We left off with a shift from Pictorialism to an era of Modern art, with help from Stieglitz. Stieglitz organizes the Armory Show in 1913, introducing
American audiences to Modern art. The Armory Show predominantly features
European artists. Also the First World War sounds off a general disbelief in
the good of technology and the heroism of war. Many Modern art movements begin
in this period with manifestos to match.
After the creation of photo-secession groups in the late 19th
century, photographers started to conceive of photography as its own artistic
medium not in service to science or painting. These photographers attempt to
define a “modern photographic” fine art movement. Stieglitz showcases and
advocates for many of the photographers of this era in his publication, “Camera
Work.” Simultaneously, photography and film are having major impacts on the
medium of painting. Marcel Duchamp’s Nude
Descending a Staircase (1912) and other modern art movements like Cubism
show the world as manifold. Locomotion photography told us not to trust our
naked eye and film tells us that there is always more than one view of the
world as opposed to the Renaissance one-point perspective.
At this time, a lot of modern photographers and filmmakers think of
the natural world and humanity in general as inherently and completely flawed.
(We cause wars and suffering after all.) So some modern art movements really
start to worship machines and industry (hello futurism), even fetishizing it.
This period is the beginning of photographers asking, “Why not make images as
crisp as possible because that is what a camera does and what machines are for.
They show us how the world really looks. Also, lets photograph some steel,
because steel rules!”
1910s
Alvin Langdon Coburn
is one of the major hitters to dump Pictorialism.
He creates alternate views of common places, for instance looking directly down
onto a fountain in a park and calling it an “octopus” because what a thing is,
is not as interesting as what a thing may become. Make sense?
Paul Strand. His Wall Street image shows the grandeur of Wall
Street before the big crash. Humans in the image are anonymous; they are not
important for their individuality but that they contribute to the rhythm and
movement of economic exchange. Also during this decade Strand makes close ups
of every day items, showing us, like with Coburn, that with a new perspective
items can transform into something else.
One of my favorite photographers is the mysterious E. J. Bellocq, whose Storyville New
Orleans portraits of anonymous sex workers often have scratched out faces. And
nobody really knows why.
Carlo Leonetti photographed the stars of stage and later film in beautiful dramatic
portraiture
National Geographic, its first magazine published in 1888,
is making a point of sending photographers on expeditions with archeologists,
scientists, and researchers. Photographers like David E. Ford show us unknown parts of the world in
beautiful images of places we don't belong, digging up dead people. This further opens up the world for a western audience and photography
continues to go hand-in-hand with our history as colonizers.
People still want to photograph the world in color but it's tricky. I
found this amazing survey of the Russian people by Sergei Mikhailovich
Prokudin-Gorskii. Prokudin-Gorskii used a three-lensed camera and took black and white images through three
different color filters, Red, Green and Blue. Later he projected the combined
color layers to realize a full color image. Stunning.
Eugène Atget. He walks the streets of Paris photographing storefronts. Surrealists
about a decade later adopt the photographs as a sign of a neurotic
civilization.
Edward Steichen is promoted by and partnered with
Stieglitz. I like his fashion work. I found on the Wikipedia he was dared to
prove that fashion photography is art so he photographed dresses by Paul
Poiret, a couture designer and today this shoot is called the “First modern
fashion shoot.”
Gertrude Käsebier
photographs families and does some interesting portraiture work that is much
more dynamic than your average JC Penny portrait studio. Unfortunately, family
life is still considered women appropriate subject matter, ala the female
impressionists. Don’t worry, women bust out later.
Moving on.
1920s
Man Ray is also a
filmmaker and partnered with many famous Surrealists of the time. His Ray-o-graphs
(narcissist) consist of every day objects exposed on light sensitive photo
paper. The reversal makes those every day objects take on a new life,
association, and idea. Very Surreal.
Dadists are starting to use photo collage
and photomontage and appropriating photographs from mass culture for political
ends. Hannah Höch, John Heartfield, and
Aleksandr Rodchenko are important photographers of this movement.
Charles Sheeler shows industry as
a beautiful, organized set of shapes, patterns, and rhythms. The scorched earth
photographs of Gursky will counter
the hope of industry later. Margaret
Bourke-White and Paul Outerbridge
do the same as Sheeler.
Edward Weston goes to Mexico and
writes in his journals about “Pre-visualization.” The idea is photographers
should be able to know exactly what the resulting photograph will look like
well before tripping the shutter. They should govern and control every aspect
of the camera machine. As a result Weston produces very formal, still, and
balanced imagery that suggests all things on this earth are connected. Blech.
Ansel Adams and the F64 group
want really sharp “straight” images now, with a deep depth of field. Also Adams
invents the zone system, (a core part of my photographic education in thee
olden days), where by understanding how chemistry, temperatures, film speeds, and
agitations work, you get complete control of your black and white, (ideally
full tonal range) images. All I can say is: film base plus fog.
Imogen Cunningham
Lázló Moholy-Nagy counters the
control of the Americans with the experimentation of the era in Europe by
putting items with seemingly no relationship together in his collages to make
surrealistic imagery.
Florence Henri also breaks up
spaces by inserting mirrors into composition.
Tina Modotti is hanging out with
Weston and photographs the proletariat of Mexico.
August Sander creates a survey
of the German people. A decade later, the Nazis do what they can to eliminate
the photographs because it shows that there is a diversity of people living in
Germany instead of the general, “we’re all superior, Assyrian race” stuff.
André Kertész creates some
wonderful Surrealist portraits in Paris.
1930s
The Great Depression comes to the US and
the Farm Security Administration sends out a bunch of photographers to document
the hardships of agrarian laborers. The plight of the poor is shown by Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans, Eudora Welty,
Arthur Rothstein. The era also ushers in the question that with government patronage
(aka propaganda), shouldn’t we question the intrinsic truthiness, the realism
of the photographic medium?
Brassaï’s work of the
bohemian underworld of Paris is, to this day, one of my favorite photographic
portfolios.
Horst P. Horst makes an iconic
fashion photograph of a corset that Madonna rips off for her Vogue music video.
I still like Madonna of course.
Manuel Alvarez Bravo
Berenice Abbot
Roman Vishniac photographed
Jewish ghettos. Surviving images become really important as humans show their
continued propensity for genocide in an age after enlightenment.
The surrealists are still making some
interesting and bizarre photographs to examine the irrational and unknown parts
of our psyche. Any list of this movement would be incomplete without the doll
pictures by Hans Bellmer. Yikes.
Bauhaus photographer Herbert Bayer
Raoul Ubac tries different
dark room techniques, like solarization, to invert images and create
experimental compositions.
Robert Capa, famous war
photographer but also photographed events throughout the world including a Trotsky speech!
1940s
Henri Cartier-Bresson and his
“decisive moment” add another approach and theory to the act of photographing
Helen Levitt’s work is part of the decisive moment
movement
My favorite photography always comes with
a bit of satire and wit. Lisette Model
photographed us Americans with the eyes of an alien who found us quite strange and
resistant to self-reflection. She also influenced the quirky work of Diane Arbus
Wright Morris
Alfred Eisenstaedt made the famous
picture of the sailor forcing a kiss on a woman that everyone is nostalgic
about
Weegee! This guy was a
crazy good news photographer. He embodied the term, “F8 and be there.” An
ambulance chaser, Weegee went to crimes scenes and developed film in his car.
Lee Miller
Clarence John Laughlin showed the
death and destruction of WWII and ushered us into the existential Atomic Age
Frederick Sommer
Minor White offers more
existential uncertainty and angst. White, a gay man, tries to depict his world through a Modernist lens sans nude women, revealing that Modern art
movements, like all art movements, seems to necessitate unclothed female bodies
as a way to express “universal” desire and beauty. Arguably, White shows an
oppositional identity pre Robert
Mapplethorpe.
1950s
Robert Frank creates a scathing
look at American life post WWII in The
Americans
William Klein
In contradiction to the despair of the
age, The Family of Man photographic
survey features work by Wynn Bullock
and many, many photographers across the world, to make the point that the human
race is all good and all connected.
Harry Callahan looks inward,
photographing his family and life in Chicago. His work is amazing
Aaron Siskind
Richard Hamilton follows the Dadists
by making collages of imagery showing our post war consumption and family life
With Kodak dye transfer, color image printing
is possible with luscious vibrancy: see Eliot
Porter
Bruce Davidson shows a new
movement in society that all the ad agents are wild about: Youth culture.
Roy Decavara is the first
African American to receive the Guggenheim and photographs life in Harlem for a
project, “The Sweet Flypaper of Life” with author Langton Hughes
Mario Giacomelli shows a loss of
faith with his distorted imagery
All this self-expression is depressing.
I’ll start with the 1960s and finish this list soon!
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