Who is Ansel Adams?

Ansel Easton Adams was an American landscape photographer and environmentalist known for his black-and-white images of the American West. He helped found Group f/64, an association of photographers advocating “pure” photography which favored sharp focus and the use of the full tonal range of a photograph.

Ansel Adams is one of the giants of 20th Century photography, esteemed for his lush gelatine silver photographs of the national parks that have become icons of the US wilderness. A passionate champion of photography as a legitimate form of fine art, he referred to his most stunning images as his “Mona Lisas”.

His childhood

Ansel Adams had problems fitting in at school. Some problems were due to a natural shyness and some were due to a physical issue (an “earthquake nose” as he called it – his nose was broken during an earthquake). It is also possible that he may have dealt with dyslexia.

Adams was a hyperactive and sickly child with few friends. Dismissed from several schools for bad behavior, he was educated by private tutors and members of his family from the age of 12. Adams taught himself the piano, which would become his early passion.

His Inspiration

When photographer Ansel Adams looked through his camera lens, he saw more than Yosemite’s rocks, trees, and rivers. He saw art. Hues of wildness surfaced in this great American photographer’s stunning black-and-white prints. And for most of his life, Yosemite National Park was Adams’ chief source of inspiration.

Ansel Adams photographed Yosemite primarily to raise environmental awareness. His iconic photographs of the Yosemite National Park played a pivotal role in advocating for the preservation of natural landscapes and the need for conservation efforts.

Sierra Club

In 1934, Adams was elected as a member of the Board of Directors of the Sierra Club, a role he maintained for 37 years. His tenure spanned the years that the Club evolved into a powerful national organization that lobbied to create national parks and protect the environment from destructive development projects.

The purposes of the Sierra Club are to explore, enjoy, and protect the wild places of the earth; to practice and promote the responsible use of the earth’s ecosystems and resources; to educate and enlist humanity to protect and restore the quality of the natural and human environment.

In 1927, Adams participated in the Club’s annual outing, known as the High Trip, and, the next year, he became the Club’s official trip photographer. In 1930 he became assistant manager of the outings which consisted of month-long excursions of up to 200 people.

What else was he involved in?

Ansel Adams was not just a photographer. After leaving school at the age of 12, he taught himself how to read music and play the piano. He was judged to be gifted and actually intended to make a career as a pianist before photography became his main occupation.

While photography and the piano shared his attention during his early adulthood, by about 1930 Adams decided to devote his life to photography. (As late as 1945, however, he still thought enough of his playing to have a recording made of his interpretations of Beethoven, Chopin, and perhaps others.)

When were his photos first used for environmental purposes?

Adams’s images were first used for environmental purposes when the Sierra Club was seeking the creation of a national park in the Kings River region of the Sierra Nevada. Adams lobbied Congress for a Kings Canyon National Park, the Club’s priority issue in the 1930s, and created an impressive, limited-edition book, Sierra Nevada: The John Muir Trail, which influenced both Interior Secretary Harold Ickes and President Franklin Roosevelt to embrace the Kings Canyon Park idea. The park was created in 1940.

The Sierra Club advocated for making Kings Canyon a national park so it could be better protected, and Adams was chosen to represent the club at a conference in Washington. To make his argument, Adams presented a selection of his own photographs before the assembled representatives.

How did Ansel Adams help convincing the congress to protect the high sierra

Adams lobbied Congress for a Kings Canyon National Park, the Club’s priority issue in the 1930s, and created an impressive, limited-edition book, Sierra Nevada: The John Muir Trail, which influenced both Interior Secretary Harold Ickes and President Franklin Roosevelt to embrace the Kings Canyon Park idea.

Visualisation

Visualisation is the concept of interpreting a scene and deciding on the final shot before pressing the shutter. Taking place within the ‘mind’s eye’, as Adams often said, visualisation involves intuitively assessing a subject and choosing the most important attributes to frame and highlight.

Zone system

The Zone System, pioneered by Ansel Adams and Fred Archer over 80 years ago, is a technique that offers photographers a way to control exposure and capture the entire tonal scale in their photographs.

Romanticism

Among the characteristic attitudes of Romanticism were the following: a deepened appreciation of the beauties of nature, a general exaltation of emotion over reason and of the senses over intellect, a turning in upon the self and a heightened examination of human personality and its moods and mental potentialities.

Romanticism has long been associated within the landscape. In the medium of photography, the sense of romance of the landscape features it spirit in full bloom.

What was Romanticism a reaction against?

Romanticism was a revolt against the aristocratic social and political norms of the Age of Enlightenment and also a reaction against the scientific rationalization of nature.

Enlightenment

Romanticism, flourishing in the late 18th to mid-19th centuries, emphasised emotion, nature, and individualism, contrasting sharply with the Enlightenment’s focus on reason, science, and societal progress. The Enlightenment, spanning much of the 18th century, prioritised logic, scepticism, and intellectual discourse.

A fact-file about romanticism​

Who-

In English literature, the key figures of the Romantic movement are considered to be the group of poets including William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Keats, Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley and the much older William Blake, followed later by the isolated figure of John Clare​

What-

Romanticism has long been associated within the landscape. In the medium of photography, the sense of romance of the landscape features it spirit in full bloom. It is very hard to categorise. The very nature of Romanticism is rather uncontrollable and unpredictable.​

How-

With its emphasis on the imagination and emotion, Romanticism emerged as a response to the disillusionment with the Enlightenment values of reason and order in the aftermath of the French Revolution of 1789.​

Where, when-

Romanticism was first defined as an aesthetic in literary criticism around 1800. It then went on to gain momentum as an artistic movement in France and Britain in the early decades of the nineteenth century and flourished until mid-century. ​

Why-

The main idea of Romanticism is the celebration of the individual and the glorification of nature. More specifically, Romantics embrace the uniqueness of the human spirit, which they feel is reflected in and deeply connected to the untamed wildness of nature.​

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.

In the “sublime”, vast horizons, towering mountains, and plunging chasms inspired profound feelings of awe, or even fear, rapture, and closeness to God or the infinite. The idealization of nature’s landscapes promoted a spiritual antidote to the crowded, industrialized urban areas where so many people lived.

According to Burke, the Beautiful is that which is well-formed and aesthetically pleasing, whereas the Sublime is that which has the power to compel and destroy us.

How did the Industrial Revolution have an impact on Romanticism?

The Industrial Revolution had a profound impact on the Romantic movement, shaping its themes, concerns, and artistic expressions. The loss of connection with nature, the alienating effects of urbanization, and the critique of industrial capitalism all influenced the works of Romantic poets and artists.

The rise of Romanticism can be seen as a literature’s backlash against the Industrial Revolution. Escaping from the crashing modernity and rise of technology, factories, and cities, Romantics focused on nature, rural life and subjectivity.

The importance of the British painters JMW Turner and John Constable​

The landscape painters Turner and Constable were influential exponents of romanticism, an artistic movement of the late 1700s to mid-1800s that emphasized an emotional response to nature. ​

Turner, who travelled extensively, often infused his dramatic seascapes and landscapes with literary or historical allusions. Two of Britain’s greatest painters, J.M.W. Turner and John Constable were also the greatest of rivals. ​

Born within a year of each other Turner in 1775, Constable in 1776 – they used landscape art to reflect the changing world around them.​

Key word and terms associated with romanticism

Individualism ​

Focus on the self and personal expression, valuing individual creativity over societal constraints. ​

Imagination ​

Emphasized as a powerful and transcendent faculty, often seen as more important than reason. ​

Nature ​

Nature was seen as a source of inspiration, beauty, and spiritual power, often depicted as sublime and untamed. ​

Sublime ​

A concept that refers to experiences of awe and terror in nature or art, where beauty and danger intersect. ​

Emotion ​

Emphasis on intense emotions such as passion, awe, melancholy, and longing, often in reaction to the rationalism of the Enlightenment. ​

The Supernatural ​

Interest in the mystical, the mysterious, and the irrational, including folklore, myths, and gothic elements. ​

The Heroic ​

Celebration of the individual hero, often portrayed as a misunderstood or tragic figure. ​

Exoticism ​

Fascination with distant, mysterious lands and cultures, often portrayed in art, literature, and music. ​

Nostalgia ​

A longing for the past, especially for simpler or more primitive times, often idealized. ​

Rebellion ​

Rejection of established norms, authority, and traditional conventions, including a challenge to societal, political, and artistic constraints. ​

Art for Art’s Sake​

The idea that art should be valued for its intrinsic beauty and emotional power rather than its moral or didactic message. ​

Gothic ​

A style that blends the mysterious, eerie, and dark elements, often involving haunted landscapes or supernatural occurrences. ​

The Byronic Hero ​

A specific type of hero, derived from Lord Byron’s works, characterized by rebellion, isolation, and a troubled, tormented soul. ​

Sentimentality ​

Overwhelming emotion, often expressed in literature or visual arts, with a focus on tender, emotional moments. ​

Any expanse of natural scenery that can be seen from one viewpoint is also called a landscape. The artistic meaning of landscape is the earliest, dating from the 1600s.

When did landscape emerge as a genre in western culture? ​

After the fall of the Roman Empire, the tradition of depicting pure landscapes declined, and the landscape was seen only as a setting for religious and figural scenes. This tradition continued until the 16th century when artists began to view the landscape as a subject in its own right.

When did classical landscapes emerge as a genre?​

In the 17th century the classical landscape was born. These landscapes were influenced by classical antiquity and sought to illustrate an ideal landscape recalling Arcadia, a legendary place in ancient Greece known for its quiet pastoral beauty.

What prompted the rise of Landscape Art during the late 18th / 19th century?​

Subsequently, religious painting declined throughout the rest of Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries. That fact, combined with a new Romanticism — which emphasized emotion, individualism, and the glorification of nature — promoted landscapes to a prestigious place in art that continues to this day.

When did landscape photography originate?

According to records, the earliest known evidence of a landscape photograph was taken between the years of 1826 and 1827. It was an urban landscape photo taken by a French inventor by the name of Nicephore Niepce.

Set 1

Presentation

The photos I have chosen to be my final ones, create a storyline. They represent freedom and how the subject is finding and accepting her identity. Each photo has a shadow, which almost looks like a soul, leaving the subjects body, and as you go down the photos, the soul becomes further and further away from her body. This symbolises the subject letting go and accepting who she is.

Virtual Gallery

If these photos were to be put in a gallery, I would want to present them as either one of the virtual images below.

Final Photos

In this image, you can see how the subject is holding her arm up, almost shielding herself. This shows how she doesn’t want to accept her identity and wants it to stop.

Here you can tell how the subject is slowly giving in and letting herself go.

This image represents ‘question of self’ as she is facing herself, almost questioning herself and what her identity is, but also accepting it.

Set 2

In this final piece, These photos show the subject’s identity as a dancer. The facial expressions in the images show how happy she feels when dancing. The double exposure images shows how the subject moves and captures her dancing more.

Virtual Gallery

This is how I would want my photos presented if they were to be put in a gallery.

Final Photos

These images give an angelic effect to the subject’s identity. The double exposure shows the movements and emotion being put into the images.

Evaluation

How successful was your final outcome?

I would say that my final outcome was successful, although i could have done better and taken some more photos in various different areas with different angles of the subject. I think I did well with what I had. I got a story across to the viewers and I believe my images represent that story and ‘finding your identity’ quite well.

I intended to capture the subject’s emotions and movements using a slow shutter speed and a long exposure from the beginning, what I did not intend to do is create a storyline from it. I was halfway through editing before I had realised that these images would work really well together and that’s when I decided to create the storyline.

I did make a few references to Francesca Woodman‘s technical aspect of her images as I used a long exposure but I used the flash and I relied on a high contrast to make my images look interesting which she did not.

Francesca Woodman’s images were all in black and white, whereas mine are in colour, although, the form and the pattern of both of our images are quite alike.

Some of Francesca’s photos represented ‘isolation’ and ‘questions of self’ which my images can represent as well, because mine indicate letting go of past self and accepting who you are.

I think, if i had the chance, I would change the outfits to something a bit more flowy to get more dimension in the images and really capture the slow shutter speed that I used. I would also change the setting of the images to somewhere more open and outside with nature. A different setting would allow the subject to express herself more as the studio didn’t have enough room for that.

Process of Editing

First, I cropped the photo to square, and then I selected what I wanted to remove from the photo and selected ‘generative fill’ which then edited it into just a hand without holding anything.

I then duplicated the layer, in case I made any mistakes, and I adjusted the brightness and contrast.

I then duplicated the layer, in case I made any mistakes, and I adjusted the brightness and contrast.

After that, I modified my exposure and gamma correction.

Then I decided to change the vibrance of the image.

I then moved on to switching up the hue of the image, just slightly, to give the photo some dimension.

The three images were all edited the same way so that I could guarantee that they work well and look good together.

The femininity images had the same concept to editing except different settings.

I cropped it to square and modified the brightness and contrast, increasing both of them to brighten up the image.

I then moved on to adjusting the exposure which I reduced, and the gamma correction which I increased. This gave a more eerie effect to the image, while still keeping the pink tint.

I then increased the saturation which brought back more of the pink colour that I lost when doing the gamma correction and exposure.

I started off with this photo.

I then decided to add on another image on the top and blend them together by reducing the opacity on the top layer.

pped the image to get rid of negative space and so that it is square. I also flattened the image to make it all one layer.

After that, I adjusted the brightness and contrast to make it a little darker as it was too light.

I decreased the exposure and increased the gamma correction to improve the quality of my image and also give it an angelic effect.

I modified the vibrance by increasing both the vibrance and saturation to give it a little tint.

I then adjusted the curves to adjust the contrast and the lighting of my image.

Before and After Editing

With these images, I brought up the brightness and contrast, exposure, vibrance and the gamma correction to create this soul effect. I reduced the hue only slightly to make the image look more like fire. I cropped it into a square with the subject in the middle of the image.

In this set of images, I went for the theme of femininity. I increased the brightness, contrast, gamma correction, vibrance and the saturation. I reduced the vibrance saturation, and the exposure. I cropped two of them to squares and one of them to get rid of negative space throughout the image.

With these images, I increased the brightness, contrast, vibrance, saturation and gamma correction and reduced the hue saturation slightly.

Presentation

This is how I would want my final photos to be presented.

In my photoshoot, I started off with 102 photos, using black or white backgrounds and a slow shutter speed. Most of these photos are 1/2 body photos or 1/4 body photos. I then took another 215 photos using a black background but with pink studio lighting, still using a slow shutter speed. I ended up with 317 photos in my contact sheet.

I then narrowed it down to 19 photos by flagging them, which will be the photos I use for my editing and some possibly for my final photos.

Unedited Photos

Francesca Woodman

Who is she?

Francesca Stern Woodman was an American photographer best known for her black and white pictures featuring either herself or female models. Many of her photographs show women, naked or clothed, blurred, merging with their surroundings, or whose faces are obscured.

Francesca Woodman is best known for photographing herself. But her pictures are not self-portraits in the traditional sense. She is often nude or semi-nude and usually seen half hidden or obscured – sometimes by furniture, sometimes by slow exposures that blur her figure into a ghostly presence.

Meaning behind her photos

Francesca Woodman’s entire body of work was produced as a young person and created over just eight short years. Her photographs explore many themes that affect young people such as relationships, sexuality, questions of self, body image, alienation, isolation and confusion or ambiguity about personal identity.

Francesca Woodman photographed herself, often nude, in empty interiors. But her pictures are not traditional self-portraits. She is usually half hidden by objects or furniture or appears as a blur. The images convey an underlying sense of human fragility.

Why did Francesca Woodman take her photos?

Woodman knew that not showing a clear subject could be more impactful that showing it. Her photos, which already have an abstract quality due to the black and white film, present the viewer with something to interpret rather than just observe.

What was Francesca Woodman’s photography style?

Woodman applied some of the characteristics associated with surrealism to her own work. She created dreamlike environments with interesting and unusual objects, such as shells and eels, and combined familiar things in unfamiliar contexts to evoke uncanny feelings.

What is the power of identity in photography?

Defining your photographic identity will allow you to say who you are, what you want to be, and how you are to be perceived by others. This should be apparent to each viewer, regardless of whether they are a photographer or not. Your photographic identity will define how you will be perceived by the world around you.

Moodboard

About:

Cynthia Morris Sherman is an American artist whose work consists primarily of photographic self-portraits, depicting herself in many different contexts and as various imagined characters. Cindy Sherman has probed the construction of identity, playing with the visual and cultural codes of art, celebrity, gender, and photography.

She is among the most significant artists of the Pictures Generation — a group that also includes Richard Prince, Louise Lawler, Sherrie Levine, and Robert Longo — who came of age in the 1970s and responded to the mass media landscape surrounding them with both humor and criticism, appropriating images from advertising, film, television, and magazines for their art. At the end of the century, Sherman was the artist who most effectively utilised this source. Her pictures are composed of masks and anatomical models of the body, not unlike the bashed-up dolls by a surrealist pioneer such as Hans Bellmer (1902–1975).

Sherman grew up on Long Island, New York. In 1972 she enrolled at the State University of New York (SUNY) at Buffalo and majored in painting, later switching her major to photography. She graduated from SUNY in 1976 and in 1977 began work on Untitled Film Stills (1977–80), one of her best-known series.

Cindy Sherman’s work is characterized by her use of self-portraiture to create fictional characters and explore themes such as identity, representation, and the construction of femininity to portray the various roles and identities of herself and other modern women.

Her work is mostly consisting of photographic self-portraits. Started when she was only 23, these images rely on female characters (and caricatures) such as the jaded seductress, the unhappy housewife, the jilted lover, and the vulnerable naif. Sexual desire and domination, the fashioning of self-identity as mass deception, these are among the unsettling subjects lying behind Sherman’s extensive series of self-portraiture in various guises. Sherman’s work is central in the era of intense consumerism and image proliferation at the close of the 20th century. Sherman has always been adamant that her photos are not self-portraits.

The seminal series expanded the artistic potential of the photographic medium by using image-making to engage with dialogues of feminist and postmodern theories. In this pseudo-self portrait, Sherman assumes the persona of Claude Cahun, pioneer of self-portraiture and the French surrealist movement.

Image analysis

Visual:

In this image, Cindy Sherman is adopting the role of a housewife in a kitchen, as she is wearing an apron and has cooking supplies beside her it makes it easy to tell this. Sherman’s positioning in the photo makes it look like shes cramped in the frame and she’s looking over her shoulder which could mean that someone else is there or she’s deep in thought. She is holding her stomach and this could be either maternal or trying to protect herself. She looks extremely uncomfortable. Since the title is an ‘Untitled film still’ it suggests that Sherman is trying to show the typical female housewife stereotypes usually portrayed in movies.

Technical:

As the foreground objects are blurred it would suggest that the image was taken with a very large aperture. The subject in the photo is in focus so this could suggest that a fast shutter speed was used, with a balanced exposure. The angle this was taken at a slightly lower angle, this makes the viewer feel like they are amongst the setting and not outside of it. It is a half body shot so it would make it more intimate as the viewer is closer to the subject.

Contextual:

Gender roles are the roles that men and women are expected to occupy based on their sex. Traditionally, many western societies have believed that women are more nurturing than men. Therefore, the traditional view of the feminine gender role prescribes that women should behave in ways that are nurturing. Women were usually excluded and, when mentioned, were usually portrayed in sex stereotypical roles such as wives, mothers, daughters, and mistresses.

Sherman’s ‘Untitled Film Stills’ created a powerful reflection on identity representation and stereotypical femininity.

Conceptual:

Sherman is using selfies to deceive the audience.

Claude Cahun

About:

Claude Cahun was a French photographer and writer associated with the Surrealists. Her work was often in collaboration with her partner Marcel Moore, also an artist, and she is known mostly for her self-portraits which examine and challenge ideas of gender and identity.

Her work left a huge impression on photography and directly influenced contemporary photographers Cindy Sherman, Gillian Wearing, and Nan Goldin.

In early-20th-century France, when society generally considered women to be women and men to be men, Lucy Schwob decided she would rather be called Claude Cahun. It was her way of protesting gender and sexual norms.

In taking the gender-neutral forename Claude and by shaving her head, as she did often in the late 1910s, Cahun actively and outwardly rejected social constructions of gender and sexual identity. Surrealism aims to revolutionise human experience. It balances a rational vision of life with one that asserts the power of the unconscious and dreams. The movement’s artists find magic and strange beauty in the unexpected and the uncanny, the disregarded and the unconventional.

Cahun’s connection with Jersey began early, with childhood holidays spent in Jersey and Brittany. They were born Lucy Schwob in Nantes, France to a wealthy Jewish family. But in their late teens and early twenties Cahun had been looking for a new, gender-neutral name for a while.

Image analysis

Visual:

In the image, it is a self-portrait of Claude Cahun. She is sat with her legs crossed and her gaze is staring directly at the camera. She is wearing black shorts, pale tights and top emblazoned ‘I am in training Don’t kiss me’, sitting with her right leg over her left, a heart on her thigh, spherical weights to right and left. On the weights, they have the names of comic heroes on it ‘Totor and Popol’.

Contextual:

Women were expected to roll up their sleeves and keep their homes and families running smoothly – and on a budget. Women without a family – either by choice or by circumstance – were often overlooked.There were more job opportunities for women in the 1920s and 1930s due to better education. Many women found work as clerks, teachers and nurses. The nature of industries changed and new types of work emerged. Many women found work in the new light industries e.g. making electrical goods. British society remained intensely gender and class ridden throughout the 1920s. Women had only slowly, and prosaically, gained political rights in the 1920s and secured little in the way of equality of opportunity in employment and education.

Conceptual:

Through an exploration of the multiplicities of gender, works such as the self-portrait from their series I am in Training Don’t Kiss Me (1927) declare that Cahun’s gender is both allowed to be on public display while simultaneously not to be objectified and exoticized by the male gaze. ‘I am in training, don’t kiss me’ refers to a provocative phrase that embodies the surrealist movement’s emphasis on challenging norms and expectations in society and art.

What is identity?

Identity is the set of qualities, beliefs, personality traits, appearance, and/or expressions that characterize a person or a group. Identity emerges during childhood as children start to comprehend their self-concept, and it remains a consistent aspect throughout different stages of life.

What is femininity?

Femininity (also called womanliness) is a set of attributes, behaviors, and roles generally associated with women and girls. Femininity can be understood as socially constructed, and there is also some evidence that some behaviors considered feminine are influenced by both cultural factors and biological factors.

What is masculinity?

Masculinity involves displaying attitudes and behaviours that signify and validate maleness, and involves being recognised in particular ways by other men and women. Traits traditionally viewed as masculine in Western society include strength, courage, independence, leadership, and assertiveness.

How can Identity be affected?

Identity can be affected in lots of different ways, for example:

Gender Identity:

Gender identity is defined as a personal and internal sense of oneself as male, female, or other. Gender expression is defined as the way in which an individual publicly expresses their gender, for example, through aspects such as clothing, hair, makeup, and body language.

Cultural Identity:

Cultural identity refers to an individual’s sense of belonging and connection to a particular cultural group or community encompassing the shared values, traditions, customs, language, beliefs, and behavioral norms that define and distinguish a specific cultural or ethnic group.

Social Identity:

Social identity refers to people’s self-categorizations in relation to their group memberships (the “we”). These categorisations are often assigned to us or something we are born into.

Geographical Identity:

Geographical identity refers to an individual or group’s sense of attachment to the country, region, city, or village in which they live.

Political Identity:

Political identity is how a person or group of persons think of themselves in relation to the politics and government of a country. Everything that makes up our sense of self are components of our political identity. This includes our ethnicity, religion, gender, class, ideology, nationality and even our age and generation.

Lack of/ Loss of Identity:

Loss of identity may follow all sorts of change; changes in the workplace, loss of a job or profession, loss of a role that once defined us, as a child, as a parent, as a spouse, as an employee. This leaves a gap, an abyss, an empty space.

Stereotypes:

A stereotype is a fixed general image or set of characteristics that a lot of people believe represent a particular type of person or thing.

Prejudices:

Prejudices is a favoring or dislike of something without good reason, unfriendly feelings directed against an individual, a group, or a race. prejudice.