For this project I’m gonna aim to record and create romanticised landscape photographs. I’m going to do this by taking photographs of the coastline, the sea, the woods etc. I’ll try use the rainy and foggy weather to my advantage and create a sense of atmosphere, and I’ll photograph at different times of day to get a larger selection of images. I’m also going to look for leading lines such as pathways, roads etc to help dissect my images and provide a sense of journey/discovery to them.
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.
An eighteenth century intellectual movement whose three central concepts were the use of reason, the scientific method, and progress. Enlightenment thinkers believed they could help create better societies and better people.
The Age of Romanticism (1800-1900)
Definition: 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.
It started with its emphasis on the imagination and emotion, Romanticism emerged as a response to the disillusionment with the Enlightenment values of reason and order in the aftermath of the French Revolution of 1789.
The founders of Romanticism, critics August Wilhelm Schlegel and Friedrich Schlegel, began to speak of romantische Poesie (“romantic poetry”) in the 1790s, contrasting it with “classic” but in terms of spirit rather than merely dating. It involved breaking with the past, and consciously moving away from the ideas and traditions of the Enlightenment. In so doing, Romanticism fundamentally changed the prevailing attitudes toward nature, emotion, reason and even the individual.
5 characteristics of romanticism:
Interest in the common man and childhood
Strong senses, emotions, and feelings
Awe of nature
Celebration of the individual
Importance of imagination
Romanticism in Photography
Romanticism means that photography can be made dramatic for the sake of the viewers, making it more interesting to see and telling a real story about maybe the history of the landscape or the purpose of the photography.
My favourite quality of romantic landscapes is how they beautifully dramatize the courtship of light, land, water, and the presence of man on that courtship. Such scenes tell tales about Man’s adapting nature to his needs, and sometimes how nature defeats those very intentions. Romantic landscapes are typically “moody” in atmosphere; they are more about the subjective feelings of the artist, than an objective record of the observable world.
Ansel Adams
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.
When speaking of Ansel Adams’ photography, the most famous is Monolith, the Face of Half Dome. This was Adams’ first photograph that gathered the attention of the public and the art world. Using his Korona camera, Adams captured his iconic photo of Half Dome in Yosemite National Park after a difficult hike.
Ansel Adams
His work
Adams was strongly influenced by Alfred Stieglitz, whom he met in 1933 and who mounted a one-man exhibition for him in 1936 at Stieglitz’s An American Place gallery in New York City.
Adams shot in colour for almost as long as he did in black and white. And he experimented with it for the rest of his life, snapping over thirty-five hundred shots. Originally working in the Pictorialist style, widely popular in the 1910s and 1920s, Adams encountered Paul Strand’s photography in 1930, and rejected his earlier painterly, soft focus style for a new “pure” and sharp focus approach.
In 1932, Adams founded Group f/64 with Edward Weston. Active between 1932 and 1935, f/64 comprised a group of photographers – including Imogen Cunningham, Willard Van Dyke, Consuelo Kanaga, Henry Swift, Alma Lavenson, and Sonya Noskowiak – that advocated Straight and unmanipulated photography over Pictorialism.
Pictorialism favoured traditional, soft-focus images, which were printed from manipulated negatives that produced prints more reminiscent of oil paintings than photographs. The group’s name, f/64, referred to their use of the smallest aperture setting (f-stop) on a camera that created an image with the sharpest depth of field.
Image analysis
Most famous piece
I have selected this image to analyse this image of Ansel Adams’ as I think that this piece, being among his most famous work, is my favourite piece of his. The first reason for this is the contrast throughout the whole image, as the romanticism is really present in this image, with the river is tones 0/1 along with the clouds. with the trees and bottom of the mountains being tones 9/10, and the majority of the vegetation being mid tones. I think that the perspective of this image is important to note as it means that the river and the mountains are the most apparent natural elements of the image, and the image is more symmetrical as the river is part of both halves of the image. I think that this would be Adams’ way of expressing his love for nature.
Furthermore, the fact that the mountains are so far away from where the image was taken means that there is added more depth as this means there are other elements to the image. I like that the all of his work is in black and white, because this adds to the romanticism of his work as the shadows are very strong and contrast very obvious, adding to the tonal values of the image. I thin that Adams’ work is also very popular as the clarity of his images, especially considering the era that his photography was taken and this may have been seen as revolutionary for the time,
Zone System
Adams came up with the concept of that every monochromatic image he took should consist of these 11 tones, for example trees/ shadows should be tone 0 and aspects such as the moon and highlights should be tone 9/10. This meant he was aiming to take photographs and planning what the final result would look like rather then just adapting to the photographs he too. Also, this gave his final pieces of work lots of contrast and made them seem more creative as they was consistent, meaning that his style of photography was recognisable and this helped his develop his name.
An American photographer, who really began to focus solely on photography in the 1930s.
Born February 20th 1902 in San Francisco, California.
Formed a group of photographers, Edward Weston and Imogen Cunningham, called “f/64” who wanted to elevate photography into a high art instead of being used for documentational purposes.
Travelled throughout the country to take various pictures of different environmental nature sites.
Sadly, Ansel Adams died on April 22nd 1984.
Ansel Adams.
Examples of his work –
Horizontal Aspens, 1948.
Arches, North Court, Mission San Xavier del…, 1968.
The White Church, Hornitos, California, 1946.
Winter Evening, Owens Valley 1962.
Analysis –
The White Church, Hornitos, California, 1946.
I really like this picture taken by Ansel Adams in 1946 because of the way he uses the darker and lighter tones which are contrasted well against each other and have been created due to the sunlight which creates this shadow on the floor which is wavy and looks very strange, like when water is reflected onto something which makes it create this calm yet bust atmosphere for the viewer. It really attracts your attention well as the lines in-between have been highlighted through the sunlight fighting through the gaps in the fence as if it wants to be seen. I also like how the church in the background stands out extremely well due to it being grey which contrasts heavily besides the white, and this shows how it is not lost within it and guiders you to focus your attention on it as it is a really bright white which is due to the black and white filter which Ansel Adams uses in his photographs as well.
In my work, I’m going to use a black and white filter, similar to Ansel Adams. This is because I want to create a deep contrast of black and white and make it looks strange yet looks like it works perfectly which he portrays well within his work and create shapes/lines which you wouldn’t normally see as well. I think that this would work with clouds, and their formations in the sky and horizon views where you cant see much besides a small part at the bottom of houses/trees.
Romanticism (also known as the Romantic era) is a state of being romantic or affectionate in a sentimental way. It was also 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. This movement emphasized nature, imagination, emotion and the individual.
Romanticism in Art
Romanticism in Landscape Photography
Painting Vs Photography
Roger Fenton, inspired by nature and romanticism revisited a spot in Wales where previously the painter Samuel Palmer had been inspired by the natural beauty of this river valley. The images are very similar as they both have the river flowing through the middle and the tall trees surrounding it.
Roger Fenton c. 1852-62
Samuel Palmer c. 1840-45
Roger Fenton was a British photographer, noted as one of the first war photographers. Fenton was born into a Lancashire merchant family./Samuel Palmer was a British landscape painter, etcher and printmaker. He was also a prolific writer. Palmer was a key figure in Romanticism in Britain and produced visionary pastoral paintings.
The Age of Enlightenment (1685-1815)
The Enlightenment , also known as the Great ‘Age of Reason’, is the time period in the 17th/18th century Europe. During this period, people started questioning the church and started being more interested in science. It was an intellectual movement whose three central concepts were the use of reason, the scientific method, and progress.
The Sublime
Edmund Burke created the Sublime Theory in the mid-18th century, defining Sublime art as “art that alludes to a magnificence beyond all capacity of measurement, assessment, or reproduction.” He described the Sublime as an aesthetic impact that produces the most powerful sensation the intellect is aware of experiencing.
rural landscapes mainly focus on the areas which have been left untouched by mankind, the most natural areas are what seem to be photographed the most.
The sublime
The sublime means a quality of greatness which inspires wonder. From the 17th century and so on the concept and emotions it contributes have been a main source of inspiration for artists and writers, especially in relation to landscape.
Throughout the Italian Renaissance the concept started to form. The depictions of’ Christ lifeless and suffering’ by Andrea Mantegna and Masaccio, as well as Raphael’s sketches and analyses of skeletons, show us of the certainty of mortality and the not knowing of life– essential elements of the Sublime. Nevertheless, it was only in the Romantic era that the Sublime as an artistic notion gained attraction all round Europe.
enlightenment
The Enlightenment, a philosophical movement that dominated in Europe during the 18th century, was centred around the idea that reason is the primary source of authority and legitimacy, and advocated such ideals as liberty, progress, tolerance, fraternity, constitutional government, and separation of church and state.
romanticism
romanticism consists of contrasting kinds of art, such as painting, literature and music, but can also be applied to photography. A large focus of Romanticism is appreciating the beauty of nature.
most romanticism paintings tend to lean to having both terrifying and beautiful features and such immense detail, which is what makes them so interesting and special.
Ansel Adams
Born– 20th Feb 1902
He was a landscape photographer based in California, he also worked on being an environmentalist which lead him to be able to protect certain sights into being modernised.
He mainly focused on capturing eyeful black and white naturality.
examples of ansel adams work
He then started to publish his work in the 1920s.
image analysis
The way the river is leading into the mountains shows a sense of ominosity, the mountains holding something dangerous. The way this photograph is in black and white also creates an effect of how visually there is a dark mysterious vibe going on. The river intruding the land can be an intake of a snake like trail. The photo is captured from an up wright angle showing all of the landscape.
“Romanticism, attitude or intellectual orientation that characterized many works of literature, painting, music, architecture, criticism, and historiography in Western civilization over a period from the late 18th to the mid-19th century.”
Romanticism in in landscape photography and art is a style that rejects classical aspects of an image and emphasises the other aspects. For example the nature and the emotion. This is shown in the deep colours of the foliage and the colour contrast between each item of the photo. Additionally, most images of this style often have a haze or tone over them which i think gives them a more old fashion style. This is also due to the style being popularised in the mid twentieth century around 1950 – 1960. This was after the popularisation of colour photography rather than black and white. In Romanticism landscapes the colours are often phased and blended together which reduces the sharpness of the contrast and colour changes. this provides a softer image to look at which therefore makes the image more relaxing to look at and gives a calmer feel. Romanticism can be seen in many different subjects of all different styles. For example poetry and art. Romanticism in art follows very similar patterns as the style in photography.
Sir Donald McCullin CBE is a British photojournalist, particularly recognised for his war photography and images of urban strife. His career, which began in 1959, has specialised in examining the underside of society, and his photographs have depicted the unemployed, downtrodden and impoverished. He was born on October 9th, 1935 and has now aged 86 years.
McCullin took a range of different kinds of images such as, landscape, rural, war photography, portraits, close ups and much more. He is most known for his war photography because of how powerful most his images are, but he also does have a big amount of good landscape photos.
“Photography for me is not looking, it’s feeling. If you can’t feel what you’re looking at, then you’re never going to get others to feel anything when they look at your pictures.” – Don McCullin
Don McCullin landscape photos:
Image analysis:
In this image you can see multiple people that seem to be running away from something unknown but it can be imagined they are escaping from war that is happening where they are. The image is displayed in black and white due to this photo being taken many years ago which I think makes the image look more effective and creates a dark tone. In the background you can see a lot of fog/smoke which was confirmed to be tear gas due to soldiers gassing the neighbourhood. McCullin seems to be attempting to catch emotion with this image by photographing people who seem to be running for their life which at the time all the people are going to have many emotions at the time such as, frightened, shocked and helpless. On the wall there are people that look like their wearing soldier uniform such as a helmet and some look to be holding a weapon. This means this image must’ve been taken during the World War in the 1940s which is when most of Dan’s images were photographed.
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. This period depicted more emotions such as trepidation, horror, and wild untamed nature.
The earliest known landscape photograph was in 1826 taken by a French inventor by the name of Nicephore Niepce.
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.
Sublime is a aesthetic concept of ‘beauty that is big and dangerous’. Sublime refers to the wildness of nature. In history of ideas it has a deeper meaning, an ideal that artists have long pursued. Taking inspiration from the rediscovery of the ‘Pseudo-Longinus’ and Edmund Burke, British artists and writers on art have explored the sublime for over four hundred years. In the introductory essay Christine Riding and Nigel Llewellyn trace the relationship between British art and the sublime, discussing ideas and definitions of the sublime used in the Baroque, Romantic, Victorian periods and modern periods. The accompanying piece by Ben Quash considers an intractable problem for Christian art – the notion of a separation between the sublime and the beautiful in God’s creation.
Artists have been painting the landscape since ancient times. After the fall of the Roman Empire, the tradition of depicting pure landscapes declined. It declined until the 16th century when artists began to view the landscape as a subject in its own right. The artistic shift happened because of a growing interest in the natural world sparked by the Renaissance. The photographic side of landscapes was greatly influenced by the rejection of The age of Enlightenment and brought on by the Age of Romanticism. Through landscape photography, the photographers can demonstrate their connection to nature and capture the interesting and great environments around them.
Examples of Landscape Paintings
The age of Enlightenment 1700s-1800s
European politics, philosophy, science and communications were radically reoriented during the course of the age of enlightenment. Enlightenment thinkers in Britain, in France and throughout Europe questioned traditional authority and embraced the notion that humanity could be improved through rational change. This time period produced numerous books, inventions, laws, scientific discoveries and paintings. Landscape paintings began to become more and more common throughout this era due to the new found interest in landscapes, away from religious beliefs.
There were two main styles of landscape in the 18th century, the Classical and the Dutch styles.
Classical Landscape
Dutch Landscape
The age of romanticism 1800s-1900s
Romanticism was a rejection of the Age of Enlightenment (1700-1800) where science and rationality were rejected over emotion and aesthetic. They felt that a scientific worldview was cold so as a reaction the Romantics generated paintings which were rich in emotions such as dread, horror, and savage nature.
Examples of Romanticism landscape paintings
Romanticism landscape paintings were a lot more dramatic and substantial compared to the Enlightenment paintings of the century before, showcasing grander landscapes that look more fictional.
Romanticism paintings started to be transferred into photographs in the mid 1900s by photographers such as Ansel Adams who became known for his photographs of the American west.
Ansel Adams 1902 – 1984
Ansel Easton Adams was an American landscape photographer and environmentalist known for his black-and-white images of the American West. Adams is considered to be one of the pioneers of photography. Adams chose a career in photography after meeting and seeing photos by Paul Strand. Adams mainly shot in black and white, this was because he felt colour could be distracting, and could therefore divert an artist’s attention from the achievement of his full potential when taking a photograph, he also believed black and white photos had a certain quality that colour photos couldn’t achieve. In 1940 he helped organize the first public collection of photographs, at the Museum of Modern Art, and in 1946 he established the first academic photography department at a California school of arts.
View of valley from mountain, “Canyon de Chelly”
Barren land to mountains, “From Logan Pass”
Ansel Adams and other landscape photographers like him, successfully showcased the vast landscapes around them to really draw viewers in to their work. Adams liked to say that instead of communicating images, he communicated feelings in his work, It is this thought process behind his images which make them so powerful, he created these images knowing exactly what he wanted to portray, before he took the photo.
“The Tetons and the Snake River”
This image created by Adams known as “The Tetons and Snake River” greatly portrays the substantial landscape of the American west. The image is shot in black and white, this dramatizes how the rural west of America looks, and adds a lot of intensity to the image making it look almost fictional. Ansel clearly waited for the perfect moment in the weather to take the image, the distant clouds on top of the mountain show a clear contrast to the lower part of the image, almost like they are two different landscapes, the lower half being a very calm landscape and the upper half being a very wild harsh landscape. This adds depth to the image and makes it much more interesting for viewers.
Landscape photography is the technique of capturing images of nature to bring your viewer into the scene. Through landscape photography, the photographers demonstrate their connection to nature and capture the essence of the environment around them. Landscape photography is greatly influenced by Romanticism and the rejection of The age of Enlightenment.
Examples of landscape paintings
ROMANTICISM AND THE SUBLIME
Romanticism (1770-1850) was a rejection of the Age of Enlightenment (1685-1715) where science and rationality was prised over emotion and aesthetic. By contrast, the Romantics rejected the whole idea of reason and science. They felt that a scientific worldview was cold and sterile so as a reaction the Romantics generated paintings which were rich in emotions such as trepidation, horror, and wild untamed nature.
Romanticism was rejected or ignored by most of the major artists later seen as associated with it, but it nevertheless identified several key tendencies of the period.
Though hard to define precisely, it essentially involves: 1) placing emotion and intuition before (or at least on an equal footing with) reason; 2) a belief that there are crucial areas of experience neglected by the rational mind; and 3) a belief in the general importance of the individual, the personal and the subjective- every painting told a story.
Destruction of Tyre, John Martin, 1840
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.
PAINTINGS TO PHOTOGRAPHY
Winter at the Sognefjord, Johan Christian Dahl, February 1827
The talents of Romanticism in paintings were transferred to photography where photographers such as Ansel Adams became known for his black-and-white images of the American West (as seen below).
These two images, although created over 100 years apart share striking similarities in terms of evoking emotion and technical skill, such as a a large array of tonal values.
Clearing Winter Storm, Yosemite National Park, by Ansel Adams, 1937
Landscape photography is the art of capturing pictures of nature and the outdoors in a way that brings your viewer into the scene. From grand landscapes to intimate details, the best photos demonstrate the photographer’s own connection to nature and capture the essence of the world around them.
