Realism is the attitude or practice of accepting a situation as it is and being prepared to deal with it accordingly.
Straight photography refers to photography that attempts to depict a scene or subject in sharp focus and detail, in accordance with the qualities that distinguish photography from other visual media, particularly painting.
Straight photography came from photographers who believed in the intrinsic qualities of the photographic medium and its ability to provide accurate and descriptive records of the visual world. These photographers strove to make pictures that were ‘photographic’ rather than ‘painterly’, they did not want to treat photography as a kind of monochrome painting. Photographers taking this approach attempted to depict a scene or subject in sharp focus and detail.
This style of photography appeared in 1904, when the Magazine ‘Camera Works’ stated that the term was a more pure form of photography in comparison to pictoralism which is photography which tends to be seen and then manipulated to take another form. Photographers Paul Strand and Alfred Stieglitzpioneered Straight photography in New York while the Hungarian-born László Moholy Nagyexploited pure photography to maximize the graphic structure of the camera-image.
Western photographers such as Ansel Adams (left) and Edward Weston (right) brought this concept of Straight photography to life. They photographed natural scenes which they took as they saw it with there minds eye. Although not manually manipulated when the image was taken, photographers did use techniques such as darkrooms to enhance the appearance of prints to have greater contrast. The term came to be known for images which had a big tonal range and high contrast. The two above photographers are both good examples of the vast tonal range included in Straight photography images, which highlights the use of natural structures of landscapes to create romantic landscapes.
The West Coast Photographic Movement refined straight phtography in the 1530s. During this period, with a skillful use of composition, natural scenes where captured in sharp focus with expressive tonal ranges, light and texture. The use of this photography “engages the camera’s own technical ability to produce images sharp in focus and rich in detail”.
Weston emphasised the simplistity that this type of photography could be when he said “Get your lighting and exposure correct at the start and both the developing and printing can be practically automatic.”, this view was reinforced by Ansel adams who stated that “the photographer visualizes his conception of the subject as presented in the final print. He achieves the expression of his visualization through his technique – aesthetic, intellectual, and mechanical.” The photographs show the mediums own technical language which conveys the reality of what the photographers are actually seeing.
In 1907 Stieglitz took this picture, The Steerage and thereby rejected Pictorialism’s aesthetics and the modernist straight photographers whom Stieglitz would promote later in his career included Paul Strand, Ansel Adams, and Eliot Porter. Paul Strand became a particular fan of his work calling it ‘absolute unqualified objectivity’ and ‘straight photographic means’. Stieglitz and Strand was also influenced by European avant-garde art movements such as Cubism and Fauvism and some of their pictures emphasised underlying abstract geometric forms and structure of their subjects.
Realism, closely associated with ‘straight photography’, photography grew up with claims of having a special relationship to reality, and its premise, that the camera’s ability to record objectively the actual world as it appears in front of the lens was unquestioned. This supposed veracity of the photographic image has been challenged by critics as the photographer’s subjectivity (how he or she sees the world and chooses to photograph it) and the implosion of digital technology challenges this notion opening up many new possibilities for both interpretation and manipulation. A belief in the trustworthiness of the photograph is also fostered by the news media who rely on photographs to show the truth of what took place.
http://landscapephotographyblogger.com/straight-photography-and-abstraction/