PICTORIALISM

Time period: 1880s-1920s

Key characteristics/ conventions: To make photography art, photographers during this time wanted to make photographs that resembled paintings, they wanted the images to have the same texture as a canvas with blurred and fuzzy imagery. They also wanted their photos to have darkness and claimed photography was a science as chemicals were used to manipulate photographs and using the darkrooms.

Influences: Allegorical paintings these are a mode of representation conveying meaning other than the literal. These paintings communicate messages by means of symbolic figures, actions or symbolic representation. There is an underlying meaning that’s has moral, social, religious or political significance. The characters are often personifications of abstract ideas as charity, greed or envy. Allegorical paintings were dominant in Italian Renaissance art in 16th century and continued to be a popular up until the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in the mid 19th century. There were also influences of closely framed portraits, illustrative allegories based or religious works and Emersons naturalistic photography.

Artists associated: Julia Margaret Cameron, Peter Henry Emerson, Hugo Henneberg, The Vienna Camera Club (Austria), The Brotherhood of the Linked Ring (London), Alfred Stieglitz, Alvin Langdon Coburn, Photo-Secession (New York)

Key works: ‘Morning’ by Clarence H. White, ‘Equivalent’ by Alfred Stieglitz, ‘What Remains’ by Sally Mann, ‘Cottage Garden’ by Joseph Gale, ‘Reflections’ by George Davidson, ‘He never told his love’ by H P Robison, ‘Fleeting and Far’ by Alferd Horlsey Hinton

Methods/ techniques/ processes: Putting Vaseline on camera lenses, scratching the negative. They used different techniques to make it seem like paintings, they used chemicals to manipulate the photos in the darkroom. They had to construct a picture, it could be from ‘nature’, but it had to be ‘made’.

REALISM / STRAIGHT PHOTOGRAPHY

Time period: 1920s

Key characteristics/ conventions: Photos that are able to provide accurate and descriptive records of the visual world. Make pictures that were ‘photographic’ rather than ‘painterly’. These photographers didn’t want to treat photography as a monochrome painting, they didn’t use handwork and soft focus but used crisp focus and a wide depth-of-field. Realism was also associated with ‘straight photography’, so it grew up with claims of having a special relationship with reality. They wanted to show the cameras ability to record objectively the actual world as it appears in front of the lens.

Influences: Cubism is a style which makes paintings appear fragmented and abstracted. They broke objects and figures down into distinct areas which artists aimed to show off their different viewpoints at the same time, within the same space. Fauvism is characterised by its bold colours, textured brushwork and non-naturalistic depictions.

Artists associated: Paul Strand, Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, Jacob Riis, Lewis W Hine

Key works: ‘Blind Woman’ by Paul Strand, ‘Migrant Mother, Nipomo, California’ by Dorothea Lange, ‘Workmen Sitting on Sidewalk’ by Walker Evans, ‘Wandering Boy, Camp Carlton, California’ by Dorothea Lange, ‘Blind Beggar’ by Jacob Riis, ‘Workers, Empire State Building’ by Lewis W Hine

MODERNISM

Time period: Late 19th and early 20th century

Key characteristics/ conventions : Modernism rejected the dominance of the older movements such as naturalism in favour of a new experimental; was of producing art. It believed that science could save the world and that a foundation of universal truths could be established. It was to seek answers to fundamental questions about the nature of art and human experience. Modernism was inspired by all aspects of society and its cultural forms including fiction, architecture, painting, popular culture and photography. It shared a common feeling that the modern world was different from what had passed before and that art needed to renew itself by confronting and exploring its own modernity. This meant rejecting the industrial in favour of the primitive or celebrating technology and machinery and using photography as a new medium. Modern-isms contested between themselves whether art should explore emotions and states of mind, spiritual order, social function, the unconscious, the nature of representation or the social role of art in a capitalists society. The invention of photography was part of the process of modernisation of the means of production. It is a modern from of image making, contributing to the development of modernism.

Influences: Surrealism photography took several forms, one being manipulation, many artists used photomontage. It aimed to create art which was ‘automatic’ meaning that it had emerged directly from the unconscious without being shaped by reason, morality or aesthetic judgements. Surrealist also explored dream imagery and they were an important art movement within modernism involving anything from paintings, sculpture, poetry, performance, film and photography. Dadaism and the development of photomontage, it was sought to break down traditional definitions of art during WWI. It wanted to break the barriers between art and design, often to merge art with everyday life. They embraced technologically advanced means of production, developed mixed media practices, and engaged with social and political issues. Their use of photomontage was used to challenge the authority of mass-cultural representations used in advertising in the new illustrated press and magazines.

Artists associated: Ansel Adams, Eadweard J. Muybridge, Margareth Bourke-White, Johannes Baader, Hannah Höch, Francis Picabia, Alexander Rodchenko, El Lissitzky, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Maurice Tabard, Claude Cahun, Pierre Molinier, Andre Kertezh, Henri Cartier-Bresson

Key works: ‘Yosemite’ by Ansel Adams, ‘Animal Locomotion’ by Eadweard J. Muybridge, ‘Untitled’ by Maurice Tabard

POST-MODERNISM

Time period: Late 20th Century

Key characteristics/ conventions : Post-modernism is a response to modernism and is interested in anything experimental. Architects took the lead in the development of post-modernism, they criticised the international style of modernist architecture as it was to formal. Post-modernism uses various materials and styles with greater playfulness. Parody of earlier styles is a dominant postmodern trait. Another is the refusal to develop comprehensive theories about art, architecture and social progress. One of the main features of post-modernism is relativism, this is the belief that no society or culture is more important than any other. Post-modern artists are pure relativists so they use their art to explore and undermine the way society constructs and imposes a traditional hierarchy of cultural values and meanings. Post-modernism explores power and the way economic and social factors exert that power by shaping the identities of individuals and entire cultures. There is little to no faith in this style of art and they value it for being imperfect, low-brow, accessible, disposable, local and temporary.

Influences: Post-modernism was a disenchantment after the second world war. This was a collective name given to the shattering of modernism. In photography it was the direct challenge to the ideal of fine art photography whose values were established on an anti-commercial stance. There was a increase of female artists in the 1980s who were using photography and had an impact on the discourse on photography. New aspects of the social and private worlds of women made their way into the galleries in a number of guises
and ideological positions.

Artists associated: Frank Gehry, Jeff Wall, Cindy Sherman, Richard Prince, Barbara Kruger, Sherrie Levine, Laurie Simmons, Martha Rosle, Corrine Day, Sam Taylor-Wood, AES & F, Tom Hunter

Key works: ‘Walt Disney Concert Hall’ by Frank Gehry, ‘Insomnia’ by Jeff Wall, ‘Untitled (Your Body is a Battleground)’ by Barbara Krüger, ‘Diary’ by Corrine Day, ‘Soliloquy I’ by Sam Taylor-Wood, ‘Action Half Life’ by AES & F, ‘Film Stills’ by Cindy Sherman

Methods/ techniques/ processes:

• Eclecticism – mixing art forms, mixing cultures, mixing style.
• No Value to the worth of Art – mixing high art with pop culture
• Intertextuality – Including the work of others, the “quoting” of others work
• Collaboration – Creating work with others
• Pastiche – copying an original
• Parody – imitating in order to ridicule, ironically comment on, or poke some fun at
• Recycling – re-using the same material more than once
• Refiguration – re-structuring of an original
• Bricolage – deconstructing and then restructuring existing materials in a new, exciting and inventive way

Art Movements & Isms

PICTORIALISM

time period : 1880s-1920s

Key characteristics/ conventions : to make photography an accepted art form, the adaptation of skill, reacted against mechanization and industrialization, constructed images looking for harmony of matter, mind and spirit – subjective and spiritual motive. Pictorialism is an approach to photography that emphasizes beauty of subject matter, tonality, and composition rather than the documentation of reality. Images had a foggy, mystical-type quality of fantasy that highlighted the aesthetically pleasing elements of an image.

Artists associated: Hugo Henneberg, George Davison, Alfred Stieglitz, Henry Peach Robinson.

Key works:  (Equivalent; clouds study),  (He Never Told His Love 1884), (Reflections 1899).

Methods/ techniques/ processes: Vaseline on lens, scratching the print,  manipulating images in the darkroom, making photographs that resembled paintings

ALLEGORICAL PAINTINGS

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PICTORIALISM PHOTOGRAPHY

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REALISM / STRAIGHT PHOTOGRAPHY

Time period: 1920s

Key characteristics/ conventions : abstract, landscape, show things how they are/ were, the key characteristic of this style was to reflect a person/landscape/object with complete honesty and ‘realism., without heavy editing or manipulation.

Artists associated: Paul Strand, Walker Evans, Edward Weston, Dorothea Lange.

Key works:  ‘A Sea of Steps’,  Monolith, the Face of Half Dome (1927),  Ladder of Ladders (1931).

Methods/ techniques/ processes:  darkroom, digital processes, lighting, exposure.

STRAIGHT PHOTOGRAPHY

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MODERNISM

Time period: 1900-1960’s

Key characteristics/ conventions :  difference between wrong and right, what will America’s future be, what is truth, and what does it mean to be an American. Break from tradition which focuses on being bold and experimenting with new style and form and the collapse of old social and behavioural norms. 

Artists associated: Dora Maar, Edward Steichen, André Kertész, , Paul Strand, Tina Modotti.

Key works:  (Metamorphosis of Narcissus), Workers Parade,  Blind, Wall Street.

Methods/ techniques/ processes:  experimentation,  abstraction,  emphasis on materials.

MODERNISM PHOTOGRAPHY

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POST-MODERNISM

Time period: 1960s- 1970s

Key characteristics/ conventions : reaction against the ideas and values of modernism, scepticism, irony and philosophical critiques of the concepts of universal truths and objective reality. Modernism was based on idealism and reason, postmodernism was born of scepticism and a suspicion of reason. 

Artists associated:  William Eggleston, Cindy Sherman, Jeff Wall, Guy Bourdin, Goran Sekulovski, Lee Friedlander, Andreas Gursky, Jacky Redgate, Robyn Stacey, Yasumasa Morimura.

Key works: Campbells Tomato Juice Box, A requiem: spinning a thread between the light and the earth 1946, Ice.

Methods/ techniques/ processes: Can be characterized by a deliberate use of earlier styles and conventions, and an eclectic mixing of different artistic and popular styles and mediums.

POSTMODERN PHOTOGRAPHy

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JIM GOLDBERG

Jim Goldberg is an American photographer best known for his 1995 photobook ‘Raised by Wolves’ which is a documentation of the lives of homeless youth on the streets of California. The series follows a range of characters but primarily focuses on Tweeky Dave and Echo, two teenage drug-addicts. Goldbergs photobook is composed of mixed media including images, video-stills, drawings & interviews mostly with Dave or Echo discussing anything from drugs to home life & their troubled childhoods. Goldberg turns the camera on his subjects and tells a story through their eyes – his photobook is a raw and unfiltered journey through the highs and lows of troubled youth that makes the reader feel connected with his subjects, going as far to include media such as doctors notes or police statements about them, this makes us feel we are there alongside them, experiencing the atmosphere Goldberg photographs of his surroundings whilst hanging out with his subjects, usually in abandoned, rotting houses or underneath highway bridges.

Through his protagonist’s stories Goldberg displays a different side of life in Hollywood through his outsider vs. insider narrative, a drastic change from the stereotypical flashy glamourous lifestyle celebrities in Los Angeles live. I am inspired by Goldbergs work, particularly Raised By Wolves because it gives a unique outlook on life on the streets in almost an endearing way, reading the photobook i felt emotion through Goldberg immersing himself in the life of his subjects and i feel the book incorporates both professional photography and ‘homemade’ more personal elements e.g the subjects writing in the book or including drawings and personal belongings from their lives, it gives a good sense of understanding and helps the reader get to know the characters more. Inspired by this, i plan to include writing in my book from both myself and my friends when i interview them.

IMAGE ANALYSIS

This photo depicts Tank, a homeless youth, pointing a gun at an outsider on the street. Goldberg took this image at an abandoned house the group frequented, where he would photograph them shooting heroin, a key part of the photobook that showcases the darker side of street life. The photo is monochromatic, stripping back emotion to highlight the subject with his gun. The image features a grainy effect that shows the unfiltered theme of the book. The camera is close to Tank aiming the gun and in the distance you can barely make out the figure on the street, this alludes to the outsider vs. insider narrative that runs through the book. The lighting rests primarily on the gun, highlighting the violence and oppression on the streets of California, whereas the stranger on the street is hidden by shadows, putting the focus on Tank. This provides the photo narrative as the viewer is unsure of who the stranger is, and why the gun is pointed at him.

Reiner Riedler was born in Gmunden, Austria and went to Vienna with the intention of studying ethnology. He then attended a College for photography (Graphische) in Vienna and decided to dedicate himself solely to photography. Master Studies of Image Sciences at the Danube University of Krems.

He is a documentary photographer and deals with important topics of the present day. His view always centers on human beings and their environment. The main focus of his documentary work is to challenge our value systems. As a traveller he visits the periphery of our habitats, always searching for the fragile beauty of human existence with its desires and abysses. His recent conceptual works question the nature of photography and the way, how we look at the world surrounding us.

Reiner Riedler’s work has been shown in numerous countries at photo festivals, galleries and museums. He has been working for periodicals and magazines.

Riedler has produced a series of photographs followed by photobooks. An example of one of his books was one named ‘Sweat’. I really liked how his photographs turned out within this photobook as they produce an almost nightmarish looking series of photographs that were just produced from the formation of his sweat.

Within this photobook, Vreni Hockenjos stated that “Reiner Riedler has discovered sweat as an artistic form of expression. Fascinated by the image captured by the sweat on his T-shirt after jogging – like a spontaneous self-portrait – he has used the sweat produced by others to create a series of images. In order to achieve this, he approached the renowned Fraunhofer Institute in Munich which provided him with a special sensory material that could be placed above or underneath his perspiring models. In doing so, Riedler used the sweaty body as a kind of rubber stamp to create life-size negatives. He then photographed these and transformed them into monochrome paper prints.“

Image analysis

PICTORIALISM

Time Period:

1880’s-1920’s

Key characteristics/ conventions :

Aimed to make photography an art form, hands on process, aim was creating photos that resembled paintings/art using different techniques, floating existence, similar to music, ‘floating romance’?, dreamlike, staged images,

Artists associated:

Alfred Stieglitz, Julia Margaret Cameron, Peter Henry Emmerson & his theory on natural photography, the Vienna camera club, the brotherhood of the linked ring, Frank Eugene, Sally Mann [modern take on pictorialism]

Influences:

Allegorical Painting:

Key works:

Methods/ techniques/ processes:

Smearing Vaseline on lenses [making the images looks soft/fuzzy], manipulated images/negatives in the dark room [using chemicals], scratch the images/negatives using different tools,

REALISM / STRAIGHT PHOTOGRAPHY

Time Period:

1920’s

Key characteristics/ conventions :

Sharp focus images that are full of detail, shadows, abstract forms, architecture, geometric forms, structured images

Artists associated:

Edward Weston, Walker Evans, Paul Strand, Alfred Stieglitz, Ansel Adams

Influences:

Picasso, Cubism:

Key works:

Methods/ techniques/ processes:

No manipulation, clear focus, ‘face reality,

Social Reform Photography

Time Period:

Early 1900’s

Key Characteristics:

Photos on issues happening at the time, documenting the urbanisation, not meant to look nice/pretty

Artists associated:

Dorothy Lange, Lewis W Hine, Jacob Riis,

Influences:

Key Works:

Methods/ techniques/ processes

Documentary photography, raw/real images,

MODERNISM

Time period:

Late 19th century – Early 20th century [photography itself was a modernist invention]

Key characteristics/ conventions :

Photojournalism, emphasised the truth/materiality of a work of art, believed meaning was embedded in work/created by the artist themselves [not interested in context], tried to produce timeless pieces that did not link to history/tradition, rejected older concepts + movements,

Artists associated:

Margaret Bourke-White, Ansel Adams,

Influences:

Against the enlightenment [pro science and technology], dadaism [Hannah Hoch], expressionism, surrealism,

Key works:

Methods/ techniques/ processes:

Form, composition, focuses on object rather than content,

POST-MODERNISM

Time Period:

1900s – 1960s

Key characteristics/ conventions :

Believed in individuals creating their own meanings for art, came about as a reaction to modernism, a backlash against modernity, references things outside of the artwork [i.e: context such as politics, psychology etc], a mix of various styles,

Artists associated:

Heidegger, Derrider, Lyotard

Influences:

Mix of different concepts, disenchantment from WW2

Key works:

Methods/ techniques/ processes:

Nihilistic, rationality, objectivity, universalism, relativism, identity, colonialism, eclecticism,

Art Movements & Isms

Time period :

1880s-1920s

Key characteristics/ conventions :

trying to make photography more of an accepted art form.

1880s’- Photography was seen as less serious, photography is a optical process, the painters, sculptures saw photography as a quick way to create art (lazy). Painting, sculptures etc saw photography as a threat as they would’ve had to spend years on their practice.

Kodak- box camera, photography became popular and easy…

Machine process, was believed to be an unhuman art form so not accepted.

Influences:

Allegorical paintings

Peter Henry Emmerson- Emerson’s Naturalistic Photography

In 1889 Peter Henry Emerson (1856-1936) expounded his theory of Naturalistic Photography which the Pictorialist used to promote photography as an art rather than science. Their handcrafted prints were in visual opposition to the sharp b/w contrast of the commercial print

Artists associated:

Alfred Stieglitz

Clarence H White- represents female clothes, landscape

Frank Eugene- represents women sexualised, male gaze, naked.

Key works:

Methods/ techniques/ processes:

scratching the negatives- create fake brush strokes

Vaseline on the lenses – blurry, dream like

chemical process- in the dark room place tint over negative… manipulate tonality.

Realism/ straight photography

Straight Photography…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 strove to make pictures that were ‘photographic’ rather than ‘painterly’, they did not want to treat photography as a kind of monochrome painting. They abhorred handwork and soft focus and championed crisp focus with a wide depth-of-field.
Realism… (closely associated with ‘straight photography’) 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. This supposed veracity of the photographic image has been challenged by critics as the photographer’s subjectivity (how he or she sees the world and chooses to photograph it) and the implosion of digital technology challenges this notion opening up many new possibilities for both interpretation and manipulation. 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.

Time period:

1915- modern day

Key characteristics/ conventions :

Capturing things as they are

creating an abstract art from through shape.

Observations.

detailed sharply focused photos without manipulation.

Influences:

Cubism

Paul strand – cubism

people wanted to go back to the documentary side of photography

Artists associated:

Paul strand

Stieglitz

 Paul Strand and Alfred Stieglitz pioneered Straight photography in New York while the Hungarian-born László Moholy Nagy exploited pure photography to maximize the graphic structure of the camera-image. These straight or pure approaches to photography continue to define contemporary photographs, while being the foundation for many related movements, such as Documentary, Street photography, Photojournalism, and even later Abstract photography.

walker evans

“To photography truthfully and effectively is to see beneath the surfaces and record the qualities of nature and humanity which live or aren’t latent in all things”

Edward western

Key works:

Straight photography emphasizes and engages with the camera's own technical capability to produce images sharp in focus and rich in detail. The term generally refers to photographs that are not manipulated, either in the taking of the image or by darkroom or digital processes, but sharply depict the scene or subject as the camera sees it.

Methods/ techniques/ processes:

Modernism

Time period:

Key characteristics/ conventions :

Artists associated:

Key works:

Methods/ techniques/ processes:

Post Modernism

Postmodernism was the collective name given
to the shattering of modernism. In
photography this was the direct challenge to
the ideal of fine art photography whose values
were established on an anti-commercial stance.
At the end of 1970s artists suddenly began to
use the codes and conventions of commercial
photography against itself

Postmodernists see all kinds of things as text, including photographs, and insist that
all texts need to be read critically. For postmodernists a text is different from
modernists’ notion of a work. A work is singular, speaking in one voice, that of the
author, which leads the reader to look for one meaning. For postmodernists many
readings (interpretations and understandings) of a text or a work of art are
desirable - no single reading can be conclusive or complete. Postmodernism also explores power and the
way economic and social forces exert that
power by shaping the identities of individuals
and entire cultures. Unlike modernists,
postmodernists place little or no faith in the
unconscious as a source of creative and
personal authenticity. They value art not for
universality and timelessness but for being
imperfect, low-brow, accessible, disposable,
local and temporary. While it questions the
nature and extent of our freedom and
challenges our acquiescence to authority,
Postmodernism has been criticised for its
pessimism: it often critiques but equally often
fails to provide a positive vision or redefinition
of what it attacks.

 2nd world war disrupted modernity project. Anything that was new at beginning of 20th century e.g. tech, knowledge - Modernity used industrial revolution - industrial revolution turned humans against each other e.g. war, bombs, nuclear weapons - sceptics, no belief, no universal truth, - Post modern art, underlined as political motivation.

While reproduction is photography’s main
contribution to postmodernist practice, a
photograph is also readily adaptable; it can
be blown up, cropped, blurred, used in
newspapers, in a book, on a billboard. Other
formal devises used by postmodernists
practitioners are seriality, repetition,
appropriation, simulation or pastiche (which
is opposite to principles of modernity: the
autonomy, self-referentiality and
transcendence of the unique and precious
work of art.)

Time period:

1960s- now

university’s, America and Europe, people begin questioning the failing modernity project.

Key characteristics/ conventions :

Postmodernism makes references to things outside the
art work…e.g. political, cultural, social, historical,
psychological issues

Postmodernism favours the context of a work including
examining subject and the reception of the work by its
audience.

Postmodern work are aware of and make reference to
the previously hidden agendas of the art market and its
relation to art museums, dealers and critics;

Postmodern work often uses different approaches in the
construction of the work such as…eclecticism,
intertextuality, collaboration, pastiche, parody, recycling,
reconfiguration, bricolage

Artists associated:

Cindy Sherman

Her numerous alter egos cast doubts upon a definitive sense of self, and her copies of sourceless material subscribe to postmodernism's claim that originality has ceased. Deconstructing the myths we have about ourselves and our surroundings, Sherman's work is an ideal example of postmodern art.

Richard Prince

Barbara Kruger

Associated with postmodern Feminist art as well as Conceptual art, Kruger combines tactics like appropriation with her characteristic wit and direct commentary in order to communicate with the viewer and encourage the interrogation of contemporary circumstances.

Sherrie Levine

Where is originality? Parody of walker Evans

In 1981, Levine photographed reproductions of Depression-era photographs by Walker Evans, such as this famous portrait of Allie Mae Burroughs, the wife of an Alabama sharecropper. The series, entitled After Walker Evans, became a landmark of postmodernism, both praised and attacked as a feminist hijacking of patriarchal authority, a critique of the commodification of art, and an elegy on the death of modernism. Far from a high-concept cheap shot, Levine’s works from this series tell the story of our perpetually dashed hopes to create meaning, the inability to recapture the past, and our own lost illusions.

Laurie Simmons

Martha Rosler

Walter Benjamin

In the 1930s, cultural theorists, Walter
Benjamin wrote two essays on photography
that are frequently cited by current critics.
In these essays Benjamin stressed aspects
of the photographic medium different from
those that modernist photographers, like
Paul Strand and Edward Weston were
advocating. While they heralded the
honesty of the medium and the infinite
detail of the negative and the beautiful
photographic print, Benjamin pointed out,
that unlike the painting, the photograph is
infinitely reproducible.

Key works:

Tableaux-

Tableaux photography is a style of photography in which a pictorial narrative is conveyed through a single image as opposed to a series of images which tell a story such as in photojournalism and documentary photography. This style is sometimes also referred to as ‘staged’ or ‘constructed photography’ and tableaux photographs makes
references to fables, fairy tales, myths and unreal and real events from a variety of sources such as paintings, film, theatre, literature and the media. Other tableaux photographs offer a much more ambiguous and open-ended description of something that are subjective to
interpretation by the viewer. Tableaux photographs are mainly exhibited in fine art galleries and museums where they are considered alongside other works of art.
Tableau photography involves a performance
enacted before the camera and embraces
studio portraiture and other more or less
elaborate peopled scenarios in constructed
settings directed or manipulated by the
photographer to suggest a story. The word
tableau derives from tableaux vivant (plural)
which in French means ‘living picture’ and the
term describes staged groups of artist’s
models often using dramatic costumes,
carefully posed, motionless without speaking
and theatrically lit, recreating paintings ‘on
stage’. Before radio, film and television,
tableaux vivants were popular forms of
entertainment in the Victorian and Edwardian
era.

Methods/ techniques/ processes:

PICTORIALISM

time period : 1880 – 1920

Key characteristics/ conventions : to make photography an accepted art form – was influenced by allegory paintings – was to separate photography as an art form from photography used towards various scientific and documentary purposes.

Artists associated: Louis Dagueree, Alfred Stieglitz,
Henry Peach Robinson, Clarence Hudson White

Key works: Daguerreotype, Calotype

Influences: One of the key figures in establishing both the definition and direction of pictorialism was American Alfred Stieglitz, who began as an amateur but quickly made the promotion of pictorialism his profession and obsession.

Methods/ techniques/ processes: gum printing, putting Vaseline on a lens, using specific chemicals

REALISM / STRAIGHT PHOTOGRAPHY

Time period: 1915 – up until this day

Key characteristics/ conventions : to photograph things as they were without any manipulation

Artists associated: Paul Strand (inspired by cubism), Walker Evans, Edward Western

Key works: Walker Evans – subway series, The Stone Breakers – Gustave Courbet

Influences: Within the Realism Art movement, artists moved away from the previously Romantic style that had dictated artistic creation in favor of capturing a truthful representation of life. This led scenes, objects, and subjects to be depicted in a meticulous, accurate, and detailed way.

Methods/ techniques/ processes: uses the camera and photograph to gather information

MODERNISM

Time period: 1910 – 1950

Key characteristics/ conventions : clean lines, sharp focus and repetition of form.

Artists associated: Olive Cotton, Alfred Stieglitz

Key works:

• Wall Street, 1915.
• Abstractions, Twin Lakes, Connecticut 1916.
• Chair, Abstract, 1916.
• Blind, 1916.
• House, Benbecula, Hebrides, 1954. .

Methods/ techniques/ processes: cropping and framing a single body part, distorting and accentuating its curves and angles.

POST-MODERNISM

Time period: 1950 – to this day

Key characteristics/ conventions : explores power and the way economic and social forces exert that power by shaping the identities of individuals and entire cultures

Artists associated: Lee Friedlander, William Eggleston, Jeff Wall, Andreas Gursky

Key works: Postmodernism makes references to things outside the art work…e.g. political, cultural, social, historical,
psychological issues

Methods/ techniques/ processes: Bricolage, surrealism, expressionism, intertextuality, eclecticism

As a teenager, Fred Mortagne shot his friends skateboarding through the historic city centre of his home Lyon. He grew to film and photograph some of skateboarding’s most iconic characters. Bit by bit, Mortagne began to blend still photography into his film. “I became used to visualising angles that would be good for photography, but didn’t necessarily work for video”, employing a 24-90mm lens with a high ISO so he can get a better grain within his images he has become known for picturing from angles no one else sees. Mortagne got one of his earliest shots of a skateboarder coursing through a hotels carpark while leaning off a balcony of a hotel room on the 17th floor.

Nearly 25 years since Mortagne started filming skaters he released his first photobook titled “Attraper Au Vol” (Catch in the Air) and features images of skaters on locations all over the world. “With skateboarding, you travel a lot trying to find new spots, we skate around modern buildings which often also happen to be very photogenic”. Mortagne explains that when you film skateboarders it is very close up so you lose the dimension of where the skateboarders fully are, and he wanted to recapture that dimension within his photography.

“Attraper Au Vol”

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Attraper au vol (Catch in the Air) is the culmination of Mortagne’s photographic career, from 2000 to 2015. A feast of lines and angles, his black-and-white compositions blend his subjects into their environments, offering an abstract perspective on architecture, geometry and the human figure. “Well, it’s my first major book. We didn’t even really have to talk about it but it was obvious we would just go dig through my whole photo library. So I dug out a lot of things. Obviously all the famous stuff. And then actually there’s also a lot of new material that I shot that makes up almost half the book too.”

There are three island territories within the British Isles that are known as Crown Dependencies; these are the Bailiwicks of Jersey and Guernsey which make up Channel Islands, and the Isle of Man. The Crown Dependencies are not part of the United Kingdom, but are self-governing possessions of the British Crown.

FINANCIAL RELATIONSHIP

Independent research demonstrates that Jersey adds a net £14 billion to the UK economy every year, supporting an estimated 250,000 British jobs. This economic benefit is dependent upon Jersey’s independence in setting political and fiscal policy. Jersey’s banks attract over £80 billion of funding from markets outside the UK sterling zone and provide 1.5% of the funding of the whole UK banking sector. The Island is also a conduit for almost £0.5 trillion of foreign investment into the UK, much of which might may not reach the sterling zone otherwise.

ECONOMIC RELATIONSHIP

Jersey necessarily imports an array of goods and services to meet the needs of the population. The vast majority of these imports come to the Island from the United Kingdom. Reciprocally, the UK is also a major export market for many of the goods and services provided by businesses and industries in Jersey, including high-value produce such as Jersey Royals, oysters, and dairy products. The majority of Jersey’s communications links (flight paths, shipping routes and digital traffic) are with the UK. Jersey has strong links with the UK business community and, in particular, the City of London in its capacity as an International Finance Centre. Jersey provides vital liquidity and makes a significant contribution to the UK’s economy.

HISTORY AND BACKGROUND

The United Kingdom is Jersey’s closest international partner. Deep social, cultural, economic and constitutional links between us have been built up and maintained over hundreds of years. Jersey’s relationship with the English Crown began with the Norman invasion of England in 1066, after which William the Conqueror sat as both William I of England and Duke of Normandy, the latter of which Jersey was a part. The cultural links between Jersey and the UK have developed significantly since the end of the Second World War. Nearly a third of the resident population in Jersey were born in other parts of Britain meaning there are strong family links between this Island and the UK. The majority of international phone and digital traffic from the island goes to the UK.

Carolle Benitah

Carolle Bénitah was a French Moroccan photographer, who worked for ten years as a fashion designer before turning to photography in 2001 she explores memory, family and the passage of time. Often pairing old family snapshots with handmade accents, such as embroidery, beading and ink drawings, Bénitah seeks to reinterpret her own history as daughter, wife, and mother.

Benitah took old family photos and made them into new ones but with her version of the story and her feelings towards the people and the photos. She used different styles to re-interpret her own history. For example, she used embroidery on many of her pieces as a way to express her thoughts and experiences, or on some, she used gold paint to cover a part of somebody or she would cover everyone and leave the background black and white.

“Those moments, fixed on paper, represented me, spoke about me and my family told things about my identity, my place in the world, my family history and its secrets, the fears that constructed me, and many other things that contributed to who I am today”

Benitah started to become interested in her old family photos when she was looking through a family album, the photos she was looking at were taken 40 years earlier, but she could not remember the moments that were in these images and what followed those special moments. Benitah felt that those photographs represented her, showed things about her family as well as told people about their identity and her place in the world. She stated those photos “contributed to who I am today”.

Benitah decided to explore the memories of her childhood so that she could understand who she was and define her identity. She started by looking into the photos that she found in her family albums. She chose snapshots because they related to memories and to loss. She saw these photos as fragments from her past, she ordered them, scanned them and printed them so that she didn’t do anything directly to the original photographs. Once Benitah made the image choice she wanted to start telling her version of the story, she then turned her attention to her own history with a new perspective as there were 40 years of distance and life experience.

“I make holes in paper until I am not hurting anymore.”

One of Carolle Benitah’s most unique features of her work is the way she manipulates the photos, she uses needlework, embroidery, beads and ink. She wanted to use embroidery as it is a primarily feminine activity and in the past women embroidered hoping for the man’s return to the home. This style was linked to when she grew up as a girl in a “good family” and used to learn how to do this. Even though Benitah knew that there was nothing subversive about embroidery she wanted to twist it with her purpose. she uses this style of work as a decorative function so that she could re-interpret her own history and expose its failings. The activities she put into her work to dispute the stereotype of embroidery being a sign of a good education with well-behaved girls, a wise spouse and a loving mother.

Carolle Benitah believed that each stitch she made with the needle, that each hole is putting death to her demons and she states that it’s like an ‘exorcism’.

Carolle Benitah – Information

Image analysis

I like how this photograph is manipulated in such a smile way, such as the stitching around each person and the shadows but can convey such a powerful message. Benitah claimed that she liked to use stitching in her photos as she felt that with each hole she was putting death to her demons. When I look at the picture I think that when growing up she had strict parents which had a very specific way they raised their children which could have led to Benitah feeling suffocated and trapped within her family. I enjoy that she is able to portray this through a simple activity such as the stitching with red string. Another feature that I feel brings the full manipulation together is the colour of the sting, red. Red is a colour that can be linked with anger, danger and love which I think a the feelings she wanted to put forward in her projects as she wanted to show case her family and how she grew up and was raised.