Les Demoiselles D'avignon. 1907. Picasso
Painted within a year of each other one can clearly see the cubism style and the influence Cezanne had on both of these artists.
Can it be said that Picasso and Braque were inspired to paint in this manner, or influenced? Without the influence of proto cubism, would Picasso, with his fellow painter Baroque have made cubism their own. Influence obviously played a big part in this period of their painting before Picasso became more avant garde becoming totally inventive in his own right. Maybe it was the cubism period that inspired him to be more original and make his mark in the world rather than be continuously influenced by already invented styles. It is said that George Baroque never strayed too far from cubism and we all know who is the more famous.
So maybe influence is a good starting point to sharpen one claws on any given subject, and after that, be inspired by those truly original artists, photographers, whatever, to be totally original oneself.
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So maybe influence is a good starting point to sharpen one claws on any given subject, and after that, be inspired by those truly original artists, photographers, whatever, to be totally original oneself.
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Can photography be abstract?
Anything which is abstract, appertaining to artwork, doesn't actually exist in the world as we know it, and in some cases, is barely recognisable as anything remotely 'real' when brought into the world, as a painting or sculpture etc.. We use all or some of the formal elements of artwork to express those thoughts and ideas and make them tangible. We already know that it is impossible to take a photograph of an idea or a concept unless that idea, concept or abstract thought has been made into something visual or, these days, even audible. But even then, if you took a picture of that abstract art, or even a video or audio clip, the photograph, or video, or recording itself is only a copy, or portrayal of that idea or concept. But, lets just deal with a camera and the taking of still photographs. The abstract artwork did not come out of the camera. It is already there to be photographed. When Rene Magritte painted a picture of a pipe in 1929 declaring, in text, on the painting itself, in a short sentence, 'This is not a pipe', (in French), he was plainly stating that this painting was merely an image of a pipe; what does a camera do apart from record images of whatever is put in front of it. It cannot create art by itself. It cannot think for itself. It is basically a copying machine.
But, lets argue the point that a camera deals with light and without light, you have no photograph at all. Light is the medium by which a photograph is created. If we surmise that an artist uses paint as a medium to produce a painting, then we can also surmise that a photographer uses light to produce an image. An artist manipulates paint with a brush, and a photographer manipulates light with a light source. This brings us back to the earlier way of thinking, that the camera can only produce an image of the light and not the light itself. Well, you could argue that, when an artist's paint, dries, and it is no longer a medium that can be manipulated What you then have is a permanent recording of the final, finished work like a photograph is the non manipulable result of taking a photo. Let us see how this applies to a camera.We have all heard of painting with light. We can point a camera at a black canvas, open the shutter, and happily paint with a torch or laser, on that canvas, recording the image as he goes. The artist could have any number of coloured lasers and gels to shine light through and create an abstract piece of art that would exist nowhere else, but inside the camera. Indeed, it would be a piece of art that never existed in the real world in its entirety, at all. You could say, yes, but you are photographing the black canvas, but then again, you could just shine the light directly into the camera, literally straight onto the canvas of the sensor. Painting with paint on a canvas to create an abstract work of art is surely not that far removed from painting with light onto a sensor, is it?
Isn't saying a photograph, or photography or a camera itself cannot be abstract, only the same as saying a blank canvas cannot be abstract, until we apply a medium?
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Formal qualities of artwork
Like a formal occasion that becomes the sum of its parts, a piece of art is also made up of formal elements, or qualities. A wedding for example has many formal parts. The invitations, the reception, the dress, the taxi's, the flowers, the church, etc are all elements of the special day, but not necessarily all of them are used. Art also has a number of elements that make up its formal qualities, and it has long since been established that there are seven of these in the form of..
Line
Pretty much as it sounds. A line drawn straight, curved or any number of ways by any drawing or painting implement.
Pretty much as it sounds. A line drawn straight, curved or any number of ways by any drawing or painting implement.
Shape
Any shape that can be formed by lines and is two dimensional
Form
Three dimensional shapes that have depth.
Tone, sometimes refereed to as Value
The overall dark and,or, light areas of colour
Texture
Texture can be real to the touch or a virtual texture that appears to be texture, through use of any of the elements of art to create the illusion.
Pattern
Any repeating visual pattern
Pattern
Any repeating visual pattern
Colour
Colour or hue is what the eye sees when light is reflected off a surface. When mixing paint, all colours can be made up from the three primary colours which are red, blue and yellow. Where photography is concerned, the medium for mixing colour is light. The three primary colours of light that you would find as an adobe standard colour gamut are red, green and blue, commonly referred to as RGB. Most modern monitors show a slightly smaller colour gamut known as sRGB
Colour or hue is what the eye sees when light is reflected off a surface. When mixing paint, all colours can be made up from the three primary colours which are red, blue and yellow. Where photography is concerned, the medium for mixing colour is light. The three primary colours of light that you would find as an adobe standard colour gamut are red, green and blue, commonly referred to as RGB. Most modern monitors show a slightly smaller colour gamut known as sRGB
A piece of art may not necessarily have all these parts, some may have them all.
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Early Printing Methods
Daguerreotype
Long before group f64 was even heard of, two photographers were developing their own methods of producing photographic prints in the early 19th century. These pioneers of print were the French man Louise Jacques Mande Daguerre and the Englishman William Henry Fox Talbot.
Louise Jacques Mande Daguerre 1787-1851
Daguerre perfected the method of producing an image directly onto a silver iodide coated copper plate around 1837. Each image created was a singular image that could not be copied. In some cases the image would be painted by applying a thin coating of gum arabic and then having powdered colour pigment applied.
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William Henry Fox Talbot 1800-1877
Calotype
Instead of copper plate, Fox used silver iodide coated paper to produce a translucent image. Once this image had been made, it could be used over and over again to produce copies.
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Wet Collodian Method
Fredrick Scott Archer 1813-1857
Moving forward to 1851, Archer produced the first detailed negatives on glass, after which many paper prints could be produced from the one negative. Talbot was so convinced the method was only a variation on his Calotype method and brought a lawsuit against Archer that was dismissed. By the end of the 1860's this method became popular practically superseding the Daguerre method.
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Mathew Brady 1822-1896
Brady and his team of around twenty photographers were responsible for thousands of photographs depicting the American civil war. Brady used the daguerreotype method in his early work and went on to use the wet collodian method in the field which required a portable dark room. So called as the plates were coated with a mixture of collodian and silver nitrate and were placed in the camera, still wet, for exposure.
Union artillery. American civil war 1861-1865
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Henry Peach Robinson 1830-1901
Robinson was known for using multiple negatives, stacked to create his prints. This was far removed from the approaching straight photography of Adams etc.
Robinsons 1869 book.
Examples of layered negatives
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Sally Mann
1951-
Mann was a controversial figure in the world of photography, most notable for publishing photographs of her three daughters, in the nude. Her book entitled, 'Immediate family' was met with praise and great acclaim but in some quarters was looked upon as bordering on child pornography. It seems an age old argument ,where art and beauty, conflict with taste and morality. In context, this book was published before the age of the internet and the modern problems of online pornography. But, even so this was 1990, so hardly the dark ages. It is unfortunate that the days of nude children playing on the beach, for example, without anyone raising an eyebrow have gone, yet even so, i personally question the need for publishing nude pictures of your children? Out of the 65 Photo's, 13 depicted her naked daughters. Her defence that child pornography was not in the public's conscience at the time may seem plausible, but I couldn't justify such reasoning even from a 90's point of view. So, some say she became famous for the wrong reasons. From a photographic view point, she went on to use the above mentioned wet collodian method in the nineties to photograph landscapes, using antique cameras from the early 1890's.
One of the less provocative photographs taken by Sally Mann
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Photo Secessionists
The American counterpart of
'The Linked Ring'
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Photo Secessionists
The American counterpart of
'The Linked Ring'
1902
The secessionist movement was led by Alfred Stieglitz. This was before the Group f 64 was founded and photography was in its transition from pictorialism to vorticism and futurism. Photographers could be seen to be producing painting like photographs. At about the same time, Straight photography was beginning to merge where the images were not manipulated and were to be sharp focused photographs of objects and landscapes.
High Seas by Joseph Petrocelli.
Pictorial photography still being produced in the early 1920's
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Alfred Stieglitz, 1907.
Straight photography
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Lewis Hine 1910 approximate.
Straight picture documenting the working conditions of children in the early 20th century.
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Paul Strand straight picture of wall street in 1915.
Strand was actually apprenticed to Hind
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Impressionism
While photography, in its 'straight phase' was dealing with photographs as the world presents itself, the artist's moved to a more romantic way of painting which gave rise to impressionism.
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Lewis Hine 1910 approximate.
Straight picture documenting the working conditions of children in the early 20th century.
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Paul Strand straight picture of wall street in 1915.
Strand was actually apprenticed to Hind
The straight photography movement and the Group f64
Alfred Stieglitz was an American photographer who lived through the end of the 19th century and into the 20th, dying at the age of 82 in 1946. As well as being a photographer he was also an exponent of modern art which culminated in the first exhibitions of modern art in America at the 291 gallery in New York. As well as featuring pioneering photographers of the time such as, Edward Steichen, Clarence H White and Alvin Coburn, amongst others, he also featured prominent artists such as Picasso, Matisse and the French sculptor Auguste Rodin. Up until now Pictorialism had dominated the art of photography and photographs were more akin to works of art with soft edges, lacking any sharp focus and some even had brush strokes where the image had been manipulated. Influenced by the 291 Gallery exhibition, Alfred Stieglitz and Paul Strand were to popularise a new form of photography called straight photography; the idea being, to produce clear sharp high contrast images of the real world. While painters were moving away from, painting to reproduce what they saw, and turning to new forms of expression such as cubism and surrealism, photographers were moving from artistic forms of photography into precise depictions of the real world, with sharp clear images. And so the straight photography movement came about which gave birth to the short lived Group f64 who went on to create their first exhibition in 1932.
Group f64
Ansel Adams Merced river Yosimite
So named after the smallest aperture setting of f64, to create a precise clear depiction of the image with a full depth of field, the group 's original seven members were;
Ansel Adams, Imogen Cunningham, Edward Weston, Willard Van Dyke, Henry Swift, John Paul Edwards and Sonya Noskowiak.
Other Photographers were invited to display their work at the group f64 exhibitions. The first invites were handed out to;
Preston Holder, Consuelo Kanaga, Alma Lavenson and Brett Weston
Edward Weston straight photography close up
Impressionism
While photography, in its 'straight phase' was dealing with photographs as the world presents itself, the artist's moved to a more romantic way of painting which gave rise to impressionism.
Joseph Mallor William Turner 1856
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Contemporary Photography
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Contemporary Photography
Susan Fenton
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Chloe Dewe Mathews
Juliya Burvinyova travelled 1000 miles from Moscow to receive the Naftalan treatment. She is one of a growing number of young Russians, who soak in oil for it’s cosmetic benefits. During the fifties, the Naftalan treatment was identified by the Soviets as a potential holiday resort. They built 2,500 capacity sanatoriums, and by the late eighties, 75,000 people were being treated each year, with free flights offered by the Soviet government. From Caspian © Chloe Dewe Mathews
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