EARLY PHOTOGRAPHY
Camera Obscura
During the Renaissance artists became increasingly interested in exploring and representing the reality of nature. Leonardo Da Vinci was particularly known for his anatomical drawings of capturing reality. The Camera Obscure was invented by the Arabian scientist, Alhuzen in the 9th century. In the renaissance many artists started using Camera Obscura to draw accurate perspective and help them with getting fine details. One man who identified the principles that underpin photography when he built what could amount to the first camera obscura on record was Alhazen. This enclosure consisted of a “dark room” into which light entered through a pinhole-size aperture, projecting an inverted image of what lay outside onto a wall inside the chamber. This was called a ' Camera Obscura".
- Because of his rigorous methods of experimentation, Alhazen has been called the “world’s first true scientist.”
- He identified the basic principles underlying modern photography.
- His work with lenses led to the development and production of early eyeglasses, microscopes, and telescopes.
19th Century
As the industrial revolution transformed society in the 1800s with mass-production leading the way forward, scientists focused on reproducing reality in a fixed format. Following Alhazen's work, a photographer called Joseph Nicephore Niepce in 1827 took inspiration from Alhazens work and created the first fixed picture, "View from his window at Le Gras".
Although he mad the first fixed picture, he outdent keep it for a long time. From this, two men decided to further improve Josephs initial methods. The race to make the best camera was on between Louis Dagguerre and William Henry Fox Talbot.
Although he mad the first fixed picture, he outdent keep it for a long time. From this, two men decided to further improve Josephs initial methods. The race to make the best camera was on between Louis Dagguerre and William Henry Fox Talbot.
Louis DaggurreLouis Dagguerre was originally a French painter of stage sets and worked with Niepce in his quest to fix the projected image. In January 1839, Daguerre officially announced the invention of the "Daguerreotype", a type of photograph which was laterally reversed and monochromatic printed onto a metal plate.
However there were problems with the daguerreotype as it required long exposures which meant that any movement resulted in blur. |
William Henry Fox TalbotAround the same time, an English scientist called Henry Fox Talbot developed another type of photograph called the "Calotype". The calotype had one distinct advantage over the Daguerreotype as it could be reproduced as a negative as opposed to being a single image and not multiple images.
Talbots photographic experiments involved producing photograms, or what he called 'Photogenic Drawings' and was first produced in 1835 as a latticed window. |
George Eastman created the first Eastman Kodak camera which was smaller and cheaper than the rest of the market which led to it's popularity.
Pictorialism and Straight photography
Pictorialism
Alfred Stieglitz followed on the idea of impressionism and the focus that artists no longer had to depict the world in a realistic way. Pictorialists hoped to express and engage feelings and senses and felt that their images should be concerned with beauty rather than fact, making photography an art form. Photographers such as Edward Steichen also believed that distorting and altering the image was the beauty of photography.
Photo Secession
In 1902, Alfred Stieglitz founded the photo secession movement. It had the ideals of Pictorialism but the concerned photographers also wanted the mechanical origins to be apparent. Stieglitz went on to release a photography journal called 'Camera Work' in 1903 and then opened the 'Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession' in New York in 1905. Alvin Coburn was also a photo secession photographer.
Straight Photography
Pictorialism had now ended ( The End of Secessionism). Steiglitz felt that the work was lacking creativity and 'Camera Works' began including less and less 'artistic' photography replacing it with more candid images by photographers such as Paul Strand. Strand realised that the camera had a unique ability to capture shape and form and created simple straight photography. Instead if distorting the image, Strand placed emphases on the selection and framing of the picture. The art depended on the eye of the photographer and facing reality by not changing it for an artistic viewpoint.
F/64 Group
The F/64 group placed emphasis on pure photography, sharp images, maximum depth-of-field, smooth glossy printing paper, emphasizing the unique qualities of the photographic process. The significance of the name lies in the fact that F/64 is the smallest aperture on the lens of a large-format camera and therefore provides the greatest depth-of-field. The group involved Edward Weston, Imogen Cunningham, and Ansel Adams.
20 Century
Landscape Photography
Impressionism
Impressionistic landscape photographs are those that show an impression of the scene rather than an exact representation of the scene. Someone can achieve it by using a shallower depth of field with a photograph to highlight a particular aspect while leaving the impression of what lies behind that aspect.
Pictorialism
Pictorialism, an approach to photography that emphasizes beauty of subject matter and composition rather than the documentation of reality.The Pictorialist perspective was born in the late 1860s and held sway through the first decade of the 20th century. It approached the camera as a tool that could be used to make an artistic viewpoint.
Modernism
Modernism was a movement in art, architecture and literature that responded to the rapid changes in technology, culture and society at the beginning of the 20th century. Developments including new modes of transport, such as the car and aeroplane, and the industrialization of manufacturing had a dramatic impact on the life of the city and the individual.
Unconventional Perspectives
In the early part of the 20th Century, photographers were keen to show that photography was a different art form and not jjust a way of showing scientific documentation or the countryside. This led to a high regard for unconventional compositions and perspectives, often focusing on modern architecture and the industrial world.
Documenting and Recording History
Not all photographers were interested in experimental photography and preferred to use it as a means of recording the environment and documenting history. Eugene Atget Was known for his vast archive of photographs of ‘old Paris’, choosing to record places that were shortly afterwards demolished and re-built.
A Dialectic Struggle
From the 1960s onwards, photography became increasingly conceptual and photographers resisted being labeled. Photographers started to define themselves as either professionals working vocationally or fine artists who use photography to express their ideas.
Conceptual Photography
Conceptual photography is a type of photography that illustrates an idea. Using cameras, artists like Richard Long and Dennis Oppenheim began recording their performances and temporary artworks in a manner that is now often described as deadpan. The aim was to make simple, realistic images of the artwork that looked as documentary as possible. Artists adopted this approach as far back as the early twentieth century for example Alfred Stieglitz.
Direct Intervention
Some photographers view themselves objective and act as ‘recorders of truth’. Conversely, some photographer choose to see themselves a artists that construct a scene, preferring to highlight the subjectivity through which we see the world. Robert Smithson and John Pfahl like to question our ability to discern spaces by using props to optically trick us.