In this folder here you can find texts to read in relation to a number of subjects and themes below. Some of these files are too large to upload to the blog here so go to the folder below.

M:\Departments\Photography\Students\NOSTALGIA\Contextual Studies\READING

Photography
Histories > Identities > Codes > Meaning

Barthes, R. (1984) Camera Lucida. London: Flamingo

Benjamin, W. (1936) ‘The Work of Art in an Age of Mechanical Reproduction’ in Hannah Arendt (ed) (1973) Illuminations. London: Fontana

Documentary
Realism > Representation > Ethics

A short PPT on Documentary Photography

Sontag, Susan (1977) ‘In Plato’s cave’ in On Photography. London: Penguin Books

Sontag, Susan (1977) ‘Through a Glass Darkly’ in On Photography. London: Penguin Books ch 2

Here some helpful resources on Sontag: On Photography from PhotoPedagogy

Rosler, Martha (1981) ‘In, around, and afterthoughts (on documentary photography)’ in Stallabras Julian (2013) Documentary. Cambridge (MA): The MIT Press.

Here is an introduction to John Tagg: A Burden of Representation (1998). Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press from PhotoPedagogy

Bate, David (2016) ‘The Art of the Document’ in Art Photography. London: Tate Gallerie
How documentary photography now is considered within a fine-art context

Max Pinckers Interview: On Speculative Documentary
How fact and fiction today in documentary photography is blurred

Solomon-Godeau, Abigail (1994), ‘Inside/ Out’ in Photography At The Dock: Essays on Photographic History, Institutions, and Practices. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press

Here some helpful resources on ethical questions regarding the photographer’s position of being inside or outside from PhotoPedagogy

Photography and truth

Photography and Truth – see blog post with many resources.

Bright, Susan (2019) Is it Real? in Photography Decoded.

See more short essays here in Photography Decoded

Photography & Truth

Issues in Photojournalism

Photojournalism: Truth, Representation, Propaganda, Aesthetics

Richard Billingham

Richard Billingham: Ray’s A Laugh – a photographer who worked on the inside documenting his parents life and relationship.

Interview Richard Billingham

Documentary film: Fish Tank based on his book and parents relationship

Feature film: Ray & Liz

Interview in The Guardian and The Observer by Tim Adams (2019)

Larry Sultan

a Review in the Guardian Newspaper.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/may/02/larry-sultan-pictures-from-home-review

Tableaux Photography
Pictorialism > Narrative > Cinema

A short PPT on Tableaux Photography

Bate, David (2016) ‘Pictorual Turn’ in Art Photography. London: Tate Galleries.
How Tableaux has been influenced by Pictorialism

Aesthetic Theory
Beauty > Sublimity > Judgement

The Concept of the Aesthetic

Read Greek philosopher Plato’s thesis on Beauty

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/beauty/

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/plato-aesthetics/

Snapshot Photography
Vernacular photography

Photography and Feminism
Gender Studies > Male/Female Gaze > Self-portraiture

Mulvey, Laura (1973) ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’ in Screen (1975)

Judith Butler is an academic and writer who is an authority on feminism and gender studies, incl queer theory. Her seminal book is: Gender Trouble which we do have a copy of in the Library LRC and in Media. Here is a good overview of her work – make sure you read it all and watch video as well.

Kotz, L. (1998) ‘”Aesthetics” of Intimacy’ in Bright, D. (1998) The Passionate Camera: Photography and bodies of desire. London: Routledge

Healy, C. M. (2023) Girlhood, London: Tate Enterprises Ltd.

Rudd, N. (2021), The Self-Portrait. London: Thames & Hudson.
– too large a file to be uploaded to blog – find text here:
M:\Radio\Departments\Photography\Students\NOSTALGIA\Contextual Studies\READING

Photography and Portraiture

Robert Mapplethorpe: The Male Gaze – in pictures. The Guardian

Amelia Jones The “Eternal Return”: Self-Portrait Photography as Technology of Embodiment

Cindy Sherman

Paoli, J. Deconstruction Woman: The works of Cindy Sherman

Cain, Abigail, A Brief History of Cindy Sherman and Feminism

Owen, Samantha Rosemary (2014) Gender and Vision Through the Lens of Cindy Sherman and the Pictures Generation. University of Vermont

Lots of interviews and video and with Cindy Sherman on MOMA

Have a look at Shannon’s O’Donnells work here and when she was an A-level student?

Francesca Woodman

Townsend, C. (2006) Francesca Woodman: Scattered in Space and Time. London: Phaidon Press Limited.
– too large a file to be uploaded to blog – find text here:
M:\Radio\Departments\Photography\Students\NOSTALGIA\Contextual Studies\READING

Online texts

https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/an-hourglass-figure-on-photographer-francesca-woodman/

The Dream of Reason: On Photographer Francesca Woodman

Thematic Essay about Francesca Woodman

Have a look at an essay and research by previous student, Francesca Hogan

Jo Spence and Photo-therapy

Jo Spence Memorial Library

Dennett, Terry (2008): Jo Spence’s camera therapy: personal therapeutic photography as a response to adversity

Heath, Charlene (2017). Work, Politics, Survival, British Journal of Photography

Weiser, Judy (2005) Remembering Jo Spence: A Brief Personal and Professional Memoir… PhotoTherapy Centre

Jansen, Charlotte (2020) Is Photography An Effective Form of Therapy? Elephant

Dennett, T. (2013). ‘Jo Spence’s Family Album’ in Family Politics, Issue 20. Brighton: Photoworks

Photography and Surrealism – influence of Freudian psychoanalysis

Bull, S. (2009) Photography. London: Routledge

Surrealism Art Movement: A Window into the Mind

Surrealism and Psychoanalysis – Smarthistory

Surrealism and Psychoanalysis

One photographer’s surrealist impression of mental illness

Photography and Memory

Kuhn, ‘A. Remembrance: The Child I Never Was’ in Wells L. (ed) (2003) The Photography Reader. London: Routledge

Here are a few articles and photobooks on Photography and its relationship with memory. You should read them and references them in your essay.

Colberg, J (May 28, 2012) Photography and Memory
blogger on Conscientious

Frames of Mind: Photography, Memory and Identity
by Anwandter, Patricia Marcella
In Frames of Mind, I have sought to explore the themes concerning the dynamic construction of memory. What do we choose to remember and how do we reinforce it? Who are we in relationship to who we were? Working with a collection of over five hundred images accumulated throughout my life, I have reinvestigated the images and their interrelationship with one another

A Matter of Memory: Photographs as Objects in the Digital Age 
An exhibition at George Eastman House

A review on British Journal of Photography

Barthes, R (1982) Camera Lucida, London: Jonathan Cape

Overview of Barthes book Camera Lucida in Photo Pedagogy
The first half of this article talks about Barthes theory of a studium and punctum. The latter part about a photograph of his dead mother which allows him to think about memory.
Commentary on Barthes book

Rereading: Camera Lucida by Roland Barthes
Article by Brian Dillon in the Guardian, 26 March 2011
Grieving for his mother, Roland Barthes looked for her in old photos – and wrote a curious, moving book that became one of the most influential studies of photography

DEATH IN THE PHOTOGRAPH – critical article in response to Roland Barthes seminal book ‘Camera Lucida’ reflecting on photography.

Photography and Narrative

Narrative and Photography

Family / childhood Photography

Kuhn, A. ‘Remembrance: The Child I Never Was’ in Wells, L. (ed) (2003) The Photography Reader. London: Routledge

Hirsch, Marianne, Family Frames: Photography, Narrative and Postmemory. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. Read Introduction: Family Frames

Howarth, S. (2016) ‘Is My Family Normal?’ in Family Photography Now. London: Thames & Hudson.

McLaren, S. (2016), ‘Thanks for Sharing!’, in Family Photography Now. London: Thames & Hudson

Williams, V. (2013). ‘Who’s Looking at the Family, Now’ in Family Politics, Issue 20. Brighton: Photoworks.

All three texts above are too large a file to be uploaded to blog – find text here: M:\Radio\Departments\Photography\Students\NOSTALGIA\Contextual Studies\READING

Jim Goldberg

A Completely True Work of Fiction: Jim Goldberg’s Raised By Wolves (Magnum website)

Fingerprint: Tracing the Roots of Jim Goldberg’s Raised by Wolves (Magnum website)

Raised by Wolves video

Photography and Archives / Narratives / Memory

Landscape
Romanticism/ Sublime > Modernism/beauty >
Post-modernism/ New Topographics

Colin Pantall Landscape, Power and Climate Change

Landscape as Photograph and Photograph as Landscape: The New Topographies
Author(s): SHELLEY ARMITAGE
Source: Southwest Review , AUTUMN 1989, Vol. 74, No. 4 (AUTUMN 1989), pp. 422-465

Adams, R (1996), Beauty in Photography, New York: Aperture
Read chapter one of same name

The Sublime

J. M. W. Turner’s painting: Snow Storm Steam Boat of Harbour’s Mouth https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/turner-snow-storm-steam-boat-off-a-harbours-mouth-n00530

https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/s/sublime

Youtube on Burke/ Sublime:
https://youtu.be/BvzG_p_sdOQ

This article picks out key elements of Burke’s theory of the Sublime and also includes an analysis of painting by Casper David Friedrich: https://natureofwriting.com/courses/literary-theory-1/lessons/edmund-burke/topic/the-sublime/

Photography and Typology
Bernd & Hilla Becher > studies of types

Typlogies: Bernd & Hilla Becher – part 1

Typlogies: Bernd & Hilla Becher – part 2

August Sander: National Portrait Gallery

Find files here: M:\Radio\Departments\Photography\Students\NOSTALGIA\Contextual Studies\READING\Typology

August Sander: Face of Our Time

Photography and anthropology
enhtnography > colonialism

Ethnography and Photography: What Kind of Collaborations for What Kind of Communications?

Bull, S (2009), ‘Classification by Observation: Anthropology and Colonialism’ in Photography. London: Routledge

Edwards, E. (1992), Anthropology & Photography 1860-1920. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.

Warner Marien, M. (2006), ‘Photography and the Social Sciences’ in Photography: A Cultural History. London: Lawrence King Publishing

Sealy, M. (2019), Docolonising the Camera: Photography in Racial Time. Chawell Heath: Lawrence and Wishart Ltd.

Find all three texts above here: M:\Radio\Departments\Photography\Students\ISLANDNESS\Contextual Studies\reading

Photography and speed
> early movement in photography

Making Modernism: Muybridge and Marey, Photoworks

Marey and Chronophotography
https://www.artforum.com/print/197607/marey-and-chronophotography-37960

Landscape in Motion: Muybridge and the Origins of Chronophotography Author(s): Dimitrios Latsis
Source: Film History , Vol. 27, No. 3 (2015), pp. 1-40
Published by: Indiana University Press

https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/filmhistory.27.3.1

Frizot, M (1998), A New History of Photography. Cologne: Könemann. Read Ch 14: Speed of Photography

Warner Marien, M. (2002) Photography: A Cultural History. London: Lawrence King. Read chapter Science and Photography: The photography and Movement (pg 212-217)

MODERNISM

Time period: 18th century – 1950s

Key characteristics/ conventions : Modernism was a broad movement encompassing all the avant-garde isms of the first half of the 20th century. Although different modern-isms were often incompatible (and occasionally antagonistic) they all rejected the dominance of older movements such as Classicism, Naturalism, and Academicism in favour of new experimental ways of producing art. Early modernity is characterised intellectually by a belief that science could save the world and that, through reason, a foundation of universal truths could be established. The common trend was to seek answers to fundamental questions about the nature of art and human experience. Modernity imbue all aspects of society and are apparent in its cultural forms including fiction, architecture, painting, popular culture, photography. the age of enlightenment late 18th century, moving away from religious beliefs and god and moving into the more scientific aspects of things. This included a range of ideas centred on the sovereignty of reason and the evidence of the senses as the primary sources of knowledge and advanced ideals such as liberty, progress, toleration, fraternity, constitutional government and separation of church and state. the perfectibility of human nature. by the 19th century the enlightenment was reaffirmed by artists . to examine the impediments that were holing humanity back. free humanity from historical baggage. Modernism makes references to things inside the art work itself e.g. form, composition, medium, material, skills, techniques, process. When looking into the aspects if art, modernism holds a belief in the individual genius of the artist, a desire for originality, a thirst fro the new, and reverence for the precious and a unique art object. Modernism is concerned with object rather than subject and form rather than content, creator rather than spectator.

Artists associated:

Alberto Giacometti

Of all the artists working in Paris in the 20th century, Giacometti was the great enthusiast of plaster. He worked away at it with his knife, often subjecting it to so much pressure that it finally crumbled away, forming the rubbish observed by Genet. When he was happy with it, he painted it. The original Women of Venice exhibited at the Venice Biennale in 1956 were plaster figures with black and brown lines etched on to their faces and bodies, making them resemble the women in his paintings.

Now the Giacometti Foundation in Paris has found new methods of restoring his plaster sculptures, many of which were damaged by being broken apart and covered in orange shellac to be cast in bronze. The Women of Venice, whose painted surfaces have been revealed, can once again be exhibited as they were at the Biennale, rather than as bronzes. And they will make their first appearance at a major retrospective opening at Tate Modern in London next month. This will be Giacometti’s first Tate show since a retrospective in 1965, when the sculptor worked away in a basement, perfecting the works that he was never quite prepared to declare finished. It will be his first major exhibition in London for a decade.

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El Lissitzky

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Jackson Pollock

In 1947 Jackson Pollock arrived at a new mode of working that brought him to his fame. His method consisted of flinging and dripping thinned enamel paint onto an unstretched canvas laid on the floor of his studio. This direct, physical engagement with his materials welcomed gravity, velocity, and improvisation into the artistic process, and allowed line and color to stand alone, functioning entirely independently of form. His works, which came to be known as “drip paintings,” present less a picture than a record of the fluid properties of paint itself. 

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POST-MODERNISM

This movement was a reaction from ww2 and pop art started to emerge by taking inspiration from mass media.Postmodernism makes references to things outside theart work…e.g. political, cultural, social, historical,psychological issues. It favours the context of a work including examining subject and the reception of the work by its audience. Work from this time period are aware of and make reference to the previously hidden agendas of the art market and its relation to art museums, dealers and critics. Postmodern work often uses different approaches in theconstruction of the work such as…eclecticism,intertextuality, collaboration, pastiche, parody, recycling, reconfiguration, bricolage

Pop Art

Andy Warhol

People’s opinions are torn over whether Pop Art is genius and a creative new idea for the postmodern age, or whether it is a load of rubbish. Others believe that pop art is worth way more that it is worth to look at. Pop art is post modern as it has created a new version of art which is original and new, as well as combining both high art with low art. Andy Warhol’s art work is post modern as it uses bricolage to combine both images and writing within artwork.

Andy Warhol’s most famous pieces are Marilyn Monroe screenprints, deteriating throughout the continueing images in many rows of the piece, as many of Warhol’s work is collages of layers of images. This shows the destruction and breakdown of Marilyn Monroe as her fame and publicity increased. Andy Warhol’s work concentrates on the idea and concept behind his work, rather than the realism which had been dominant in years before Warhol’s work became famous. Where art work is only considered as ‘good art’ when based on a realistic scene. As Warhol was one of the first pop artists to occure, people were shocked yet intrigued at this new upcoming style of art. Andy Warhol blurs the lines between high art and popular culture, as his pop art has both the combination of images and writing, which was new and original at the time. Another key piece within his portfolio is his ‘Campbell’s tin soups as shown below.

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Tableaux

“Tableaux is used to describe a painting or photograph in which characters are arranged for picturesque or dramatic effect and appear absorbed and completely unaware of the existence of the viewer. ” – Sarah Jones

Tableaux vivant is French and stands for ‘living picture’, and is a story telling scene containing one or more actors or models. Tableaux photographs are a style of staged photography in which a pictorial narrative is conveyed through a single image or a series of images that makes references to fables, fairytales, myths, unreal and real events from a variety of sources such as paintings, film, theatre, literature and popular media. The models in the photographs are usually told to be: stationary and silent, usually in costume, posing in a certain way, with props and scenery, the setting may also be lit in a certain way in order to make the photo and scene look more dramatic. In order to take good tableaux photography it works well to combine both theatre and the visual arts.French philosopher, Denis Diderot was the first to use ‘Tableau Vivant’ in the eighteenth century to describe paintings with a certain type of composition. Tableau paintings had the effect of walling off the observer from the drama taking place, as well as that they were natural and realistic. In his desire to make paintings that were realistic rather than idealised, Édouard Manet, a French modernist painter, decisively rejected the idea of tableau as suggested by Diderot in the 1860s, but the concept of tableau reached a crisis due to this. He painted his characters facing the viewer with a new vehemence that challenged the beholder. In the 1970s, a group of aspiring young artists such as Jeff Wall and Andreas Gursky began to make large format photographs that resembled paintings, that were designed to hang on a wall. As a result these photographers were obliged to take on the very same issues revealing the continued importance of tableau in contemporary art.

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after some reflection, I have decided that I would like some of my images to be black and white. below are some of the images that I have made b&w for my photobook.

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