Question:

In what way are portraits by Paul Strand and Edward Steichen seen as examples of high-modernism.

Introduction:

“The process of manipulation starts as soon as we frame a person, a landscape, an object, or a scene with our cameras: we chose a portrait or landscape format”(Bright and van Erp.2019:18). This quote explores, how photographers want to set up a what they want to take an image, meaning they have different opportunities to explore, when they are doing a photo shoot.

I am going to explore how having a change of event in your childhood can change the way you have been brought up, and how you view your past. This interests me because it’s something which I can relate to and have experienced first hand. I will be investigating how portraiture was an integral part of Paul Strand and Edward Weston work and consider there position as exponent of modernist photography. I was also interested by the way they took the images, therefore I have decided to look at Modernism. I am going to take self portraits and use archival images, to explore my story.

Modernism started around the 1880’s, and focused on capturing the surrounding of what was going in everyday life. The early forms of photography was seen a a scientific tool, and it’s practical usage was in botany and archaeology. photography. New York became a hub for photographers in the 1910’s, due to its radical architecture, and mass population. Most modernist photographers fought that and tried to challenge the fact that photography didn’t rival painting. therefore by doing this they could see the potential for originality. Modernism also saw photographers take in mistakes they have made to create something new, they did this by cutting up, marking, or combining images together. This era also let photographers explore viewpoints as the number of hand held cameras increased they were able to explore different angles of taking images.

Paul Strand was instrumental in developing Straight Photography. He did this by experimenting with several techniques at a time. Strand became the first person to try out the candid camera technique “Driven to document his city with complete photographic objectivity, he created a means of shooting his subjects candidly. He worked out that by screwing in a false lens to one side of his camera pointing ahead while concealing the real lens under his arm facing his subjects” (AnOther, n.d.) . This meant that he could take images without people realizing what he was doing. One of his successful photos was of a blind street beggar in 1916. after this he developed a more interest in this type of photography, he then started to taking pictures in a lot more detail capturing every curve in the image. In the image above you can see a woman where she has a a sign saying Blind, the audience then can straight away tell that this woman cant see anything. you can also see that she is wearing a tag around her neck this shows us that she is a licensed beggar in New York. This image was taken in Black and white. It also captures the details on her face, the light is hitting off her forehead and she is look away from the camera, this shows that she is not aware that is is being photographed.

Edward Steichen is an American photography; his works were published in Alfred Stieglitz magazines he was also known for his fashion photography. In the image above you can see a picture of a woman who is known as Gloria Swanson, who was a famous silent movie star. In the image she is looking straight at the camera, you can also see that she is wearing a headband. The picture is taken in Monotone, over the image you can see a piece of fabric covering the photo identified as being lace, this was significant as Steichen merged the words of portraiture and fashion together. on the cloth you can see outlines of flowers and leafs. this could signify to us as a reader that. This image later was used to publicize the film Vanity Fair. Where this film actress was in. You can see in this portrait that the light is hitting her directly in the face. 

I feel that Portraits by Edward Steichen and Paul Strand are examples of high modernism, as they both look at different viewpoints, for example when Edward Steichen said “The mission of photography is to explain man to man and each to himself”, this signifies thats you have to explore your own history to understand yourself. This is what I was focusing on
to try and portray my childhood. In the image below, I have tried to recreate the famous image of Gloria Swanson where he has got lace on top of her face. For my recreation I used overlay to put on top of the image, by doing this I have been able to catch the emotion of the image, where Edward Steichen achieved. Also Edward Steichen also is a good example of high modernism as he made sure that when he took images they were precise, this is evident in his image of “George Washington bridge where he has got the Everything parallel to each other and it was taken in high clarity.

When Paul strand said ” Your photography is a record of living, for anyone who really sees”. I believe that this true, as everything you take images of goes in the history books for years to come people look back and will see what it was like in this time. The image below I have attempted to recreate what Paul Strand does when taking portraits. I have taken the image in a naturalistic surrounds, this was a trait of modernism, I have also turned the image into monotone as Paul strand’s images were all in black and white. Paul Strand also is a example of high modernism because he also took images in a very abstract way, for example when he took the image of “Wall Street”, in New York, where the photograph seemed to be done very precisely.

Edward Steichen and Paul Strand are very similar artists, in the way they take portraits however, they look at different styles of portrait types. They both include a lot of emotion in the photographs, meaning that the person viewing can connect to what they are trying to get across. I found that Paul Strand images that I looked at showed a lot of emotion and how people were in real life whereas with Edward Steichen images, I felt that the images showed emotion however in a different compared to Paul Strands, the images felt that that they showed emotion but he has done it so it is done through a different viewpoint. Modernism allowed photographers to achieve this. Both Photographers have strong connections between the subjects in the images.

Bibliography:

• Bright, S. and van Erp, H.(2019).Photography Decoded.London:Octupuss Publishing House.

Seiferle, R. and Stephenson, K. (2020). Modern Photography Overview. [online] The Art Story. Available at: https://www.theartstory.org/movement/modern-photography/ [Accessed 9 Jan. 2020].

AnOther. (n.d.). How Paul Strand Paved the Way For Photographic Modernism. [online] Available at: https://www.anothermag.com/art-photography/8482/how-paul-strand-paved-the-way-for-photographic-modernism [Accessed 13 Jan. 2020].

da Cunha Lewin, K. (2020). Edward Steichen Artworks & Famous Photography+. [online] The Art Story. Available at: https://www.theartstory.org/artist/steichen-edward/artworks/#pnt_6 [Accessed 3 Feb. 2020].

https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/p/photography/a-z

1 -How does photographers Paul strand and Edward Weston use photography to explore modernism through portraits.

2- How does Realism present portrait photography in past and present

3- How has photographer Carole Benitah explored childhood memories through Identity?

Write 3 literary sources from a:

• Book
• Internet
• Video

Harvard system of referencing

Bibliography: (book reference)

Barthes, R. (1993) Camera Lucida. London, vintage

1. Last name follow by comma, followed by the first letter of their first name and then a full stop
2. Year it was published found in the colophon
3. Book title name always in italics
4. The location of publication
5. Name of the publisher

How to incorporate a quote inside my own writing

*own text* … critic Roland Barthes says; ‘I decided then to take as a guide for my new analysis the attraction i felt for certain photographs’ (Barthes, 1993; 18)

1. Reference person
2. Then embed the sentence you want to use, using speech marks on both ends of the quote
3. Add brackets with the second name of author, the year it was published and the page number
4. close brackets

Referencing online sources:

1. Authors second name, followed by first letter of first name and the full stop
2. Year/time/date published
3. Title of article/review, always in italics
4. Where it was published (if possible to find)
5. Semi colon
6. Who it was punished by (if possible to find)
7. Reference the url link (cut and past in)
8. Date you accessed it

How to incorporate a quote inside my own writing

Blah blah blah critic … says; ‘text from article referenced’

1. Last name
2. Year or date published

My first photo shoot for my personal project is based on my most recent artist reference by Chris McKenney. I used his ‘self ghosts’ project as a basis for the shoot, using my little brother as the subject as I felt a younger silhouette was representative of the age I started to have conflicting thoughts of my identity. Natural outdoors lighting was used for these images and were set in my garden on walls, around bamboo and oak trees. I had a high level of control as I positioned my brother where I pleased, I made sure I went out when there was reasonable amount of light and when the wind was at a low force so that the bamboo leaves were stagnant. Some of the images were originally overexposed, this was due to the harsh light filtering through the clouds, so I either cropped it out or selected the area and decreased the exposure. I chose black and white to create a cold tone to represent how you feel when you remember a memory that you forgot about and never wanted to think about ever again. These memories can change your mood in an instant and they crop up at the most random times.

The white wall represents the tabula rasa and how we all all born a blank slate, throughout life its in our hands to decide where we belong, what we like and what we want. I used a wide lense to capture the white wall and the brown wood in order to optimize the contrast as well as symbolizing the conflict. The black and white represents the to and through I had with whether I sat in my family.

Oak trees have a much slower rate of growth, its around 0.5m per year. The hands around the oak tree link to each other as it takes them years to grow and so do our hands. It’s the idea that I needed time as a child to get used to the changes like an oak tree it takes a long time to reach your full self.

I used the sheet over his head to symbolize the lack of identity I had and how I didn’t see where my place was in my family. Bamboo can grow 1 mm every 90 seconds, it’s one of the fastest growing plants in the world. In this image bamboo is representative of the divorce and how everything was changing around me and fast but I was stuck in a cycle of conflict and confusion as to how I fit into this change. New step-mum, new step-siblings suddenly I wasn’t the only child, I wasn’t the only women in my dad’s life he had a new wife who I now had to call a step mum whether I liked her or not.

I used the window that was semi-transparent as I wanted to move the focus away from my brothers facial features because your looks are such an important part of you identity. I want to just focus in on his hands to display the fact that identity isn’t just how you dress it’s also your DNA, your fingerprints, your bloodline, who you genetically call family.

Hands were significant to me as I child as I used to fiddle with my thumbs, pick at my fingers and suck my thumb at times of stress they were like a stress mechanism that relaxed me in times my anxiety was high. The window this was taken at is on my side door, no one ever uses it. The side door symbolizes how I felt, my family weren’t ignoring me, I had a purpose but I felt useless.

In this image I wanted to keep in the bathroom as it represents the home I had but how it just felt like a building to me, which is how I feel about my Dad’s current house. The idea that my brother has assess to the house but he feels like he locked outside and he looking in on the rest of his family, hes the outcast. Although he has a family who loves him he fells a distance between them, he doesn’t know if he fits in so he stays outside in order to let the rest of the family get on without friction.

The cardboard box signifies the constant movement to different houses, I have moved to six houses, which were all down to my parents finding new partners. The idea that whenever someone moves they can easily just pack up their worldly belongings and relocate to a new setting.

My personal study will focus on the construction of fantasy within society. Within my work I will explore what creates this fantasy from childhood such as the media, sterotypes and the childish mind. My project will address matters that match my views of society such as the idea of cradle to grave and unrealistic contructs such as unrealistic body images. I plan to uses images of toys and dolls that represent the childish mind and the fantasy society contructed at childhood. I will also take images of real things to represent the awakening due to loss of innocence that comes as you get older. I was inspired by Shiela Pree’s photo series Plastic bodies, which focuses on unrealistic body images and the misrepresentation of women presented in dolls, and the majority of Laurie Simmons’ work such as her series Early Black and white (1976) and Earlier Color Interiors (1978). I’m inspired by their contruction of reality through the childish fantasy.

EXHIBITION JERSEY ART CENTRE

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On Friday afternoon we went down to the Jersey Art Centre to look at an exhibition called “Invisible Hands.” This exhibition shines a light on Jersey from a migrant workers perspective.

The hard work that seasonal farm workers put in has been more than important for Jersey’s economy for more than 150 years yet their presence on this island continues to be undocumented despite the impact they have. This exhibition is based so that people realise what some people have to go through to have even the smallest of happiness. A polish artist named Alicja Rogalska teamed up with some ordinary migrant workers and asked them to photograph “a day in the life..” to which she also teamed up with a group that discuss local issues called ‘The Morning Boat”

From Rogalska’s work she did several interviews with the migrant workers to which they explained in detail what its like to live a week in their life.

“I hope that this will be the trigger for change, but also that people will get some perspective and empathy from it. I guess it’s really about empathy, especially in the images taken by the workers,’ Ms Rogalska said. ‘You really see them as people with their lives – it brings it back to the human level rather than just talking about waves of immigration.“

‘It’s very easy to take things for granted if you are born in an affluent place. You don’t have to leave your families and your children and work in an unfamiliar place. But they may be terrified that something might happen to them because they don’t have the money to go to hospital. That’s what I wanted people to understand through this exhibition, a bit more on a human level.’

Chapter we looked at; “Is it Real?”

Example

Harvard Referencing;

Bibliography – BrightS. and Van ErpH. ( 2019 ) Photography Decoded. London; Octupus Publishing House. Page 17.

QUOTES;

“The mirror can serve as metaphor for reality…”

“If manipulation is the first thing someone thinks of in connection to photography, what does that say about the value of the photograph as a reflection of reality?

“Under what circumstances are these images to be trusted as real?”