Key artists from the exhibit include Robert Adams, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Joe Deal, and Stephen Shore.
Robert Adams, Tract House, Westminster, Colorado, 1974, George Eastman House collections
What was the importance of the New Topographics show and its movement?
On the one hand, New Topographics represented a radical shift by redefining the subject of landscape photography as the built (as opposed to the natural) environment. To comprehend the significance of this, it helps to consider the type of imagery that previously dominated the genre in the United States.
Robert Adams, Tract House, Westminster, Colorado, 1974, George Eastman House collections
What was the New Topographics a reaction to?
Their stark, beautifully printed images of this mundane but oddly fascinating topography was both a reflection of the increasingly suburbanised world around them, and a reaction to the tyranny of idealised landscape photography that elevated the natural and the elemental
Robert Adams, Tract House, Westminster, Colorado, 1974, George Eastman House collections
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.
Cyanotype is a photographic printing process that produces a cyan-blue print. Engineers used the process well into the 20th century as a simple and low-cost process to produce copies of drawings, referred to as blueprints. The process uses two chemicals: ferric ammonium citrate and potassium ferricyanide.
Cyanotypes in photography
Cyanotype photographs can be made in two ways: by using a photo negative, or by placing an object directly on the paper that is being exposed to the sun. Wherever the object blocks out the light the paper will remain white, and wherever the light hits around that object will react and turn blue.
The cyanotype process reverses light and dark, so a negative original is required to print as a positive image. Large format photographic negatives or transparent digital negatives can produce images with a full tonal range, or lithographic film can be used to create high-contrast images.
Cyanotypes in science
The cyanotype is an alternative photographic process that relies on the chemical properties of two iron compounds – ferric ammonium citrate and potassium ferricyanide. Basically, formulas of these two iron compounds are mixed together in a 1:1 ratio to form a citrine coloured solution.
This is an example of the use of Cyanotypes in art produced by Rachel E. Church.
Anna Atkins
Anna Atkins was an English botanist and photographer. She is often considered the first person to publish a book illustrated with photographic images. Some sources say that she was the first woman to create a photograph. Her nineteenth century cyanotypes used light exposure and a simple chemical process to create impressively detailed blueprints of botanical specimens.
This is a photo of Anna Atkins who was born in 1799.
This is one of many Anna Atkins cyanotype pieces that she created in the 1840s.
Sir John Herschel, a friend of Atkins, invented the cyanotype photographic process in 1842. Within a year, Atkins applied the process to algae (specifically, seaweed) by making cyanotype photograms that were contact printed by placing the unmounted dried-algae original directly on the cyanotype paper.
Henry Peter Bosse
Henry Peter Bosse is an German-American photographer, cartographer and a civil engineer who was born on November 13 1844. Henrys cyanotypes surfaced at a Sotheby’s auction in 1990, his cyanotype photographs have been included in the permanent collections at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles. His cyanotypes were exposed with large glass plates and printed on the finest French cyanotype paper, each sheet off-white measuring 14.5″ x 17.2″ and bearing the watermark “Johannot et Cie. Annonay, aloe’s satin.”
This is one of Henrys early pieces of work which shows the watermark he regularly used on most pieces of his work.
Portrait photography has had a long and varied history since Louis Daguerre introduced the photographic process in 1839. In that same year, Robert Cornelius produced what’s considered the first photographic self-portrait. Photography has served many purposes, mainly to commemorate occasions and periods in history.
How Portrait Photography Has Evolved Over Time
If you were a wealthy individual in the early 1800s, you might have been able to commission an artist to paint a portrait of you. This was not likely to have been a pain-free process, however, even if it meant that you got a framed likeness of yourself at the end. Think multiple sessions of sitting still and trying to keep your features frozen in a dignified smile. And if you didn’t quite like how the portrait turned out, there wasn’t much you could do about it.
Luckily, the invention of photography transformed portrait making into something less time consuming and with more reliable results. Early portraits were daguerrotypes. They were named after the French inventor, Louis Daguerre, who came up with this technique of imprinting images on an iodine-sensitized silver plate using mercury vapor. Daguerrotypes were produced for around twenty years starting in 1839 before they were edged out by other photographic techniques. Since they had a pretty short run overall, daguerrotypes that survive today (such as the two below) are valuable collectibles.
Photography. An art form invented in 1830s, becoming publicly recognised ten years later.
Today, photography is the largest growing hobby in the world, with the hardware alone creating a multi-billion dollar industry. Not everyone knows what camera obscura or even shutter speed is, nor have many heard of Henri Cartier-Bresson or even Annie Leibovitz.
In this article, we take a step back and take a look at how this fascinating technique was created and developed.
Before Photography: Camera Obscura
Before photography was created, people had figured out the basic principles of lenses and the camera. They could project the image on the wall or piece of paper, however no printing was possible at the time: recording light turned out to be a lot harder than projecting it. The instrument that people used for processing pictures was called the Camera Obscura (which is Latin for the dark room) and it was around for a few centuries before photography came along.
It is believed that Camera Obscura was invented around 13-14th centuries, however there is a manuscript by an Arabian scholar Hassan ibn Hassan dated 10th century that describes the principles on which camera obscura works and on which analogue photography is based today.
An illustration of camera obscura. Image: Public domain via Wikipedia
Camera Obscura is essentially a dark, closed space in the shape of a box with a hole on one side of it. The hole has to be small enough in proportion to the box to make the camera obscura work properly. Light coming in through a tiny hole transforms and creates an image on the surface that it meets, like the wall of the box. The image is flipped and upside down, however, which is why modern analogue cameras have made use of mirrors.
In the mid 16th century, Giovanni Battista della Porta, an Italian scholar, wrote an essay on how to use camera obscura to make the drawing process easier. He projected the image of people outside the camera obscura on the canvas inside of it (camera obscura was a rather big room in this case) and then drew over the image or tried to copy it.
Giovanni Battista della Porta. Image: Public domain via Wikipedia
The process of using camera obscura looked very strange and frightening for the people at those times. Giovanni Battista had to drop the idea after he was arrested and prosecuted on a charge of sorcery.
Even though only few of the Renaissance artists admitted they used camera obscura as an aid in drawing, it is believed most of them did. The reason for not openly admitting it was the fear of being charged of association with occultism or simply not wanting to admit something many artists called cheating.
Today we can state that camera obscura was a prototype of the modern photo camera. Many people still find it amusing and use it for artistic reasons or simply for fun.
The First Photograph
Installing film and permanently capturing an image was a logical progression.
The first photo picture—as we know it—was taken in 1825 by a French inventor Joseph Nicéphore Niépce. It records a view from the window at Le Gras.
The first photograph, taken by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce. Image: public domain via Wikipedia
The exposure had to last for eight hours, so the sun in the picture had time to move from east to west appearing to shine on both sides of the building in the picture.
Niepce came up with the idea of using a petroleum derivative called “Bitumen of Judea” to record the camera’s projection. Bitumen hardens with exposure to light, and the unhardened material could then be washed away. The metal plate, which was used by Niepce, was then polished, rendering a negative image that could be coated with ink to produce a print. One of the problems with this method was that the metal plate was heavy, expensive to produce, and took a lot of time to polish.
Joseph Nicéphore Niépce 1765-1833. Image: public domain via Wikipedia
Donovan Wylie is an Irish photographer from Northern Ireland, based in Belfast. His work chronicles what he calls “the concept of vision as power in the architecture of contemporary conflict”
Tish Murtha-
Patricia Anne “Tish” Murtha was a British social documentary photographer best known for documenting marginalised communities, social realism and working class life in Newcastle upon Tyne
Mike Brodie-
Mike Brodie, also known as the “Polaroid Kid” or “Polaroid Kidd”, is an American photographer. From 2004 to 2008, Brodie freight hopped across the US, photographing people he encountered, largely train-hoppers, vagabonds, squatters and hobos.
Gregory Crewdson-
Gregory Crewdson was born in Brooklyn in 1962. Crewdson is recognized for his elaborately staged scenes of small town American life. His photographs have dramatic and cinematic qualities, and he often has an extensive support crew on site for proper staging and lighting.
For my photography mock exam, I produced multiple images but only chose to use the collection of 6 and the single one as my final pieces. I am happy with the way all my images ended up coming out using photoshop and lightroom. I like the way I was inspired by multiple artists and used my own approach to create my own style of images. I am happy that I was able to include at least one of my images from when I went to the skatepark to take some photos because I think skateparks are a great place for phtoshoots
What didn’t go well:
For my next mock exam project, I will make sure to take a lot more photos so I have many more options to choose from in the future. I would’ve liked to include more photos from skatepark but most of the photos I took didn’t turn out in the best quality. Also, I would’ve liked to have more ideas for good edits on some of the photos I took.
Conclusion:
Overall, I am very happy with my final outcomes and the work I produced. and how i used my inspiration from tish murth to try show what kids do and followed her ideas in using the derelict buildings (the bouely bay hotel)
For this image i used 2 photoshoots one being the skatepark and the other being the old waters edge hotel
for this photo i edited to photos i took at the hotel over one at the skatepark to create an image of the three being one i took some inspiration form Tish Murtha and how she photos derelict buildings with children playing in them relating to the derelict buildings in the mirrors and where kids play at the skatepark
to do this i cut out the mirror in this picture
aswell as my second image
after cropping them out i placed them over this picture from the skate park
