Ralph Eugene Meatyard

Meatyard made his living as an optician but was a member of the Lexington Camera Club and pursued his passion for photography outside the mainstream. Meatyard’s work spanned many genres and  he experimented with various strategies including multiple exposures, motion blur and other methods of photographic abstraction. Two of his series are concerned with focus and depth of field. They both show the expressive potential of photography, film and cameras when looking at the ordinary world.

Zen strongly influenced Ralph Meatyard's photography works since his photos reflect a connection between nature and humans. His Zen twig series include close up detailed images of thin tree branches set against out of focus backgrounds. To respond to his photographic style, I will take photos zoomed in on twigs and make sure that the background is blurred so the subject is sharply focused.

Uta Barth

Uta Barth describes herself as an artist who works mostly with photographs. She is interested in light, drawing attention to the viewer’s perception and separating the image from the thing depicted. Although her images are blurred, they appear abstract. The works that brought her international attention is the photographic series Ground and Field. These photographs are blurred caused by focusing the camera on an unoccupied foreground. Uta Barth has made visual perception the subject of her work. She  carefully renders blurred backgrounds, cropped frames and the natural qualities of light to capture incidental moments.

Field #20 is a photograph of a street corner taken deliberately out of focus with a shallow depth of field. At a glance the image appears to look like an abstract design of muted browns and greys with red traffic lights that have been expanded by the out of focus effect. Close up they look like an abstract composition of coloured dots and from a distance the street scenes appear disorted as if seen through a partially opaque glass. To respond to her photography style, I will deliberately take images out of focus to create abstract photos with a merge of colour

Albert Renger Patzsch (June 22, 1897- September 27, 1966) was a German photographer who was part of the New Objectivity movement. He wanted to engage with the world clearly and precisely. The New Objectivity appeared as a movement in German art, architecture and literature in the 1920s. Using this attitude to photography, Renger Patzsch used his camera to produce a true recording of the world. His works includes wildlife and botanical studies, traditional craftsmen, mechanical equipment, landscape and architectural studies.

In 1928 Renger Patzsch published The world is beautiful, which is his best known book. It is a collection of one hundred photographs which presents natural forms, industrial subjects and mass produced objects. He reveals patterns of beauty and order in natural and man made objects. This book made Renger Patzsch one of the most influential photographers of the twentieth century.

New Objectivity

• Rejection of sentimentality and idealism
• Showing things as they are, clearly and precisely
• Concentration of certain subjects

Other photographers at the time who were interested in objectivity

• Karl Blossfeldt
• August Sander
• Edward Weston

This is my favourite image by Albert Renger-Patzsch. Glasses of different sizes and forms have been laid out on a white table to create a visually interesting composition. The composition of this image has been thought through since the top edges of the glasses and the end of the shadows touch the corners of the image to fill the entire frame. The lighting, coming from the right hand side, is creating long shadows to dramatize the image and help define the form of the glasses. The formal element line can be seen through the shadows the glasses have casted. Since the image is in black and white, contrast is clearly visible through shadows and areas of highlight which help create depth to the image.

My response

To response to Albert Renger Patzsch photography work I will capture 100 or more images in black and white to replicate his style. I will take pictures using the Hipstamatic app on my iphone with the lens Florence and the film BlackKeysXF. The lens captures images clearly and the film makes them black and white instantly. I think that this effect creates lots of contrast and shows highlights and shadows effectively. After I have taken the 100 images, I will make a selection to have a smaller set of images.