Romanticism is a term used to describe the movement in literature and art in the early 19^th century. During this time, literature, paintings and poetry were heavily influenced by natural, emotional and personal themes.

Romanticism focuses on the emotional response brought about by nature and rejects the idea of calm, order (rules and regimes), balance and idealisation. It represents the irrational and strong emotions of an individual or their spontaneity, celebrating wildness and nature above reason and science.

In the medium of photography, Romanticism is mostly associated with the natural landscape. The natural environment can be very humbling to a spectator and may produce strong emotional responses.

The power of the sublime can be overwhelming to the subject as it conjures up feelings of terror or even danger, due to its unpredictability and mercurial nature. However, nature to a romanticist can also be very sensual, calm and quiet, which in turn makes the subject respond in awe at the environment around them.

Examples

Within art: (paintings)

In landscape photography:

What makes a landscape photograph romantic?

Aspects of the wilderness can take you away from the bustling activity and norms of human-life. Certain landscapes may hold sentimental value to an individual (personal themes in romanticism). The enormity of some structures also takes away from the engineering of humans as their stature is incomparable to any work produced by us.

Mark Meyers commented on this saying, “Wilderness goes all the way to the core of this world and our human works merely touch the surface.”. He’s truly highlighting how insignificant humans are compared to the power and presence of nature and the sublime.

Landscape photography tends to show vast and unending areas in the world, such as land, sea and natural environments like cliff faces, woodlands and marshes in order to capture the presence of nature, avoiding the interference of humans on the area. However it can also focus on the integration of man-made structures and features, such as urban landscape photography.

History

Earlier versions of cameras and photographic technology forced photographers to take photos of fixed objects, due to the long exposure time of their cameras which made moving objects blurred. This restriction allowed for landscapes to become ideal material for photo shoots.

Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre’s cityscape in 1839 is a prime example of these constraints. He managed to photograph a human being due to the static positioning they were in (having their shoes shined). The image took a pain-staking 10 minutes to make and he managed to capture the individual in his image by coincidence.

Eventually, the technology involved in photography became more and more developed, allowing it to become more accessible and affordable to anyone. In the 20th century, landscape photography had been mainly led by American photographers, who had various and vast environments to experiment with.

Peter Horvath is a Canadian photographer whose revolves around video, sound, photo-based and new media art as well as digital art.  His recent work focuses on taking images out of context, deconstructing and creating completely unique imagery through collage , drawing from his archive of mid-20th Century material. He uses juxtaposition and scale combined with saturated colour to produce surreal and sometimes humorous re-workings. Usually he mixes photos/images from different times and puts modern images with older images and links them together.

He first started using digital art in 1995 when his friend gave a Macintosh Plus, allowing him to discover the capability of computers and how they expand the range of edits you can do to make a photograph look different/better. He was also inspired by other photographers, Hannah Hoch and John Hartfield because the way they create new images with photo montage techniques e.g. cutting, gluing, rearranging and overlapping two or more images (less technological).

Horvath is most known now for intentionally displacing and disturbing anything remotely familiar or nostalgic, or both. Due to his discovery of computers he could now fulfill his desire fro his personal artist expression;
a feeling of freedom from the two-dimensional context had an effect on his exploration of social, creative and conceptual boundaries and identity issues, interlaced with psychic and emotional relations.

Contextual

This photo montage also has a lot of context to do with environment and also the selfishness of some humans (social context). Firstly the misty and faded back background of the buildings are meant to represent pollution caused by humans and is believed to be in the background because it’s so unnoticed in reality. As for the iceberg in the hands of a human, this is meant to represent humans destroying the earth and global warming and the polar ice caps melting because of it and the warmth from the human hands is making the ice melt quicker. The iceberg in the hands has a double meaning, the image of the hands also represents third world countries struggling for clean water. Over all this photo montage is meant to be an example of all the major isues in the world.

Conceptual

The overall reasoning behind producing this photo montage is to make people more aware of the problems around them and how they all link to each other.

I started selecting my favorite photos out of the shoots and discarding others I knew i wouldn’t use. I used poppies to symbolize the soldiers lost in the war as well as the colour of them standing out a lot against black and white photos. All of them are unedited apart from the last photos.

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These photos in particular stand out the most to me and are the ones i will most likely be using in my photo montages.

The idea of landscape photography is to capture an image that exemplifies the spirit of the outdoors, and to carry a sense of being there in the moment, so that the viewer is brought into the scene. Many of the most important landscape photographers have been motivated by an appreciation of the beauty of the natural environment and a desire preserve it. This means the majority of landscape photographs avoid human disruption in order to focus simple on nature.

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Features such as strongly defined landforms, weather, and ambient light are frequently, and photographs incorporate bright, vibrant colours from sunsets, dramatic tones from harsh skies, rough lines from mountains or cliffs, as well as reflections from lakes and rivers. This is a modern way of capturing an image of a Romantic landscape.

• lighting; usually no flash, instead uses naturally occurring light such as sunrise, sunset etc.
• wide angled lenses to allow broad angle of view
• small aperture to allow all areas to be viewed in focus.
• camera tripod usually used to maintain composition when taking same shot in different ISO’s.

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Landscape photography: Capturing large scale photos of ‘beautiful’ areas of nature such as mountains, rivers, sea-scapes. Can also be focused on man made areas or disturbed landscapes but the main interest is in the sublime especially for romanticism.

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These are a mix of photos by Ansel Adams, Fay Godwin and Don McCullin. These photographers are renowned for their outstanding landscape photography.

Romanticism

Romanticism is a mindset not a movement that became popular in the 1800’s. The artists, photographers and musicians all had the same objective of conveying emotion in their work and provoking emotional responses in the audience. They focus on Nature being more powerful than man and the powers of the sublime.

Painting examples:

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Photo Examples:

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Romanticism was an artistic and intellectual movement from the late 18th and early 19th century in Europe. It is strongly emotional, and includes aspects of vivid imagination.

Romanticism has long since been associated with landscape. It can describe the romantic sense of a landscapes features, displaying its sensual and quiet beauty. But also presents it dark and stormy, with a mysterious spirit. The most definable feature in a landscape image of romantic quality is one that portrays emotion and inspiration to the viewer.  

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Romantic artists work closely with the observation of a landscape as well as the sky and atmosphere displayed, to create an emotional and dramatic scene, but other artists use romanticism to emphasise the human link with nature, and the comparison of their power and impact.

Due to the start of the Industrial revolution, the era of romanticism was triggered, allowing photographers to focus on the power of nature and places that still had little human impact.