He was born in St. Louis, Missouri to Jessie (née Crane) and Walker Evans. His father was an advertising director. Walker was raised in an affluent environment; he spent his youth in Toledo, Ohio; Chicago; and New York City. He attended the Loomis Institute and Mercersburg Academy, then graduated from Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts in 1922. He studied French literature for a year at Williams College, spending much of his time in the school’s library, before dropping out. He returned to New York and worked as a night attendant in the map room of the Public Library. After spending a year in Paris in 1926, he returned to the United States to join a literary and art crowd in New York City. John Cheever, Hart Crane, and Lincoln Kirstein were among his friends. He was a clerk for a stockbroker firm on Wall Street from 1927 to 1929.

Evans took up photography in 1928 around the time he was living in Ossining, New York^. His influences included Eugène Atget and August Sander. In 1930, he published three photographs (Brooklyn Bridge) in the poetry book The Bridge by Hart Crane. In 1931, he made a photo series of Victorian houses in the Boston vicinity sponsored by Lincoln Kirstein.

In May and June 1933, Evans took photographs in Cuba on assignment for Lippincott, the publisher of Carleton Beals’ The Crime of Cuba (1933), a “strident account” of the dictatorship of Gerardo Machado. There, Evans drank nightly with Ernest Hemingway, who lent him money to extend his two-week stay an additional week. His photographs documented street life, the presence of police, beggars and dockworkers in rags, and other waterfront scenes. He also helped Hemingway acquire photos from newspaper archives that documented some of the political violence Hemingway described in To Have and Have Not (1937). Fearing that his photographs might be deemed critical of the government and confiscated by Cuban authorities, he left 46 prints with Hemingway. He had no difficulties when returning to the United States, and 31 of his photos appeared in Beals’ book. The cache of prints left with Hemingway was discovered in Havana in 2002 and exhibited at an exhibition in Key West.

The Depression years of 1935–36 were ones of remarkable productivity and accomplishment for Evans. In 1935, Evans spent two months on a fixed-term photographic campaign in West Virginia and Pennsylvania. In June 1935, he accepted a job from the U.S. Department of the Interior to photograph a government-built resettlement community of unemployed coal miners in West Virginia. He quickly parlayed this temporary employment into a full-time position as an “information specialist” in the Resettlement Administration (later Farm Security Administration), a New Deal agency in the Department of Agriculture. From October 1935 on, he continued to do photographic work for the RA and later the Farm Security Administration, primarily in the Southern United States.

In the summer of 1936, while on leave from the FSA, writer James Agee and he were sent by Fortune on assignment to Hale County, Alabama for a story the magazine subsequently opted not to run. In 1941, Evans’s photographs and Agee’s text detailing the duo’s stay with three White tenant families in southern Alabama during the Great Depression were published as the ground-breaking book Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. Its detailed account of three farming families paints a deeply moving portrait of rural poverty. Critic Janet Malcolm notes that a contradiction existed between a kind of anguished dissonance in Agee’s prose and the quiet, magisterial beauty of Evans’s photographs of sharecroppers.

Walker Evans gained his eye for knowing what a great photograph was through the visual education of his painter friends. He undoubtedly became influenced by the great works of artists that his friends would probably talk about, share, and aspire towards.

Evans died at his apartment in New Haven, Connecticut in 1975. The last person Evans talked to was Hank O’Neal. In reference to the newly created A Vision Shared project, O’Neal recounts, “The picture on the back of the book, of him taking a picture – he actually called me up and told me he had found it”. “And then the next morning I got up and I had a phone call from Leslie Katz, who ran the Eakins Press. And Leslie said: ‘Isn’t it terrible about Walker Evans?’ And I said: ‘What are you talking about?’ He said: ‘He died last night.’ I said: ‘Cut it out. I talked to him last night twice’ So an hour and a half after we had our conversation, he died. He had a stroke and died.”

In 1994, the estate of Walker Evans handed over its holdings to New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Metropolitan Museum of Art is the sole copyright holder for all works of art in all media by Walker Evans. The only exception is a group of about 1,000 negatives in collection of the Library of Congress, which were produced for the Resettlement Administration and Farm Security Administration; these works are in the public domain.

In 2000, Evans was inducted into the St. Louis Walk of Fame.

some of his work:

What are environmental portraits?

An environmental portrait is a portrait executed in the subject’s usual environment, such as in their home or workplace. They typically highlight the subject’s life and surroundings.

Michelle Sank

Michelle Sank is a social documentary photographer, based in Exeter, in the UK. She was born in Cape Town, and left there in 1978. During her childhood in Cape Town, her family were jewish immigrants, who faced high amounts of antisemitism and witnessed the awful era of the Apartheid. Because of her experiences in South Africa, she became interested in documenting people and their situations both in the UK, where she is based, and elsewhere, for example the USA and Ireland.

Insula

Insula is one of Michelle’s many projects. These images were taken both in Jersey, as well as Guernsey.

“Insula eschews a specific brief though the work responds to the wealth of nineteenth century portrait photographs within the Jersey Photographic Archive that it now joins as a powerful point of interpretation. The beguiling qualities of these new photographs call to mind the position that Lewis Baltz found for photographic series, ‘somewhere between the novel and film.’ As such, Sank’s photographs offer a visual poem to the island”.  Gareth Syvret

Images from Michelle’s other collections

This image, along with many of Michelle’s other images, has a very striking background. This helps to make the subject appear more striking, creating a natural focal point to the subject’s face. This photo features an overcast and slightly overexposed background, which helps to contrast the dark tones in the subject’s outfit. The tones in this image are muted, except from the harsh black tones within the subject’s outfit. The image is slightly cool tones, with grey and very slight blue tones coming from the sky and water.

The image also has a wide depth of field, and slightly lower light sensitivity, leading to a slightly grainy image. Furthermore, I think that by capturing thus image, Michelle is commenting o what it is like to be a teen in Belfast when the picture was taken, as well as class and social aspects – Belfast after the era of the troubles, and how it affected the younger generation.

My photoshoot plan

	Inside Shoot	Outside Shoot	Multiple People Shoot
Location ideas	Condor Ferries Terminal, Skills Jersey offices, Local Corner Shop, Cafes, Shops such as Butchers, Boots, The Quayside food kiosk.	Rubbish Dump, Building Sites.	Rubbish Dump, Green Waste dump.
Subject(s)	Employees, owners, bar staff, waiters.	Workers	Workers
Shot Types	Full body, 3/4 length, headshot	Full body, 3/4 length, headshot	Full body, 3/4 length, headshot

Walker Evans

Walker Evans Image Analysis

This is an image by walker evens. it has been taken in the photographers style which he is recognised for in many of his photoshoots. This image has been taken from above in a birds eye view style. this captures the shape and shade of the image very well. the ground shadow of the object has been minimised by raising the object off of the surface by placing smaller objects such as small balls off tape underneath. This image is centred in the photo which ensured it is the only object of interest in the photo. This photo has either been taken in black and white or transformed into grayscale during the editing process of the image. This could have been to enhance the contrast in the image as back and white shows more difference in shade to colour images.

My Object based photoshoot

MY FINAL IMAGES

For this image the studio was set up with a white infinity curve to give the impression of an infinite white room. We had two flashing LED studio lights set up on either side of the objects at a roughly 45 degree angle. This setup eliminated shadow. The is because the one light shines on the other lights shadow so it doesn’t show. the camera was on a tripod to eliminate shake and blurring. When editing this image I lifted the contrast to bring more depth to the photo and create a more cast colour pallet.

On this image I used the same set up however we deactivated one of the lights. This resulted in us getting a more ominous effect due to the darker shades, larger shadows and higher contrast. In Lightroom Classic I brought the exposure and highlights down to prevent the reflection on the shiny surfaces overwhelming the image. This also increased the contrast between the now darkened background and the lighter areas of the objects.

This image has a old rustic look which suits the objects within the image as they are from the second world war. This was achieved by moving the lights to get more influential shadows and stronger reflections which I think makes the image look as though it is in water. In Lightroom classic I added more contrast to make the colours pop out over the white background. I also increased the presence to make the textures of the objects clear and show the items age.

Walker Evans

Walker Evans was an American photographer and photojournalist best known for his work for the Farm Security Administration documenting the effects of the Great Depression.

Walker Evans began to photograph in the late 1920s, making snapshots during a European trip. Upon his return to New York, he published his first images in 1930. During the Great Depression, Evans began to photograph for the Resettlement Administration, later known as the Farm Security Administration (FSA), documenting workers and architecture in the South-eastern states. In 1936 he travelled with the writer James Agee to illustrate an article on tenant farm families for Fortune magazine; the book Let Us Now Praise Famous Men came out of this collaboration.

Walker Evans greatly influenced a photographer named Darren Harvey-Regan. Both artists paid very close attention to the choice of their objects, composition, lighting and exposure.

Darren Harvey-Regan

Darren was born in 1974 and is aged 47 and works in the liminal space where flat representation ends, and three-dimensional object begins. Harvey-Regan’s work has appeared in exhibitions and publications internationally and is part of the permanent photography collection at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Solo exhibitions include Metalepsis and The Erratics, Copperfield, London, The Erratics, Passaggi – Arte Contemporanea, Pisa, IT Phrasings, The Ravestijn Gallery, Amsterdam A Shifting Sense of Things, Sumarria Lunn, London and A Collection of Gaps, Phoenix, Exeter. Darren Harvey-Regan is a graduate of the Royal College of Art and is based in London.

This week ensure your process looks like this…

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Throughout its long history, still life has taken many forms, from the decorative frescoes of antiquity to the high art of the Renaissance. Traditionally, a still life is a collection of inanimate objects arranged as the subject of a composition. Nowadays, a still life can be anything from your latest Instagram latte art to a vase of tulips styled like a Dutch Golden Age painting.

Task 1 “The Beauty of the Common Tool”

Walker Evans

Darren Harvey-Regan

What you must do…

Walker Evans greatly influenced Darren Harvey-Regan, and both artists paid careful attention to choice of objects, composition, lighting and exposure values.

You must explore the work of both artists (create a blog post that compares and contrast their work) and develop a range of images in response to their outcomes. For this, you will need to use the selection of heritage objects we have provided for you and we wil l show you various lighting arrangements too.

Task 2 Developing still life ideas

Mary-Ellen Bartley “7 Things again and again”.

Inspired by minimalist sculpture and painting, these simple but effective still life studies encapsulate the formal elements . Artists such as Giorgio Morandi have a clear influence here…and again there is a strong connection between painting and photography, historically and traditionally.

What you must do…

Collect a group of objects that you think combine well. Consider shape and size, colour, texture etc.

Then look carefully at what / how Mary Ellen Bartley groups, lights and photographs her objects. Aim to create a set of images by altering the layout, lighting, focus, composition etc.

Print some of the results off — and then rip, tear, cut-n-paste to create a photo-montage. Re-photograph this and develop the composition into a final outcome.

Lastly, print off a selection of carefully chosen images that you can then paste to either foamboard or cardboard. Then cut and arrange these choices so that you can create a free-standing photo-sculpture like Lethe Wilson (below)

Task 3 Symbolism and Metaphor – Vanitas

Vanitas Art and Photography

A vanitas is a symbolic work of art showing the transience of life, the futility of pleasure, and the certainty of death, often contrasting symbols of wealth and symbols of ephemerality and death.

The term originally comes from the opening lines of the Book of Ecclesiastes in the Bible: ‘Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities, all is vanity.’

Vanitas are closely related to memento mori still lifes which are artworks that remind the viewer of the shortness and fragility of life (memento mori is a Latin phrase meaning ‘remember you must die’) and include symbols such as skulls and extinguished candles. However vanitas still-lifes also include other symbols such as musical instruments, wine and books to remind us explicitly of the vanity (in the sense of worthlessness) of worldly pleasures and goods.

Inspired by the works of 17th century Old Master still life painters such as Giovanna Garzoni and Maria Sibylla Merian, American photographer Paulette Tavormina creates stunningly lit imagery of fruits and vegetables immersed in dark atmosphere

A perfect example of the old technique getting combined with modern-age ideas is Mat Collishaw’s Last Meal on Death Row series of works. Although they appear as meticulously arranged staged photography still lifes of food, each image is actually based on death row inmates’ last meals before they are executed. Apart from the eerie subject, the pictures deliver a strong drammatic effect through an excellent use of chiaroscuro.

On a much more lighter, even pastel note, we have Dutch photographer Krista van der Niet, whose compositions often include fruits and vegetables mixed with mundane objects such as socks, cloths and aluminum foil, giving it all a contemporary feel. Her photos often carry a dose of satire as well, which references consumerism and popular culture through a clever employment of objects within a carefully composed scenery.

Experimenting with the endless possibilities of light, self taught photographer Olivia Parker makes ephemeral constructions. She started off as a painter, but soon turned to photography and quickly mastered the way to incorporate an extensive knowledge of art history and literature and reference the conflicts and celebrations of contemporary life in her work. Over the many years of her artistic career, her style remained fluid, yet consistent

Think paintings by Pieter Claesz or Adriaen Coorte, only in plastic. That’s how one could describe the photographs of Richard Kuiper, whose objects are all made of this everlasting, widely used material, including water bottles, floral arrangements, even the feathers. The artist tries to draw our attention towards the excessive use of plastic in our everyday lives, with the hope we will be able to decrease it before it takes over completely.

What you must do…

Respond to one of the artists above and create a set of images that clearly shows your understanding of…

Light

Shape

Shadow

Composition

Metaphor

Symbolism

Memento Mori

A series of blog posts should now show a combination of visual experiments, Adobe Lightroom selections and adjustments, 3-5 final images and an evaluation

Due Date : Friday 12th November

Camera obscura

The desire to permanently capture reality existed for as long as we humans. So long in fact, the oldest know drawing made by Homo Sapiens dates back 73,000 years.

The history of photography itself began in the 5th century BC with a Chinese philosopher ‘Mozi’ who found that by letting light rays pass through a small hole into a pitch black room he could record the creation of an image. This phenomenon was also observed by a Greek philosopher Aristotle in the 4th century BC, when he noticed that the light from a sun eclipse passing through holes between leaves cast and image of the eclipsed sun on the ground. Today, we refer to this occurrence as a Pinhole Image.

Although many have experimented with this concept it wasn’t until the 11th century AD, an Arab mathematician, astronomer and philosopher Alhazen suggested that a viewing screen can be used to see the inverted image of the original object. Furthermore, Alhazen wrote the Book of Optics where he accurately describes how a Camera Obscura works and why the image we see is inverted. For the first time in human history we were able to mathematically prove that light travels in straight lines. His explanation helped us understand how vision works. Alhazen’s accomplishment influenced many great individuals such as Leonardo Da Vinci and Galileo Galilei.

In the 16th century Giambattista della Porta improved the image quality by adding a concave lens near to where light enters the pinhole. Soon after a Giambattista Benedetti proposed to use a mirror at a 45 degree angle to revert the image back to it’s upright form. Although the concept was around for a many years the term “Camera Obscura” was used in 1604 for the first time by Johannes Kepler. Kepler used the Camera Obscura for astronomical applications and so created a tent version he could use for surveying in Austria. In 1835 the Camera Obscura became a popular attraction when Maria Theresa Short set up a popular observatory in Edinburgh and demonstrated it every day. Sadly she was evicted out of the property in Calton Hill due to breaking leafleting rules in 1849. Maria Set up the Short’s Observatory in Castle Hill soon enough, in 1853. The observatory runs till this day. Over the years the Camera Obscura evolved from a room, to a tent, to a small portable box.

First Permanent Images

Up until the 19th century the Camera Obscura was mainly used by artists and as a form of entertainment. In 1820 a French physicist and inventor, Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, worked out a way to create permanent images using the Camera Obscura. To make a so called Heliography (‘Sun writing’), Niépce dissolved bitumen in lavender oil and inserted the coated pewter plate into the Camera Obscura to expose it to light for several hours. Here is the first permanent photograph ever made.

Knowing the process still required improvements Niépce started a partnership with a French artist, Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre, who helped him refine it using a more light sensitive resin and different post-exposure treatment resulting in shorter exposure time and higher quality images.

Daguerreotype

After Niépces sudden death in 1833, Daguerre carried on working with the notes he was left, he began experimenting with exposing images onto metal plates. Daguerreotype is a process involving the use of a silver coated copper plate, exposed in iodine vapour before being exposed to light. The exposure time was still extremely inconvenient until he discovered that a faint image from a short exposure can be developed using mercury fumes and then fixed by using a hot solution of salt to remove the remaining silver iodide. This shortened the exposure time to just a few minutes. Daguerreotypes were introduced to the public in 1839 and were the most commonly used up till 1850s.

Calotype

Whilst Daguerre was working on perfecting his process, another individual was also motivated to formulate a photographic process. William Henry Fox Talbot was a English chemist, linguist and archeologist trained at the university of Cambridge. Talbot could not draw his scientific observations even with the help of a camera lucida. He invented the process called Calotype, consisting of coating a sheet of paper with silver chloride and exposing it to light in the camera obscura. The areas exposed to light to become dark resulting in a negative image. In addition Toolbox discovered gallic acid; a chemical present in many plants; which he then used to develop the image, speeding up the chlorides reaction to the light and shortening the exposure time from an hour to a minute. The image was then fixed with sodium hyposulfite.

The Calotype process was superior in regard to the Daguerreotype, seeing that it could produce numerous positive images using the method of contact printing. Talbot announced his process in 1841.

Collodion Process

In 1851, both Frederick Scott Archer and Gustave Le Gary invented the Collodion Process almost simultaneously. Although Le Grey was the one who theorized it in 1850 the invention was credited to Archer. The exposure time was only a few seconds as the plates used an emulsion process instead of being simply coated. A portable dark room was needed as the plates had to be coated, sensitised, exposed and develop within fifteen minutes. This was a faster, cheaper and more efficient process that took over the Daguerreotype process by the end of 1860.

Dry Plates

Although the Collodion process was an innovative discovery it still required a lot of improvements as the plates had the be wet during the entire process. Throughout the years many tried to perfect the process and make it more convenient, scientists such as Joseph Sidebotham or Richard Kennett, but never successfully. Not until 1871 when an English physician and photomicrographer, Richard Maddox discovered the Dry Plate process. The process involved sensitising cadmium bromide and silver nitrate coated on a glass plate then coated in gelatine. This made it much more practical as the plates could be stored, transported and used whenever needed. Improvements were made to reduce the exposure time and with no need for a tripod first handheld cameras started to emerge.

Kodak

George Eastman perfected his own dry plate process. He received a patent on the process and set up a small factory in 1880. Soon enough he found a local investor, Henry Strong, and what started as a one room operation, in 1881, turned into the most revolutionary company in the history of Photography, the Eastman Dry Plate Company. In 1885, Eastman started manufacturing paper Film which reduced the weight of cameras, exposure time and could be used in already existing plate cameras. In 1888 he placed on the market the first camera designed to use Film roll, th Kodak. This simple, box camera with a fixed focus lens and single shutter speed, changed photography forever. The low price of the camera and the easy use greatly accelerated the growth of amateur photography. The camera contained enough Film for 100 exposures which would then be sent back to the manufacturer for developing, printing and reloading when film was used up. Eastman, the businessman he was, wrote one of the best advertising slogans: “You push the button, we do the rest”. As the name Kodak was more and more recognised around the world, Eastman eventually changed the company name to Eastman Kodak Company.

This however, wasn’t the peak of his genius. Eight years later Eastman monopolised the photographic industry in the US with the introduction of the one dollar Brownie camera initially intended for use by children. In 1891, Eastman Kodak opened its first overseas plant in London and had other distribution sites around Europe by 1900. Overall, Kodak controlled 90 percent of the photographic market.

Instant Film

Edwin H. Land was one, to by fitting all of the dark room process into a camera, give life to instant photography. In 1948, Polaroid debuted the first commercial instant photo camera, the model 95 Land, which used a chemical process that let you develop photos in under a minute. Although the camera was rather expensive, the idea of instant photos appealed to the consumers more than the thought of taking 100 photos, sending the camera back, waiting for them to be developed and waiting again, up to several months, for your photos to arrive. By 1960s the Polaroid company had numerous models of instant cameras that were widely available and favoured.

Coloured Photography

Although coloured photography existed for quite some time, it wasn’t the most effective as the exposure time would take as long as a few day and the colours captured were so light sensitive they could only be viewed for a short while under very dim light. Many attempted to master coloured photography throughout the years. Individuals such as Thomas Sutton who took the first durable photograph in 1861. It was a set of three black and white photographs taken through red, green and blue optical filters and shown layered using projectors.

Not long after, photogenic emulsions were used. However, they produced poor outcomes as they were only sensitive to blue, violet, slightly sensitive to green and almost completely insensitive to other colours. In 1873, a German photochemist and photographer, Hermann Wilhelm Vogel discovered a way to make the emulsion sensitive to the rest of the spectrum; die sensitisation. While trying out some collodion bromide dry plated her noticed that they were more sensitive to green than to blue, he then tried adding various aniline dyes to freshly prepared emulsions and found that he was able to add sensitivity to green, yellow, orange and red.

The first widely used method of coloured photography was the Autochrome plate process invented by two brothers, Auguste and Louis Lumiére. It consisted of a random mosaic of tiny grains of potato starch dyed red-orange, green and blue-violet. Those grains of starch acted as colour filters. Lampblack was used to fill the gaps between the grains and a black and white panachromatic silver halide emulsion was coated on top of the filter layer. The Autochrome was loaded into the lense so that the light passed the filter layer before reaching the emulsion. In addition an orange layer was added to block the ultraviolet light to which the emulsion was overly sensitive to. Because the grains were so small the human eye could do the colour mixing in real time instead of using projectors.

In 1935, Leopold Godowski and Leopold Mannes introduced the Kodachrome Process that consisted of silver based, gelatin emulsion, having layers of cyan, yellow and magenta dye which was being released during the photographs development. During the process, the silver is removed leaving only the colours. The Kodak company released its first coloured film. In 1963, Polaroid introduced the first instant colour film.

Nikon

One of the biggest issues in photography was the inability to preview the photograph, often photographers were disappointed as the picture did not turn out the way it was intended and once you pushed the button it was done. Nikon, a Japanese company introduced their first SLR (Single Reflex Lense) camera that solved this very issue for good, in fact, it is widely used till this day. A SLR camera use a movable mirror behind the lense that reflects the minnage in the lense to the viewfinder, this way the photographers can see what the photograph will look like. When the shutter button is pressed the mirror flips and the light passes through onto the film.

Digital Photography

The first recorded digital image was taken in december 1975 with a camera designed by a Kodak engineer, Steven Sasson. The camera weighed almost 4kg and only took black and white photographs on top of that Sasson had to create a special screen to look at those pictures. In 1988, Fuji invented a first digital camera intended for commercial use, the Fuji Fujix DS1P, that never made it to the market. The first digital camera to enter the market was the Nikon F3. The camera required the photographer to carry an external memory source on the shoulder strap. In 1994, Kodak made the first camera to use removable memory cards. Since then photo technology advanced rather quickly to cameras we use today.

Whilst editing the portraits, I tried to make each photo seem different by using different contrast strengths and different colour schemes for each image, making some more saturated then others in order to experiment with what I like best.

Editing One of My Portraits

I chose to edit this image as I liked how the model was slightly off centre and out of frame as I thought it could tell an interesting story. Along with that I also liked how she was posed with the apple and basket. I felt like I had decent lighting and could improve upon this image further by adjusting the colours and exposure especially since I got the window in the background which could further add to the story.

I started by sharpening the image so the details could be clearly seen before changing the temperature of the photo in order to give it a colder look. I then went onto changing the lighting by increasing the highlights and decreasing the shadows and contrast and vibrance in order to give the image a soft and dreamy look. Next, I desaturated most of the yellows in the image so it wasn’t overpowering everything else in the image, especially as I wanted the apple to be the brightest thing in frame.

Finally, I finished off the edit by increasing the temperature [as the yellows were no longer as bright] and added a subtle white vignette which gave an almost vintage look to the image and added to the dreaminess of the photo.

My Final Portraits: