WHO WAS GUSTAVE LE GRAY?

Gustave Le Gray was the central figure in French photography of the 1850s. Around 1847 he took up photography. Even before making the marine images, he became one of the most renowned pioneers of the new art.

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.

WHO IS DAFNA 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. 

CONSTRUCTED LANDSCAPE II:

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. Her work also engages with contemporary discourses on manipulation, the analogue/digital divide and the effects these have on photography’s status. 

WHAT ARE LANDSCAPE PICTURES?

Landscape photography shows the spaces within the world, sometimes vast and unending, but other times microscopic. Landscape photographs typically capture the presence of nature but can also focus on man-made features or disturbances of landscapes.

SIMILARIES AND DIFFERENCES BETWEEN BOTH IMAGES:

Both images show the landscape of the beach and waves. In Le Grays image it is more visually obvious as it is a stereotypical landscape image, whereas Talmors image is more abstract as it picks apart different landscapes. She creates different shapes so it gives a different composition than it does with a common landscape image.

WHAT WORDS DESCRIBE EACH LANDSCAPE:

THE GREAT WAVE: DRAMATIC, DELINEATED, CLASSIC

FROM CONSTRUCTED LANDSCAPES II: EVOCATIVE, MYSERIOUS, CREATIVE

IN WHICH LANDSCAPE WOULD YOU LIKE TO LIVE?

Dafna Talmors image gives a sense of mystery. As you look at the image it looks like a maze that you are trying to escape and figure out the missing pieces. Due to the abstract and the cut out parts of her image it can give connotations of missing pieces in a puzzle or perhaps a deeper meaning that slowly the beach and the earth a dying away and it is coming apart piece by piece.