Aaron Siskind was an American photographer who was closely involved with the abstract expressionist movement.
Siskind’s early work contributed to a social documentary of Harlem, New York. This was known as the Harlem Document. Siskind also identified with the ideas and styles of the Abstract Expressionist artists in New York in the 1940s. In these later photographs he continued to emphasize the modernist concern with the flatness of the picture plane, but intensified his approach to picture making – with close-up framing, as well as emphasis on texture, line, and visual rhymes – creating abstract images of the real world.
Albert Renger-Patzsch was a German photographer associated with the New Objectivity.
Renger-Patzsch was born in Würzburg and began making photographs by age twelve. After military service in the First World War he studied chemistry at Dresden Technical College. In the early 1920s he worked as a press photographer for the Chicago Tribune before becoming a freelancer and, in 1925, publishing a book, The choir stalls of Cappenberg. He had his first museum exhibition in 1927.
A second book followed in 1928, Die Welt ist schön (The World is Beautiful). This, his best-known book, is a collection of one hundred of his photographs in which natural forms, industrial subjects and mass-produced objects are presented with the clarity of scientific illustrations. The book’s title was chosen by his publisher; Renger-Patzsch’s preferred title for the collection was Die Dinge (“Things”).
In its sharply focused and matter-of-fact style his work exemplifies the esthetic of The New Objectivity that flourished in the arts in Germany during the Weimar Republic. Like Edward Weston in the United States, Renger-Patzsch believed that the value of photography was in its ability to reproduce the texture of reality, and to represent the essence of an object.
In reponse to Renger-Patzsch, I have Taken photographs which experiment and focus on: focus, line, and the theme of object. For this I have used a school camera with a high zoom lens, and my own camera which has a regular lens.
What I most enjoy about Renger-Patzsch’s images is that they focus more on the line and aesthetic of the objects, and feature almost no other concepts. This allows the viewer to subjectively fabricate their own conclusion about the intentions behind the images.
These are possible layout ideas for my final images which I selected previously. They range from full image layout, to cropping it parallel and arranging them with additional photos. I have a total of 6 images that I am able to combine and put into a layout. It will be a difficult arrangement as each image comes in a different format, some being more panoramic, some rectangular and some in a regular A4 or A5 format.
This is another possible layout idea which could work for my final piece, but it is difficult to determine whether this will be the right way to do it as the sizes of the photos are not relative to their actual sizes (A3, A4, A5). I like the overlapping of the images as they harmoniously blend into each other. The simple color pallet of all the images means that they can be easily grouped together without clashing or looking out of place, it also allows me to group the images without having to crop any of them which makes the whole process a lot simpler and easier.
These three images I have chosen to print are my favorite and most successful photos over the abstract project. My A3 print is a combination of three separate photos taken from the same shoot which was about exploring blur motion, focal points and negative space. The first photo situated on the left hand side was taken in the intention of having the plant in focus and the background as blurred negative space as i wanted emphasis on the vibrant red and detailed stalk, as i felt the contrast between the dull murky background and the bright plant would fit well together. The second photo in the middle is similar to the first but I made it black and white, to match with Ralph Eugene Meatyard’s Zen Twigs work. ISO 200-39mm-1/50-ƒ/5.6, these were the setting I had my camera set to to take this photo, I ensured my camera has a middle focus, in order the capture as much detail as possible from the plant as well as being able to display that I can use negative space effectively within my photos. The third image on the left is completely blurred the background and the plant, this is also inspired my Meatyard’s work. I chose to place them in a repetitive structure to extenuate the similarities of the three pictures. I felt that the black and white worked well as a contrast in the middle between the colourful pictures.
A3
My second print is a combination for two photos from my pre AS summer task. The shoot was inspired by Jan Groover an American photographer who was among the very best still life photographers since the medium’s invention. Her Kitchen Still Life photographs were first exhibited at Sonnabend Gallery. She received a John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship in 1979. In 1987, Groover had a major retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art which subsequently toured the United States. Her work has been exhibited and included in the collections of most major museums worldwide, and continues to influence a new generation of artists. Groover moved to France in 1991, with her husband, the painter Bruce Boice, who still lives there. I cropped both photos in order to focus on the detail in the pipes, the reflections from the natural light and the cobwebs. The layout of the photos are overall messy, which to me made sense as i was trying to recreate the work of Groover in which she focuses on catching things in the moment. In the two photos there isn’t a clear focal point, I want the viewer to be able to work there way around the photo as their are several different elements to them.
A4
My final print is my favourite photo from my shoot which was inspired also by Ralph Eugene Meatyard but a different collection of his with is called ‘No focus’. Meatyard made his living as an optician. He was a member of the Lexington Camera Club and pursued his passion for photography outside the mainstream. He experimented with various strategies including multiple exposures, motion blur, and other methods of photographic abstraction. Two of his series are particularly concerned with focus and depth of field, both stretching the expressive potential of photography, film and cameras when looking within the ordinary world. My camera was set ISO 200-34mm-1/40-ƒ/5.6. In order for this blur affect to be achieved the aperture must be wide (smallest f-value) so that the blurred area is harsher. A long focal length and a reasonably far distance from the subject would have also been techniques that Meatyard would have used. In all this photos of this particular collection he used a colour balance of black and white, which creates cold tone. The black and white goes well with the motion blur as it creates a mirroring effect for instance the people are walking, everything is fast pace and blurry, you can see no expression from anyone, this is similar to how there is no colour expressing the atmosphere, everything is gloomy and dull. I wanted this photo to be isolated as its own as I feel it was my successful over the abstract unit.
In photography and cinematography, a multiple exposure is the superimposition of two or more exposures to create a single image, and double exposure has a corresponding meaning in respect of two images. The exposure values may or may not be identical to each other.
In order to further explore and improve on the manual camera skills I have learnt in the past week, I have decided to take inspiration from photographer Ralph Eugene Meatyard, and his projects “No Focus” and “Zen Twigs”, in which Meatyard explores the use of manual focus, and produces work to show both unfocused images that have a show a lack of context, as well as images that focus on nature with a shallow depth of field, that both help to draw the attention of the viewer, with effective use of contrasting, grey-scale colors.
The following images were taken by Meatyard during his “No Focus” project, and are the images that I took inspiration from:
Both of Meatyards projects hold some similarities as well as differences. “No Focus” is a project that focused on removing the context of the image, and presenting images as more flat and without depth, while still presenting enough contrast and shape to draw the attention of the viewer, allowing them to question the context, as the can’t see it.
In similarity, “Zen Twigs” focuses on the naturally twisted and unpredictable shapes of branches and twigs, while throwing the background completely out of focus. This draws the attention to the subject matter (the twigs), while separating the subject from it’s naturally surrounding, therefore creating a very abstract and out-of-context effect.
As a response to Meatyards work, I produced the following photo shoot, focusing mainly on the use of depth of field and manual focus:
The above photoshoot I took inspiration specifically from Meatyard’s “No Focus” project. In order to present images as having high contrast, I purposefully chose images that were naturally black or white, and placed them together to create contrast. I also used a variety of wires, boxes and stationary as subjects to show different shapes, which will help with drawing the attention of the viewer to the different shapes.
After taking the photo-shoot, I edited my images to enhance the colour contrast. I edited the images so that the colours became grayscale, which is a tactic used by Meatyard in his images to emphasise the shape and contrast of his images.
I also produced another photo-shoot, taking inspiration from Meatyard’s “Zen Twigs”. The images from this photo-shoot are seen below:
Sarah Lamb is a talented and dynamic realist painter. With classical skill—and through transparency, depth and texture—she captures the minute details of everyday objects in her dramatic still lifes and luscious landscapes. She makes us love the familiar and see beauty in the mundane.
Born in Petersburg, VA, with a passion for art and an appreciation for the past, Sarah spent a semester at the Studio Art Center International in Florence, Italy before graduating from Brenau Women’s College with a BS degree in Studio Art in 1993. Following a summer workshop in Santa Fe, NM with renowned classical painter Jacob Collins, she spent two years painting at The Ecole Albert Defois in the Loire Valley with classical realist artist Ted Seth Jacobs.
In 1997 she moved to New York and spent the next 6 years studying and painting under Jacob Collins at the Water Street Atelier. During this time, she had successful one-woman shows in major galleries in Atlanta, Houston, and San Francisco and was represented in art galleries in Alexandria, VA, St. Simon’s Island and Gainesville, GA, Sag Harbor, NY and Madison, CT.
More recently, she has had sell-out, one-woman shows at the Spanierman Gallery in NY, the Meredith Long Gallery in Houston, TX and the John Pence Gallery in San Francisco. She has been featured in magazines such as American Artists, American Art Collector and Southwest Art as one of America’s most talented young painters.
British-born art critic, John A. Parks, wrote that “Sarah Lamb brings to her work a robustly sensual grasp of the world. Her keenness of eye and joyful brush make the whole enterprise feel freshly alive as she reminds us what the really wonderful things in life are.”
Sarah, her husband, artist, David Larned, and their daughter, Sadie, divide their time between Pennsylvania’s Brandywine Valley and Houston, Texas.
Classical Still Life Painting Classical Still Life Painting Sarah Lamb
MY PROCESS AND RESPONSE:
For this photo shoot I set up a still life composition to photograph, including many different types of object that you would find classically such as pottery, glassware and fruit. In order to create the dark and atmospheric setting that most still life possess, I laid down a dark floor which would accommodate the objects. This floor flowing all the way into the left top hand corner of the image. Furthermore, I added a fairly soft light source in order to retain the dark atmosphere. I did not use natural light, but instead an artificial white bulb which kept the images very neutral in color.
For my second photo shoot, I also followed a similar pattern of work, selecting objects that would be fir to include in still life, yet this time I experimented with laying down a white sheet to see the effects this would have on the overall outcome of the image. I kept the light source at top right hand corner of the image. I included less richly color objects and decided to stick to a more neutral color palette which in turn made the images feel more light and breezy.
CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF MY FAVORITE IMAGE:
TECHNICAL: In order to retain the darkness in the first photo shoot, the room which I was in was fairly dark therefore i set my ISO setting quite high, to 1600, which allowed me to have a good balance between the dark and light in the images. Again, due to the darkness in the room, I had to use a slow shutter speed to allow as much light as possible into the camera, setting it to 1/15. To avoid the inevitable motion blur, i used a tripod to keep my camera still whilst taking the photos and to have a very central, head on view of the still life. I kept my aperture high in order to allow my camera to capture a large field of view as the still life set up was quite large itself.
VISUAL: The first thing that the image conveys is the darkness and depth of color, the rich, juicy red of the tomatoes and the dark purple of the grapes that hand from the pottery. The light source, coming directly from the top right hand corner of the image casts a strong highlight onto the tomatoes, giving very powerful light reflections. The light also bounces of the walls of the glass, giving it dimension. The darkness of the shadows also creates a depth of space in the image, the glass and tomatoes being right in the foreground of the image, whilst the delicate tea cups are in the background, There is a harsh contrast between the bright white walls and the darkness of the shadows which further add to the mood of the image. The image overall is very busy and crowded, yet the composition of the objects mean that they are harmoniously linked to one another. There is a wide variety of texture, shape and color in the image. The tomatoes: smooth and glossy, the glass: transparent and delicate, the pottery: rough and uneven. A lot of the objects in the image have smoothness of line and roundness which allows the image to flow and intertwine.
CONTEXTUAL: Historically, still life paintings were deeply imbued with religious and mythological meaning. This was a reflection of the times; the Church was the center of everyday life. Class hierarchy was deeply embedded – everyone knew their place and stayed within it. By the 16th century, society was changing. As science gained more of a stronghold, religious themes fell by the wayside. The natural world was now interesting to observe and record in its own right, not for religious or mythological purposes. As history rattled towards the mid-19th century, depicting the natural world was starting to go out of fashion. Now the art world was more interested in exploring our inner world of moods and emotions. As we sped through the 20th century, still life dissolved into geometry as objects were abstracted more and more on the canvas. By the end of the millennium, the object depicted in paintings were exhaled as commodity and recognized for their commercialism, as in the Pop Art and Photo realism movements.
CONCEPTUAL: The main objective which I tried to capture in these images is the complexity of simple objects. Appearing plain and boring but when placed together and put into a composition, they can create impact and surreal.
CONTACT SHEETS:
The set ups which i created for this project were fairly simple, yet i found that new effects were created when pointing my camera in different directions. When I really got up close to the objects, I was able to capture detail withing all the objects, and their texture which created complex and intricate images.
Abstract photography, sometimes called non-objective, experimental, conceptual or concrete photography, is a means of depicting a visual image that does not have an immediate association with the object world and that has been created through the use of photographic equipment, processes or materials.
Abstract photography is based on the photographers eye. We’re looking to capture something in a way that it would not usually be seen. Looking for the details, the patterns, the lines, the form, shape and colors that complete a subject and utilizing those key features to make an engaging image.
László Moholy-Nagy
László Moholy-Nagy, born in 1895 in Borsód, Austria-Hungary, believed in the potential of art as a vehicle for social transformation, working hand in hand with technology for the betterment of humanity. A multifaceted artist, educator, and prolific writer, Moholy-Nagy experimented across mediums, moving fluidly between the fine and applied arts, pursuing his quest to illuminate the interrelatedness of life, art, and technology. Among his radical innovations were his experiments with cameraless photographs (which he dubbed “photograms”); unconventional use of industrial materials in painting and sculpture; experiments with light, transparency, space, and motion across mediums; and his work at the forefront of abstraction.
my favorite photograph he took:
this is a photograph he took of a what seems to be a building, but he took it from an angle which made it abstract. the patters of those balconies one on top of the other is very interesting and eye catching. and finally the black and white filter adds even more definition to the photograph.
experimenting with abstract photography:
in order to take abstract photographs i had to have a plan first and that was to burrow a camera from the school and go off to the fields and down the beach and just take photographs of anything that catches my eye and this is what i came up with.
i call this one The Moving Cyclamen and its basically just a photograph of a plant of species cyclamen but the main thing here was to take the photograph with the slowest speed possible while moving the camera to the left and right at a very steady rate. and this created a lot of movement and color in the photograph.
this is a photograph of a lichen growing on a tree’s bark. the intense color of this organism really caught my eye and the texture looks like its a piece of art. this photograph although was taken with very fast shutter speed to create a sharp image.
This is a photograph i took of a tree at dusk time. the time of the day in addition to the angle the photograph was taken at created a very simple yet abstract photograph.
this is a photograph i took at sunrise. i took this photograph at an angle in where the sun is opposite to me reflecting sunshine off the breaking waves into the camera. this created a lot of color and light in the photograph. this photograph was taken at a fast shutter speed to catch the movement of the waves.
He was a Portuguese photographer who is currently living in the United Kingdom. He was born in 1977 in a small town area called Évora, although Martins grew up in China. However Edgar doesn’t just base all his creativity in the photographic area but he has also published a hand full of books in which he has won a variety of awards for. Martins has work exhibited in various places around the world from Portugal to places like Dubai. Not only that but Martins was considered by the UK and the US as one of the most influential artists for this generation. Not only has his work inspired our first project for photography but having looked at my new images and my now edited images there are some obvious changes in terms of contrast and the shadowing I have added to the photo to make it similar to Martin’s developments.
His images is part of a series of work inspired by the writing and sending of letters, the power and intimacy of a letter. Martins has recently won various awards for his minimal, direct and stylish approach. it is pretty evident that Martins puts a lot of thought into his images as not many artists have had the same approach as he had.
Edgar photographed paper. There is a stillness to his images that belies the fact they may have been written as suicide notes, used to communicate between prison inmates and loved ones. Martins spent time working with court, prison and parole officials and indeed, prisoners in Portugal.
Here are just some of my favourite examples of his work.
(not an image of paper but still one a famous image)Paper 1Paper 2
I like these images due to the contrast of lights and darks and how in the second image of the paper there is a real sharpness and contrast on how the black background sits below the white piece of paper. For me this is really eye-catching as the focus is quite vastly spread amongst the image but immediately only draws attention to the white area.
My paper photographs were not as professional as Edgar’s but there was a thought process. Here are some of my examples before I even edited them slightly. This image was not the first set a paper photographing I did but the second. I chose to edit this image as its one that looks quite similar in terms of Edgars images .
Here I’ve changed the image lighting and added a lot of heavy shading. I’ve edited this image by adjusting the tone, brightness,exposure,contrast and black point.
Below are the my chosen images to manipulate slightly and display as final images, I have chosen the ones below to work with as I feel they have the most potential to produce good final images once displayed and maybe slightly manipulated and experimented with.
Favourite Images
3 Images By Albert Renger-Patzsch
This image was not the first set a paper photographing I did but the second. I chose to edit this image as its one that looks quite similar in terms of Edgars images .
