Photographs that resemble art, making photography handmade, break away from commercialism.
Artist Associated
Alfred Stieglitz, Julia Margret Cameron, Peter Emmerson, Alvin Langdon Coburn, Photo-succession, Brotherhood of the linked ring, Vienna camera club.
Key Works
Alfred Stieglitz – Equivalent (cloud studies)
John Everett Millais – Ophelia (inspiration)
George Davidson – Reflections
Methods
Vaseline on lense
Scratching the negative
Brushing prints with chemicals
Realism
Time Period
1915
Key Characteristics/Conventions
Break away from pictorialism, focus on sharp focus, shape and form.
Artists Assosiated
Paul Strand, Edward Western, Walker Evans, Cunningham
Key Works
Paul Strand – Photograph, Blind woman
Dorothea Lange – Migrant Mother
Walker Evans – Alabama Tenant Farmer Wife
Methods
Picture looks like it does in the viewfinder, emphasis on framing, abstraction and sharp focus.
Modernism
Time Period
1900 – 1940
Key Characteristics/Conventions
Reaction to the enlightenment, examine impediments holding society back. New alignment with the experience and values of modern industrial life. New imagery, materials and techniques to create artworks that they felt better reflected the realities and hopes of modern societies.
Artists Associated
Picasso, Paul Strand, Alfred Stieglitz, Dora Maar, Edward Weston, Man Ray
Key Works
Edward Weston Nude 1936
Edward Steichen A Bee on a Sunflower 1920
Dora Maar Untitled (Hand-Shell) 1934
Herbert Bayer Humanly Impossible (Self-Portrait) 1932
Tina Modotti Bandelier, Corn and Sickle 1927
Man Ray Glass Tears 1932
Methods
False brass lens to the side of camera, abstraction and a highly defined clarity, photomontage, cropping and framing a single body part, distorting and accentuating its curves and angles, solarisation and using photograms (developing directly onto photographic paper rather than onto film)
Postmodernism
Time Period
1970 – 2000
Key Characteristics/Conventions
Reaction against the ideas and values of modernism, as well as a description of the period that followed modernism’s dominance in cultural theory and practice in the early and middle decades of the twentieth century. Scepticism, irony and philosophical critiques of the concepts of universal truths and objective reality.
Artists Associated
Cindy Sherman, Jeff Wall, Sherrie Levine, Jean Baudrillard, Edward Burtynsky, Jeff Koons
Key Works
Jeff Koons – Three Ball Total Equilibrium Tank (Two Dr J Silver Series, Spalding NBA Tip-Off) 1985
Marilyn Diptych by Andy Warhol, 1962
Cut Piece by Yoko Ono, 1964
Joseph Kosuth – One And Three Chairs (1965)
Methods
artists experimented with form, technique and processes rather than focusing on subjects
interpretation of our experience was more concrete than abstract principles
Carolle Benitah is a French-Moroccan photographer, born in 1965, who is best known for her multimedia pieces that focus on the theme of identity, Benitah’s in particular, through archived family photographs. With these Benitah utilises the techniques collage, ink drawings and embroidery in order to create her narratives of family history, personal memories, mourning and the passage of time. As well as this, Benitah uses this work as a way to reinterpret her past, stating that she uses “the falsely decorative function of embroidery to create designs that break the images of happiness and deconstruct the myth of the ideal family.”. This look back on the past has also allowed Benitah to understand and establish her current identity in a more defined manner, and gain knowledge of the fears, secrets and memories that helped shape it.
Analysis
Carolle Benitah – A la plage (from Photos Souvenirs) – 2009
This collage image produced by Carolle Benitah, from her series ‘Photos Souvenirs’, showcases what appears to be an old family portrait of the children, in a beach setting. The composition of the original image places the group of children just off centre, leaving a large amount of empty space around them. This bright, white sand creates a heavy contrasts with the dark, black hair of the children, as well as the strong shadows cast behind them. Due to the vastness of the background there is a lack of leading lines in this photograph. The children are the clear focal point of this image, but in particular the child who had been replaced by a red silhouette is the main point of focus in my opinion. This is due to its bold contrast with the black and white tone of the photograph, bringing in some of the only element of colour this piece has to offer. As well as this, the red cut out section here seems to posses a texture which is different to the one of the photograph. Here Benitah has utilised the border of the photograph as a place to isolate the two children who have been cut out of the family portrait, leaving blurred white empty spaces.
From a technical viewpoint, it is clear to see that the original image was taken with natural light due to its beach settings and the shadows. These shadows can also be an indicator of the time of day in which this was taken, which is most likely around midday, as the shadows are short and close to them. As a result of the large amount of natural light flooding the lens, the ISO setting used when this photograph was taken was most likely low, meaning the image would not be over exposed. In addition to this, it is probable that the shutter speed was on a fast setting due to this as well, as a longer shutter speed would also result in an over exposed image. Due to this brightness of light, the white balance setting used for this photograph would have a mid to high one. This photograph appears to have been taken with a small aperture, as the image is taken far away from the children and they are all still in focus with no blur on the background behind them.
Here Benitah seems to have reinterpreted her family history and presented the truth by removing two of the children out of the frame of the photograph and onto the border, as well as making one completely red. This could be interpreted as a way to foreground the exclusion of these children, possibly by the child in red, as the blurred effect on the blank spaces where the children used to be could imply a sense of uncertainty and anxiousness, contrasting with the bold red and the powerful position the child is stood in. This piece may be highlighting how they might not have been treated as part of the family. This border acting as a frame for the altered image, may also be a way of communicating what is seen as the ideal family, removing any imperfections. This inclusion of the border could also be a way of showing the issues that have been left out of the photo and creating a wider perspective in which the audience are able to see the truth. Furthermore, the angle in which this photo was taken could suggest that the children are viewed as inferior as they are being looked down on, by supposedly the parents or adults that took this photograph. Due to this piece being taken from Benitah’s series ‘Photos Souvenirs’ it may be a depiction of her painful childhood experiences, in which she has chosen to portray the truth which was hidden by the innocence of the original photograph.
Key Characteristics: The make it look like art, look handmade. It reacted against mechanization and industrialisation. They abhorred the
Methods/Techniques/Processes: Rub Vaseline on the camera lens to blur parts of the picture. Scratch the negative, and use chemicals to create an interesting print.
Artist Associated: Alfred Stieglitz. He was an American photographer and modern art promoter who was instrumental over his 50-year career in making photography an accepted art form. In addition to his photography, Stieglitz was known for the New York art galleries that he ran in the early part of the 20th century, where he introduced many avant-garde European artists to the U.S. He was married to painter Georgia O’Keeffe.
Hugo Henneberg. An amateur photographer originally trained in the sciences, Henneberg came to the medium from his study of physics, chemistry, astronomy, and mathematics. His knowledge of the technical aspects of photography served his aesthetic interests particularly well, as he created gum bichromate prints that involved multiple stages of development.
Julia Margret Cameron. The bulk of Cameron’s photographs fit into two categories closely framed portraits and illustrative allegories based on religious and literary works.
Realism / Straight Photography
Time Period : 1915
Key Characteristics: Politics, Revolutions, Cubism. Straight photographers were photographers who believed in the intrinsic qualities of the photographic medium and its ability to provide accurate and descriptive records of the visual world. These photographers. Realism photography grew up with claims of having a special relationship to reality, and its premise, that the camera’s ability to record objectively the actual world as it appears in front of the lens was unquestioned. A belief in the trustworthiness of the photograph is also fostered by the news media who rely on photographs to show the truth of what took place.
Methods/Techniques/Processes: Sharp Focus, Shape, Form, To face reality. “The camera is an instrument of a new kind of vision.”
Artist Associated: Paul Strand. He was an American photographer and filmmaker who, along with fellow modernist photographers like Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Weston, helped establish photography as an art form in the 20th century.
Walker Evans. Often considered to the leading American documentary photographer of the 20th century. He rejected Pictorialism and wanted to establish a new photographic art based on a detached and disinterested look. He most celebrated work is his pictures of three Sharecropper families in the American South during the 1930s Depression.
Modernism
Time Period : early 1900s through to the 1960s.
Key Characteristics: 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.
Methods/Techniques/Processes:
Artist Associated: Joe Cornish. He is a British photographer noted for his large format landscapes. Born in Exeter, Devon, England in 1958, he graduated with a degree in Fine Art from University of Reading in 1980 and then went to America to train as a photographer’s assistant.
Ansel Adams. He was an American landscape photographer and environmentalist known for his black-and-white images of the American West. He helped found Group f/64, an association of photographers advocating “pure” photography which favoured sharp focus and the use of the full tonal range of a photograph.
Edward Weston. He was a 20th-century American photographer. He has been called “one of the most innovative and influential American photographers…” and “one of the masters of 20th century photography.”
Post-Modernism
Time Period : second half of the 20th century
Key Characteristics: Postmodernism is relativism – the belief that no society or culture is more important than any other. It explores power and the way economic and social forces exert that power by shaping the identities of individuals and entire cultures.
Methods/Techniques/Processes:
Artist Associated: Anna Gaskell. She is an American art photographer and artist from Des Moines, Iowa. She is best known for her photographic series that she calls “elliptical narratives”
David LaChapelle. Is a famous American pop photographer, moviemaker and video artist that made his name by shooting celebrities like Lady Gaga, Kanye West, Michael Jackson, etc. But unlike most “celebrity photographers” he expands his portfolio with other kinds of work and creates beautiful exhibitions. His photography often references art history and sometimes conveys social messages.
NFT stands for “Non Fungible Token” which represents either a digital file/ item. The token in NFT is an object that is built onto a blockchain, non fungible means that it is unique being different and 1 of 1 to the person who makes a purchase of it.
2 Lives exhibition
The “2 Lives exhibition” is Jerseys first Art exhibition the brings together Art and Finance, due to the introductions of NFT’s. It is a project that has been put together in order to build a future of the art world, as it seems to fade away with no technological advances being put into the art world. Therefore, this will leverage NFT’s as a tool leading to the creation of new communities, opportunities and even art overall.
NFTs in art
NFTs in terms of art is revolutionary for artists in this day and age. The reasoning behind this is because artists now have a second option of being able to sell there art online to anyone who wants to buy it from around the world. Whereas, if you where to sell your art in person you would have to put it up in a exhibition or auction in order for you art to sell. Moreover, if you sell a physical piece of art, you only get the money that the customer has offered for it and thats the money you earn. As for NFT’s, when you sell your own NFT you get money from that sale and when the person who bought your art sells it, you get a fixed percentage for every-time your art continuously gets sold off. Alongside this, the NFT you make becomes a certificate of authenticity in order to cancel out people trying to make counterfeits.
NFT’s in gaming
NFT’s in terms of gaming has also revolutionised as any items you buy in your game; for example skins on Fortnite, you would be able to keep these ‘skins’ if you where to stop playing the game and you could use them again if you like. Moreover, with these skins you could sell it on the game marketplace to other players who are going to jump onto the game. Alongside being able to sell them, you could use your skins for the appearance of your digital avatar for others to look at.
NFT’s for collectionist’s
People who collect items in the real world in order to flip there items to make money, now have a whole new platform of being able to purchase NFTs to make more money in terms of collectables. This change kicked into place during the covid pandemic due to the fact that the whole world became more digital as people could online socialise via internet. Moreover, this lead to a larger increase in people around the world trusting the internet more. Therefore, in society we now appear to have more people collecting digital assets as much as physical assets which can de sold through exhibitions or other places on the secondary market giving sellers a wide range of choice in selling of collectable items.
NFT’s in virtual worlds and virtual exhibitions
Virtual worlds have been starting up in the NFT’s space such as Decentraland and somnium space. Decentraland as an example is an online world where users have to create an avatar in order to express their presence online. Moreover, you are also able to communicate wit other peoples avatars online as well from participating in concerts, art shows and even being able to build your own digital house with other people as well. This is great as friends or people in general from around the world are able to share there own sense of community, or even mix culture together which can have people from around the world gain a better understanding of different communities and how they work. This is accessible on 2d screens which is via computer. Decentraland also have another layer of connection with cryptocurrencies in order for people to be able to make purchases on the virtual land that exists, art on the walls in galleries and making these purchases can give you ownership on the virtual world, leading to people being able to give users a say on how the world should operate.
NFT’s blockchain, cryptocurrencies, coins and defi
The next revolution alongside NFT’s is by changing the way we see and use money. People in todays society don’t trust authorities, which helped in the gradual increase of people using cryptocurrencies for a substitute to physical and money kept away in a bank with the creator being a random person that no one knows of. Therefore, this means that the person who invented cryptocurrencies has no ties to the government or any authority, its a universal currency having the same value everywhere across the globe and the market is open 24 hours in a day. A cryptocurrency is a digital asset that is designed to be a medium of exchange for real money, the individual coin ownership is then stored away in a ledger existing in a form of computerised database and cryptography is used to secure transactions and records, which controls the creation of additional coins and verify the transfer of coin ownership.
How to create, buy and sell NFTs
In order to create an NFT, you will need whats called a NFT wallet and an account inside FT platforms.
A digital wallet can be used as if it was your physical wallet but just virtually. Metamask appears to be used most commonly do far keeping your NFT’s, these wallets allow you to move your digital assets within the metaverse.
NFT PLATFORMS: Opensea, Nifty Gateway, KnownOrigin, Foundation, Mintable, Rarible, Hic Et Nunc, Zora, Makersplace, VeeFriends, NBA TopShot, Crypto.com NFT, Eenjin, Superrare, Sweet, Doingud.
NFT’s environmental impact
For NFT’s to not damage the environment the use of renewable energy would be useful such as solar and wind. However, NFT’s are only a small contribution to this as the energy consumption it takes to mine a singular etherium is 0.0006, which in comparison is the same as watching a youtube video.
mining crypto takes a lot of electricity, needing big computational work by hardware. The process of mining and rewarding the miners for closing a block of the blockchain is called Proof of Work, that was the way Bitcoin was applied in 2009, until now.
In the crypto ecosystem there has been a transition from the ‘Proof of Work’ to ‘Proof os Stake’, which is a lot more environmentally friendly. This is because POS doesn’t require miners anymore, but validators. These are the people that deposit their owned crypto to validate block transactions, then the reward is given on a random basis.
In some ways, NFT’s can also be good for the environment, this is because Fashion at the moment is the 2nd most pollutive industry in the world. Therefore digital clothing could revolutionise this issue that is currently taking place across the globe.
NFT Clothing Revolution
Here is a link to a website called the 2 lives exhibition, which gives out additional information on NFT’s, Metaverse and Cryptocurrencies. https://2lives.world/
Romanticism was an artistic and intellectual movement that ran from the late eighteenth century through the nineteenth century. It focused on strong emotion as a source of aesthetic experience, placing emphasis on such emotions as trepidation, horror, and the awe. It elevated folk art, language, and custom. Romanticism rose as a reaction against the excessive rationalism of the Enlightenment. It drew upon the French Revolution’s rejection of aristocratic social and political norms. It was also influenced by the theory of evolution and uniformitarianism, which argued that “the past is the key to the present.” This lead some Romantics to look back nostalgically to the Middle Ages and elements of art and narrative perceived to be from the medieval period. The ideals of the French Revolution influenced the Romantic movement in other ways. Romanticism elevated the achievements of what it perceived as misunderstood heroic individuals and artists that altered society, and legitimized the individual imagination as a critical authority which permitted freedom from classical notions of form in art.
IMPRESSIONISM
Impressionism in Art
Impressionism was a radical art movement that began in the late 1800s, centered primarily around Parisian painters. Impressionists rebelled against classical subject matter and embraced modernity, desiring to create works that reflected the world in which they lived. Uniting them was a focus on how light could define a moment in time, with colour providing definition instead of black lines. The Impressionists emphasized the practice of plein air painting, or painting outside. Initially disapproved by critics, Impressionism has since been embraced as one of the most popular and influential art styles in Western history. Artists abandoned the traditional landscape palette of muted greens, browns, and grays and instead painted in a lighter, sunnier, more brilliant key. They began by painting the play of light upon water and the reflected colours of its ripples, trying to reproduce the manifold and animated effects of sunlight and shadow and of direct and reflected light that they observed.
MODERNISM
Modernism in Art
Modernism, in the fine arts, was a break with the past and the concurrent search for new forms of expression. Modernism fostered a period of experimentation in the arts from the late 19th to the mid-20th century, particularly in the years following World War I. In an era characterized by industrialization, the nearly global adoption of capitalism, rapid social change, and advances in science and the social sciences, Modernists felt a growing alienation incompatible with Victorian morality, optimism, and convention. New ideas in psychology, philosophy, and political theory kindled a search for new modes of expression. In the visual arts the roots of Modernism are often traced back to painter Édouard Manet, who, beginning in the 1860s, not only depicted scenes of modern life but also broke with tradition when he made no attempt to mimic the real world by way of perspective and modeling. He instead drew attention to the fact that his work of art was simply paint on a flat canvas and that it was made by using a paintbrush.
REALISM
Realism in Art
Realism, in the arts, is the accurate, detailed, and unembellished depiction of nature or of contemporary life. Realism rejects imaginative idealization in favour of a close observation of outward appearances. Realism was stimulated by several intellectual developments in the first half of the 19th century. Among these were the anti-Romantic movement in Germany, with its emphasis on the common man as an artistic subject. Gustave Courbet is often considered the leading figure of Realism. He laid the groundwork for the movement in the 1840s, when he began portraying peasants and labourers on a grand scale typically reserved for religious, historical, or allegorical subjects. Prior to Courbet’s radical emergence, painters did not depict scenes as they saw them; instead, they idealized them, virtually erasing any flaws or imperfections. To Courbet, this approach was detrimental to painting, as it eliminated any sense of individuality.
CUBISM
Cubism in Art
The Cubist style emphasized the flat, two-dimensional surface of the picture plane, rejecting the traditional techniques of perspective, foreshortening, modeling, and chiaroscuro and refuting time-honoured theories that art should imitate nature. Cubist painters were not bound to copying form, texture, colour, and space. Instead, they presented a new reality in paintings that depicted radically fragmented objects. The monochromatic colour scheme was suited to the presentation of complex, multiple views of the object, which was reduced to overlapping opaque and transparent planes. Some historians have argued that these innovations represent a response to the changing experience of space, movement, and time in the modern world. This first phase of the movement was called Analytic Cubism.
Andre Kourtez – Meurdon = transformation. “Photography always transforms what it describes. Photography tells a story beyond the frame through intuition.
Fixing the shadows – photography invented 1839 – Louis de Gaye, Henry Fox Talbott. Goes further back than that – Camera obscura used by renaissance artists in the 15th century. The two inventors found a way to fix this camera obscura projection onto a surface. Daguerreotype – copper plate. Abdudlla Morell. Well befor 1839 it was known that materials had a sensitivity to light. Talbott started experimenting as he couldnt draw. He started using silver salts on paper and ‘moustraps’ to start creating negatives. His paper negatives represented the breakthrough of photography. Positives were created from these negatives and produce many copies. Louis – mirrored metal – daguerreotype, immediacy. Depth of field and tonal range and detail. Guild – burning the image into the dag. Talbott system still dominated as daguerreotypes could not be copied many times. Dags are fragile. Beginnings of photography were all about the struggle to see which process will prosper – sense of industry. Photography mid 19th century – industrial revolution – huge technological change. Photography was part of the invention of modernism. Speed. Motion studies – precursor of cinema – Moybridge. Stanford came to Moybridge to study if horses feet all came off the ground. Daguuera never saw photography as an artform. George Eastman – roll of film, kodak. Kodak camera created mass production for photography. You press the button well do the rest. Brownie – low cost more accessible. Vernacular – photography not for art. Pictorialism – artistic photography.
Jeff Wall is best known for constructing and photographing elaborate mise-en-scènes, which he displays in wall-mounted light boxes as large-scale colour images. He takes his cues from the neorealism of Italian cinema, working with nonprofessional actors to stage scenes of everyday life. The above is Jeff Wall’s image titled, ‘Passer-by’ (1996). It is a street photography image where Jeff has captured a naturally occurring event. An event that he has encountered almost by accident that portrays a scene and can be interpreted beyond the frame by using intuition. This encapsulates one of Wall’s strong views of what makes an intriguing and meaningful image.
Quote from David Company’s So Present, so invisible
The image is of a sidewalk in what seems like an urban American suburb. Framed in the centre of the image is a tree, and on either side of the tree we see two men. The man in the foreground is wearing denim jeans and a denim jacket, we cannot see his face as he is looking over his shoulder at the other man while continuing to walk. The other man in the background is running towards a stop sign in the distance in the opposite to the man in the foreground. Overall the image has an overwhelming feeling with a low exposure and abundance of shadows the image has a sober emotion throughout. The image has a wide tonal range with the man in the foreground being well lit, along with an illuminated white wall which possesses the images highlights. In the background where the man is running is very dark and underexposed giving the images its pure black’s and therefore this wide tonal range. This tonal range connotes a sense of innocence for the well exposed man in the foreground who can be seen looking over his shoulder into what can seem like a world of darkness he is leaving behind. The man in the background is presented as a more corrupt character in the scene as he can be seen to run towards the theoretical ‘ dark side’. This lighting looks as if it has been achieved using an artificial source of lighting during the night time to achieve the vast contrast between the foreground and background. The lighting casts long shadows from the subjects and the tree in the centre of the image. These shadows aid in making the image significantly more dramatic as it adds more to the dark, ominous aesthetic while introducing a sense of depth. These shadows also connote to the theme of innocence and corruption, almost insinuating the man in the foreground is leaving his dark side behind him. The lighting also adds a shiny highlight to the leaves of the tree in the middle of the image. This gives it a glistening texture adding to the innocence of the foreground, while the background remains without light and therefore keeps a grainy texture adding to the theme of corruption. I think this method of casting shadows shouldn’t be overlooked as it can being a lot more meaning to how photography is interpreted. The development of modern photography has preached a certain aesthetic to be correct, I think Jeff’s work challenges this. Having these drooping shadows can be undesirable by the modern photographer seeking to achieve this ‘correct’ aesthetic with a lot of photographers using fill-lighting to cancel out shadows in the background. Jeff challenged this view and believe in a balance between aesthetics and narrative. He used the shadows to add to the narrative of this image.
Quote from David Company’s So Present, so invisibleQuote from David Company’s So Present, so invisible
Jeff used a narrow aperture to achieve the depth of field in the image and get everything in focus which allows him to tell relay the narrative of innocence and corruption between the foreground and background. Shooting with a closed aperture also aids in underexposing the image and making it appear darker. The way the image is framed where the tree separates the two men and the man who represents corruption is hiding behind the tree almost representing hiding from his true identity.
The above gives further insight into Jeff Wall’s perspective of photography and the importance to investigate pictorialism and how imagery can create art. He talks about how photography is like poetry where all elements of a photos narrative and aesthetic qualities evoke emotion and relay purpose like a poem does. This aligns with the above Quotes from David Company’s So Present, so invisible where Jeff discusses the relationship between the vernacular and the pictorial and how there is no one way to create art. I believe that the strongest pictorial images originate from a documentation of accidental circumstances that outline a subject. I believe art can be interpreted in all images that relay a narrative and also the importance of imagery in accurately documenting in a artistic fashion. I therefore wholly agree with Jeff’s view on photography.
The worlds first photograph was made in a camera in 1826 by Joseph Nicéphore. The photograph was taken from the upstairs windows of Niépce’s estate in the Burgundy region of France. It was the worlds first image that didn’t fade quickly. He used camera obscure to capture his image, however he added a photo sensitive plate coated with silver chloride, which darkened where it was exposed to light. This is how he recorded his image.
It took 8 hours to record the image. You can see sunlight illuminating both sides of the buildings. He made it by exposing a bitumen-coated plate in a camera obscura for several hours on his windowsill. Which leads to the question what is camera obscure?
Camera obscura is the Latin name means “dark chamber,” and the earliest versions, dating to antiquity, consisted of small darkened rooms with light admitted through a single tiny hole. The light rays enter the tiny hole and inside the box there will be the scene projected on the wall, however it will be upside down. Camera obscura isn’t a camera, it was invented by a Chinese philosopher called Mo-tzu (or Mozi) in 400BC. He noted that light from an illuminated object that passed through a pinhole into a dark room created an inverted image of the original object. Although, the first known date that camera obscura was 1021 AD.
DAGUERREOTYPE – 1837
In 1837, Louis Daguerre introduces the daguerreotype, a fixed image that did not fade. From 1839 on, the popular metal plate process known as daguerreotype opened up this mix of art and technology to the masses. The daguerreotype is a direct-positive process, creating a highly detailed image on a sheet of copper plated with a thin coat of silver without the use of a negative. The process required great care. After exposure to light, the plate was developed over hot mercury until an image appeared.
It was one of the easier metal plate photographic processes, it was still messy, expensive, very time consuming, and somewhat dangerous.
CALOTYPE – 1841
Calotype, also called Talbotype, is an early photographic technique invented by William Henry Fox Talbot in the 1830s.
In this technique, a sheet of paper coated with silver chloride was exposed to light in a camera obscura; those areas hit by light became dark in tone, yielding a negative image. The revolutionary aspect of the process lay in Talbot’s discovery of a chemical (gallic acid) that could be used to “develop” the image on the paper, it accelerates the silver chloride’s chemical reaction to the light it had been exposed to. The developing process permitted much shorter exposure times in the camera, down from one hour to one minute.
The developed image on the paper was fixed with sodium hyposulfite. However, if you touched the paper it would destroy it, as the emollition sits on top of the image. The “negative,” as Talbot called it, could yield any number of positive images by simple contact printing upon another piece of sensitized paper. Talbot’s process was superior in this respect to the daguerreotype, which yielded a single positive image on metal that could not be duplicated. Talbot patented his process in 1841.
KODAK – 1888
George Eastman of Rochester, New York had an idea. Use this new roll film, build a simple, easy-to-use camera, and market it as a fun use product. In the history of photography, Eastman was a master of marketing photography to the masses. “You push the button, we do the rest.”
POLAROID CAMERA – 1948
Edwin Land launches the Polaroid camera. He invented inexpensive filters for polarizing light, a practical system of in-camera instant photography, and the retinex theory of colour vision, among other things. His Polaroid instant camera went on sale in late 1948 and made it possible for a picture to be taken and developed in 60 seconds or less.
CANON DIGITAL – 1984
In 1984 Canon demonstrates first digital electronic still camera, which set the path for digital photography for todays world.
‘Fixing the Shadows’ documentary notes + further research;
The medium of photography has been around for much longer than many think, with the first known record of the ‘Camera Obscura’ in a Chinese text called ‘Mozi’ from 500 BCE, however more commonly known to have been invented in 1021. The Camera Obscura consists of a box, tent, or room with a small hole in one side or the top. Light from an external scene passes through the hole and strikes a surface inside, where the scene is reproduced, inverted and reversed – similar to a projector. This invention captured peoples imagination for photography, the ability to manipulate light and project scene onto a surface made people question how they could fix this image to make ‘the photograph’. And Louis Daguerre did exactly that, he created fixed images known as ‘Daguerreotype’s’ where each unique image was printed onto a silvered copper plate, accurate and detailed with a mirror-like quality. A statement on the Daguerreotype medium reads ‘Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre invented the daguerreotype process in France. The invention was announced to the public on August 19, 1839 at a meeting of the French Academy of Sciences in Paris. American photographers quickly capitalized on this new invention, which was capable of capturing a truthful likeness.’ Nevertheless, by 1860 there were several other photographic techniques that were quicker to produce and less expensive than the Daguerreotype, therefore it lost popularity.
William Henry Fox Talbot was an English scientist, inventor and pioneer of photography, best known for his development of the calotype, an early photographic process that was an improvement over the previously mentioned Daguerreotype. In Talbot’s calotype technique, a sheet of paper coated with silver chloride was exposed to light in a camera obscura; those areas hit by light became dark in tone, yielding a negative image. The calotype was invented around the same time as the daguerreotype in 1840, however society was slow to adapt to Talbot’s method as the daguerreotype was still majorly successful, people questioned the authenticity and ability of the calotype. Compared to the daguerreotype, many people saw the calotypes differences as flaws. The process was slower, chemicals weren’t regulated and often impure which lead to inconsistent results and prints often faded over time. Also, depending on the type of paper used, the texture of the paper could interfere with the image. During this time in the world of photography, the Romanticism art movement was prominent, people started to recognise the similarity between Talbot’s technique (when changing the paper to create a softness) and the delicate brush strokes and portrayal of the sublime in Romanticism art works. In the photography documentary ‘Fixing The Shadows’ I watched, the medium of photography is described as ‘the easiest medium in which to be competent, but the hardest to create your vision’ For the first time, people began considering the calotype as artistic; the first half of the process mechanical, but the second half of the process developing the tonality was an art.
American entrepreneur George Eastman is one of the most well known photographic pioneers who helped to bring the photographic use of roll film into the mainstream. Working in a bank, Eastman first became interested in photography when he decided to document one of his family holidays, little did he know this would be the start of one of the biggest photographic revolutions. In 1880, Eastman opened the Eastman Dry Plate and Film Company, his first camera ‘the Kodak’ was sold in 1888 and consisted of a box camera with 100 exposures. The Kodak camera allowed photographers to create images with more ease, as it was smaller and cheaper, giving opportunities for more of society to become photographers as it was accessible for all. The name Kodak was chosen as Eastman believed products should have their own identities, he wanted a name without any prior meanings or links to other products/languages etc. Later, in around 1900, Eastman introduced the Kodak Brownie which was originally intended to be a children’s camera sold for one dollar. Kodak roll film was affordable, it interested late 19th and early 20th century society as the film technique was new and exciting for them, the original Kodak camera and Kodak Brownie revolutionised the way in which photography was viewed, encouraging more people to get involved and create their own masterpieces.
Photography started off around 200 years ago; around 1021 the camera obscura was invented. The camera obscura is a device that projects images to another surface. It was a tent with a tiny hole that when light shunned, it would display a tiny, upside down image to the far wall of the inside of the box. Since at this type you could not make the image a permanent image, you could trace around it to create accurate drawings of landscapes, buildings, portraits, vehicles and more.
It was not until the 17th century that the camera obscura became a small portable device with lenses to focus the light inside the small box.
However, it is argued that the first photograph was made by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce in 1830. He did this by exposing a pewter plate coated with bitumen to light, and this created the first recorded image that did not fade quickly. Contrastingly, in my opinion, the Shroud of Turin is the first recorded image. This is because the shroud is a long linen cloth containing a negative image of a man believed by the Catholic Church to be Jesus Christ, and in my opinion is one of the first images that did not fade quickly. How it was produced however is a mystery. Some believe the Shroud is a perfect example of Camera Obscura since some theorise that in the 13th Century men would pose in the camera obscura, have linen cloth at the back of the wall and if you waited long enough, sun rays would burn the image into the linen, i.e. The wave of the hypothetical UV radiation would have been of varying phase at the surface of the skin, yet the negative image demands the image is a minimum at the skin surface.
On the other hand, it is indisputable that Joseph’s success to create a lasting image on a pewter plate did lead to experiments being done which led to the creation of Daguerreotypes, emulsion plates and wet plates in the mid – to late – 1800s.
The most popular first photographic film however was the daguerreotype. It was basically a copper plate coated with silver and exposed to iodine vapor before it was exposed to any light. In order to create an image, you had to expose the plate to light for up to 15 minutes. One drawback for daguerreotypes was the fact they were way too expensive for people of the working class to even think of buying it. Hence the creation of emulsion plates.
Emulsion plates, way cheaper than daguerreotypes and more efficient. These wet plates used a process called COllodion process. However, it meant photographers had to carry chemicals and dark rooms in order to develop these images.
Afterwards, by 1880, George Eastman started a company called Kodak. Eastman created a roll of film that did not require constantly changing the solid plates, such as, the dry plates (dry gelatine plates that were equal to wet plates, had a decrease in exposure times and meant the plates could be stored rather than made). Eastman therefore created a self-contained box camera that held 100 film exposures, the camera had a small single lens with no focusing adjustment.
With Kodak, the consumer would take pictures and send the camera back to the factory where the film would be developed, printed and have a new roll of film fitted. All this while being affordable by average people costing around $1 per camera.
Then we had the Polaroid that used a secret chemical process to develop film inside the camera in less than a minute.
Finally, In the 1950s, Asahi (which later became Pentax) introduced the Asahiflex and Nikon introduced its Nikon F camera. These were both SLR-type cameras and the Nikon F allowed for interchangeable lenses and other accessories.
For the next 30 years, SLR-style cameras remained the camera of choice. Many improvements were introduced to both the cameras and the film itself.
Therefore, we can successfully see how photography has changed through time, from daguerreotypes to SLR cameras that we see nowadays.
