of David Octavius Hill and Julia Margaret Cameron, which they admired and exhibited -Pictorialists valued their symbolic control over the growing photography industry, and they cultivated a sense of superiority over the snapshooters, who did not even develop their own film -one Pictorialist asserted that "the photographer is not helpless before the mechanical means at his disposal. He can master them as he may choose, and he can make the lens see with his eyes, can make the plate receive his impressionis" -Pictorialist writing encouraged a self-image of cultural heroism, striking back at the worst of the modern world Straight Photography: -This functional aesthetic also influenced photography. Critics began to praise "photographs that look like photographs," those devoid of the manipulation so prevalent in the work of pictorialists who strove to force photography to emulate the surface textures of pictures made by other media. -Articles began to appear in the photographic press in praise of "pure photography." -Art critic Sadakichi Hartmann, in an otherwise highly laudatory review of the Photo-Secession exhibition at the Carnegie Institute in 1904, condemned gum printing, the glycerine process, and handwork on negatives and prints. He called upon pictorialists "to work straight" -Working straight: "...in short, compose the picture which you intend to take so well that the negative will be absolutely perfect and in need of no or but slight manipulation. I do not object to retouching, dodging or accentuation as long as they do not interfere with the natural qualities of photographic technique... I do not want him to be less artistic than he is to-day, on the contrary I want him to be more artistic, but only in legitimate ways" -Straight photography had existed since the medium first appeared, but What was new in the opening years of the twentieth century was the acceptance of the straight photograph as a "legitimate" art medium -Hartmann also said, "... the painter composes by an effort of imagination. The photographer interprets by spontaneity of judgment. He practices composition by the eye." -Yet paradoxically the spectator is not for an instant left unaware of what has been photographed. With the shock of recognition one realizes almost at once that the form that delights the eye is significant, and one marvels that such beauty can be discovered in what is commonplace. -For this is the power of the camera: it can seize upon the familiar and endow it with new meanings, with special significance, with the imprint of a personality. -Strand wrote in 1917: The photographer's problem is to see clearly the limitations and at the same time the potential qualities of his medium, for it is precisely here that honesty no less than intensity of vision is the prequisite of a living expression. This means a real respect for the thing in front of him expressed in terms of chiaroscuro ... through a range of almost infinite tonal values which lie beyond the skill of human hand. The fullest realization of this is accomplished without tricks of process or manipulation through the use of straight photographic methods. -In 1923, lecturing to the students of the Clarence H. White School of Photography, he made a strong plea for the revival of craftsmanship and told them of the need to free photography from the domination of painting, and ro recognize that the camera had its own aesthetic. -Weston wrote that of the two directions he saw in his most recent work-abstraction and realism-the latter was the stronger and offered the greatest potential for creative expression, and commented: The camera should be used for a recording of life, for rendering the very substance and quintessence of the thing itself, whether it be polished steel or palpitating flesh . . . I shall let no chance pass to record interesting abstraction, but I feel definite in my belief that the approach to photography is through realism. -His technique and aesthetic became one: "Unless I pull a technically fine negative, the emotional or intellectual value of the photograph is for me almost negated." - Is in fact the photographer the creative person in controlof a machine. Who can help humanize the machine human eye Edward Weston discusses in the reading thatwe have assigned for from the.Classic essays textbook on seeing photographically will be talking aboutWeston's aesthetic much more in our class on 3rd. And what was going on in that essay but basicallyit's about trying to understand and maintain a kind of absolute control over the material of your photograph. -That what the photographer has to do is to lookat their subject And to be able to. Detail translate in your mind's eye what you see withyour human eye into the way in which your camera ... and the the film that you're using in the wayit's being developed as well. How ultimately that will read. A black and white. Surrealism: -Andre Breton's Surrealist Manifesto, published in on October 15, 1924, announced the primacy of the irrational and the belief in a truth beyond realism -surrealism was deeply indebted to Freud's theory of the unconscious and the methods he proposed for revealing a person's unconscious desires, notably dream analysis and free-association sequences of words and ideas -rather than emphasizing social change on the state level, the Surrealists advocated the transformation of human perception and experience through great contact with the inner world of imagination -photography was central to Surrealist practice -in theory, at least, making photographs could be the visual equivalent of free association and other methods of side-stepping the monitoring rational mind -it was in Germany and Russia, countries in which the legacy of war was particularly far-reaching, that the dream of a utopia achieved through technological means found its most animated vision Bauhaus/Germany: -In Germany, and in the territories once under its control, the dogma of a new vision propelled multidisciplinary art exploration intended to shake up vestiges of the past while shaping the future -Laszlo Moholy-Nagy arrived in Berlin just before the 1920 Dada Fair -He soon met Hoch, Hausmann, and other members of the Berlin Dada group -like them, Moholy-Nagy favored the use of industrial materials and concepts, and he adopted the Soviet artists' notion of faktura, which he understood to mean that a new vision could be created only when photography was practiced for its own inherent qualities, not as an imitation of painting -while the Dadaists were politically active, many joining the Communist party, Moholy-Nagy concentrated instead on technology and its relation to art -he insisted that "the first and foremost issue" for photography was to determine "a more or less exact photographic language," independent of the past -his social concern was expressed in his theory that mass production, especially the wide circulation of images, made it possible for an artist to change perceptions of the world, thereby creating a desire for social revolution -Moholy-Nagy claimed that photography's chief characteristic was light, and that artists should experiment with patterns of light and shade -"this century belongs to light... photography is the first means of giving tangible shape to light, though in a transposed and... almost abstract form" -"today, everything is concentrated, more powerfully than ever before, on the visual" -Moholy-Nagy looked to science to research the physiological and psychological basis for visual presentations, which would be as effective as written language -he announced that "the illiteracy of the future will be ignorance of photography" -like Rodchenko, Moholy-Nagy proposed that photographers should radically change the angle of camera vision -he advocated such devices a distorting mirrors that would alter normal views, and he anticipated the invention of new sorts of cameras that would allow the operator to play with perspective -he also envisaged photographers adapting microscopes, telescopes, and x-ray equipment to their repertoire of image-making -among his proposals was the making of cameraless photographs, which he called photograms -in 1923, Moholy-Nagy was invited to join the faculty of Bauhaus, the German art school established by architect Walter Gropius (1883-1969), whose goal was to integrate the arts with industry -Moholy-Nagy already had an international reputation for his abstract paintings and sculptures, some of which used industrial materials and processes, such as porcelain enamel on steel; he was an energetic member of a faculty that would later include artists Wassily Kadinsky and Paul Klee -the Bauhaus curriculum did not include classes in photography until soon before it was closed by the Nazis in 1933, but Moholy-Nagy's ideas were influential -in addition, his 1925 book Painting, Photography, Film, published by the Bauhaus, became an international reference for the new photography -the upbeat mood of experimental photography was captured in the title of an article by Bauhaus artist Johannes Molzahn, "Stop Reading! Look!" -Molzahn was convinced that formal education should adapt to the increasingly visually portrayed world rendered in mass-media newspapers and magazines -he offered "Stop Reading! Look!" as the guiding motto for teaching and learning -also at the Bauhaus was Austrian-born designer and photographer Herbert Bayer (1900-1985), whose design for the first cover of the institution's publication, Bauhaus, was a photomontage -Bayer's post-Bauhaus career included the design of an infamous Nazi brochure, which demonstrated the extent to which photomontage was not a technique intrinsically wedded to progressive politics, but a style whose aesthetic features could serve any political persuasion Russia: -in Russia, the Revolution of 1917, which placed revolutionary socialists in power, had a deep impact on artists, particularly the avant-garde -even before the overthrow of the czar, abstraction had already become a symbol for a future untained by the past -after the Revolution, artists experimenting with Cubism and Futurism responded to the Communist Party's buoyant utopianism, expressed in The ABC of Communism (1919), which proclaimed that "within a few decades there will be quite a new world, with new people and new customs." -photomontage originated in Germany, but was adopted in Russia soon after WWI, through artists' visits and through magazines -the avant-garde Dada movement, initiated by artists who took refuge in Switzerland during the war, spread to Berlin, and from there to Moscow -experimental artists cut pictures from magazines and newspapers and pasted them together in composite images whose jumbled scale and perspective challenged conventional expectations (George Grosz and John Heartfield, Life and Activity in the Universal City at Five Past Twelve) -these collages (from the French word for "glue") were sometimes photographed so that the unique first image could be printed in multiple versions -Soviet experimental artists called such images not photocollages but photomontages -the word "montage" has various sources; in silent film, for example, it specified rapid succession of images that indicated a change of place or the transition of ideas -the Berlin Dadaist Hausmann wrote that the group agreed on the term "photomontage" because of "our aversion at playing the artist and, thinking of ourselves as engineers (hence our preference for working-men's overalls) we meant to construct, to assemble (montieren) our works -experimental artists used to word "photomontage" almost exclusively after World War I -although a photomontage may resemble a Cubist painting, on to which such materials as tickets and menus have been pasted, experimental artists in Germany and Russia aimed to use such materials in a different way -the jumbled appearance of photomontage was more than formal inventiveness; it was a token of the quick changes and disruptions of modern life that seemed, in the period immediately after WWI and the Russian Revolution, to promise progressive social change -Rodchenko wholeheartedly accepted photography because he felt it freed artists from inherited aesthetic ideas, especially perspective and the other techniques used to render the world as it is, rather than as it might be -he promoted the notion that new concepts could not be expressed in old media, and was a leading proponent of faktura, the idea prominent in Soviet art theory that an artist should discover a medium's distinctive capabilities by experimenting with its inherent qualities -looking at the work of photographers who traveled to foreign countries, Rodchenko scoffed, "They photograph with museum eyes, the eyes of art history" -Rodchenko's hope for new media such as film and photography was enhanced by looking at German art and fashion magazines, such as Woman, Young World, and Modern Illustrated Journal, which featured experimental German photography -in turn, Rodchenko's work appeared in the Russian magazine LEF (Left Front of the Arts), a left-wing arts magazine founded by poet Vladimir Maiakovskii -in 1923, Rodchenko gathered images from the picture press, and also commissioned a series of photographs from another photographer -he joined these images to make photo montage illustrations for Maiakovskii's poem "About This" (use class of incongruous objects to evoke the poet's seething anxiety about the absence of his lover) -these images are visually arresting but it is hard to see how uninitiated viewers could have interpreted their symbolic meanings -the post-revolutionary Russian avant-garde advocated making images in such a way as to obstruct habits of seeing -odd camera angles, unrecognizable close-ups, multiple exposures, and confused perspective all served to "make strange" the expected appearance of the world -in the mid-1920s, Rodchenko learned to make his own photographs and moved from photomontage to straight photography (Untitled, (Walking Figure), 1928) -nevertheless, he continued to disparage "belly button" camerawork-- that is, the conventional, balanced picture taken with a camera held near the waistline while the photographer peered into the viewing screen -in the years immediately after the Revolution, the Soviet government courted experimental artists in its search for innovative methods of mass communication -but by the early 1930s, the romance turned sour -official policy shifted from avant-garde art-- seen as intelectual, bourgeois, and thus part of the capitalist system-- and instead promoted Socialist Realism, that is, a conventionally realistic style used as a vehicle for rousing propaganda messages that could be universally understood by the workers

What different positions were articulated regarding the relationship between photography and the human?

- From Peter Henry Emerson's 'naturalistic focus' to Paul Strand's concerns about humanizing the New God, to Weston's 'seeing photographically' to the various manifestations in Europe, each group we studied seems to have a different view of the relationship between the camera and the people who use it (and those who view photographs). How would you summarize this question for each of the major practitioners that we've looked at? ---------------------------------------- 5) Pictorialism: Peter Henry Emerson argued that we should make the camera function like the human eye in his essay on naturalistic photography. This was the method often used by pictorialists. Therefore, we should make the edges of the image fuzzy while having focus in the center. 6) Straight Photography: Weston and the f/64 group instead argued for having everything in focus. Straight photographers adhered to the modernist idea that whatever art form you were working in should emphasize what makes that medium unique. So in photography, that meant the capacity of focus. Weston, in his Seeing Photographically essay, believed we needed to pre-visualize the end result as what is photographed by the camera looks nothing like the eye could ever see. Thus, photographers needed to see like the camera instead of making the camera see like humans. Strand- New God -wrote in the 20s, or the Machine Age-photography can humanize the machine or else it will destroy them-also fetishization of the machine; huge cultural shift Strand is responding to-sees photography as an art (creative control; human control of the machine)-new way of seeing***-dehumanizing potential of machine age-maintaining humanity is with creative use of the camera-humanize machine-art vs. science resolved by camera 7) European Modernisms Russia- -El Lissitzky, an architect who worked in many media, including photography, was one of the most politically committed artists -he renounced self-expression in art, along with easel painting, which he associated with a corrupt past and stagnant aesthetics -with others, Lissitzky insisted that the artist's role was now linked to industry and to reshaping everyday life -in avant-grade circles, the terms "production art" and "production artist" began being used, to indicate that the artist would employ technology in order to mold a new society -photography was favored precisely because it was the product of a machine that could be mass produced by other machines Germany- -it was in Germany and Russia, countries in which the legacy of war was particularly far-reaching, that the dream of a utopia achieved through technological means found its most animated vision -German architect Hannes Meyer said in 1926, "The mechanization of our planet" offers "palpable proof of the victory of human consciousness over amorphous nature." -for him, the speed of planes and automobiles broke the bounds of place and tradition -the speed of life made us live faster, and therefore longer. It made us see that things could change: "We learn Esperanto," Meyer wrote; "we become citizens of the world." -industrialization as a marvelous marriage of the human body and the machine -like them, Moholy-Nagy favored the use of industrial materials and concepts, and he adopted the Soviet artists' notion of faktura, which he understood to mean that a new vision could be created only when photography was practiced for its own inherent qualities, not as an imitation of painting -while the Dadaists were politically active, many joining the Communist party, Moholy-Nagy concentrated instead on technology and its relation to art -he insisted that "the first and foremost issue" for photography was to determine "a more or less exact photographic language," independent of the past -his social concern was expressed in his theory that mass production, especially the wide circulation of images, made it possible for an artist to change perceptions of the world, thereby creating a desire for social revolution Surrealism- -Breton's curiosity about psychic states led him toward psychology, especially the theories of Sigmund Freud, which suggested that human behavior is motivated by forces and desires hidden deep within the human psyche, which individuals and society are generally reluctant to acknowledge -rather than emphasizing social change on the state level, the Surrealists advocated the transformation of human perception and experience through great contact with the inner world of imagination -l'informe: formless -focusing on the human body both of which arguably take advantage of this notion of the out form of formless the Act form can take place through simple lighting and cropping it is it defamation a process of undoing the fundamental notion of form itself so in the brass eye at the top is woman's body is cropped off

How is photography an art?

- Looking at the various movements/manifestations covered in these Modules, how did each try to define the goal of photography as art? What assumptions did each make about the fundamental nature of the medium, and how did that fit in with their respective aesthetic ideas? ------------------------------------ 5) Pictorialism: -The photographers in this movement often took Impressionist painting astheir model, relying on the same basic strategy we saw in the first wave of art photography— making photography into an aesthetic art form by having itemulate some type of painting. Emerson: -It was a theory of art based on science. Heexplained that a natural photograph should echo what the human eye sees in nature. He emphasized this concept in hispractice of photography, calling it 'naturalistic focus'. -In his lecture, Emerson rated photography as an art secondto painting only because photography at the time could not provide color or a true tonal relationship. - In the late nineteenth century, dissension in the ranks ofamateur photography societies in Europe began to erupt. The organizations had been formed in the mid-1800s to promote the mediumof photography, but there was disagreement as to how this should be done. Some members were interested primarily in thetechnical aspects of the camera and its capacity for creating accurate reproductions, and some were devoted to the medium's artisticpossibilities. -Within this second group, there were two camps—those who preferred to exploit the camera's detailed description of the worldin front of it; and those who wanted to develop its impressionistic and expressive potential. -As the turn ofthe century approached, these divisions became increasingly sharp. -The controversy between the two aesthetic camps—those who insisted that photographs should not be altered at anystage of development and those who believed that such manual intervention was necessary to make clear the artist's role—was continuedin lively debates that clarified the aesthetic role of photography in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century art. -As an army of weekend "snapshooters" invaded the photographic realm,a small but persistent group of photographers staked their medium's ... claim to membership among the fine arts. They rejected the point-and-shoot approach to photography and embraced labor-intensiveprocesses such as gum bichromate which involved hand-coating artist papers with homemade emulsions and pigments,or they made platinum prints, which yielded rich, tonally subtle ... images. Such photographs emphasized the role of the photographer as craftsmanand countered the argument that photography was an entirely mechanical ... medium. -Photographer Gertrude Käsebier once asked, "Why should not the cameraas a medium for the interpretation of art as understood by painters, sculptors, and draughtsmen, command respect?" -At a time when technical improvements enabled photographers to make sharper pictures, Emerson denied that the camera could make art by merely transcribing physical reality -Instead, he argued that the artist should translate exactly how the eye sees, concluding that the photographer should focus on the main subject of a scene, allowing the periphery and the distance to become indistinct -Called differential or selective focus, this approach varied from William Newton's earlier idea of making the entire image slightly out-of-focus 6)Straight Photography: -In 1923, lecturing to the students of the Clarence H. White School of Photography, he made a strong plea for the revival of craftsmanship and told them of the need to free photography from the domination of painting, and ro recognize that the camera had its own aesthetic. Critics began to praise "photographs that look like photographs," those devoid of the manipulation so prevalent in the work of pictorialists who strove to force photography to emulate the surface textures of pictures made by other media. -Articles began to appear in the photographic press in praise of "pure photography." -Art critic Sadakichi Hartmann, in an otherwise highly laudatory review of the Photo-Secession exhibition at the Carnegie Institute in 1904, condemned gum printing, the glycerine process, and handwork on negatives and prints. He called upon pictorialists "to work straight" -Working straight: "...in short, compose the picture which you intend to take so well that the negative will be absolutely perfect and in need of no or but slight manipulation. I do not object to retouching, dodging or accentuation as long as they do not interfere with the natural qualities of photographic technique... I do not want him to be less artistic than he is to-day, on the contrary I want him to be more artistic, but only in legitimate ways" -Straight photography had existed since the medium first appeared, but What was new in the opening years of the twentieth century was the acceptance of the straight photograph as a "legitimate" art medium -Hartmann also said, "... the painter composes by an effort of imagination. The photographer interprets by spontaneity of judgment. He practices composition by the eye." -the part of the artist ofthe immense possibilities in the creative control of one form of the machine the camera. --about clear focus throughout image as well as interest in form and way it manifests with selection by photographer of how to locate framing edge of image; unique to photography, not trying to make like painting -popularized if shoot straight, get in focus, and must use full negative instead of cropping; comes from Weston's seeing photographically concept (seeing final image before take; don't mess with in darkroom -classic modernist very formalist form of photography -important aesthetic position is seeing photographically/pre-visualization *** relationship of human being to photography -weston's formalism; klsmot objectifies forms; certain way of seeing only part of a thing (pepper, shell, nude, etc.) -Group f.64, and issued a manifesto: "The members of Group f.64 believe that Photography, as an art-form, must develop along lines defined by the actualities and limitations of the photographic medium, and must always remain independent of ideological conventions of art and aesthetics that are reminiscent of a period and culture antedating the growth of the medium itself" ***naturalistic emerson make camera see like human to strand save humanity by creative control of camera while weston wants to see like camera*** -Beaumont: First photo department with MOMA where photography is recognized as an aesthetic expression in its own right 7) European Modernisms: -perception versus representation; think about as representation (this is not a pipe because it's a picture that looks like a pipe, but not the thing itself); philosophical question -not specifically talking about art anymore; question is not if photography is art, but how it can help revolutionize how we see the world Vienna-born German artist Raoul Hausmann asked, "Why don't we paint works today like those of Botticelli, Michelangelo, Leonardo, or Titian? Because our spirits have utterly changed. And not simply because we have the telephone, the airplane, the electric piano, and the escalator. Rather, because above all these experiences have transformed our entire psycho-physiology." Dada- -in the words of one of their leaders, Richard Hulsenbeck, "the highest art will be that which in its conscious content presents the thousandfold problems of the day, the art which has been visibly shattered by the explosions of last week, which is forever trying to collect its limbs after yesterday's crash" -involved in World War I in only the final stages, the US also did not endure years of conflict on its own soil, and was therefore spared the disillusioned anguish that led to the questioning of the role of traditional art in an age of trench warfare -moreover, Americans did not identify non-objective, or abstract, art with political revolt and social change to the degree that many European experimenters did Surrealism- -continuous questioning of the frame of representation of how it is that we think we understand things and asking whether we might in fact think about that very differently -surrealism was deeply indebted to Freud's theory of the unconscious and the methods he proposed for revealing a person's unconscious desires, notably dream analysis and free-association sequences of words and ideas -rather than emphasizing social change on the state level, the Surrealists advocated the transformation of human perception and experience through great contact with the inner world of imagination -photography was central to Surrealist practice -in theory, at least, making photographs could be the visual equivalent of free association and other methods of side-stepping the monitoring rational mind -some Surrealists pointed their cameras haphazardly, recording whatever happened to be in front of the lens Germany- -In Germany, and in the territories once under its control, the dogma of a new vision propelled multidisciplinary art exploration intended to shake up vestiges of the past while shaping the future -He soon met Hoch, Hausmann, and other members of the Berlin Dada group -like them, Moholy-Nagy favored the use of industrial materials and concepts, and he adopted the Soviet artists' notion of faktura, which he understood to mean that a new vision could be created only when photography was practiced for its own inherent qualities, not as an imitation of painting -while the Dadaists were politically active, many joining the Communist party, Moholy-Nagy concentrated instead on technology and its relation to art -he insisted that "the first and foremost issue" for photography was to determine "a more or less exact photographic language," independent of the past -his social concern was expressed in his theory that mass production, especially the wide circulation of images, made it possible for an artist to change perceptions of the world, thereby creating a desire for social revolution -Moholy-Nagy claimed that photography's chief characteristic was light, and that artists should experiment with patterns of light and shade -"this century belongs to light... photography is the first means of giving tangible shape to light, though in a transposed and... almost abstract form" -"today, everything is concentrated, more powerfully than ever before, on the visual" -Moholy-Nagy looked to science to research the physiological and psychological basis for visual presentations, which would be as effective as written language -he announced that "the illiteracy of the future will be ignorance of photography" Russia- -In the post-revolutionary Soviet Union, some artists began to think of themselves as social Engineers, reshaping Optical experience -in Russia, the Revolution of 1917, which placed revolutionary socialists in power, had a deep impact on artists, particularly the avant-garde -even before the overthrow of the czar, abstraction had already become a symbol for a future untained by the past -after the Revolution, artists experimenting with Cubism and Futurism responded to the Communist Party's buoyant utopianism, expressed in The ABC of Communism (1919), which proclaimed that "within a few decades there will be quite a new world, with new people and new customs." -El Lissitzky, an architect who worked in many media, including photography, was one of the most politically committed artists -he renounced self-expression in art, along with easel painting, which he associated with a corrupt past and stagnant aesthetics -with others, Lissitzky insisted that the artist's role was now linked to industry and to reshaping everyday life -in avant-grade circles, the terms "production art" and "production artist" began being used, to indicate that the artist would employ technology in order to mold a new society -photography was favored precisely because it was the product of a machine that could be mass produced by other machines -Rodchenko wholeheartedly accepted photography because he felt it freed artists from inherited aesthetic ideas, especially perspective and the other techniques used to render the world as it is, rather than as it might be -he promoted the notion that new concepts could not be expressed in old media, and was a leading proponent of faktura, the idea prominent in Soviet art theory that an artist should discover a medium's distinctive capabilities by experimenting with its inherent qualities -in the years immediately after the Revolution, the Soviet government courted experimental artists in its search for innovative methods of mass communication -but by the early 1930s, the romance turned sour -official policy shifted from avant-garde art-- seen as intelectual, bourgeois, and thus part of the capitalist system-- and instead promoted Socialist Realism, that is, a conventionally realistic style used as a vehicle for rousing propaganda messages that could be universally understood by the workers

Publishing photography

- Review the significant publications covered in the module (photobooks, Camera Work, etc). How did these publications contribute to the development and circulation of ideas about photography? --------------------------- **make note of photobooks and publications as one of main ways other photographers got to see each other's works); incredibly important form since Talbot's Pencil of Nature; be influenced by each other -photographers and filmmakers explored unexpected angles and collage effects, and closely watched and admired each other's work Pictorialist: -- In 1886 Emerson published his first photo-book, "Life and Landscapeon the Norfolk Broads." It consisted of 40 platinum prints of photographs exposed in the marshlands, such as this one,Polling the Marsh Hay. although Emerson wrote that he thought much amateur and art photography pretentious, many practitioners ignored his insults, and based their ideas of art photography on his photographs, with their subdued middle-gray tones, soft focus, and peaceful, agrarian subjects -In 1889 Emerson published a textbook of photography titled "NaturalisticPhotography for Students of the Art." It was his attempt to explain his philosophy of art and how it relatedto nature including the aesthetics and techniques of photography, and his view of art history. -The book was referred to as "the bombshell dropped atthe tea party" because of the controversy it generated. It fired the focus debate: Was completely sharp faithful to nature?How soft was soft enough? Did the human eye see the subject sharp with the edges falling off to soft?What was natural, or what tones were possible? --having promoted art photography as a cutting-edge application of recent science, he seems to have abruptly cast it off because he saw it as limiting the individuality of the artist-although Emerson wrote that he thought much amateur and art photography pretentious, many practitioners ignored his insults, and based their ideas of art photography on his photographs, with their subdued middle-gray tones, soft focus, and peaceful, agrarian subjects -Camera Work: first issue in 1903 that ran through 1917; important in communicating ideas about modern art, photography, pictorialism, aesthetic questions, etc.; very lux production; not printed photos with text, but printed on japanese paper in photogravures and hand tipped in -Strand credited Stieglitz for creating, through Camera Work, a true American art -"America has really been expressed in terms of America without the outside influence of Paris art schools or their dilute offspring here," Strand wrote, comparing the work of White, Steichen, Kasebier, and Eugene to the unique experimentation manifested by the builders of skyscrapers Moholy-Nagy's ideas were influential -in addition, his 1925 book Painting, Photography, Film, published by the Bauhaus, became an international reference for the new photography -The Surrealist sensibility peristsed well beyond its historical high point in the 1920s and 1930s, although shorn of its early radicalism and intense psychologizing -Brassai's recognition that the extraordinary always prowls close to the ordinary informs his book of photographs Paris by Night (1933), which teems with people who exist at the twilight of respectable society -to many photographic artists, such outsiders as vagrants and prostitutes represented freedom and nonconformity -Brassai's Paris by Night carried no message of social reform or personal redemption, but showed such people of the night as "Bijou" (Jewel), who relished the extremes of life -In Europe a somewhat similar respect for straight photography is found in the work of the German photographer Albert Renger-Patzsch. -His book, Die Welt ist schon ( "The World is Beautiful"), published in 1928, was hailed as the photographic counterpart of the New Objectivity (Neue Sachlichkeit) movement in painting. -The pictures were strong and direct: extreme closeups of plants and animals, lonely city streets, bold forms of industrial buildings, details of machinery, and still-life studies of their products. -The freshness of Renger-Patzsch' s vision was impressive. -Thomas Mann found his photographs "exact statements drawn from the whole and that's the way it usually is with this man who is, in his way, impassioned. The detail, the objective, is removed from the world of appearances, isolated, sharpened, made meaningful, animated. What more, I would like to ask, has art or the artist done? -Renger-Patzsch himself said, quite simply, "Let us leave art to the artist, and let us try-with photographic means-to create photographs which can stand alone because of their very photographic character-without borrowing from art."

Development of the definition of the medium

- Each of the movements we have encountered had their own way(s) of defining what photography is/should be, and how those characteristics contribute to aesthetics and/or the function of photography. How would you compare Stieglitz with Rodchenko, for example? Or Emerson with Moholy? Revisit each of the Classic Essays readings assigned in this section of the course to clarify these positions for yourself. ------------------ Stieglitz wrote that the exhibition was "the sharp focusing of an idea .. .. My teachers have xen life-work--continuous experiment. . . . Every print I make, even from one negative, is a new experience, A new problem .... Photography is my passion. The search for Truth my obsession." Okay honestly just go to other notes for this

What is the relationship in each movement to 'the modern'?

- Photography, as a product of the Industrial Revolution, is by definition a modern medium, yet the relationship between photography and the modern is articulated differently by a number of the figures that we've seen. - How would a Pictorialist describe the relationship between their style, and the modernity of their medium? What about Paul Strand? The Surrealists? Moholy and Franz Roh? ------------------------------- Pictorialism: -some believed that art photography should take its lead from contemporary scientific findings -others rejected science as hazardous to the timeless values of art and to the need for self-expression through art forms -many felt that mass-media photography was not only vulgar and sensational, but also a symbol of the cheapening of modern life -just as the fine arts had inspired some Vicrorians to devise High Art photography, turn-of-the-century photographers contrived pictorialism-- that is, a kind of photography that rejected industrialization for evocative, often hand-painted photographic images - at the turn of the 20th century, more people came to believe that a modern art must evolve at a pace and with an inventiveness similar to those of Science and Technology -Pictorialists adopted Emerson's disgust with industrialization and mass-produced goods, as well as his belief in photography as a fully fledged modern art form -they embraced his choice of subjects, but jettisoned allegiance to recent science -in Pictorialist hands, Emerson's selective or differential focus became a dislike of the distracting details associated with vulgar commercial photography -Pictorialist photographers favored scenes infused with fog and shadows -in contrast to their simple subjects, they strove for tonal complexity, choosing techniques such as platinum printing, which yielded abundant soft, middle-gray tones -they favored procedures that allowed for handworking of both negatives and prints -their results were in obvious visual opposition to the sharp black and white contrasts of the commercial print -Pictorialist photographs were frequently printed on textured paper, unlike the glossy surface of commercial photographs, so that they resembled watercolors, evoking the earlier Victorian photographs of David Octavius Hill and Julia Margaret Cameron, which they admired and exhibited -Pictorialists valued their symbolic control over the growing photography industry, and they cultivated a sense of superiority over the snapshooters, who did not even develop their own film -Pictorialist writing encouraged a self-image of cultural heroism, striking back at the worst of the modern world --What Stieglitz was driving at was a new vision for a modern world. Teach America to see and photography was the epitome of a new way of seeing. He is known as the father of modern photography but for this rebel against complacent acceptance of the past photography was not enough. -to a small but growing number of photographers proudly proclaiming themselves amateurs, this machine could produce art; prove it by making their pictures as muchlike paintings as possible. -called Pictorialism, was the modern avant-garde photography of its time. -Camera work was well known for publishing distinguished writing onthe Arts. But these new modern arts demanded writing as radical as its images. -stieglitz was far from pleased when his vision forAmerican art was challenged by others especially the precisionists I like to call them the machine ages. They werefascinated by Manhattan they were fascinated by modernity, specifically in the new industrial and high-rise structures. Inthe new technologies that were proliferating at the time. ... - the perceived vulgarity of mass culture and the excitement of Modern Art combined to encourage photographers interested in art and personal expression to create a separate aesthetic, supported by Publications, Galleries, and exclusive societies. -Steichen's photograph of The Flatiron on the left is an interesting image for its aestheticism, but also forits modernity. The Flatiron Building, in NYC, was the first skyscraper builtin New York, in 1903. So this was a brand new and striking addition to the skyline of the city. Steichen added color to the platinum print that forms thefoundation 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, "The Flatiron" is the quintessential chromatic study of twilight. - Clearly indebted in its composition to the Japanese woodcuts thatwere in vogue at the turn of the century and in its coloristic effect to the "Nocturnes" of Whistler, thispicture is a prime example of the conscious effort of photographers in the circle of Alfred Stieglitz to assert theartistic potential of their medium. - You'll notice that these three variations, based on the samenegative, are each quite different in tonality, color, even mood. Instead of seeking to reproduce as many identical images as possible from a negative, - Steichen is here demonstrating the individualization of the hand worktechniques that he's applied. So each print is essentially an original. -The Octopus, on the left, is couched in the softvelvety nap of the platinum paper, composed in the languid lines of Art Nouveau, and softly focused. This photograph ofNew York's Madison Square employs many elements of Pictorialism at its best. However, the dizzying effect of Coburn's aerial viewand his fascination with the skyscraper are distinctly and precociously modern. -The blend of Pictorialist technique and fresh vision wascharacteristic of the transitional moment when Alfred Stieglitz, Coburn, Karl Struss, and Paul Strand began to celebrate contemporary urban experience. -Transparency of means and respect for materials were primary tenets of modernart, which derived meaning from the ephemera of contemporary life. Photography was naturally suited to representing the fast-paced cacophony thatincreasingly defined modern lifee -Stieglitz: - His refusal to encapsulate her personality into a single imagewas consistent with several modernist ideas: the idea of the fragmented sense of self, brought about by the rapid paceof modern life; the idea that a personality, like the outside world, is constantly changing, and may be interrupted butnot halted by the intervention of the camera; and, finally, the realization that truth in the modern world is relativeand that photographs are as much an expression of the photographer's feelings for the subject as they are a reflectionof the subject depicted. Straight Photography: -These kind of General Notions of Mid Twentieth Century modernism like to talk about particular. Of you do if your time at a particular mediumthe goal of that Medium is supposed to be. Manifesting the qualities that are unique to the medium As in you shouldn't be trying to imitate other thingsso in the realm of painting Basically the idea of pre-visualization is that the job ofthe photographer is to understand absolutely and completely Everything about the materials that there were The camera the quality of the lens Of what kind of photographic Emulsion you're shooting onto what'sthe film like was the sensitivity in the latitude of the film. - Basically again adopting this modernist stance -pictorialists thought photography had to look like paintings to claim itself as art, but straight photographers believed in the very modernist idea of making clear what makes that medium unique; in order words, don't make photos look like anything but a photo and painting can abandon representational as it is a flat surface with forms and colors added (leads to abstract painting)-distinguish photos from painting with their capacity for sharpness of focus and isolating corner of world-At the beginning of the twentieth century, progressive artists were groping for a new aesthetic based upon the unique properties and characteristics of their chosen medium.-"Form follows function" became their slogan Paul Strand- -photography can humanize the machine or else it will destroy them-also fetishization of the machine; huge cultural shift Strand is responding to-sees photography as an art (creative control; human control of the machine)-new way of seeing***-dehumanizing potential of machine age-maintaining humanity is with creative use of the camera-humanize machine-art vs. science resolved by cameraAdd the rise of Science and empirical thought made itso empiricism empirical thought that's the kind of scientific approach that's based on Direct observation.- A phenomenal and attempting to analyze and account for them in the ways that modern science does. And so he.Guy deposits the fact that now we've got to.Where the world has exploded we have Age of the machine. Out of wooden metals and quoting from page 145 inthe text out of wooden Metals he made hands that could do the work of a thousand men he madebacks that could carry the burden of a thousand beasts and change the power which was in the earth andwater is to make them work through him men consummated a new creative act a new Trinity so he's erectinga new kind of religious image. New Trinity. Got the machine materialistic empiricism the Sun and science theHoly Ghost. So that those Photography in the new God the newGod is God the machine.-And he's very interested in pursuing what's going on withthis new guy. He's he thinks it's a means by which lots ofpeople's lives can be vastly improved obviously there's there are these new modern Innovations people can communicate with one anotherin new ways people can.-Tibetan you're significantly improved living conditions and so on andthen he gets interested if he starts talking about how.Photography figures into this because if you think about itphotography. Is. For him and Hispanic medium among other things it's aCommunications medium it is a medium that comes from a machine.-Camera is a machine.And so he's very interested in the particular role thatseems to be present. Two photographers as they. Are undertaking their work because what what's a photographer photographeris a creative person. In control of a machine. European Modernisms: Surrealism- -emerged in interwar period; not happy with stifling conventions of bourgeois society-surrealism challenged that by inventing new ways of looking-imaginative from unconscious; release the "id" and stuff that emerges when you dream-photography is ostensibly objective and indexical, but many things you are unconscious of when photographing-a kind of "optical unconscious" in photography; when snap the shutter, you can access the world in an unconscious state that opens itself up to chance (ex: solarization accidentally discovered) Bauhaus/Germany- -utopian, socialist sort of vision; well-designed, functional, and beautiful-improving lot of working class-photography as extension of human senses -new objectivity alternative in 20s to expressionism; objective rather than subjective A modern realist movement, often associated with portraiture, that developed in Weimar Germany in the 1920s as a challenge to Expressionism.. As its name suggests, it offered a return to unsentimental reality and a focus on the objective world, as opposed to the more abstract, romantic, or idealistic tendencies of Expressionism. The artists associated with the movement were not formally organized and worked in many different locations. They are linked by their embrace of naturalism in their drawings and paintings and by their vivid, often caustically satirical depictions of Weimar society following Germany's defeat in World War I. Wrapped up in these criticisms was a more universal, savage satire of the human condition. Russia -not specifically talking about art anymore; question is not if photography is art, but how it can help revolutionize how we see the world -The huge gush of experimental photography after the war was propelled by the buoyant, sometimes militant perception that the war's Devastation shattered Victorian conventions of artistic conduct and generated a new, modern Covenant with the social world -in this heady atmosphere, creators working in film and photography underscored the notion that their media were not only similar to each other but also like the proliferating Illustrated newspapers and magazines read by the public -That each spawned a rapidly changing, sometimes confusing, but always exciting jumble of successive images oscillating at the speed of Modern Life -in his 1925 article on "The magazine as a Sign of the Times," german editor and radio personality Edlef Koppen linked the hectic activity of modern life to the character of the illustrated magazines -"The mark of our age is haste, hurry, nervousness... People have no time, indeed they flee the calm of contemplation" -the public, Kolden scolded, wanted the pleasure, variety, and brevity of short acts in a theatrical review -the speed of modern life found its expression in the compression of meaning in modern media -in his book on the motion pictures, Vachel Lindsay wrote that "American civilization grows more hieroglyphic everyday. The cartoons... the advertisements in the back of magazines and on the billboards and in the streetcars, the acres of photographs in the Sunday newspapers make us into a hieroglyphic civilization..." -Hungarian-born painter and sculptor Laszlo Moholy-Nagy (1895-1946) asserted the unique qualities of sound recording, film, and photography, which he thought were the best media for representing the modern experience -similarly, in 1921, Vienna-born German artist Raoul Hausmann asked, "Why don't we paint works today like those of Botticelli, Michelangelo, Leonardo, or Titian? Because our spirits have utterly changed. And not simply because we have the telephone, the airplane, the electric piano, and the escalator. Rather, because above all these experiences have transformed our entire psycho-physiology." -borrowing the name of a contemporary German art movement, observers described such work as exemplifying the New Objectivity -more imprecise terms such as "new Vision", "Modernist Photography," or "New Photography," were also used to denote the emphasis placed on industrial subjects, close-ups, odd angles, and repeated visual patterns -some critics decried the commercialization of the Modernist style -Karel Teige (1900-1951) angrily observed that "film und Foto," as well as the 1930 Munich exhibition "Das Lichtbild" (The Photograph) propagated a visual fashion emptied of its initial social activism -in Europe, many photographers were persuaded that they should follow the example of mass media in order to sway public opinion -as a medium capab;e of multiple images, photography became more central to art movements -sometimes, as in the work of Klutsis and Rodchenko in the Soviet Union, and the Nazi Party in Germany, the result was overtly political -by contrast, the photograms and other photographs by Laszlo Moholy-Nagy and Lucia Moholy conveyed a sense of newness and Modernist values without specifically alluding to a particular political philosophy -photographers and filmmakers explored unexpected angles and collage effects, and closely watched and admired each other's work -Dada art and photography inclined in other directions, smartly ridiculing the pomposities of art or attempting to fathom the nasty bits of the human psyche -Surrealism also targeted the human unconscious, and explored the significance of change and the dream state