WHAT IS NEW OBJECTIVITY?
New objectivity (Neue Sachlichkeit) was an art movement that originated in Germany during the 1920s against the expressionism movement. It tries to focus more on the objective world than the abstract and idealistic world the expressionists created. The photographs usually contained objects or plants in a plain and simple way, removing any conceptual ideas.
EXAMPLES
Albert Renger-Patzsch
Karl Blossfeldt
Walker Evans
RESPONSE
Photoshoot one:
Photoshoot two:
“Photographers have to impose order, bring structure to what they photograph. It is inevitable. A photograph without structure is like a sentence without grammar—it is incomprehensible, even inconceivable. “
– Stephen Shore
Photographs are composed of two main elements; visual and formal. There is something within an image that can be used to convey and enhance meaning, often to do with beauty, photography isn’t unique in most of its formal and visual elements, it strays from other art forms through elements of framing, time, focus, and flatness, something that cannot be achieved through methods such as painting.
The formal and visual elements include:
Light: Which direction is the light coming from? How strong is the light/How thick are the shadows? Is the lighting natural/from studio lights?
Lines: Are any structures creating outlines/lines in the image? Are the lines straight/curved/thick/thin? Are they parallel/perpendicular? Do they create a shape
Repetition: Are there any patterns in the image? Are they created by lines or shapes within the photo? Are there any reflections?
Texture: What kind of surface does it look like the subjects within the photograph have? Rough/smooth? How much depth is there in the composition/shapes?
Shape: What kind of shapes are present in the photo? What are they composed of? Do they create repetition within the image?
Tone: What mood do the colours within the image create? Are there darker/lighter tones dominating the image? Which areas are the brightest and darkest? Is there an equal level of light and dark?
Composition: How is the photograph staged? Is it organised? Does the order/angle create any shapes? Is the rule of thirds present?
Colour: What colours are present throughout the composition? Is the image monochrome or in colour? Do the colours suggest mood/danger/nature/love, etc.? Are they heavily saturated or muted?
Within our pair, we picked out lots of things we noticed in the image with the grid further up this post. We noticed things like there being a lot of square or rectangular shapes or the different tones and shadowing throughout the image. The image is quite a ‘busy’ image as we have mentioned on our analysis sheet and again even though there are lots of different shapes throughout the entire image there seems to be a bit of a pattern with squares or rectangles.
Photography is the art of taking and processing images. The actual word “photography” means ‘drawing with light’. The definition shows how creative photography actually is, it also means that you can manipulate the image to make it look better.
The main elements of photography are shutter speed, ISO and aperture. Shutter speed determines whether or not a moving image is in focus, which also determines the quality of the image. ISO is the camera’s sensitivity to light, the lower the ISO, the less sensitive the film is to light.
David Campany talks about how impactful photography is on people. It allows people to look at fixed appearances and interpret them how they want. Special moments can be captured or just simply a moment in time that you would like the remember, which can help us notice things we maybe never have noticed before. It is simple to share the images with people around the world as photography is such a mobile thing. Even if a photographer takes a photo with a certain meaning, it can lose that meaning or perhaps other people can have their own meanings of it.
“Photographs confuse as much as fascinate, conceal as much as reveal, distract as much as compel. They are unpredictable communicators.”
I agree with this statement as everyone interprets images differently and can be completely limitless. An image can affect people in different ways. ‘Distract as much as compel’ says that people can be draw to an image for different reasons to other.
What is new objectivity:After War World I, a sharp and objective style of photography emerged in Germany called New Objectivity. New Objectivity is a veristic art style, which encompasses painting, drawing, and photography, it was a movement in German art that began in the 1920s to oppose expressionism. Its rejects self-involvement and romantic idealism. This is shown through modern photographers such as Karl Blossfeldt and Albert Renger-Patzsch. Their way of working is very interesting as they focus on photographing simple objects like plants or house items that most people would have in their home, but just because the objects they photograph are not exiting does mean their work isn’t exiting , ,they have a way of capturing beauty of any item through the camera. as they photograph these objects this causes the idealized aspect of most photographs to be removed, like they did with new objectivity back in the 1920s.
These close-ups were used to aid Karl Blossfeldt teaching in the late 19th century and early 20th century about the natural beauty of nature, something which is evident in all his photographs.
formalism is marked attention to arrangement, style, or artistic means usually with corresponding de-emphasis of content, meaning it is excessive adherence and analysis of a specific photograph.
there are key aspects when analysing a photograph Technical, Contextual, Conceptual and Visual. , within those aspects there are a few key ones, with visual elements there a groups which make analysing easier e.g. colour, tone, texture, shape, pattern, line, space, with technical there is lighting, aperture, shutter speed, ISO, white balance. for contextual the aspects are going to be additional information that brings a deeper meaning adding more value to the photo, like historical context and personal context. conceptual aspects are ideas, meaning, reasoning, thought , theoretical construct, its art in which the concepts involved in the work take precedence over traditional aesthetic and material concerns.
to explore and practice all the above aspects of evaluating an image, in a group we have looked at the visual aspects of the photo created by Andre Kertesz. The main aspects we looked at are the visual aspects of the photograph, which are :
Light: Which areas of the photograph are brightest? Are there any shadows? Does the photograph allow you to guess the time of day? Is the light natural or artificial? Harsh or soft? Reflected or direct? How does light fall across the objects in the photograph?
Repetition/Shape: Are there any objects, shapes or lines which repeat and create a rhythm or pattern? Do you see echoes or reflections within the image?
Space: Is there depth to the photograph or does it seem shallow? What creates this appearance? What is placed in the foreground, middle ground and background? Are there important negative (empty) spaces in addition to positive (solid) spaces?
Texture/ value tones: If you could touch the surface of the photograph how would it feel? How do the objects in the picture look like they would feel?
Colour: What kind of colours can you see e.g. saturated, muted, complementary, primary? Is there a dominant colour? How would this image be different if it was in black and white? Does the use of colour help us understand the subject or does it work independently?
I have found a similar image to the previous one we were analyzing in class also by Andre Kertesz. Taken from a birds eye view/ from a higher point, showing people walking on the street. His work is in black and white as he worked in early 1900. This is his signature style of work and many photographs include variety of ordinary camera angles , especially at significant times of day , golden hour when the sunlight is very sharp and creates longer and more shadows then at any other time of the day.
When it comes to analyzing this picture by using the key main features and a help sheet which help focus on different aspect of the photograph, focusing for now on the visual aspects, the photograph is in black and white and because of this this can relate to contextual part of the photograph as during the times it was taken, a coloured photograph wasn’t available or produced yet , the tone , lighting , texture is what may fall int o the technical categories as well as visual because depending on the camera or its setting how much lighting is in the photo is effected by aperture, shutter speed , white balance etc. regarding this photograph it seems bright as the highlights are very defined but the spaces between people are also filled in with lots of light, the darks are also very visible on people which contrasts which the background. the shadows of people on the floor is very smooth resulting is a blended in texture of the image. when looking at line, pattern, space within the image i can say there isn’t a regular pattern of most things except little accents of grid like fence on the right corner or children’s playground equipment,e.g swing on the bottom left. the lines and shapes in the image is what shows the viewer more of what the image is off , allowing them to make sense in their mind of what is photographed this as a whole analysis correlates to conceptual aspects of the image, to why the image is how it is , what the photographer meant and what he planed to teach, show, mean about the image. this is to everyone to interpret in their own way. but looking and analyzing this image to me the light and the fact it is of children being in the playground links together a lot . because you can see more children leaving or leading towards the exit of the playground when it is a later time of day may mean that everything good has to end however it may also mean control and restriction that children have the lack of freedom , as everyday at certain times their parent may tell them to do a certain task or not to do it, like here they may tell them to leave the park, restricting children freedom. this may also be a metaphor for life in general as through children we are thought exactly that, restrictions like having to end your fun at the end of the day.
What is a montage:
Photomontage is the process of using two or more images and creating a final image out of them by either cutting, gluing, overlapping, editing or rearranging them.
Some of my own:
Firstly I opened up two of my images that I liked and that I thought went well together, in this montage I used a toy car and a little bottle with sand and shells in.
I then dragged one image on top of the other and then resized it and placed it where I wished it to go.
I then changed the opacity level to 64% so that the image was more of a blur. To blend the background I then changed the layer from normal to pin light to leave the car by itself.
Finally I cropped the image to the size that I wanted it to be so that there was not too much empty background.
Overall I like this image as it looks as if the toy car has been captured in the glass bottle. I also think that the plain background make the objects pop and stand out drawing the viewer into the image.
For my second montage I opened up two images that we the same in different colours, one in blue and one in pink.
I then dragged one image on top of the other and began cutting out circles with the elliptical marquee tool. I then clicked layer via copy and once I was happy with the amount of circles cut out I deleted the original pink image to leave the blue image and pink circles.
I am happy with how this montage turned out as it shower the viewer two versions of the image at once with the pink peering through breaking up the solid blue.
For this montage I used the same method as above however when I selected the circle I deleted it so reveal the image underneath. I think this edit is very effective and engages the viewer with the shapes and colours.
For this montage I opened two images on top of each other. I then selected half of the top image with the rectangular marquee tool, and deleted it by right clicking and then clicking layer via cut to reveal half of the image underneath. I like how this edit turned out as the blue and purple contrast well with each other drawing in the viewers eye. I have also tried to change the layer of the blue image to pin light to give it an engaging effect with the purple image in the shadows behind, as seen below.
A photomontage is a collage constructed from photographs.
Historically, the technique has been used to make political statements and gained popularity in the early 20th century (World War 1-World War 2)
Artists such as Raoul Haussman , Hannah Hoch, John Heartfield employed cut-n-paste techniques as a form of propaganda…as did Soviet artists like Aleksander Rodchenko and El Lissitsky
Photomontage has its roots in Dadaism…which is closely related to Surrrealism
WHAT IS PHOTOMONTAGE?
A photomontage is a collage constructed from photographs. Historically, the technique has been used to make political statements and gained popularity in the early 20th century (World War 1-World War 2).
Artists such as Raoul Haussman, Hannah Hoch, John Heartfield employed cut-n-paste techniques as a form of propaganda…as did Soviet artists like Aleksander Rodchenko and El Lissitsky. Photomontage has its roots in Dadaism…which is closely related to Surrrealism.
Raoul Haussman
Hannah hoch
John Heartfield
Aleksandr Rodchenko
El Lissitzky
