Gustave Le Gray: Sea and Sky Photography

Le Gray was born in 1820 near Paris and trained there as a painter. Around 1847 he took up 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 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.

Dafna Talmor — Constructed Landscapes

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, ‘Constructed Landscapes’ references early Pictorialist processes of combination printing as well as Modernist experiments with film, the work also engages with contemporary discourses on manipulation, the analogue/digital divide and the effects these have on photography’s status. 

comparison

Both the artistes refer to their work as compositions of man made structures and land, its also both described as constructed landscapes as the photo doesn’t show the truth of the content in the photo. The similarities in both their work is that they both have cut up film negatives to create a creative collage to create one photo. Differences within the two photographers is that Le Grays combination of the two negatives he has used has a clean finish and there is not an obvious mark of the merge of the photographs, compared to Talmor her work shows the obvious marks of the film cut up’s.

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

Both of these images show two different types of seascapes

What similarities do you notice about these two pictures?

they both have the sea included.

What differences do you notice?

the image on the right is clearly a few different photos collaged together, whereas, the image on the right is less obvious and smoothly put together

What words/phrases best describe each of these landscapes?

dramatic, due to the angry looking clouds in the image on the left as-well-as the dark harsh lines on the right hand side image.

In which of these landscapes would you prefer to live? 

i would prefer to live in the image on he right as the photographer has chosen to take out all of the negatives out of the image.

Images i created:

 i used the Lasso tool on photoshop to select the part of the image i wanted to use.

I then used the paintbrush to create the darker parts which Talmor would have used bleach to create it, i turned the harshness of the brush down, made the brush size smaller and turned the opacity down and proceeded to go over the outline on the parts i cut out.

The technique of constructing landscapes is one that has been used in many instances and for different reasons. Whether for practical or artistic reasons, the artists have been exploiting their medium for many years.

The first example of this that we see is the work of Gustave Le Gray, taken near Montpellier, France in 1857, titled The Great Wave. This image’s origin was in Le Gray’s struggles to create an image that was equally representative of the darker regions of the scene and also able to capture the wild movement of the sea without it becoming entirely blurred. This led him to choose to use two different exposures in two different images – one of the sky and one of the sea. He then of course had to merge the two together to form the landscape we see in the final photo. Owing to its period, this process would have been lengthy and complicated; involving manipulating the actual negatives to fit together and look seamless. This was therefore a pioneering image for Le Gray and as the first of its kind, it has inspired artists through time.

One example of an artist inspired by Le Gray’s image could be Dafna Talmor, whose series of Constructed Landscapes II employs the same physical cutting process in a darkroom. Her images are made up of other images taken in different locations (still on film despite their recency) before being cut up and spliced together to form these collages.

This technique does inspire the question of a new possibility to photography – can we use photography to create a new medium of art through both physical and digital (examples seen in the work of Andreas Gursky) manipulation?

Gustave Le Gray

Le Gray was born in 1820 near Paris and trained there as a painter. Around 1847 he took up photography. 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.

His most famous photographs was The Great Wave, which is a dramatic piece due to the multiple techniques he used to create it, he took two negatives to create one photograph.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.

Dafna Talmor

Talmor is a London based photographer who practices encompasses photography, spatial interventions, curation and collaborations.

She creates her work by using two different negatives and cutting them up with a scalpel to merge the photos together when developing them. Talmor combines colour negatives of landscapes that she has been collecting for years and transforms them into visually striking compositions that are devoid of man made structures.

Similarities of Talmor and Le Grays work.

Both the artistes refer to their work as compositions of man made structures and land, its also both described as constructed landscapes as the photo doesn’t show the truth of the content in the photo.

The similarities in both their work is that they both have cut up film negatives to create a creative collage to create one photo.

Differences within the two photographers is that Le Grays combination of the two negatives he has used has a clean finish and there is not an obvious mark of the merge of the photographs, compared to Talmor her work shows the obvious marks of the film cut up’s.

I would describe these photos as artistic, abnormal and unique due to the irregular technique used to create the photos.

If i was to choose where to live out of the two photos i would choose to live in the first one, Talmors work due to the clam water and hoe the sky is less cloudy, it seems a lot more peaceful compared to Le Grays photo as the sea is rough implying bad weather and the clouds are darker.

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.

Though he was trained as a painter, Gustave Le Gray made his mark in the emerging medium of photography. An experimenter and technical innovator, Le Gray pioneered the use of the paper negative in France and developed a waxed-paper negative that produced sharper-focus prints.

Gustave Grey was born in August 30 1820 and died on July 30 1884 Gustave Grey was know as on of the most important French photographers of the eighteenth century he was noted as a teacher for some other great photographers. he
pioneered the use of the paper negative in France and developed a waxed-paper negative. this is why he is known in photography history for his innovation in the early days of photography.

Gustave Le Gray was born in 1820 in Villiers-le-Bel, Val-d’Oise. He was originally trained as a painter. He even exhibited at the salon in 1848 and 1853. He then crossed over to photography in the early years of its development. He made his first daguerreotypes by 1847. His early photographs included portraits; scenes of nature such as Fontainebleau Forest; and buildings such as châteaux of the Loire Valley.

Le Gray published a treatise on photography, which went through four editions, in 1850, 1851, 1852, and 1854. In 1855 Le Gray opened a “lavishly furnished” studio. At that time, becoming progressively the official photographer of Napoleon III, he became a successful portraitist. His most famous work dates from this period, 1856 to 1858, especially his seascapes. The studio was a fancy place, but in spite of his artistic success, his business was a financial failure: the business was poorly managed and ran into debts

Anthropocene is a period of time which we are currently in as human activities have impacted the environment enough to constitute a distinct geological change. This is evident as earths temperature is rising rapidly every year and is showing no signs of slowing down.

Initial Ideas:

For my final outcome I will do a landscape project and abstract project, looking at the photographers David Maisel and Vilde Rolfsen.

What is Anthropocene ?

The Anthropocene Epoch is an unofficial unit of geologic time, used to describe the most recent period in Earth’s history when human activity started to have a significant impact on the planet’s climate and ecosystems.

How and why are photographers exploring this concept?

The time many people refer to as “Anthropocene”. Humans have become the single most influential species on the planet, causing significant global warming and other changes to land, environment, water, organisms and the atmosphere. The world is getting progressively more polluted so photographers are trying to raise awareness about this issue.

Mandy barker

Mandy Barker is an international award-winning photographic artist whose work involving plastic debris in oceans for more than 13 years. 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. her work has been published in over 50 different countries to illustrate key academic and scientific research papers about current plastic research.

Edward Burtynsky

Edward Burtynsky is a Canadian photographer and artist known for his large format photographs of industrial landscapes. He works in places around the world that represent the increasing development of industrialization and its impacts on nature and the human existence. His work often connected to the concept of sublime.

“We come from nature. There is an importance to [having] a certain reverence for what nature is because we are connected to it… If we destroy nature, we destroy ourselves” – Edward Burtynsky

Both Artists have similarities and differences in their style of work. Mandy barker focuses on collecting plastic waste and laying them out to give them a sense of characteristic and beauty but also aims to spread awareness about the severity of todays pollution. Where as Edward Burtynsky takes photos of the more overall view of pollution and how it is manipulating our surroundings and our lifestyle. His style of art work gives the world a more dystopian look.

Robert Adams (born May 8, 1937) is an American photographer who has focused on the changing landscape of the American West. His work first came to importance in the mid-1970s through his book ‘The New West’ (1974) and his participation in the exhibition ‘New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape’ in 1975.

This image is in black and white and has the darkest part of the image being the shadow cast under the mobile home and the lightest being the walls of the homes.

The composition of the image is 2 homes next to a road, with one cloud in the sky.