Introduction to Romanticism –

Romanticism is a movement and feeling that surfaced around the late 18th century, romantics focus more on the natural beauty of the world and the emotions and feelings that come with that.

It was characterised with a focus of emotion, thought/imagination, and individualism. Romanticism placed a strong emphasis on creative freedom and individual expression, as well as a celebration of nature and the wonders of the natural world. Romanticism can be seen as a rejection of the precepts of order ; calm, harmony, balance, idealization and rationality that stereotypically thought out classicism in the 18th century.

Romanticism mood board –

Characteristics of romanticism –

A deepened appreciation of nature is an example of a characteristic which entails that romantic’s look at things with a lot more awe, they take in the natural beauty more then the regular person, appreciating it more. They have a deeper appreciation of the beauty of nature ; the idea of emotion over reason.

A deeper understanding of emotions and the connection of that to the natural world is another example of a characteristic and it means that romantics value and appreciate how beauty affects their emotions and are very in tune with feeling in a sense where a view or picture may make them feel emotions in a deeper way then most people.

The sublime

For Romantics, the sublime is a meeting of the subjective-internal (emotional) and the objective-external (natural world): we allow our emotions to overwhelm our rationality as we experience the wonder of creation.

Edmund Burke believed that the ruling principle of the sublime was terror. ~Whatever therefore is terrible, with regard to sight, is sublime too … Indeed terror is in all cases whatsoever, either more openly or latently, the ruling principle of the sublime. ~Burke was interested in what happens to the self when assailed by that which seems to endanger its survival.

A landscape is all the visible features of an area of land, often considered in terms of aesthetic appeal ( nice to look at .) Landscape emerged during the renaissance in the 16th century but is said to have originated around 1826 – 1827 where the first landscape photograph was ever taken by a French inventor that went by the name Nicephorus Niepce.

Classical landscape art emerged during the 17th century however and eventually gained prominence in the late 18th century with the rise of romanticism, and often continued to carry a religious significance. Additionally, it became a method of self expression, with the emotions of the painter and their appreciation of nature demonstrated in the painting.

Mood board –

The origin –

People have been fascinated by landscapes long before photography technology came around. This is proved by the multiple hundreds of landscape Paintings that came before the technology of the time, was advanced enough to produce photographs. In the earliest days of landscape photography, technical issues meant that photographers were bound to work with blurry views, this was due to long exposure times because of the technology and it being not very advanced, which made any movement blurry. This made landscapes and cityscapes perfect material for there unadvanced camera exposures.

According to the records, the earliest known evidence of a landscape photograph was taken between the years of 1826 and 1827. It was an urban landscape photograph taken by a French inventor by the name of Nicephore Niepce. It was noted that the first exposure took him an astonishing 8 hours, which makes it understandable that he chose a still subject. A few years later, around 1835, an English Scientist named Henry Fox Talbot entered the scene and introduced innovations into photography.

It was quite revolutionary back then because this allowed people a much faster way of rendering reality into a two dimensional physical format that they were previously only able to do through painting, since the paining process took so much longer then taking a photo.

Frances Frith was a photographer from the 19th century, born and raised in England. He was most famous for his photographs of Egypt and the pyramids, he travelled around places like Egypt, Palestine, Jerusalem and other countries in the east to capture his photos. In Frith’s photographs he wanted to make the viewers feel like they were there with him and thought about how to bring to mind the feel of things for people who weren’t there to see what he did.

I put all the final photos into a photo gallery to show them off easier. I did this by using Art steps and copy and pasting them in. I also put little borders around each photo to enhance the shadow below them.

Final individual photos –

Environmental portraits –

Studio portraits –

Femininity and masculinity photos –

These are a few of the photos I took that I feel as Cindy Sherman inspired.

I wanted to let her work influence mine because I feel that she shows femininity very well through her photos and the amount of skin used is very impacting on showing femininity.

I also wanted to play around with lighting because even through most of Cindy Sherman’s photos are black and white, I thought that to bring in a red light to my photos could show stereotypical ideas of femininity.

Almost how woman were seen years ago, whenever they may have worn red or if they were associated with red as a colour it would signify almost them being ‘easy’ or prostitution, so I wanted to use that to almost counteract that idea.

photo shoot plan –

photoshoot 1:

For this photo shoot, I am planning to use a snowy area/background including flowers to show aspects of femininity while using mopeds and cars to bring a stereotypical masculine aspect as well.

photo shoot 2:

For this photo shoot I wanted to go into the studio to create unnatural shadows and also wanted to focus on the masculine aspect to get a variety of different photos.

photo shoot 3:

This photo shoot was a bit different, I decided that I wanted to focus on the more physical aspect of femininity by using skin and body parts for the shoot. The inspiration for this shoot was perfume or product commercials where they usually use a lot of skin to show femininity in the products.

photo shoot 4:

For this shoot, I wanted to interpret fruit with it because fruit have a very prominent connection to femininity and masculinity.

photo shoot 5:

For my last photo shoot I included some of the men in my lesson to help show masculinity a lot even though they ended up showing femininity a lot more.

I’ve narrowed down to 3 final photos to edit and finalise for the Femininity vs Masculinity topic.

These 3 photos, for me, portray the topic of Femininity vs Masculinity very well, and with some editing I believe they could be staple pieces of my work.

Editing ( photo 1 ) –

I began with playing around with saturation and colour in photoshop with the first photo, increasing the contrast and hue and played around with black and white a little, just to see what might look the best for this specific photograph.

The highlights and shadows with this edit, I feel, worked really well and complimented the dimensions on the photo especially on the skin. It gave the photo a warm feeling with the use of warm colours and lights that were used in the studio as well as successfully contrasting with the shadows and lowlights within the photo.

With this edit, I wanted to have a basic feel to it, so I wanted to try out a black and white idea. Initially all I did was add a black and white cover over the top of the original photo but after investigating with the saturation and shadows I was able to give the photo more of a raw and gritty feel which I think fits perfectly with this photo.

Editing ( photo 2 ) –

For this photo I have a definitive idea of what I want to do. I want to make this photo almost over saturated to enhance the inspirational aspect of male perfume adds and how they are portrayed through the internet

This edit was not very successful as it was difficult editing this on photoshop purely using saturation and hues.

For the next edit I am going to try and use dimensions to improve this photo.

I did end up cropping the photo and changing the hue, but only slightly so that the natural elements of the photo weren’t taken away as it happened. I smoothed the texture a little around the face but made sure to keep it within the rest of the photo to keep the realism.

Editing ( photo 3 ) –

For this photo, I want to definitely use a more grunge feeling to the photo to show almost power as that will compliment the red hue already in the photo.

I worked a lot with the saturation in this photo and the colours that make up the photo, like the purples, blues and reds. I am not sure if I like the brightness of the photo, it does not really fit with the grunge idea I was going for, so with the next edit I am going to focus more on the shadows and how that will effect the edit style and photo itself.

This edit went a lot better for me, as I used Lightroom to edit instead of photoshop. The grunge effect I was going for definitely was shown in this edit as I focused on the contrast between colours and shadows in the photo, also thinking about the texture and clarity of the photo as well. The use of the red hue focuses on the femininity of the photo as well as thinking about the connotations the colour red has, as its often linked to danger which contradicts the stereotypical idea of femininity.

Artist Inspiration –

The artist that inspired these photos and edits was Cindy Sherman.

In her photos, she only ever photographed herself and I wanted to use that idea of independence in my work as well because, woman ( stereotypically ) are not independent and rely on other people for most things. I wanted to counteract that idea by using photos of myself.

mood board –

Femininity and Masculinity are very stereotypically concreate definitions but the idea of them over the years have morphed into varieties of both together.

Now a ‘days, everyone has different ideas of what those words mean to them. Whether its the stereotypical idea or the mixed idea of be who you want to be, everyone’s view is different.

Cindy Sherman has probed the construction of identity, she plays with the norms of gender, art and photography. She came to light in the 1970s and continued to transform herself, displaying the diversity of human types and stereotypes in her images.

Her images seem to focus a lot on femininity and sexuality enhancing certain aspects of female identity.

Her work has inspired mine quite a lot, and id like to use aspects of here work in mine to show femininity.

She only photographed herself and dressed up for shoots to almost imply a masking. Through that showed empowerment and self. Which is a very strong message to show during the time, where holly-Wood was massive and everyone was watching these actors while Sherman was portraying different people in her own way.

Artist analysation –

This photo is a very famous one of Cindy’s, it represents femininity in a very different way to how it would be seen in that era. She focus’ on normalising independent and strong women through the use of photographing herself and the way she presents herself in each photo. The short hair is a main focus as woman at the time would only be ‘socially acceptable’ with long hair because that was the norm – this shows the theme of social desirability bias.

This photo shows a different side to Cindy’s work then the other photos as the use of morphing different photos together show how people may not seem comfortable showing who they are because of the social desirability bias that surrounds normality in the modern day world.

Previously known as Lucy Schwob, Claude was a freedom fighter she defied the conventional ideals of beauty and femininity with her Masculine clothes and shaved head.

Her work blurs the gender and behaviours which serves to undermine the stereotypical ideas of gender bias. She lived through the Jersey occupation of WW2 and her work was very influential through those times.

Her work was meant to unsettle the audience’s understanding of photography as a documentation of reality. Her public image has become a commentary which challenges the publics notions of gender and beauty.

Artist analysation –

In this image, there is a clear representation of Claude’s feelings and thoughts for aesthetics. You can see that the models in this photo have quite masculine features showing that they were men but the makeup that is on their face proves Claude’s style of undermining the gender and identity stereotype at the time. The use of feminine men in her work showed how little she cared about the gender bias in the first place.

This photo clearly shows that the models have masks on which clearly states the theme of identity through the idea of covering up how you look. This also shows the theme and style of social identity bias, showing how you may not fit in to society’s norms and needing to change yourself to feel normal and comfortable to b e around others.

Themes –

Femininity : femininity is defined as qualities or attributes regarded as characteristics of women or gils.

Masculinity : masculinity is defined as qualities or attributes regarded as characteristics of men or boys.

These stereotypes can be influenced by where people are brought up or who they are brought up around. Some people may be brought up around the stereotype that woman should be stay at home mums who care and devote themselves to their husbands while the husbands go and bring home the money for the family. Other people may be brought up around the idea that woman are their own people who can go and work and provide for themselves. This all depends on where and who your brought up around.

Male stereotypes –

• Powerful
• Strong
• Scary
• Rough
• Violent

Men are usually thought of like this because of how the wide variety of people see them.

Woman stereotypes –

• Kind
• Loving
• Helpful
• Nurturing
• Emotional

While woman are thought of like this because of how the wide variety of people see them.

Most of the time however, these stereotypes are not correct because of the change of society’s observations throughout the years. Some woman could could be perceived with the stereotypes of a man, whereas a man could have the stereotypes of a woman.