Gustave Le Gray

‘Since its first discovery, photography has made rapid progress, especially as regards the instruments employed in its practice. It now remains for the artist to raise it to its proper position among the fine arts.’

Gustave focused on sea and sky photography. Born in Paris (1820) and trained to be a painter, 27 years later he started doing photography. Even before making the marine images, he became one of the most renowned pioneers of the new art. His architectural, landscape and portrait photographs, his writings, teaching and inventions were all highly influential.

The great wave

The Great Wave, the most dramatic of his seascapes, combines Le Gray’s technical mastery with expressive grandeur. He took the view on the Mediterranean coast near Montpellier. At the horizon, the clouds are cut off where they meet the sea. This indicates the join between two separate negatives. The combination of two negatives allowed Le Gray to achieve tonal balance between sea and sky on the final print. It gives a more truthful sense of how the eye, rather than the camera, perceives nature. When first shown, the luminous, shimmering effects amid Le Gray’s otherwise dark seascapes were often mistaken for moonlight. It is easy to see why this misconception arose in these monochrome images where darkness encroaches towards the edges of the scene. In fact, he achieved the moonlight effect by pointing the camera in the direction of the sun during daylight.

It was not only their beauty that attracted high praise but also Le Gray’s technical mastery in capturing apparently instantaneous views. To arrest breaking waves was an impressive accomplishment at a period when exposures required many seconds rather than split seconds.

Most photographers found it impossible to achieve proper exposure for both landscape and sky in a single picture. This usually meant sacrificing the sky, which was then over-exposed. Le Gray’s innovation was to print some of the seascapes from two separate negatives – one exposed for the sea, the other for the sky – on a single sheet of paper.

Dafner talmor

Dafna Talmor is a visual artist that took abstract photographs. She is an artist that lecturers based in London whose practice encompasses photography, spatial interventions, curation and collaborations. Her photographs are included in public collections of Victoria and Albert Museum, Deutsche Bank, Hiscox and in private collections internationally. 

Comparing both landscapes:

Similarities and differences

Both show the beach and the waves. However, Le Gray’s is more obvious as it’s how a usual landscape looks and is easy for people to quickly recognise that it’s a landscape. Whereas Talmor’s is more abstract and is like a collage, picking apart different landscapes, this is more creative. If I had to choose which landscape I’m drawn to the most it would be Talmor’s as it gives off a sense of mystery where you haven’t got the full image, instead just the cut-out parts of the image, but can use your imagination and ‘put the pieces’ together.

These two images are very contrasting to each other, one having very neutral colours and the other having lots of bright colours. Mandy Barker has used lots of small objects, 350 lighters all together in one image, George Marazakis has used one large object in the background of the image, even though the images are completely different, they both have the same message, which is pollution. Both images have repetition within them, Barker’s being the lighters and Marazakis’ being the lines along the road. In Barker’s the image has been purposefully arranged and edited to look how it is and have the lighters in the positions they are in, Marazakis’ image seems to have been taken by chance, even if it hasn’t, it looks as though he was driving along that road, saw the image in front of him and took it.

My aim is to attempt to create images as similar to Axel Brauns ‘human-altered landscapes’. To achieve this, I need to focus on making sure the weather and location is suitable for my photoshoots. I am going to do 3 separate photoshoots and aim to take 100 photos for each one.

Locations

PHOTOSHOOT ONE: (100 pictures)

St Catherines woods, Bouley Bay woods and any area with an excessive amount of trees.

PHOTOSHOOT TWO: (100 pictures)

Reservoirs, specifically Val De La Mar, Queens valley.

PHOTOSHOOT THREE: (100 pictures)

Electric towers, any industrial buildings.

Why these locations? – How does it corelate with Anthropocene?

PHOTOSHOOT ONE:

I picked to do woods as i want to try photograph tree stumps and any fallen trees. Also, to try find any land erosion which in this weather will be easier to find. This relates to Anthropocene as erosion degrades land, which means it can support fewer plants that can take in climate-warming carbon dioxide.

PHOTOSHOOT TWO:

I have picked to do reservoirs as the man-made structures located in usually countryside’s and in the central of certain habitats, I’m mainly using this as a location to do this photoshoot as Axel Braun has a photo of what seems to be a retaining wall which hold the water in the reservoir in structure which has inspired me.

PHOTOSHOOT THREE:

I’ve chosen to do electric towers mainly as they are also located in countryside’s and can be seen near rivers etc. This relates to Anthropocene as its man-made structures invading natural wildlife areas. Also inspired by Axel Bruan.

Gustave Le Gray:

Gustave Le Gray was a French artist who was born in 1820. in around 1847 he began and focused on photography and by doing so he became one of the most renowned pioneers of the new art producing many influential pieces, mainly of landscapes, portraits or architecture, such as the one below. Eventually he moved to Egypt and became a drawing instructor after he became bankrupt and left his business in 1860 despite his success. After moving he kept taking images and made photography a fun hobby, he stayed there and shortly died after in 1882.

The Great Wave was taken on the Mediterranean cost, southern France, in 1857, he took multiple images to create it, i.e., he would have used one image for the horizon and one for the sea. This allowed him to achieve a good balance between the two and shows the viewers how he would have seen it in his own eyes. A journal of the photographic society, at the time, wrote about his image calling it a ‘glow of glory’ with ‘liquid light’.

Dafna Talmor:

Dafna Talmor was an photographer who used multiply images and cut the out carefully layering them to create unique images. It is a project that she started in 2009 of a collection of images that she began taking in 2003. She has now made a book of her images arising in 2018, with great publicity.

Both could be described as landscape pictures. What kinds of landscapes do they describe?

I think that Le Gray’s image describes a more dark and gloomy landscape with the waves breaking and heavy clouds. Whilst Talmor’s images are more complicated with sharp landscapes and detail, looking more suburban.

What similarities do you notice about these two pictures?

Both the photographers have taken images of landscapes and have edited them in some way to make them more intriguing. They both have lots of depth and detail throughout.

What differences do you notice?

Le Gray’s images are one landscape and are very clear, whereas Talmor’s are very roughly cut and have more texture.

What words/phrases best describe each of these landscapes?

Le Gray’s: dark, gloomy, heavy

Talmor’s: sharp, detailed, rigid

In which of these landscapes would you prefer to live? 

I would rather live in Talmor’s landscapes as it looks more calm and peaceful as opposed to Le Gray’s is more storm like weather.

The Great Wave, the most dramatic of his seascapes, combines Le Gray’s technical mastery with expressive grandeur. He took the view on the Mediterranean coast near Montpellier. At the horizon, the clouds are cut off where they meet the sea. This indicates the join between two separate negatives. The combination of two negatives allowed Le Gray to achieve tonal balance between sea and sky on the final print. It gives a more truthful sense of how the eye, rather than the camera, perceives nature.

This ongoing body of work consists of staged landscapes made of collaged and montaged colour negatives shot across different locations, merged and transformed through the act of slicing and splicing. The resulting photographs are a conflation, ‘real’ yet virtual and imaginary. This conflation aims to transform a specific place – initially loaded with personal meaning, memories and connotations – into a space of greater universality. In dialogue with the history of photography, ‘Constructed Landscapes’ references early Pictorialist processes of combination printing as well as Modernist experiments with film.

Image Comparison

Both could be described as landscape pictures. What kinds of landscapes do they describe?

Gustave Le Gray’s describes a coastal land scape with waves crashing on a dark gloomy day. Dafna Talmor describes a calm and quiet landscape from the dark warm colours coming from the ripped areas on the photograph.

What similarities do you notice about these two pictures?

A similarity that I notice is the sea is in both of the images, in Talmors image the sea is hidden within the rips and darkness of the photograph. The images are both also very dark and gloomy and ominous.

What differences do you notice?

The difference between these images is that Gustave’s photograph is a landscape and Dafna’s image is an abstract image. The landscape image has soft gentle lines whereas the abstract image has sharp hash edges.

What words/phrases best describe each of these landscapes?

Ominous, dark days, seas, sharp, cold

In which of these landscapes would you prefer to live? 

Gustave Le Grays, as the photograph is more inviting

Gustave Le Gray:

Gustave Le Gray was born in Paris in 1820. He took up photography around 1847 and his inventions and photographs became very influential.

The Great Wave, the most dramatic of his seascapes, combines Le Gray’s technical mastery with expressive grandeur. He took the seascape on the Mediterranean coast. You can see that the clouds are cut off where they meet the sea. This indicates that two separate negatives have been joined. The combination of two negatives allowed Le Gray to achieve tonal balance between sea and sky on the final print. It gives a more truthful sense of how the eye perceives nature, rather than the camera.

Dafna Talmor:

Dafna Talmor is a London based photographer who creates collages of different landscapes to to make a staged landscape by, slicing and cutting out the negatives. Dafana Talmor’s constructed landscapes shows the creative process photographers go through to get a final image.

For the ‘Gold Circle’ image it shows many techniques used such as slicing to construct the man made features in the final outcome.

Comparision:

Both of these images could be described as landscape images. ‘The great wave’ describes the landscape as dramatic landscape with the rough sea and the dark, heavy clouds. However the ‘Gold Circle’ describes the landscape as mysterious and creative, leaving the audience wondering what landscapes make up the final image. Both of the images have been manipulated to remove the negatives and are of seascapes. The differences in the images are that ‘The great wave’ is a more stereotypical landscape image made up of the same landscape whereas the ‘Gold Circle’ is more abstract and is a combination of landscapes .

Gustave Le Gray

Le Gray was born in 1820, originally working on painting, until he took up photography in 1847. He had a smart ability to take well made landscape images, with his writing, teaching and overall photography skills becoming very influential.

One of his most famous photograph taken was called “The Great Wave”. What’s good about this image is his use of contrast with black and white, even more the ability to take an image like this during his period shows great skill. The use of a horizon, crashing dramatic waves, with a still pier, and a contrast of light in the clouds create the picture.

His images create a certain aesthetic, and during this period and even now these landscape images show perfect alignment for the camera, and placing in what he wants to include into the image. It feels like its giving off a radiant effect.

Dafna Talmor

Dafna talmor is a great modern day photographer/artist who uses a very unique technique that works well for her landscape end results.

What she does is take multiple landscape images around the same area, or sometimes even in completely different areas. Cuts them out, and sticks them back together to create her own synthetic type of landscape image. Kind of reminds me of Pablo Picasso.

Comparison

What I like about the both of these photographers is that they almost use the same technique of manipulation. As Gustave was during the 1840’s onwards, his way of manipulation towards the image was through the placing of the camera specifically facing the sun, whilst including other aspects in his imagery. Compared the Dafna, she uses the same technique of manipulation but almost in a newer modern aspect, by physically cutting out multiple landscape images and placing it into one landscape image like a puzzle.

What is completely different between the two is that Gustave only uses one image to represent his landscape, whereas Dafna uses multiple, as if you have to see it from more of a mental point of view rather than a physical imagery point of view.

Both could be described as landscape pictures. What kinds of landscapes do they describe?

• ‘The Great Wave’ describes an idyllic and romanticised landscape. Presenting a scene of the coast in France, Gustave describes what seems to be a stormy day. The thick and dark clouds creates an intense environment, and the choppy waves on the bottom half compliment this. Although they are separate negatives merged together, he creates a overall idealised scene.
• Talmor’s image describes a more abstract image. Her technique of collaging images give an almost nostalgic sense to her work. The original images were probably similar to Gustave’s – romanticised. However she has leant away from the simple way of presenting work. The image shows splices of the sea, and gives the viewer a chance to see the scene from multiple images and angles.

What similarities do you notice about these two pictures?

They are both based around images of the sea, however the real similarity is the idea of using more than one image. Both artists combined more than one negative to get a final product. They are also both faded. Gustave’s image is faded and has texture due to its age, however Talmor’s photos are recent. She may have created this effect to give the collage life and a story behind it.

What differences do you notice?

The first image is quite simple, and the second clearly makes the viewer take time to understand what’s going on. Gustave’s photo is from one angle and is one image, contrasting to Talmor’s collage.

What words/phrases best describe each of these landscapes?

• I think the ‘The Great Wave’ is best described as romanticised.

• For Talmor’s photo I would say its a mixture of words: Abstract, creative and nostalgic. I think this because the faded edges, the tint on the images, the collage and the idea of the beach creates a sentimental though of childhood.

Keith Arrnatt

Keith Arnatt, Plastic Bags (Monday Morning), 1990

These bags both reflect and diffuse the surrounding daylight, highlighting the varying hues of the rubbish so that the scenes appear brightly coloured and partly abstract. Although the types of rubbish shown and their exact position within the compositions varies slightly, each is presented at an apparently fixed distance from the camera and this, as well as the similar lighting effects used across the five works, creates a sense of cohesion in the series.

Arnatt took the photographs in 1988–9 on multiple trips that he made to the Coleford Tip near his home in Tintern, Monmouthshire. He did not use any artificial light when shooting the frames, relying solely on daylight.

Plastic bag pollution

Every year, around 500 billion plastic bags are used worldwide. 500,000,000,000. Five hundred followed by
nine zeros. That’s a lot of bags. So many that over one million bags are being used every minute and they’re
damaging our environment.

Plastic bags are difficult and costly to recycle and most end up on landfill sites where they take around 300
years to photodegrade. They break down into tiny toxic particles that contaminate the soil and waterways and
enter the food chain when animals accidentally ingest them.
But the problems surrounding waste plastic bags starts long before they photodegrade. Our planet is becoming
increasingly contaminated by our unnecessary use of plastic bags.
Big black bin liners, plastic carrier bags carrying advertising logos, clear sandwich bags and a variety of other
forms are all polluting our environment. They’re lightweight, handy and easily discarded. Too easily discarded

dangers to sea life

Plastic bags are now amongst the top 12 items of debris most often found along coastlines ranging from
Spitzbergen in the north to the Falklands in the south.
Animals and sea creatures are hurt and killed every day by discarded plastic bags – a dead turtle with a plastic
bag hanging from its mouth isn’t a pleasant sight but mistaking plastic bags for food is commonplace amongst
marine animals. Plastic clogs their intestines and leads to slow starvation. Others become entangled in plastic
bags and drown.
Because plastic bags take hundreds of years to break down, every year our seas become ‘home’ to more and
more bags that find their way there through our sewers and waterways. Every bag that’s washed down a drain
during rainfall ends up in the sea – every bag that’s flushed down a toilet (many small bags are), ends up in the
sea – every bag that’s blown into a river will most likely end up in the sea.
Add to that the enormous amounts of energy that’s used every year in order to manufacture these bags and it’s
no surprise that pressure is being put on governments to make changes and consumers to re-think their
attitudes.

Mandy Barker

Mandy Barker is an international award-winning photographic artist whose work involving marine plastic debris for more than 13 years, has received global recognition. Working with scientists she aims to raise awareness about plastic pollution in the world’s oceans, highlighting the harmful affect on marine life, climate change and ultimately ourselves – leading the viewer to take action.

source:

All her work is collages of debris that she finds on the beach. I personally believe this is an effective method of highlighting pollution in a physical way as. i am attracted to her work as each image is similar but very different at the same time. i also think that the black background is an effective against the bright colours of the balls in the photo below.

in this project Mandy posted on social media for people to collect footballs to create a collage and to project how impactful plastics are to the environment. in total 992 marine debris balls were recovered from the world’s oceans in just 4 months. 769 footballs and pieces of, with 223 other types of balls were collected from 41 different countries and islands and from 144 different beaches, by 89 members of the public.

The photo above shows the debris of balloons after being released into the air and traveling up to 5 miles away and bursting, leaving them floating in the sea to either be washed up onto the beach or be eaten by sea creatures. This is an effective image, due to the harsh contrast between the black background and the bright vibrant colours of the balloons. Starting from the top left hand side corner, you can see the larger pieces on rubbish slowly get smaller due to the plastics degrading as you follow it down to the bottom right hand side corner. This creates the effect of of the plastic moving or even sinking.

 Mandy arranged discarded PVC fishermen’s gloves to look like coral and then photographed them in her home studio. “Corals are destroyed when discarded fishing equipment – such as overalls, gloves, damaged lobster pots and nets – drags along the ocean floor,” she explains. Taken on a Canon EOS 500D with a Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8L lens at 2 sec, f/16 and ISO 400. source: