Photography Exam #3

Camera Obscura

- Literally meaning "dark room," the Camera Obscura was used as a drawing aid by artists. - The portable Camera Obscura was invented in the 16th Century.

Edward Steichen

- Made cityscapes and natural landscapes using the gum-bichromate process achieving a painterly effect. - One of the best remembered of these images is the Flatiron Building in New York City.

Walker Evans*

- Photographed the USA and compiled a collection of images of the USA through an accumulation of details, fascinated by the images of popular culture. Described by some as a "pop artist" before the terms pop art was used. - Published American Photographs in 1938.

Robert Frank*

- Published "The Americans," disenchanted with preceding generation that entered and fought WWII. - Influenced by Walker Evans. - The book was very unpopular with many critics when first published because it was taken as an attack on the US and because Franks technique broke from the careful view camera aesthetic and fine printing that was popular.

Garry Winograd*

- Street photographer known for his images of daily life unfolding. His random style and tendency to shoot hundreds/thousands of rolls of film has gotten criticism. - Believed that the camera neither lies nor tells the truth, rather it transforms the world.

John Mayall

"Ideality is unattainable and imagination supplanted by the presence of fact." - His was one of many voices critical of photography's perceived ability to only record facts and not enter the realm of imagination/art.

Jabez Hughes

Divided photography into 3 categories: 1. Mechanical photography (simple representation of objects) 2. Art photography (where the artist infuses his/her mind into things, so they appear in a more appropriate or beautiful manner) 3. High Art photography (pictures aim at higher purposes, which instruct, purify and enoble)

Ansel Adams*

Grand views of the West. Invented Zone system, ideas of pre-visualization. One of the founders of group f64, whose members believed that good photographs should be sharply focused from front to back.

Berndt and Hilla Becher

New Topographers, grids, types of buildings, structures.

Francesca Woodman

Self-portraits made as a student at RISD.

Bill Brandt

Distorted nudes made with extreme wide angle lens, believed he could use atmosphere to make the everyday beautiful.

Eugene Atget*

- Compiled encyclopedic collection of pictures of Paris. - Referring to Atet's work, the critic Walter Benjamin wrote: "In a document beauty is secondary, however, one might say that the photograph comes more than the mirror of nature and enters language." - Benjamin meant that photographs like Atet's could be read and interpreted to learn a great deal, both about life in Paris at the timer and Atet's own sensibilities.

Magnum

A co-operative formed by a group of photographers (including Capa and Breton) with the goals of allowing member photographers to work free of editorial demands and to regain control over the use of their images.

Modernism

A movement in the arts that began in the early 20th century. Modernist artists were drawn towards abstraction and subjective expression of unique individual interests.

Post-Modernism

A movement that came to the fore in the 1980s. They rejected Modernism and n many cases returned to depicting the figure (as opposed to abstraction) and turned to appropriating mass produced images and mining popular culture for image sources.

Alphonse Bertillon

A pioneer in the French Police department who developed a verbal and visual system for identifying criminals.

Lewis Hine*

A sociologist by training was driven to change the ills he saw in the world. Photographed child laborers, which were used to change child labor laws. - Photographed construction of Empire State Building.

Picturesque

A term used to describe photographs of natural scent that "stirred fine thoughts and feelings in the viewer." - Many photographs were of natural landscape. - Nature was romanticized.

Imogene Cunningham

After early pictorial work took a formal, geometric approach photographing the nude. Also made landscapes and portraits.

Andre Kertesz

Distorted nudes made with curved sheets of reflective metal.

Sherrie Levine

Appropriated famous photographs in order to question the belief in the unique qualities and authenticity of photographs.

Henry Peach Robinson

Argued that photography's ability to distort the truth made it a viable art form. - Used combination printing - First success titled "Fading Away." - Coined the term "pictorialism."

P.H. Emerson

Argued that selective focus (setting the lens slightly out of focus) was the road to "naturalistic photography."

Pictorialists

Art photographers who in the early 1900's often made soft focus pictures in order to create a painterly effect. Often used the gum-bichromate process.

Jock Sturges

Assistant arrested for delivering nude teenager photos to lab. Accused of making child pornography. Work seized by police, and al one drawn out case. Sturges was ultimately acquitted.

Robert Rauschenberg*

Began as photographer, uses photos and objects in paints and sculptures - called the "Combines."

Roger Fenton*

British Art photographer who was commissioned to travel to the Crimea to make pictures of the War. Made the image "The Valley of Death." Most of Fenton's images were notable for his avoidance and the grisly horrors of war.

Julia Margaret Cameron*

British portrait photographer who also made many staged.

Hugh Welch Diamond*

Built archive of hundreds of portraits of female patients at Surrey Hospital for the Insane.

Robert Capa*

Combat photographer. "If it's not good enough, you're not close enough."

Hans Bellmer

Constructed and photographed distorted mannequins, added color by hand.

David Hockney

Criticized photography, said it doesn't accurately depict the way we see and experience the world. To this end, he has made photo works that are pieced together from numerous fragments.

William Jenkins

Curated "New Topographics," an exhibition of photographs centering on views of the "man-altered landscape." The photographers included in this exhibition all tended towards a neutral and uninflected style, often inspired by the work of early American landscape photographers.

Weegee*

Daily News photographer known for his hard hitting sensational style of photographing murders, fires and disasters. - Used 4x5 Speed Graphic camera and a flash. - Kept a police radio in his car so he could arrive at crime scenes quickly.

Hippolyte Bayard

Early self-portraits, "Self Portrait o the Photographer as a Drowned Man."

Historic Monuments Commission

Formed by the French government to make a record of all the important buildings and monuments in France.

Maxime Du Camp

French photographer who went to make pictures in Egypt. Used the Calotype process.

Etienne Jules Marey

French physiologist inspired by Muybridge's images took up photography to make motion studies of his own, which he called "Chrono-photography." Invented camera in the form of a gun.

Cindy Sherman*

Has photographed herself in a continually changing range of female characters, roles and personalities. In so doing, she has created a huge catalog of types of late 20th Century women. Her early work drew on the influence of black and white film stills.

Lucas Samaras

Highly manipulated polaroid SX-70 self-portraits.

Laszlo Moholy-Nagy

Hungarian born artist who saw photography as a pivotal medium. - First to use the term "the New Vision" to sum up his belief that photography could depict the outside world in a unique way that was completely different to the way the human eye saw. - Instructor at The Bauhaus. - Fascinated by possibilities of photograms because he saw them as a pure form of image making.

Eugene Disderi

Invented Carte de Visite which produced 8 exposures on a single plate. - Ran fashionable studio in Paris. - One of the effects of the Carte de Viste was a further reduction in standards as a result of the ease of mass-production.

George Eastman

Invented Kodak box camera, with the slogan "You push the button, we do the rest." - Company later became known as Eastman Kodak.

Wet-Collodion

Invented by F. Scott Archer in 1851. - Wet-collodion produced a negative image on glass. - Possessing the sharpness of the daguerreotype and the reproducibility of the calotype this quickly became the primary process used by photographers.

Daugerreotype

Invented by Louis Daguerre. - The Daguerreotype was the first photographic process to be publicly announced in 1839. - The image was created by coating a highly polished silvered copper plate. - Each daguerreotype was a one of a kind image and in the early days of photography, this was the most popular process primarily because of the high degree of image sharpness.

Calotype

Invented by William Henry Fox Talbot. - Announced publicly short after the Daguerreotype. - The Calotype was less popular than the Daguerreotype because it was less sharp but it had the advantage of being able to make multiple copies. - In the early days of photography Calotypes were printed using the SALTED PAPER PROCESS. - Some photographers preferred the lack of detail of the Calotype believing it to be more "artistic" than the daguerreotype.

W.H. Fox Talbot*

Invented the Talbottype (later Calotype). - Salted paper printing process - Origins of negative/positive process, made many photographs of different subjects. - Tried to enforce patents, adding to less use of the Calotype. - Between 1844 and 1846, published a six volume set of his work titled "The Pencil of Nature."

Joseph Nicephore Niepce*

Invented the heliograph, partnered with Daguerre, made first known photograph of rooftops from his window. Titled "View from the Window at Gras."

Doug and Mike Starn

Large scale photographic pieces, scratched, torn, toned.

Andres Serrano*

Made "Piss Christ," a photograph depicting a crucifix submerged in urine. - Angered conservative lawmakers who argued that the arts should not receive government funds. - Pushed for the abolition of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA).

D.O. Hill and Robert Adamson

Made Caloptypes in Scotland. - Mostly portraits, often of fishermen and their families, and scenic views. - Used natural light outdoors making striking use of light and shadows.

E.J. Bellocq

Made a large collection of photographs of prostitutes in New Orleans. Many of the glass plates have been scratched or defaced.

Man Ray

Made many nudes, experimental approach, many solarizations.

Hanna Wilke

Made performance like self-portraits "flaunting" her beauty. Later made self-portraits of her battle with cancer.

Life Magazine

Magazine first published in the 1930s. - Featured photo-essays by noted photographers - Very popular until replaced by TV as a primary source for news. - Covered wars in including WWII and the Vietnam War (first media war).

Christian Boltanski

Memory and forgetting, sculptural pieces, draws on archives.

Film and Photo

Name of international exhibition hung in Stuttgart, Germany in 1929. - Germany believed that art would play a big part in post WWI reconstruction efforts. - Machines could rebuild society. - Photograph, as an art made machine, began to take a more central role in creative activity.

Dada

Name used by artists and performers that emerged in Europe during WWI. - Driven by disenchantment with mainstream societal values and a desire to overthrow established approaches to both art and life they experimented with non-traiditonal materials and techniques, and revealed in nonsense and the absurd.

Robert Adams*

New Topographer. - Developed a "neutral" style in contrast to Ansel Adams. - Influenced by early landscape photographers, in particular Timothy O'Sullivan. Wanted to call attention to man's impact on the landscape. Often included signs of people in his landscapes.

John Coplans

Nude self-portraits, close ups, great detail.

Nicholas Nixon

One image each year of his wife and her sisters, revealing the changes that have taken place over many years.

Frederick Sommer

Out of focus nudes, amputated foot.

Sigmar Polke

Painter who is interested in the way that photographs change over time. To this end, he frequently improperly fixes his prints, rendering them unstable.

Gerhard Richter

Painter, made "Atlas" - a catalog of his interests and ideas over time.

Edward Curtis

Photographed Native Americans

Edward Sheriff Curtis

Photographed Native Americans, believed they were a van

Alfred Stieglitz*

Photographed New York for over thirty years. - His later pictures are in sharper focus and depict a city undergoing huge changes, new construction. Deep shadows broken by patches of light. - The equivalent: making cloud sequences that stood as metaphors for emotional state of mind. - One image was insufficient to portray a personality. - Produced a portrait of Georgia O'Keefe consisting of hundreds of pictures, face, body, etc.

Annette Messager

Sculptural pieces, personal in nature drawn from personal archive of images.

Robert Mapplethorpe

Photographed S&M gay scene as well as portraits, flowers, etc. - Retrospective show was cancelled at Corcoran Museum in Washington DC, but was shown in Cincinnati where director is arrested for displaying photos of nude children.

Emmet Gowin

Photographed his wife Edith and her family.

Harry Callahan*

Photographed his wife Eleanor in a variety of ways, experimented with a wide range of photographic techniques.

Jacob Riis

Photographed slums and tenements on Lower East Side of NYC. Hoped to promote better living conditions.

Edward Weston

Photographed the nude throughout his career using many different approaches. These include starkly abstract images and more sensual "portraits," some made in nature.

Pictorialism

Photographic movement based on the principles of painting. Particularly influenced by Impressionism. Pictures were blurry and nostalgic.

Sandy Skoglund

Photographs elaborate sculptures she constructs for the picture.

Carrie Mae Weems*

Photographs of her family accompanied by written stories, driven by a belief in the importance of recording family history.

Joel Peter Witkin

Photographs tableaux, often based on well known images history. His photographic tableaux are very painterly, thus he avoided criticism from Senators angered by NEA funding of controversial works.

Lee Friedlander*

Self portraits, many playing visual games, hiding, reflections, shadows.

Sally Mann

Pictures of her children, often nude, much debated.

Andy Warhol

Pop artist who frequently incorporated photographic images in his silkscreen paintings.

Marcel Duchamp

Prominent dada artist who made a painting titled "Nude Descending a Staircase" - probably inspired by photographic motion studies.

August Sander*

Published "Antlitz der Zeit," "Face of the Times," a collection of portraits made in Germany. Labeled according to reach persons profession, type of life.

Nan Goldin*

Published "Ballad of Sexual Dependency." - Visual diary - Camera part of her life

Larry Clark*

Published "Tulsa," a book depicting the lives of a group of drug addicts in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Nadar*

Real name: Gaspard Felix Tournachon. - Ran portrait studio in Paris that drew artistic and literary clientele. - Believed that light was the key to photography.

The Farm Security Administration

Run by Roy Stryker who hired many photographers to make pictures of the rural poor during the Great Depression. The intention was to provide information to the general population about the difficulties suffered in rural areas, and to show how the government was helping.

Aaron Siskind

Shifted from a documentary style to making abstract "painterly" pictures which he described as psychological in nature.

Diane Arbus*

Taught by Lisette Model, Portraits of "Freaks," often disturbing. Accused by Susan Sontag of seeing all her subjects as "freaks."

Wendy Ewald

Taught photography to children in Appalachia and around the world. The work from Appalachia is notable in particular for the direct approach of the photographs and the children's honesty and lack of inhibitions.

Leica

The first 35mm camera, invented in 1925. It offered fast shutter speeds, fast film advance, excellent image quality and great portability.

Autochromes

The first color photographic process, a one of a kind image on glass, was invented by the Lumiere Brothers.

Appropriation

Use of pre-existing images (made by someone else) in artwork.

Albert Londe

Used a multi-camera setup to make picture sequences of patients in the midst of epileptic and hysterical fits.

Minor White

Used idea of the equivalent to make images, both abstract and representational. Believed that photography could be used a path to mystical experiences and spiritual growth.

Henri Cartier Bresson

Worked as a photo-journalist. First used the term "the decisive moment," to refer to his goal of releasing the shutter at the climactic moment where form and content are equally powerful and in perfect harmony.

Guiilame Duchenne de Boulogne

Worked with Adrien Tournachon on a physiognomy book designed to prove that facial expressions are mechanically produced.