What is new objectivity: 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 photography simply photographs objects or plants without any context or interesting backgrounds added. This removes the idealised aspect from their work, like they did with new objectivity back in the 1920s.
These are some examples of their work:
Karl Blossfeldt
Albert Renger-Patzsch
I did my own shoots at home that follow the aesthetics of New Objectivity, and have the same feeling and editing style and karl and Albert’s work.
Mary Ellen Bartley is known for her photographs exploring the tactile and formal qualities of the printed book, and its potential for abstraction. Bartley’s work concerns itself with geometry and pure form; painterly in style, her photos also invite curiosity about the layered histories of the books themselves. Her photos are alive with questions – about what we do and don’t see and the stories we tell. Yet the spirit of her work provides a reflective response, a respite, from a noisy and chaotic world.
Examples of her work:
‘7 things again and again’
Bartley chose a set of seven common household items, and committed to photographing them each day for the thirty days of April. Her seven elements remained recognizable but were detached from their everyday function, serving instead as an exploration of form and process. Experimenting with exposure, depth of focus and subtle variations in light and shadow, Bartley transformed the quotidian objects into moments of stilled time
This is my favourite image from her ‘7 things again and again’ as she has been creative with the objects and not just placed them in a different way, but manipulated the book and used a page from it to create a shadow of the object behind it.
We all went outside to take photos in which we threw balls up in the air and tried to take pictures of them. The other sets of photos we took we were trying to avoid the camera and “punch” it.
One ball was in focus, unlike the other two, possibly because it was moving slower than the other 2 balls or possibly because it was closer to the camera.
We hadn’t zoomed in on the sky enough so Robyn was in frame. The camera was also really aimed directly at the sky so there is a shine on the image.
These two images are the only ones that in some way worked, all the other images of the throwing part did not work, the balls had already gone out of frame or the shutter speed was not up high enough so they were blurry.
Here are some images in which one of us would try and avoid the camera and the other one would take the photo, using an increased shutter speed to make sure the images aren’t blurry.
Most of these have no blur so the shutter speed is at the correct number.
What is shutter speed?
The faster the shutter the better quality the image is as shutter speed controls how fast the shutter closes which determines how much light goes into the camera.
This image shows what an image looks like with a lower shutter speed. It closes for more time and then opens up, which will add more light, so it will take in the streams from all the lights around.
Here is an example of a fast shutter speed would look like in an image. It closes faster and then opens, which will take in less light, so it will take exactly that frame in that image.
What were the goals of New Objectivity in photography?The New Objectivity (Neue Sachlichkeit) emerged as a style in Germany in the 1920s as a challenge to Expressionism. As its name suggests, it offered a return to unsentimental reality and a focus on the objective world, as opposed to the more abstract, romantic, or idealistic tendencies of Expressionism.
The new objectivity is a very minimalistic choice of photography which includes a lot of lines and repetition of shapes. It is mainly in black an white which adds depth.
The term still life comes from the Dutch word stilleven
Coined in the 17th century when paintings of objects enjoyed immense popularity throughout Europe. The stimulus for this term came as artists created compositions of greater complexity, bringing together a wider variety of objects to communicate allegorical meanings.
Still life featured mainly in the experiments of photography inventors Jacques-Louis-Mandé Daguerre and William Henry Fox Talbot, as far back as the 1830s. They did this in part, for practical reasons: the exceptionally long exposure times of their processes precluded the use of living models.
Pieter Claesz, Still Life with a Skull and a Writing Quill, 1628. Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Paulette Tavormina
A vanitas is a symbolic work of art showing the transience of life, the futility of pleasure, and the certainty of death, often contrasting symbols of wealth and symbols of ephemerality and death.
‘Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities, all is vanity.’
This is where the term vanitas comes from, the opening lines of the Book of Ecclesiastes in the Bible.
History of still life photography
In the 17th century, still life became a genre in art, most of these paintings were about religion or death.
When cameras were invented, a photographer called Adolf de Meyer, used the genre of still life for his first ever photo.
Alleged first still life photo taken by Adolf de Meyer.
Over the years, as colour photographs emerged, photographers starting using still life more and more. As it became a more popular genre, the still life images taken got even better than they were before.
Some examples of still life photography now.
Vanitas
As stated earlier, the word vanitas comes from the opening lines of the Book of Ecclesiastes in the Bible.
Vanitas relates to what was mentioned earlier, death and is mainly used in art, it shows how painful or beautiful life is, in its entirety.
A vanitas image:
Here you can see a skull, which is in the centre of the image, showing that it could be a key part of the image and lots of other objects like a crown and a sceptre which can symbolise the power of death however the flowers in the back could symbolise the beauty of life and the beginning of life. This image, and other vanitas images, contains both elements of life and death and can be interpreted in many different ways.
In our studio, we currently have two systems. The Continuous Lighting system and the Flash Lighting system.
Continuous Lighting:
The Continuous Lighting system is the system with the always-on lights. Also paired with the curved platform to prevent reflections.
It is a perfect system to use for when you want to take basic photos. You can even place films over the light to change the colour.
Flash Lighting:
The flash lighting system works slightly differently, the lights are programmed to flash just as you take a picture. And the photo will come out like as if you took it in normal lighting. You have a fainter light on the side to see what you’re doing when in the dark and to move things to as you see fit.
We went into the studio to take photos of a musket ball, a gunpowder horn, a photo book and tap shoes. These weren’t my objects so unfortunately I cannot input a description of why they mean so much to me.
But I can describe what they mean to Nic Rolland, the owner of these items. He likes to have these as they describe his way of life in stage performing, including tap dancing. He is interested in history involving war. So he can connect with the gunpowder horn and the musket bullet. His grandfather was in the Royal Navy and the book contains photos of him during his service.
Formalism in photography is when the photographer becomes the visual designer. It tells us how important form is in photography and art as it only features visual aspects and less about narrative content. Formalism can be analysed and organised into nine categories.
The Nine Categories of Formalism:
Light: Light is wherever the photo is brightest. Whether it be the actual object or in the environment around it. When annotating Light you should decide whether it is natural or artificial. With Light you can even figure out the time of day the photo was shot.
Line: This is when you look for anything in the photo that create lines. It doesn’t matter if they are straight or curvy. You should analyse what kind of shape it creates or the angle/point of view the photo was taken from.
Repetition: Is when you look for any rhythm or pattern with the objects anywhere in the photo.
Shape: Quite self-explanatory, look for any shapes in the photograph and label them. Point out the names of them too if you can. An interesting thing to do is to point out if the edges seem natural (wavy) or geometric (straight).
Space: Look for any depth in the photo, is it deep? Is it shallow? Take Depth of Field into account by including the distance each object may have.
Texture: How much is seen in the photo? Is it crowded or is it empty? Make sure you compare the smoothness and/or grittiness of the image.
Value/tone: Look for any tones or colours in the photo and how many. How well do they contrast? What is the main tone of the photo? How does it make you feel?
Colour: How many colours are there? Make use of explaining the saturation, contrast, vibrancy etc. Also make sure you point out the main colour and the complimentary colours.
Composition: This is how the Photographer arranges the visual elements, it makes use of how we look at each item in the photo, for how long and in what order. For example, if you take a picture of something in the foreground and in the background, we are more likely to look at the foreground object first because it is closer and most likely clearer.
Exploring Formalism:
In class we looked at a few photos and labelled them to spot any elements involving formalism. Above you can see that the photo has been labelled quite a lot.
The table’s colour can fall into the Light section of formalism, as due to it’s colour it is the most eye-grabbing part of the image.
Lines can be seen going across the strip of the red wood on the wall behind.
The tiles on the floor contain some Repetition as it creates a pattern.
It is clearly taken from close range, so the Space is not so great.
There are a handful of Colours seen in this photo, such as green white and red. These colours make me think of Christmas.
These are just examples, there is much more to be highlighted in that photo. But this is just to demonstrate how to spot these details and label them.
Technical
Natural light used in the street.
Contextual
Making Do and Getting By investigates the process of perception and communication – how we see what we see, what we do with what we see, how we name what we think we have seen, who we share it with and who is speaking to whom.
Conceptual
The meaning of this work is to highlight the perception and communication and how we see things, process things and share things.
I made these still life edits using Lightroom classic by enhancing the temp of the images and illuminating the oldness of some of the objects. Overall I enjoyed this process of taking the images and experimenting on lightroom
