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.