GUSTAVE LE GRAY

Jean-Baptiste Gustave Le Gray was born 30 August 1820 was a French painter and photographer who was often referred to the “the most important French photographer of the nineteenth century” because of his innovate and famous techniques. He began by studying painting in Switzerland and lived in Italy between 1843-1846 and painted portraits and scenes of the countryside. He then crossed into photography in the early years of photography’s development.

DAFNA TALMOR

Based in London, Dafna Talmor is a artist, photographer and lecturer. She creates her work by cutting up two negatives before merging them back together while being developed in the darkroom.

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

Both describe seascapes.

What similarities do you notice about these two pictures?

They both have film cut ups, Dafna Talmors may be more obvious but Gustave Le Gray also cut and stuck his photos back together to create collages of the pictures. They both used a similar technique of cutting up the image into multiple pieces before taking them back to the darkroom to reconstruct together. I have highlighted the areas in these two photos:

What differences do you notice?

Gustave Le Gray focused more on more on seascapes whereas Dafna Talmor pictured everything from mountain landscapes to seascapes. Gustave Le Gray also used to images of the same place (each with different exposures) and put them together whereas Dafna Talmor cut up the same images and put them all back together instead of two individual pictures.

What words/phrases best describe each of these landscapes?

Gustave Le Gray: classic, simple, moving, exciting

Dafna Talmor: artistic, different, abnormal, mysterious