What is romanticism?

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Romanticism was an artistic, literary, musical, and intellectual movement that originated in Europe towards the end of the 18th century, and in most areas was at its peak in the approximate period from 1800 to 1850.

What is the sublime?

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A quality of greatness or grandeur that inspires awe and wonder. From the seventeenth century onwards the concept and the emotions it inspires have been a source of inspiration for artists and writers, particularly in relation to the natural landscape

What is the romantic sublime?

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For Romantics, the sublime is a meeting of the subjective-internal (emotional) and the objective-external (natural world): we allow our emotions to overwhelm our rationality as we experience the wonder of creation.

Edmund Burke’s Philosophical Enquiry (1757) connected the sublime with experiences of awe, terror and danger. Burke saw nature as the most sublime object, capable of generating the strongest sensations in its beholders. This Romantic conception of the sublime proved influential for several generations of artists.

Context

There were two intellectual movements that occurred between 1700s-1900s which were heavily influential for photography and art projects that were produced during the time.

The movements were known as ‘The Age of The Enlightenment’ and ‘The Age of Romanticism’.

Someone once quoted “Writers and artists rejected the notion of the Enlightenment, which had sucked emotion from writing, politics, art, etc. Writers and artists in the Romantic period favoured depicting emotions such as trepidation, horror, and wild untamed nature.”

“The ideals of these two intellectual movements were very different from one another. The Enlightenment thinkers believed very strongly in rationality and science. … By contrast, the Romantics rejected the whole idea of reason and science. They felt that a scientific worldview was cold and sterile.”

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The Age of The Enlightenment (1700-1800ish)

The Age of Enlightenment (also known as the Age of Reason or simply the Enlightenment) was an intellectual and philosophical movement that dominated Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries with global influences and effects. The Enlightenment included a range of ideas centred on the value of human happiness, the pursuit of knowledge obtained by means of reason and the evidence of the senses, and ideals such as liberty, progress, toleration, fraternity, constitutional government, and separation of church and state.

The Age of Romanticism (1800-1900ish)

Romanticism came as a rebuttal to the Age of Enlightenment and the sense of reason and order. With the progress of industrialization, many people felt that they were losing their individualism and Romanticism aimed at reversing that feeling, celebrating individuals, their connection to nature and how they experience the world.

Romanticism (also known as the Romantic era) was an artistic, literary, musical, and intellectual movement that originated in Europe towards the end of the 18th century, and in most areas was at its peak in the approximate period from 1800 to 1850.

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During the Age of Romanticism, William Blake became one of the most influential artists and was mainly known as an English poet, painter, and printmaker. He was largely unrecognised during his life, but is now considered a seminal figure in the history of the poetry and visual art of the Romantic Age.

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Francisco de Goya was another one of the many influential Romantic artists and was regarded as a highly influential figure in the later years of the 18th century. Francisco Goya’s paintings, engravings, and drawings depicted the political and historical turmoil of the era, thereby influencing many artists that followed after him.

Ansel Adams

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Ansel Easton Adams 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. Even creating a Zonal System to ensure that all tonal values are represented in the images. Ansel Adams was an advocate of environmental protection, national parks and creating an enduring legacy of responses to the power of nature and sublime conditions.

Adam was known to have quite a few problems with fitting in at school and society in general when he was a child, but the most important result of Adams’s somewhat solitary and unmistakably different childhood was the joy that he found in nature. As evidenced by his taking long walks in the still-wild reaches of the Golden Gate. Nearly every day found him hiking the dunes or meandering along Lobos Creek, down to Baker Beach, or out to the very edge of the American continent. His love for nature influenced him into capturing the beautiful landscapes he saw before him in his photographs.

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Adams’s technical mastery was the stuff of legend. More than any creative photographer, before or since, he revelled in the theory and practice of the medium.

This theory, that was produced by him and Fred Archer, was known as ‘The Zone System’. This system is a photographic technique for determining optimal film exposure and development

Minor White

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Minor Martin White was an American photographer, theoretician, critic, and educator. He combined an intense interest in how people viewed and understood photographs with a personal vision that was guided by a variety of spiritual and intellectual philosophies. Starting in Oregon in 1937 and continuing until he died in 1976, White made thousands of black-and-white and colour photographs of landscapes, people, and abstract subject matter, created with both technical mastery and a strong visual sense of light and shadow. 

Through the idea of photographs as equivalents (learned from Alfred Stieglitz) and the Zone System (learned from Ansel Adams), White practiced using tonal values as a form of expression. Edward Weston also influenced White’s use of visual form as a way to express universal ideas.

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Edward Weston

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Edward Henry Weston was a 20th-century American photographer. He has been called “one of the most innovative and influential American photographers. He was also “one of the masters of 20th century photography”.

Over the course of his 40-year career Weston photographed an increasingly expansive set of subjects, including landscapes, still-life’s, nudes, portraits, genre scenes and even whimsical parodies. It is said that he developed a “quintessentially American, and especially Californian, approach to modern photography^“

Due to his focus on the people and places of the American West. In 1937 Weston was the first photographer to receive a Guggenheim Fellowship, and over the next two years he produced nearly 1,400 negatives using his 8 × 10 view camera. Some of his most famous photographs were taken of the trees and rocks at Point Lobos, California, near where he lived for many years.

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Ralph Eugene Meatyard

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Ralph Eugene Meatyard was an American photographer known for his enigmatic portraits and use of multiple exposures. Though he did not gain much recognition during his lifetime, the artist’s haunting images of masked children have since established him as a key figure in American photography.

He first came into contact with photography in 1950 through his job of being an optical firm in Lexington, KY, which sold both optical and photo equipment. After purchasing his first camera, Meatyard joined the Lexington Camera club and learned many of the basics of the medium from another club member named Van Deren Coke.

The artist continued his education in the mid-1950s, when he attended a summer photography course taught by Henry Holmes Smith and Minor White at Indiana University. In the years that followed, he began to incorporate his interest in Zen philosophy and jazz music into his practice.

Eugene Meatyard’s collection: Zen

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What is rural landscape photography?

Rural landscape photography is in many ways similar to photographing urban landscapes. The difference is rural photography is about capturing the “life” in the countryside. Of some reasons I like to think of rural as something “old” while urban is mostly modern.

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Mood board

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THE SUBLIME

The sublime is considered an art term, first invented by Edmund Burke  in A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful published in 1757. Although first invented as an art form, the sublime applies to photography too. It refers to the quality of greatness and aesthetic captured in a photo – for example a clear image with a range of colours and focal points is a good example of the sublime. The purpose of the sublime is to evoke emotion in it’s viewers – whether happiness or fear.

ROMANTICISM IN ART

Photography was primarily inspired by art particularly the romanticism art movement which was prominent towards the late 18th century. Romanticism, first defined as an aesthetic in literary criticism around 1800, gained momentum as an artistic movement in France and Britain in the early decades of the nineteenth century and flourished until mid-century. With its emphasis on the imagination and emotion, Romanticism emerged as a response to the aftermath of the French Revolution of 1789.

 Romanticism art in landscapes focuses on the sky and its surroundings however romanticism art primarily focuses on people and emotions – some of the most famous paintings depicting war or love are products of romanticism in an art form.

You will already see that the Romantic movement was broad and far-reaching. Despite the variety of individual expressions encouraged by Romanticism, there are several key Romanticism characteristics, which underlie Romantic art. These include growing nationalism, subjectivity, and concerns with justice and equality.

ROMANTICISM IN PHOTOGRAPHY

 Romanticism as an art form crossed between music, painting, photography and many other art forms. Landscape photography was popular at this time, therefore, romantic landscapes were common. The landscapes focused on the beauty of nature and included a lot of running water and vast forests. Romanticism photography focuses on capturing emotion in the image hence why most landscape photos capture running rivers or a windy day and seem to stop it in time, to capture the emotion whether it be happiness or chaos in one photo.

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Luke Fowler (Differences)	Similarities	Claude Cahun (Differences)​
Landscape photography	Photographer is included ​	Portrait photography
Photographer isn’t central in the photo​	Photograph includes overlaying images​	Photographer is centred​ in the photo
Juxtaposed from the top to the bottom​	Both composed of two images each	Juxtaposed from side to side​
Slightly different themes – freedom​	Both in black and white​	Theme is about gender identity and loss of identity​
All the images are flat and have a full opacity​	Photograph mainly surrounds one person​	The opacity has been lowered on one of the overlapped images​
Shallow depth of field	Scratchy texture​	Deep depth of field
The landscape photography in the background is the focal point as it is fully in focus		The photographer’sface is the main focal point of the piece
Includes a more complex background		Includes a plain background
Includes one face which is only from the photographer in the corner		Includes 2 faces

Both these images share a range of similarities and differences. To compare the two images, one being done by Luke Fowler and one being done by Claude Cahun, I can first of all see that both of the photographers themselves are included in the pieces, but they both hold different positions in each photo. Luke Fowler is placed in the bottom corner of his image, whilst Claude Cahun is placed in the centre of the photograph.

I have also noticed that both images include the use of juxtaposition but they both present them in different ways. Claude has juxtaposed their image from side to side whilst Luke has juxtaposed his photo from top to bottom. They both composed of two images but are both presented differently, with the sense that Luke’s are placed next to each other with the opacity all the way up on both, so that it looks like it’s one image as a whole. Claude on the other hand has overlapped two images of their face and lowered the opacity on one of them so that the one from behind can still be visible.

These images both have a similar theme to identity however, Claude explores identity more in the sense of gender identity and lack of identity. Luke on the other hand, explores identity in the way of freedom and not caring what anyone thinks of him.

What went well:

I managed to take quite a few photos for this topic and I am very happy with the final results of some of my images. I was able to execute my photos exactly how I was imagining them to be.

What to improve:

Narrow down what artists to take inspiration from instead of taking multiple different aspects from each artist as it made it harder for me to come up with a concept. Next time I should have a wide selection of artists like this time, but narrow it down to maybe one or two photographers to take my main inspiration from so that I don’t confuse myself. I would also like to figure out more ways of experimenting with editing images as I feel that my images are still quite basic.

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What does rural mean in photography?

Rural landscape photography refers to “photography in the countryside” and covers the rural environment. While rural landscapes often contain architecture – much the same as urban landscapes – rural landscape photography is more about capturing the life and elements found in the countryside.

What is rural landscape photography? –

Natural/rural landscape photography consists of photos which are taken outside in various locations such as beaches, forests, streets, etc. The photos can also include wildlife, plants, close ups of natural scenes and textures with a variety of weather such as mist, rain, sunshine, cloudy, during the evening or night, etc which can add drastic effects to the photos which can be used in a representational, abstract, romanticised or impressionistic way.

These factors can help to make you feel like you are there within the photos landscape, when looking at various photos from different photographers, therefore these can also create a lot of different emotions for the viewer like happiness, sadness, excitement, calmness, etc. Landscape photography can also be used to share important messages such as showing the impact of global warming on the world and how humans are destroying natures natural beauty for creating large scale buildings for industry purposes or how rubbish can impact wildlife and plants.

Mood board –

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• Wilderness, adventurer, mountaineer photographer.
• Born on August 23rd, 1940 and passed away on August 11th, 2002.
• Never formally trained in photography, began taking photos as a way to share his experiences with others and by 1972 it became his full time job.
• Worked with many publications such as National Geographic, Outdoor Photographer, Life, etc.
• Won the Ansel Adams award for Conservation photography in 1984.
• His photography style included taking photos of “dynamic landscapes” of the Natural world by capturing them with the fast changing nature of light.

Examples of his work –

Analysis –

I think that this photo taken by Galen Rowell is quite effective because of the light from the sun which has been created as it is setting/rising. This is because it creates the feeling of a forest fire which is rising between the trees and getting worse as it takes control of its surroundings, like it is infecting them. I also like how in this photo there are various points where the sunlight is much warmer and vibrant which could be used to signify the heat of the fire and how intense and dangerous it is. This photo can be used to show the dangers of forest fires/global warming and raise awareness of them to the community as they are damaging to the wildlife which live in these areas where everybody is ignoring them and not giving this issue the support and care which it needs.

In my own work I will consider using the techniques which Galen Rowell uses with natural light and how it can be used to show the beauty and dangers of landscapes/natural life. I will go to various locations at different times of the day such as sunset and sunrise, when the sun is high in the sky, at night, etc (when it is sunny) and try to capture the way the light is created naturally in different ways.

• Born on January 1st 1864, passed way on July 13th 1946.
• An American photographer.
• Focussed on taking photos of cloud formations in the sky, which made him one of the most influential and popular photographers in history.
• Stieglitz called these photos “Equivalents” to parallel the artists own inner state.

Examples of his work –

Analysis –

I really like this photo from Alfred Stieglitz because of the contrast of dark to light tones within the clouds which looks as if there is a solid, jagged line in-between which separates the 2 areas, as if they are in a fight as it can show danger and fear. This atmosphere has been created through the photo because of how dark the tones are at the edges as if they are in a war with each other and are protecting what is theirs. I also like in this photo how there is a small glimpses of light created through sunlight on the smaller clouds and especially in the bottom right corner as when taking the photo as the bright, white tones can show a signal of hope and calmness to a war which feels like it might not end as if it is the light at the end of the dark tunnel.

In my own work, I would like to focus on cloud formations as I like how interesting they can be and the shapes which they are able to form. I will do this by taking various pictures at different times of the day in different locations to get a range of photos. I will then bring my photos into photoshop and change them into black and white contrasts just like Alfred Stieglitz’s work.