Mon 20th January Group 12B MVT / JAC Photography Room
Tues 21st January Group 12E MVT / JAC / LJS Photography Room
Print Folder Deadline Wed 22nd January
We have included a mini-unit to help you explore creative opportunities with portraiture in photography based around themes of femininity and masculinity. We will spend time looking closely at this and discussing ideas for you to produce a number of potential outcomes that will be the culmination of your module on portraiture. We are expecting that you will continue to develop your portraiture skills and use lighting creatively both in the studio and on location outside or inside relevant to your ideas.
Binary opposition
The themes of ‘FEMININITY and MASCULINITY’ are a binary opposite – a pair of related terms or concepts that are opposite in meaning.
Binary opposition originated in Saussurean structuralist theory in Linquistics (scientific study of language) According to Ferdinand de Saussure, binary opposition is the system by which, in language and thought, two theoretical opposites are strictly defined and set off against one another. Using binary opposites can often be very helpful in generating ideas for a photographic project as it provides a framework – a set of boundaries to work within.
Watch this film and discuss the way in which artists tackle identity…
Blog Posts to make :
Blog Post 1: Define ‘identity’, “femininity” and “masculinity” and explain how identity can be influenced by “place”, or belonging, your environment or upbringing with reference to gender identity / cultural identity / social identity / geographical identity / political identity / lack of / loss of identity / stereotypes / prejudices etc.
Blog Post 3: Optional PHOTO-ASSIGNMENT 1: Clare Rae
Blog Post 4: MINDMAP/ MOODBOARD: Add a mind-map and mood-board of ideas and associated visual stimulus. This is very important for this project, because it will steer your individual photoshoots…. E.g:
Blog Post 5: Artist reference 2 (Student Led) – Choose from a range of photographers that you feel explore themes of femininity, masculinity in relation to gender, identity or ‘self’. Include a detailed analysis and interpretation. This artist/s should influence your final outcome. Click here for a library of artists / photographers…. When choosing your artist/s… think about why / what / how – consider how you want to convey identity through photography.
Blog Post 6: PHOTO-SHOOTS: focused photoshoots exploring your ideas
Blog Post 7: EXPERIMENTATION: development of a number of final ideas
Blog Post 8: FINAL PHOTOS: Virtual gallery and evaluation
EXTENSION >THEORY/ CONTEXT: (If you complete this extension, back date it to make it an earlier blog post that comes at the start of the project). Make a blog post and write 300-500 words expressing: – What is identity politics – Make reference to culture wars. – Describe some of the positive aspects of groups harnessing their shared identity and political views – as well some of the dangers of tribalism dividing communities. – Provide examples both for and against identity politics and include images. – Try and frame the debate both within a global and local perspective.
1. THEORY > CONTEXT
What is identity politics?
IDENTITY POLITICS is a term that describes a political approach wherein people of a particular religion, race, social background, class or other identifying factor form exclusive socio-political alliances. It emphasizes the distinct experiences and challenges faced by these groups and advocates for policies and practices that address their specific needs and rights.
The term was coined by the Combahee River Collective in 1977. It took on widespread usage in the early 1980s, and in the ensuing decades has been employed in myriad cases with radically different connotations dependent upon the term’s context.
CULTURE WARS are cultural conflicts between social groups and the struggle for dominance of their values, beliefs, and practices. It commonly refers to topics on which there is general societal disagreement and polarization in societal values is seen.
A “culture war” signals much more than disagreement. It describes a sense of conflict between two irreconcilable worldviews in what is “fundamentally right and wrong about the world we live in” (1991).
What are some of the positives associated with Identity politics?
Identity Politics is responsible for raising concerns areound things like racism, gay rights, gender identity rights, and so on. With some progress made on these issues in the past few years…
Tribalism
How can tribalism contribute to a negative example of Identity Politics?
Tribalism A tribe is defined as “a social division in a traditional society consisting of families or communities linked by social, economic, religious, or blood ties, with a common culture and dialect, typically having a recognized leader.” When we hear the word tribe, we may think of Native Americans, but in modern usage the term can also refer to people who share common ideas and allegiances. Tribalism is defined as “behavior and attitudes that stem from strong loyalty to one’s own tribe or social group.”
Tribalism can have very negative consequences when it is used to exclude individuals or groups or to take away their rights, status, and/or independence. These negative aspects of tribalism are often fueled by competition and the perception of a common threat. They promote fear, anxiety, and prejudice, all of which make us more susceptible to fake news, propaganda, and conflict. Tribalism can take many forms in our modern society. One prominent example of tribalism is individuals’ strong affiliations with sports teams. These affiliations are often built on regional identities and promoted through the use of symbols. We frequently see deep bonding between fans of a particular team who identify strongly with each other and against fans of opposing teams.
What other examples of tribalism can you find?
Mindmap and moodboard: -What does Identity mean to you?
Grayson Perry:
Grayson Perry’s: Big American Road Trip. Artist and social commentator Grayson Perry crosses the US, exploring its biggest fault lines, from race to class and identity, making art as he goes along. Click here to watch Episode 3 where he travels to the Midwest and finds folk bitterly divided over identity politics and hot issues like abortion and vaccination. What causes such ‘culture wars’ and how can they be overcome?
Grayson Perry. The American Dream. 2019
This map of the US reflects a battle-torn landscape where nuance, compromise and empathy are casualties in the culture war
Read article here in the Financial Times, that uses the recent debate around the removal of Winston Churchill’s statue in Parliament Square as an example of wider discussion on Britain’s colonial past and the current government’s handling of racial inequality.
The issues above should also be viewed within a much broader historical frame work on racism and colonialism.
ARTISTS:
Claude Cahun
CASE STUDY: Claude Cahun, born Lucy Schwob
(born October 25, 1894, Nantes, France—died December 8, 1954, St. Helier, Jersey) was a French photographer, sculptor, and writer. She is best known for her self-portraits in which she assumes a variety of personas, including dandy, weight lifter, aviator, and doll. The Jersey Heritage Trust collection represents the largest repository of the artistic work of Cahun who moved to the Jersey in 1937 with her stepsister and lover Marcel Moore. She was imprisoned and sentenced to death in 1944 for activities in the resistance during the Occupation. However, Cahun survived and she was almost forgotten until the late 1980s, and much of her and Moore’s work was destroyed by the Nazis, who requisitioned their home. CaHun died in 1954 of ill health (some contribute this to her time in German captivity) and Moore killed herself in 1972. They are both buried together in St Brelade’s churchyard.
Look at Gillian Wearing – Clare Rae – Cindy Sherman
In this image, Cahun has shaved her head and is dressed in men’s clothing. She once explained: “Under this mask, another mask; I will never finish removing all these faces.”1 (Claude Cahun, Disavowals, London 2007, p.183)
Cahun was friends with many Surrealist artists and writers; André Breton once called her “one of the most curious spirits of our time.”
While many male Surrealists depicted women as objects of male desire, Cahun staged images of herself that challenge the idea of the politics of gender. Cahun was championing the idea of gender fluidity way before the hashtags of today. She was exploring her identity, not defining it. Her self-portraits often interrogates space, such as domestic interiors and Jersey landscapes using rock crevasses and granite gate
READ articles here in The Guardian and the BBC to learn more and use these texts for your essay. Link to Jersey Heritage which houses the largest collection of her work and an article written by Louise Downie in response to an exhibition in 2005, Acting Out: Claude Cahun and Marvel Moore at Jersey Museum.
In 2017 the National Portrait Gallery in London staged a major exhibition Gillian Wearing and Claude Cahun: Behind the Mask, Another Mask showing their work together for the first time. Slipping between genders and personae in their photographic self-images, Wearing and Cahun become others while inventing themselves. “We were born in different times, we have different concerns, and we come from different backgrounds. She didn’t know me, yet I know her,” Wearing says, paying homage to Cahun and acknowledging her presence. The bigger question the exhibition might ask is less how we construct identities for ourselves than what is this thing called presence?
Claude CahunGillian Wearing
In Behind The Mask, Wearing is being Cahun. Previously she has re-enacted photographs of Andy Warhol in drag, the young Diane Arbus with a camera, Robert Mapplethorpe with a skull-topped cane, hard-bitten New York crime photographer Weegee wreathed in cigar-smoke. Among these doubles, you know Wearing is in the frame somewhere, under the silicon mask and the prosthetics, the wigs and makeup and the lighting. Going through her own family albums, she has become her own mother and her father. It is a surprise she has never got lost in this hall of time-slipping mirrors, among her own self-images and the faces she has adopted. Wearing has got others to play her game, too – substituting their own adult voices with those of a child, putting on disguises while confessing their secrets on video.
Read articles in relation to exhibition here
Read articles here in Aperture and The Guardian in relation to the exhibition. Cahun has been described as a Cindy Sherman before her time. Wearing’s art undoubtedly owes something to Sherman – just as Sherman herself is indebted to artist Suzy Lake. Looking back at Cahun, Wearing is both tracing artistic influence, and paying homage to it, teasing out threads in a web of relationships crossing .
Clare Rae
Clare Rae, an artist from Melbourne, Australia who produces photographs and moving image works that interrogate representations of the female body via an exploration of the physical environment. Rae visited Jersey as part of the Archisle international artist-in-residence programme in 2017. She was researching the Claude Cahun archive, shooting new photography and film in Jersey, as well as running workshops.
From her research she produced a new body of work, Entre Nous (between us): Claude Cahun and Clare Rae that was exhibited at the Centre for Contemporary Photography, Melbourne Australia 22 March – 6 May 2018, and subsequently at CCA Galleries in Jersey, UK, 7–28 September 2018.
In her series, Never standing on two feet, Rae considers Cahun’s engagement with the physical and cultural landscapes of Jersey, an aspect of her work that has received little analysis to date. Rae writes:
Like Cahun’s, my photographs depict my body in relation to place; in these instances sites of coastal geography and Jersey’s Neolithic ritual monuments. I enact a visual dialogue between the body and these environments, and test how their photographic histories impact upon contemporary engagements. Cahun used self-portraiture to subvert the dominance of the male gaze in photographic depictions of the female body in the landscape. My practice is invested in the feminist act of self-representation and I draw parallels between my performances of an expanding vocabulary of gesture and Cahun’s overtly performative images of the body expressing a multiplicity of identity. In this series, I tease out the interpretations inherent in landscape photography. I utilise gesture and the performing body to contrast and unsettle traditional representations of the female figure in the landscape.
See this blog post Photography, Performance and the Body for more details and context of the above artists work
Clare gave a artist talk contextualising her practice, covering recent projects that have engaged with notions of architecture and the body, and the role of performative photography in her work. Clare will discuss her research on these areas, specifically her interest in artists such as Claude Cahun, Francesca Woodman and Australian performance artist Jill Orr. Clare also discussed her photographic methodologies and practices, providing an analysis of her image making techniques, and final outcomes.
PHOTO-ASSIGNMENT 1: Homework
Here is the task that Clare Rae asked participants to respond to in a workshop she delivered while in Jersey in 2017.
3. Produce a photograph that engages the body with the physical environment. Think of architecture, light, texture, and composition to create your image..
Cindy Sherman
Cindy Sherman, A selection of images from her film stills
Cindy Sherman works play with female stereotypes. Masquerading as a myriad of characters, Cindy Sherman (American, born 1954) invents personas and tableaus that examine the construction of identity, the nature of representation, and the artifice of photography. To create her images, she assumes the multiple roles of photographer, model, makeup artist, hairdresser, and stylist. Whether portraying a career girl, a blond bombshell, a fashion victim, a clown, or a society lady of a certain age, for over thirty-five years this relentlessly adventurous artist has created an eloquent and provocative body of work that resonates deeply in our visual culture.
For an overview of Sherman’s incredible oeuvre see Museum Of Modern Art’s dedicated site made at a major survey exhibition of her work in 2012…
This exhibition surveys Sherman’s career, from her early experiments as a student in Buffalo in the mid-1970s to a recent large-scale photographic mural, presented here for the first time in the United States. Included are some of the artist’s groundbreaking works—the complete “Untitled Film Stills” (1977–80) and centerfolds (1981), plus the celebrated history portraits (1988–90)—and examples from her most important series, from her fashion work of the early 1980s to the break-through sex pictures of 1992 to her monumental 2008 society portraits.
Some of her latest images using digital montages
Sherman works in series, and each of her bodies of work is self-contained and internally coherent; yet there are themes that have recurred throughout her career. The exhibition showcases the artist’s individual series and also presents works grouped thematically around such common threads as cinema and performance; horror and the grotesque; myth, carnival, and fairy tales; and gender and class identity.
Sherman’s ground-breaking photographs have interrogated themes around representation and identity in contemporary media for over four decades. Since the early 2000s, Sherman has constructed personae with digital manipulation, capturing the fractured sense of self in modern society—a concern the artist has uniquely encapsulated from the outset of her career. As critic and curator Gabriele Schor writes on her process, ‘Sherman’s complex analysis of her face and her subtle employment of expression indicates that the working method of making up and costuming the self enables two processes: an intuitive and fluid process motivated by curiosity, and an intended process whose stimulus is conceptual and which has a ‘subject matter’.’
See and read about Cindy Sherman’s latest work here
1910’s – The Suffragette1920’s – The Flapper1930’s – The Wall Street Wife1940’s – The Riveter1950’s – The Movie Star1960’s – The Super Model1970’s – The Hippie1980’s – The Business Woman1990’s – The New Wave Feminist
Here is link to Shannon’s blog showing all her research, analysis, recordings, experimentation and evaluations
Students response ^
Cindy Sherman’s photo ^
Here is link to Shannon’s blog showing all her research, analysis, recordings, experimentation and evaluations.
Since her A-level studies Shannon has continued her passion for photography and has recently completed her BA (Hons) degree in Documentary Photography at University of South Wales. During her 3-year degree she developed a number of projects based around gender identities and constructions.
Here is a link to her website, a short biography below and examples of key works:
I am an artist born in Jersey, Channel Islands. Currently based in Cardiff, Wales my practice explores themes around the gendered experience with a focus on femininity and masculinity as gendered traits. Through deep research and a sociological approach my work explores the self and identity.
My fascination lies with questioning society and challenging traditional views of gender through my work. My work is informed by my personal experience and through interviewing specific demographics to help gage a sociological understanding of how gender is viewed or challenged within mainstream society.
Gender is being re-conceptualised. Our experience of gender is changing, transforming from being solely male and female, opening to a multitude of subcategories including; gender queer, non-binary, transgender and gender fluid. As we unpick the complicated narrative of gender and the generalisations that it encapsulates, we are forced to re-imagine what it is that makes us who we are and what we want or can identify as. The beginning of change starts with the self.
That’s Not The Way The River Flows (2019) is a photographic series that playfully explores masculinity and femininity through self-portraits. The work comes from stills taken from moving image of the photographer performing scenes in front of the camera. This project aims to show the inner conflicts that the photographer has with identity and the gendered experience. It reveals the pressures, stereotypes and difficulties faced with growing up in a heavily, yet subtly, gendered society and how that has impacted the acceptance and exploration of the self.
A Short Film: That’s Not The Way The River Flows A visual poem with word by me surrounding the claustrophobia of gender identity, while visuals poke fun at ideas of masculinity and femininity (2019).
Susan’s Sleep
Susan’s Sleep (2018) is a short film that, when creating, became a form of therapy for me. It helped me to understand that I had a lot of unresolved trauma and for that reason and for my family I will not release the full short film but instead leave you with a trailer.
This body of work explores the traumatic experience that my family and I went through beginning on the 25th December 2016 and well into the new year. My mother was ill and on Christmas day was taken in an ambulance to the hospital as she could no longer breathe for herself. On the 27th December she was put into a medically induced coma after fighting with the NIV (Non Invasive Ventilation System). Here we spent our days by my mothers bedside in an isolated room on ICU (Intensive Care Unit). This short film is about that time in limbo, waiting each day for bad news, or any news.
By Your Beside
By Your Bedside (2018) is a series of images that I created to compliment my short film, Susan’s Sleep. The images are quite, to reflect my own experience during the time my mother was in a coma. I went mute during this time, isolated myself and kept my emotions inside. The only time that I felt able to express myself was when I was sat by my mother’s bedside. These images convey the surreal movie-like experience I felt while waiting for my mum to wake up.
Casa Susanna
Casa Susanna: A series of polaroid portraits found at a jumble sale about 20 years after the images were originally taken in the 1960s. This was a place where men who enjoyed female dress and transgender women were able to fully be themselves without judgement. It was a kind of holiday place but with an extremely strong community that cared for one another surrounding it.
Lissa Rivera.
Lissa Rivera. In Beautiful Boy (a chaptered series) the photographer makes images of her effeminate male partner, they have an interesting story on how he had felt so free during his time in college to dress and act as he felt confident but in the greater outside world he has reverted to sticking to the status quo and blending in as felt that he wouldn’t be accepted otherwise.
Walter Pfeiffer – Carlo Joh.
Walter Pfeiffer – Carlo Joh. A collaboration between photographer and the subject where the subject brought in their own props and was involved in the creative process of how they wanted to be represented..
Francesca Woodman
Another site of influence to Clare Rae is Francesca Woodman. At the age of thirteen Francesca Woodman took her first self-portrait. From then, up until her untimely death in 1981, aged just 22, she produced an extraordinary body of work. Comprising some 800 photographs, Woodman’s oeuvre is acclaimed for its singularity of style and range of innovative techniques. From the beginning, her body was both the subject and object in her work.
The very first photograph taken by Woodman, Self-portrait at Thirteen, 1972, shows the artist sitting at the end of a sofa in an un-indentified space, wearing an oversized jumper and jeans, arm loosely hanging on the armrest, her face obscured by a curtain of hair and the foreground blurred by sudden movement, one hand holding a cable linked to the camera. In this first image the main characteristics at the core of Woodman’s short career are clearly visible, her focus on the relationship with her body as both the object of the gaze and the acting subject behind the camera.
Woodman tested the boundaries of bodily experience in her work and her work often suggests a sense of self-displacement. Often nude except for individual body parts covered with props, sometimes wearing vintage clothing, the artist is typically sited in empty or sparsely furnished, dilapidated rooms, characterised by rough surfaces, shattered mirrors and old furniture. In some images Woodman quite literally becomes one with her surroundings, with the contours of her form blurred by movement, or blending into the background, wallpaper or floor, revealing the lack of distinction of both – between figure and ground, self and world. In others she uses her physical body literally as a framework in which to create and alter her material identity. For instance, holding a sheet of glass against her flesh, squeezing her body parts against the glass and smashing her face, breasts, hips, buttocks and stomach onto the surface from various angles, Woodman distorts her physical features making them appear grotesque.
Through fragmenting her body by hiding behind furniture, using reflective surfaces such as mirrors to conceal herself, or by simply cropping the image, she dissects the human figure emphasising isolated body parts. In her photographs Woodman reveals the body simultaneously as insistently there, yet somehow absent. This game of presence and absence argues for a kind of work that values disappearance as its very condition.
Since 1986, Woodman’s work has been exhibited widely and has been the subject of extensive critical study in the United States and Europe. Woodman is often situated alongside her contemporaries of the late 1970s such as Ana Mendieta and Hannah Wilke, yet her work also foreshadows artists such as Cindy Sherman, Sarah Lucas, Nan Goldin and Karen Finley in their subsequent dialogues with the self and reinterpretations of the female body.
MASCULINITIES: LIBERATION THROUGH PHOTOGRAPHY Through the medium of film and photography, this major exhibition considers how masculinity has been coded, performed, and socially constructed from the 1960s to the present day. Examining depictions of masculinity from behind the lens, the exhibition brings together over 300 works by over 50 pioneering international artists, photographers and filmmakers such as Richard Avedon, Peter Hujar, Isaac Julien, Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Robert Mapplethorpe, Annette Messager and Catherine Opie to show how photography and film have been central to the way masculinities are imagined and understood in contemporary culture. The show also highlightslesser-known and younger artists – some of whom have never exhibited in the UK – including Cassils, Sam Contis, George Dureau, Elle Pérez, Paul Mpagi Sepuya, Hank Willis Thomas, Karlheinz Weinberger and Marianne Wex amongst many others. Masculinities: Liberation through Photography is part of the Barbican’s 2020 season, Inside Out, which explores the relationship between our inner lives and creativity.
In the wake of #MeToo the image of masculinity has come into sharper focus, with ideas of toxic and fragile masculinity permeating today’s society. This exhibition charts the often complex and sometimes contradictory representations of masculinities, and how they have developed and evolved over time. Touching on themes including power, patriarchy, queer identity, female perceptions of men, hypermasculine stereotypes, tenderness and the family, the exhibition shows how central photography and film have been to the way masculinities are imagined and understood in contemporary culture.
Here is a downloadable teaching resource that includes information, activities and tasks that will help you develop ideas.
Key Focus Areas and questions in relation to the exhibition and the concept: MASCULINITIES
1. What does it mean to be male?
2. What overarching themes do you associate with the words masculine, masculinities or male? What would you classify as hegemonic (ruling) masculine values or traits, particularly historically – e.g. power, leadership, strength, dominance?
3. What would you say are the assumed norms of masculinity today? Think of examples of what breaks or subverts these norms and find examples in the exhibition.
4. Compare expectations and perceptions of masculinity through time, society and place – where are we now and where have we come from? Look at the variety of masculine identities encompassed, often complex or even contradictory, shaped by culture and society. In addition, you could consider the word femininities in just the same way and compare commonalities or differences.
5. How much are we conditioned by the society or culture in which we live, in terms of our gender identities? Consider gender expectations from birth onwards – what messages do we receive about who we are or are supposed to be and accompanying notions of equality? Do you feel there is still pressure put on young boys to be a certain way or to conform to some perceived gender norm?
6. Consider too, the word liberation in the context of the title – how and if photography is a liberating force for the subjects of the camera’s gaze
7. Do you think photography such as that seen in the exhibition can help to pave the way for new attitudes and choices? Discuss using examples you find in the exhibition.
In 2018 the Barbican staged another ground breaking exhibition; ANOTHER KIND OF LIFE: PHOTOGRAPHY ON THE MARGINS. Touching on themes of countercultures, subcultures and minorities of all kinds, the show featured 20 photographers from the 1950s to present day, reflecting a more diverse complex view of the world.
Another Kind of Life followed the lives of individuals & communities on the fringes of society from America to India, Chile to Nigeria. Driven by personal and political motivations, many of the photographers sought to provide an authentic representation of the disenfranchised communities with whom they spent months, years or even decades with, often conspiring with them to construct their own identity through the camera lens.
Featuring communities of sexual experimenters, romantic rebels, outlaws, survivalists, the economically dispossessed and those who openly flout social convention, the works present the outsider as an agent of change. From street photography to portraiture, vernacular albums to documentary reportage, the show includes the Casa Susanna Collection, Paz Errazuriz, Pieter Hugo, Mary Ellen Mark, Dayanita Singh, Teresa Margolles, Katy Grannan, Phillipe Chancel, Daido Moriyama, Seiji Kurata, Igor Palmin and many others.
Narrative photography, also referred to as Tableaux photography often have an element of performing for the camera. See artists such as, Duane Michaels, Tom Hunter, Anna Gaskell, Jeff Wall, Gregory Crewdson, Philip- Lorca diCorcia, Sam Taylor Johnson (former Sam Taylor-Wood), Hannah Starkey, Tracy Moffatt, Vibeke Tandberg. Read also page 26 in exam booklet that lists other artists, Sandy Skoglund, Carrie Mae Weems, Deana Lawson and Laurie Simmons who are using photography to create complex narratives using staged events and artificial set ups. The historical context of this type of photography is Pictorialism – make sure you reference this in your research and provide examples from this period of photographic history and experimentation.
Duane Michaels: photo-stories eg. The Bogeyman, The Spirit Leaves the Body. A self-taught photographer, Duane Michals broke away from established traditions of the medium during the 1960s. His messages and poems inscribed on the photographs, and his visual stories created through multiple images, defied the principles of the reigning practitioners of the form. Indeed, Michals considers himself as much a storyteller as a photographer.
Tom Hunter: Headlines, Life and Death in Hackney Since 1997, Tom Hunter has turned his camera on his surrounding neighbourhood of Hackney, showing empathy without being polemic. He is known for a remarkable blend of political commentary, history of art and the technicalities of photography. Working to create photographs that are the result of an exaggerated link between newspaper headlines, paintings from The National Gallery’s permanent collection and Hackney lifestyle, Hunter often seems to ask more questions than he can answer visually.
Read more here about Tom Hunter’s work in The Guardian
Anna Gaskell crafts foreboding photographic tableaux of preadolescent girls that reference children’s games, literature, and psychology. She is interested in isolating dramatic moments from larger plots such as Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, visible in two series: Wonder (1996–97) and Override (1997). In Gaskell’s style of “narrative photography,” of which Cindy Sherman is a pioneer, the image is carefully planned and staged; the scene presented is “artificial” in that it exists only to be photographed. While this may be similar to the process of filmmaking, there is an important difference. Gaskell’s photographs are not tied together by a linear thread; it is as though their events all take place simultaneously, in an ever-present. Each image’s “before” and “after” are lost, allowing possible interpretations to multiply. In untitled #9of the wonder series, a wet bar of soap has been dragged along a wooden floor. In untitled #17 it appears again, forced into a girl’s mouth, with no explanation of how or why. This suspension of time and causality lends Gaskell’s images a remarkable ambiguity that she uses to evoke a vivid and dreamlike world.
Anna Gaskell
Jeff Wall
Gregory Crewdson
Philip-Lorca diCorcia
Sam Taylor-Johnson
Tracy Moffat
Untitled – May 1997 1997 Hannah Starkey born 1971
Vibeke Tandberg
PHOTO-ASSIGNMENT 2: Selfie Experiments
Choose 3-5 of these ideas below to explore and produce a range of outcomes. Remember to create blog posts that clearly show your process and where the ideas come from…
Other possibilities
Luis Cobelo
Hans Peter Feldmann – identity, status and gender
John Coplans Self Portraits 1984
Alicja Brodowicz
Hassan Hajjaj -culture clash- Moroccan Pop ArtKensuke Koike – reconstituting found portraits to create new / possible identities
Dino Kuznik shares how he shoots through household materials like grease and broken glass...See what transparent materials or objects you have lying around and see if you can use them to throw light and create a visually compelling creative self-portrait.
Dino Kuznik
Always explore, describe and explain :
who (is in the photo / took the photo)
what (is the photo about?)
why (has the image been made / displayed / connected to other images or text)
where (was the photo taken)
how was the photo taken (technical attributes)
when (was the photo taken)
LINKS to high scoring A GRADE exemplar EXAM PROJECTS
The daily grind can be a test of endurance. In Tokyo Compression, Michael Wolf recorded the extreme discomfort of Japanese commuters pressed up against windows dripping with condensation on their journeys to and from work.
In Harlem Trolley Bus, Robert Frank showed the divisions within American society in the mid-20th century. Dryden Goodwin took pictures of exhausted travellers on London night buses and wove a protective cocoon of blood capillaries around them.
Connections with film making…
The idea for this project comes from Luke Fowler‘s series of half-frame photographs recently published in the book ‘Two-Frame Films‘. The project is intended to encourage students to concentrate on the editorial aspect of photography, the selection and juxtaposition of photographic images and how this might affect the ways in which a viewer engages with the work. Fowler is better known for his work in film but has used a half-frame camera as part of his practice. This work explores the relationship between two juxtaposed images. A half frame camera exposes two shots on each 35mm frame. A roll of 36 exposures therefore produces 72 images in pairs. The resulting diptychs are still images but reference the theory of montage, first articulated by Russian film makers in the 1920s, specifically Sergei Eisenstein
An example of two frames from Sergei Eisenstein’s film ‘Battleship Potemkin’, 1925
Thinking sculpturally / 3-D options
Sculptural images – using print-outs – student example
MOCK EXAM PREPARATION: Final prints must be added to the print folder !!!
We expect see a selection of final outcomes from various portrait tasks and assignments. Ensure that your final images are a direct response to your chosen photographer(s) and show a clear visual link
1-2 environmental portraits
3-4 studio portraits showing different lighting techniques etc.
1-2 self-portraits from Masculinity/ Femininity
Add your images to the print folder here:
CONTROLLED CONDITIONS : Essentials
You will have one full day = 5 hours to complete this unit so make sure you use it productively
Complete and publish relevant blog posts as per Checklist above/ Go4School Tracking sheet and comments from teacher. BLOG SIZE images = 1000 pixels on SHORT EDGE
Produce mock versions of your final prints and describe how you wish to present them
later on…
Complete mounting all final prints and include label and velcro
Produce a virtual gallery and write an evaluation, comment on:
– How successful was your final outcomes? – Did you realise your intentions? – What references did you make to artists references – comment on technical, visual, contextual, conceptual? – Is there anything you would do differently/ change etc?
PREPARE AND SAVE IMAGES FOR PRINTING:
File Handling and printing...
Remember when EXPORTING from Lightroom you must adjust the file size to 1000 pixels on the Short edge for “blog-friendly” images (JPEGS)
BUT…for editing and printing when EXPORTING from Lightroom you must adjust the file size to Short edge for “high resolution” images (JPEGS) like this…
A5 Short Edge = 14.8 cm
A4 Short Edge = 21.0 cm
A3 Short Edge =29.7 cm
This will ensure you have the correct ASPECT RATIO
Ensure you label and save your file in you M :Drive and then copy across to the PRINT FOLDER / IMAGE TRANSFER
For a combination of images, or square format images you use the ADOBE PHOTOSHOP > NEW DOCUMENT + PRINT PRESETS on to help arrange images on the correct size page (A3, A4, A5)
You can do this using Photoshop, Set up the page sizes as templates and import images into each template, then you can see for themselves how well they fit… but remember to add an extra 6mm for bleed (3mm on each side of the page) to the original templates. i.e. A4 = 297mm x 210 but the template size for this would be 303mm x 216mm.
Making a Virtual Gallery in Photoshop
Download an empty gallery file…then insert your images and palce them on the walls. Adjust the persepctive, size and shape using CTRL T (free transform) You can also add things like a drop shadow to make the image look more realistic…
For the 5 x weeks leading up to the Year 12 PHOTOGRAPHYCONTROLLED CONDITIONS you will need to refer to this resource pack for ideas and inspiration… “SELF -PORTRAIT and IDENTITY JAC PDF” (to find it just copy and paste the link below into the top bar of the folder icon on your screen) M:DepartmentsPhotographyStudentsResourcesPortraitureTO DO
Follow the 10 Step Process and create multiple blog posts for each unit to ensure you tackle all Assessment Objectives thoroughly :
Mood-board, definition and introduction (AO1)
Mind-map of ideas (AO1)
Artist References / Case Studies (must include image analysis) (AO1)
Photo-shoot Action Plan (AO3)
Multiple Photoshoots + contact sheets (AO3)
Image Selection, sub selection, review and refine ideas (AO2)
What type of image is this (photo, painting, illustration, poster, etc.)?
What do you notice first? Describe what else you see.
What’s happening in the image?
What people and objects are shown? How are they arranged? How do they relate to each other?
What is the physical setting? Is place important?
What, if any, words do you see?
Are there details that suggest the time period this image relates to? Is the creation date listed in the bibliographic record? If the creation date is listed, was this image created at or around the same time period the image relates to?
What other details can you see?
REFLECT: Generate and test hypotheses
What tools might have been used to create this image?
Why do you think this image was made? What might have been the creator’s purpose? What evidence supports your theory?
Why do you think the creator chose to include these particular details? What might have been left out of the frame?
Who do you think was the audience for this image?
What do you think the creator might have wanted the audience to think or feel? Does the arrangement or presentation (lighting, angle, etc.) of the details affect how the audience might think or feel? How?
What do you feel when looking at this image?
Does this image show clear bias? If so, towards what or whom? What evidence supports your conclusion?
What was happening during the time period this image represents? If someone made this image today, what would be different/the same?
What did you learn from examining this image? Does any new information you learned contradict or support your prior knowledge about the topic or theme of this image?
Once you have been instructed on how to use the lighting studio safely and respectfully, you will be able to use the studio during lesson times or in study periods. You must book the facility in advance via one of your teachers JAC / MM / MVT / LJS
You must always leave the studio in a clean and tidy, safe manner. All equipment must be switched off and packed away. Any damage must be reported and logged.
Typical studio set up with infinity screen back-drop
Types of lighting available
Continous lighting (spot / flood)
Flash head
Soft box
Reflectors and coloured gels
Chiarascuro effects and single point lighting
Still Life Photography and using the product table / copy stand
Product table set-up, with back light and infinity screen
Still-life Studio Shoot:
You can choose to photograph each object individually or group together several objects for a more complex still life arrangements.
Technical stuff
Continuous Lights – photograph objects three dimensionally
Camera setting: Manual Mode ISO: 100 White Balance: Daylight Aperture: F/16 Shutter: 0.5 sec to 0.8 sec (depending on reflection of each object) Lights in room must be switched off to avoid reflections
Continuous Lights – portrait
Camera setting: Manual Mode ISO: 100 White Balance: Daylight Shutter Speed 1/125 sec Aperture f/16
Camera setting: Manual Mode ISO: 100 White Balance: Daylight Aperture: F/16 Shutter: 1/125-1/200 (depending on reflection of each object) Flash heads set to power output: 2.0 Use pilot light for focusing
PORTRAITS
Camera settings (flash lighting) Tripod: optional Use transmitter on hotshoe White balance: daylight (5000K) ISO: 100 Exposure: Manual 1/125 shutter-speed > f/16 aperture – check settings before shooting Focal lenght: 105mm portrait lens
Camera settings (continuous lighting) Tripod: recommended to avoid camera shake Manual exposure mode White balance: tungsten light (3200K) ISO: 400-1600 – depending on how many light sources Exposure: Manual 1/60-1/125 shutter-speed > f/4-f/8 aperture – check settings before shooting Focal length: 50mm portrait lens
The first Half Term in Year 12 is designed to encourage you to develop Core Skills in…
Observe – Seek – Challenge
Camera Handling Skills
Using the Hautlieu Creative Blog
Discussing, sharing and analysing examples of photography
Fundamental image selection, editing and enhancement
Explore the formal elements skillfully and creatively
Learning about key artists and concepts
Task 1
Watch : Genius of Photography / Fixing The Shadows and take
Discussion Points (remember to include these in your presentation)
Camera Obscura
Nicephore Niepce
Louis Daguerre
Daguerreotype
Henry Fox Talbot
Richard Maddox
George Eastman
Kodak (Brownie)
Digital Photography
Think – Pair – Share activities
To embed your understanding of the origins of photography and its beginnings you’ll need to produce a blog post / word / powerpointpresentation which outlines the major developments in its practice. Some will have been covered in the documentary but you may also need to research and discover further information. Add plenty of visual evidence and examples to help articulate your understanding…
Wordcount Guideline = 1000 Words
Structure
Introduction – Key Content – Conclusion / Summary
Due Date Friday 20th September
Task 2
Summer Task Critique
Think – Pair – Share
Blog intro and upload of Summer Task
Develop a range Paper Experiments / photographing white paper
Create a blog post titled ‘Focus Control and Aperture’
Explain different ways of focusing on a camera (AF and MF)
Explain what focal length is. Include an image to help illustrate this.
Explain what Aperture is and give examples of different Apertures
Explain what Depth of Field is
Include your experiments using the Camera Simulator. Clearly label your experiments to explain what’s going on.
Include research of photographers who use depth of field / focus in their work – Choose from: Ralph Eugene Meatyard,(particularly his Zen Twigs and No Focus photos), Saul Leiter, or Uta Barth
Autofocus = general use
Manual focus = close ups and fine detail ( use the focus ring on the end of the lens and adjust for each shot !)
Focal length and types of lenses
The focal length of a lens is the optical distance (usually measured in mm) from the centre of a lensand its focus.
This determines what you “see” when using a camera…
Spot the differences when using different focal lengths whilst photographing the same thing…
Setting Focus Points…advanced techniques
Exploring depth of field and focus with Ralph Eugene Meatyard, Saul Leiter and Uta Barth.
One of the ways that cameras see the world differently to the way we view it with our eyes is that they can selectively focus on the subject. This phenomenon is related to the mechanics and optics of the camera lens. The photographer can change the settings on the camera in order to alter the amount of light entering the lens. This directly affects the depth of field of the subject being viewed.Some photographers have experimented with a variety of effects that can be achieved by manipulating the camera’s ability to bring subjects in and out of focus.
Meatyard made his living as an optician,born in 1925 and died in 1976. He was a member of the Lexington Camera Club and pursued his passion for photography outside the mainstream. He experimented with various strategies including multiple exposures, motion blur, and other methods of photographic abstraction. Two of his series are particularly concerned with focus and depth of field, both stretching the expressive potential of photography, film and cameras when looking with the ordinary world.
No focus- Reducing groups of human figures to indistinct abstractions, the artist proposes an alternate notion to the traditional photographic portrait.
Zen Twigs – A meditative study of the mysterious forms of twigs and tree branches, inspired and informed by the artist’s deep study of Zen Buddhism.
Saul Leiter
Leiter was foremost a painter who discovered the possibilities of colour photography. He created an extraordinary body of work, beginning in the 1940s. His images explore colour harmonies and often exploit unusual framing devices – shop signs, umbrellas, curtains, car doors, windows dripping with condensation – to create abstracted compositions of everyday street life in the city. Leiter was fond of using long lenses, partly so that he could remain unobserved, but also so that he could compress space, juxtaposing objects and people in unusual ways. Many of his images use negative space, with large out of focus areas, drawing our eye to a particular detail or splash of colour.
Examples of Saul Leiter’s work…
Uta Barth
Throughout the past two decades, Uta Barth has made visual perception the subject of her work. Regarded for her “empty” images that border on painterly abstraction, the artist carefully renders blurred backgrounds, cropped frames and the natural qualities of light to capture incidental and fleeting moments, those which exist almost exclusively within our periphery. With a deliberate disregard for both the conventional photographic subject and point-and-shoot role of the camera, Barth’s work delicately deconstructs conventions of visual representation by calling our attention to the limits of the human eye. — Tanya Bonakdar Gallery
Uta Barth’s work…
What to do…
Research the work of Ralph Eugene Meatyard, Saul Leiter and Uta Barth. How have they experimented with focus and depth of field in their work? Choose specific images to comment on in detail. You could also find other photographers who are interested in experimenting with focus effects.
Explore the effects of changing the aperture settings on your camera to alter depth of field. You could illustrate this with a series of photos of the same subject shot with different aperture settings.
Create a series of deliberately out of focus images. Consider the degree of abstraction in the final image. How out of focus are the subjects and are they still recognisable? Experiment with colour and black and white.
Create a series of images which explore dramatic depth of field (selective focus). Experiment with switching between foreground, middle ground and background focus. Remember, you will need to use a wide aperture (small number e.g. f2.8) and/or a longer lens for this. Remember to share all of the images you make (including those that you deem failures) in a gallery/contact sheet.
Curate your images into different groupings (see below). Experiment with editing the images in each set differently. Give each set a title and write a short evaluation explaining your editorial decisions.
Make a blog post about your development of ideas based on the prompts listed above…
Ensure you use technical vocab throughout using the photoliteracy matrix here
Some more examples…
Week 4Shutter Speed and movement
Throwing – rolling – spinning – bouncing paper
Explore Shutter Speed and movement / light
Paper Experiments
Throw, move , roll paper aeroplanes, balls, spirals
HW Experiment with Shutter Speed and movement / light / water
Find examples of fast shutter speed in action
Find examples of slow shutter speed (long exposure) in action
What kind of control does adjusting the shutter speed give us?
Think about and plan a set of photoshoots that show your understanding of shutter speed
What do we need to be aware of / careful of with different shutter speeds ?
Blog Posts to create:
Create a blog post titled ‘Shutter Speed’
Explain what Shutter Speed is – make sure you include how it affects light and movement
Include images to illustrate your point
Include research of photographers who use shutter speed to impact the outcome of their photos
Take your own photos inspired by the artist you have focused on, edit and present your photos on the blog post
Choosing the setting on your camera
TV – TV stands for Time-value mode, but is better known as shutter-priority shooting mode. It’s one of the Creative Zone modes. This mode allows you to set the shutter speed, leaving the camera to choose the aperture needed for correct exposure. ‘Tv’ is used to identify this setting on the mode dial.
Shutter Speed…what is it?
Shutter speed is the length of time your camera’s shutter stays open, and therefore how long the sensor is exposed to light. The longer it’s open, the more light hits the sensor and the brighter the image. Shutter speed is one side of the exposure triangle – the three factors that determine the exposure of an image.
Controlling and adapting shutter speed is vital for capturing either sharp images of moving things…or exploring creative blurring in moving things…or night photography and light trails too,
Eadweard Muybridge fast shutter speeds
Eadweard Muybridge is remembered today for his pioneering photographic studies of motion, which ultimately led to the development of cinema. He was hired to photograph a horse’s movement to prove that a horse’s hooves are clear of the ground at a trot.
Muybridge is known for his pioneering chronophotography of animal locomotion between 1878 and 1886, which used multiple cameras to capture the different positions in a stride; and for his zoopraxiscope, a device for projecting painted motion pictures from glass discs that predated the flexible perforated film strip used in cinematography
Harold Edgerton – fast shutter speeds
Harold Edgerton / MIT / 1957
Harold Edgerton / MIT / 1964
Harold Edgerton, Squash Stroke, 1938, gelatin silver print, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of the Harold and Esther Edgerton Family Foundation
Hiroshi Sugimoto – slow shutter speeds
“With contemporary art, you get to represent your uniqueness, your own reality.” Early 20th-century Cubist and Dadaist artist Marcel Duchamp influenced Sugimoto’s conceptual take on art and time.
Sugimoto often employs large format cameras and long exposure times (slow shutter speeds) to capture light behaving / performing in expected but controlled ways
Francesca Woodman’s family spent their summers at her parents’ farmhouse in the countryside near Florence in Italy and many of her photographs were taken there. European culture and art had a significant impact on her artistic development. The influence of surrealist art, particularly the photographs of Man Ray and Claude Cahun can be seen in the themes and style of her work. She developed her ideas and skills as a student at Rhode Island School of Design.
Her importance as an innovator is significant, particularly in the context of the 1970s when the status of photography was still regarded as less important than painting and sculpture. She led the way for later American artists who used photography to explore themes relating to identity such as Cindy Sherman and Nan Goldin.
What to do…
Research the work of Eadward Muybridge, Harold Edgerton, Hiroshi Sugimoto and Francesca Woodman. How have they experimented with shutter speed and long exposures in their work? Choose specific images to comment on in detail. You could also find other photographers who are interested in experimenting with similar effects.
Explore the effects of changing the shutter speed on your camera to alter exposure times. You could illustrate this with a series of photos of the same subject shot with different settings.
Create a series ofimages. Consider the degree of abstraction in the final image. How sharp / blurry are the subjects and are they still recognisable? Experiment with colour and black and white.
Create a series of images which explore dramatic shutter speed effects. Remember to share all of the images you make (including those that you deem failures) in a gallery/contact sheet.
Curate your images into different groupings (see below). Experiment with editing the images in each set differently. Give each set a title and write a short evaluation explaining your editorial decisions.
Make a blog post about your development of ideas based on the prompts listed above…
RememberAs a rule of thumb, your shutter speed needs to be double (or more) than the lens focal length. So, for example, if using a 50mm lens, your shutter speed should be 1/100th sec or faster. If shooting with a 75mm lens, your shutter speed should be at least 1/150th sec.
Remember : A slow shutter speed keeps the shutter open for longer. This not only allows more light to be recorded, it also means any moving objects will appear blurred. Slow shutter speeds are commonly used for photographing in low light conditions, or to capture motion blur.
Week 5 ISO
Blog Post to Create:
What is ISO? How does it affect your camera?
What does a high ISO / low ISO mean? What effect can this have on your photos? What is meant by visual noise? (include images to illustrate your points)
When might you want to use a high ISO?
Research one of the photographers below who look at texture in their photography.
Explore the effects of changing the ISO on your camera to alter grain but also the brightness of your images. You could illustrate this with a series of photos of the same subject shot with different settings. When taking/editing photos of the texture, consider the degree of abstraction in the final image. Are the images still recognisable? Experiment with colour and black and white.
Present at least 6 final photos (of the same subject), 3 should show visual noise and 3 should show no visual noise.
Look at a range of artists who explore texture in different ways
HW Experiment with Texture and Surface
What is ISO?
ISO is a number that represents how sensitive your camera sensor is to light.
What does a low/high ISO mean?
A lower ISO value means less sensitivity to light, and the more light you will need to take the photo.
While a higher ISO means more sensitivity, and the less light you need to take a picture.
It’s one element of photography’s exposure triangle — along with aperture and shutter speed — and plays an essential role in the quality of your photos.
LOW ISO v HIGH ISO
If you use a High ISO…. The trade-off is that higher ISOs can lead to degraded image quality and cause your photos to be grainy or “noisy.”
The lower the ISO number, the lower your camera’s sensitivity, and the more light you need to take a picture
Low Light Situations
In low light situations, it is often necessary to raise the ISO in order to get a clear picture. The big problem with raising the ISO, though, is that it introduces ‘noise’ into the image (we talk about this more below), which can make it appear grainy.
If you are taking a picture in ideal light conditions, you will want to keep the ISO low in order to avoid introducing noise into the image.
How to adjust ISO on the Camera
Texture
When talking about photography, texture refers to the visual quality of the surface of an object, revealed through variances in shape, tone and colour depth. Texture brings life and vibrance to images that would otherwise appear flat and uninspiring.
Research one of the below photographers
and then experiment with taking your own textural photos: When you find a texture you want to capture, take a series of photos of the same subject, shot with different settings. When taking photos of the texture, consider the degree of abstraction in the final image. Are the images still recognisable? Experiment with colour and black and white.
Present at least 6 final photos (of the same subject), 3 should show visual noise and 3 should show no visual noise.
Research the work of the photographers listed above. How have they experimented with texture work? Choose specific images to comment on in detail. You could also find other photographers who are interested in experimenting with similar effects.
Explore the effects of changing the ISO on your camera to alter grain but also the brightness of your images. You could illustrate this with a series of photos of the same subject shot with different settings.
Create a series ofimages. Consider the degree of abstraction in the final image. Are the images still recognisable? Experiment with colour and black and white.
Create a series of images which explore TEXTURAL effects. Remember to share all of the images you make (including those that you deem failures) in a gallery/contact sheet.
Curate your images into different groupings (see below). Experiment with editing the images in each set differently. Give each set a title and write a short evaluation explaining your editorial decisions.
Make a blog post about your development of ideas based on the prompts listed above…
Make Blog Post that describes and explains your learning journey through Adobe Lightroom Library Mode and Develop Mode
Week 6 Paper Experiments
Paper Experiments
Adobe Lightroom / Photoshop edits
Look at…The Formal Elements and make connections
Explore Exposure Compensation and Light Meter awareness / use
BLOG POSTS to make…
“Paper Experiments”…remember to describe and explain your processes, how your ideas have been influenced (artists) and what aspects of the formal elements you are exploring…
Watch the documentary on ‘Fixing the Shadows’ from BBC Genius of Photography, Episode 1.
To embed your understanding of the origins of photography and its beginnings you’ll need to produce a blog post / word / powerpointpresentation which outlines the major developments in its practice. Some will have been covered in the documentary but you may also need to research and discover further information.
Your presentation must contain information about the following and keep it in its chronological order: (Click on each of the bullet points to learn more).
Why does this make it hard to dictate the origins of photography?
A camera obscura is the natural phenomenon in which the rays of light passing through a small hole into a dark space form an image where they strike a surface, resulting in an inverted and reversed projection of the view outside.
Because this is a natural phenomenon, it’s hard to pinpoint the exact origins of photography….
The invention of photography, was not synonymous with the invention of the camera. Cameraless images were an important part of the story. William Henry Fox Talbot patented his Photogenic Drawing process…
Using a sheet of fine writing paper, coated with salt and brushed with a solution of silver nitrate, Talbot found that the paper would darkened in the sun. Talbot used this discovery to make precise tracings of botanical specimens: he set a pressed leaf or plant on a piece of sensitized paper, covered it with a sheet of glass, and set it in the sun. Wherever the light struck, the paper darkened, but wherever the plant blocked the light, it remained white. He called his new discovery “the art of photogenic drawing.”
As his chemistry improved, Talbot returned to the idea of photographic images made in a camera. During the “brilliant summer of 1835,” he took full advantage of the unusually abundant sunshine and placed pieces of sensitized photogenic drawing paper in miniature cameras— “mouse traps,” his wife called them—set around the grounds to record the silhouette of Lacock Abbey’s animated roofline and trees.
The mousetraps are sturdy little wooden boxes with a brass tube housing a lens at one end, and a sliding wooden panel at the other. Into the wooden panel at the back Talbot would stick a piece of normal writing paper that he had made chemically sensitive to light.
Once the paper was inserted, the camera would be placed in front of the subject being photographed and left for several hours to expose. After that, the paper inside would be carefully removed and chemically treated to bring out and then stabilise the latent negative image. If the experiment reached this point successfully, the negative was used to create positive prints by sensitising a further sheet of paper, laying the negative on top of it in a frame, and exposing it in the sun for several hours. The resulting print would then need to be fixed to stop the image from fading. Getting the right balance of chemicals and treatments for this stage of the process was one of the most vexed areas of research for the duration of early photographic experimentation.
In the month of August 1835, William Henry Fox Talbot produced the first photographic negative to have survived to this day. The subject is a window. Despite the clear connection, it is an entirely different image compared to those of his colleagues Niépce and Daguerre. Those are photographs taken from a window, while this is the photograph of a window. While the window constitutes the most immediate metaphor to refer to photography, Talbot doesnʼt use it but more simply he photographs it. He thus takes a photograph of photography.
Why was the daguerreotype not as successful as Talbot’s system?
While Talbot quietly continued his experiments, he discovered that he had a rival. In January 1839, Louis Daguerre thrilled the prestigious Académie Française in Paris with news of his own method for fixing the shadows.
The daguerreotype was the first commercially successful photographic process (1839-1860) in the history of photography. Named after the inventor, Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre, each daguerreotype is a unique image on a silvered copper plate.
In contrast to photographic paper, a daguerreotype is not flexible and is rather heavy. The daguerreotype is accurate, detailed and sharp. It has a mirror-like surface and is very fragile. Since the metal plate is extremely vulnerable, most daguerreotypes are presented in a special housing. Different types of housings existed: an open model, a folding case, jewelry…presented in a wooden ornate box dressed in red velvet. LD a theatre set designer
Unlike Talbot’s negative-positive process, Daguerre’s produced one-off images, like a Polaroid.
The big weakness of the dageurreotype was that you could not make multiple reproductions from the original image, and that’s where ultimately Talbot’s system came to dominate the dageurreotype.
Daguerreotype
Anna Atkins
Anna Atkins‘ British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions of 1843 is the first use of photographic images to illustrate a book. This method of tracing the shapes of objects with light on photosensitive surfaces has, from the very early days, been part of the repertoire of the photographer.
The cyanotype (from Ancient Greek: κυάνεος, kyáneos ‘dark blue’ and τύπος, týpos ‘mark, impression, type’) is a slow-reacting, economical photographic printing formulation sensitive to a limited near ultraviolet and blue light spectrum, the range 300 nm to 400 nm known as UVA radiation.[1] It produces a monochrome, blue coloured print on a range of supports, often used for art, and for reprography in the form of blueprints. For any purpose, the process usually uses two chemicals: ferric ammonium citrate or ferric ammonium oxalate, and potassium ferricyanide, and only water to develop and fix. Announced in 1842, it is still in use
Why was his invention so pioneering for photography?
Richard Maddox was an English photographer and physician who invented lightweight gelatin negative plates for photography in 1871. Dry plate is a glass plate coated with a gelatin emulsion of silver bromide. It can be stored until exposure, and after exposure it can be brought back to a darkroom for development at leisure.
The advantages of the dry plate were obvious: photographers could use commercial dry plates off the shelf instead of having to prepare their own emulsions in a mobile darkroom. Negatives did not have to be developed immediately. Also, for the first time, cameras could be made small enough to be hand-held, or even concealed:
Why if Muybridge considered the precursor of cinema?
Eadweard Muybridge’s famous Motion Studies were the precursor of cinema, and the product of the wealth and the whim of the railroad baron Leland Stanford.
Born in the ancient market town of Kingston upon Thames, his restless ambitions brought him to San Francisco, a boom city, founded on gold rush wealth, and sustained by the new transcontinental railway, financed by Leland Stanford. In this thoroughly modern metropolis, Muybridge established a reputation with mammoth plate landscapes and spectacular panoramas, including an eye-boggling 360-degree view of his adopted city.
Stanford came to Muybridge because he had a rich man’s problem. A passionate racehorse breeder, he wanted to prove that a horse lifted all four feet off the ground when it trotted, something that had evaded human perception for millennia.
0n a specially whited-out section of a racetrack, Muybridge placed a row of 24 cameras with electric shutters, which would be triggered in sequence, four every second, as the horse passed by.By this means, Muybridge did more than freeze the moment. He took a scalpel to time itself.
(Solnit) Muybridge’s photographs were the first source of accurate information about the gait of a horse.It’s the beginning of this change where the camera allows human beings to see faster than our own eyes, to break down the world and to dissect motion. And it’s part of that kind of intrusion into the flow of time.
For Stanford, the project was always about horses, whereas Muybridge understood that this was potentially about everything he could find, and really create an encyclopaedia of zoological motion.
How did he make photography available to the masses?
What company did he form?
Initially, Mr Eastman was working in a bank as a bank teller. He became interested in photography as he wanted to document a vacation he was planning. But he became more interested in photography than going on vacation. He never did go. Eastman revolutionised photography by degrees…..
In 1879, London was the center of the photographic and business world. George Eastman went there to obtain a patent on his plate-coating machine. An American patent was granted the following year.
In April 1880, Eastman leased the third floor of a building on State Street in Rochester, and began to manufacture dry plates for sale.
Eastman built his business on four basic principles:
a focus on the customer
mass production at low cost
worldwide distribution
extensive advertising
As Eastman’s young company grew, it faced total collapse at least once when dry plates in the hands of dealers went bad. Eastman recalled them and replaced them with a good product. “Making good on those plates took our last dollar,” he said. “But what we had left was more important — reputation.”
“The idea gradually dawned on me,” he later said, “that what we were doing was not merely making dry plates, but that we were starting out to make photography an everyday affair.” Or as he described it more succinctly “to make the camera as convenient as the pencil.”
Eastman’s experiments were directed to the use of a lighter and more flexible support than glass. His first approach was to coat the photographic emulsion on paper and then load the paper in a roll holder. The holder was used in view cameras in place of the holders for glass plates. In 1883, he eventually announced something we now take for granted, a roll of film.
Kodak (Brownie)
The roll of film became the basis for the first Kodak camera, initially known as the “roll holder breast camera.” The term Kodak, coined for the occasion by Eastman himself, first appeared in December 1887.
With the KODAK Camera, Eastman put down the foundation for making photography available to everyone. The Brownie was a basic box camera with a single lens. It used a roll film, another innovation from Eastman Kodak. Users received the pre-loaded camera, took their photographs, and returned it to Kodak. Kodak would develop the film, print the photos, reload the camera with new film, and return it to the customer.
While people were amazed with the invention of photography, they didn’t understand how a process that could record all aspects of a scene with such exquisite detail could fail so dismally to record its colours. The search immediately began for a means of capturing accurately not only the form but also the colours of nature.
While scientists, photographers, businessmen and experimenters laboured, the public became impatient. Photographers, eager to give their customers what they wanted, soon took the matter, literally, into their own hands and began to add colour to their monochrome images. As the writer of A Guide to Painting Photographic Portraits noted in 1851:
When the photographer has succeeded in obtaining a good likeness, it passes into the artist’s hands, who, with skill and colour, give to it a life-like and natural appearance.
Hand-coloured stereo daguerreotype of a young man in military uniform, c.1855
The three colour process
In 1861, a young Scottish physicist, James Clerk Maxwell, conducted an experiment to show that all colours can be made by an appropriate mixture of red, green and blue light.
Maxwell made three lantern slides of a tartan ribbon through red, green and blue filters. Using three separate magic lanterns—each equipped with a filter of the same colour the images had been made with—he then projected them onto a screen. When the three images were superimposed together on the screen, they combined to make a full-colour image which was a recognisable reproduction of the original.
James Clerk Maxwell, Tartan ribbon, 1861. Vivex print (1937) from original negatives
Early Experiments:
While the fundamental theory may have been understood, a practical method of colour photography remained elusive.
In 1891 Gabriel Lippmann, a professor of physics at the Sorbonne, demonstrated a colour process which was based on the phenomenon of light interference—the interaction of light waves that produces the brilliant colours you see in soap bubbles. This process won Lippmann a Nobel Prize in 1908 and was marketed commercially for a short time around the turn of the 19th century.
Not long after Maxwell’s 1861 demonstration, a French physicist, Louis Ducos du Hauron, announced a method for creating colour photographs by combining coloured pigments instead of light. Three black-and-white negatives, taken through red, green and blue filters, were used to make three separately dyed images which combined to give a coloured photograph. This method forms the basis of today’s colour processes.
While this work was scientifically important, it was of limited practical value at first. Exposure times were long, and photographic materials sensitive to the whole range of the colour spectrum were not yet available.
The first properly usable and commercially successful screen process—the autochrome—was invented early in the 20th century by two French brothers, Auguste and Louis Lumière.
In 1904 they gave the first presentation of their process to the French Academy of Science, and by 1907 they had begun to produce autochrome plates commercially.
Anon, Couple with a motor car, c.1910, autochrome
Baron de Meyer, Flower study, 1908, autochrome
The First Digital Image:
Russell Kirsch was an American who worked a steady job at the National Bureau of Standards. in 1950, he and his colleagues developed the USA’s first operational stored-program computer, known as the Standards Eastern Automatic Computer, or SEAC.
The Standards Eastern Automatic Computer that scanned the first digital image.
This computer would be used for all sorts of applications. It was Russell Kirsch who first looked at the hulking machine – (which back then was considered to be a relatively slimline computer )– and had the thought, ‘Gee, y’know, we could probably load a picture into this thing.’
Kirsch and the team built their own drum scanner that would allow them to ‘trace variations of intensity over the surfaces of photographs’. With this, they were able to make the first digital scans. One of the first – possibly the very first – was an image of Russell Kirsch’s newborn son, Walden Kirsch.
The digitally scanned photograph of Walden Kirsch.
1969 – CCD Chips The beating heart of a digital camera is its sensor. Fulfilling the same function as a frame of film, a sensor records the light that hits it, and sends it to the processor for the necessary translation that makes it a digital image.
At this point in the digital photography story, sensors start to enter the picture. In 1969, Willard Boyle and George Smith of Bell Labs developed something they called a charge-coupled device, which digital photographers with long memories might find more familiar if we refer to it by its more common name – a CCD. Essentially, it used a row of tiny metal-oxide-semiconductor (MOS) capacitors to store information as electrical charges (fulfilling the same function as the magnetic tape in the older cameras).
Though Boyle and Smith were mostly concerned with computing, subsequent inventors made the connection that if you were to pair this device with something photosensitive, you’ve got yourself a rudimentary camera sensor. In 1972, the first published digital colour photograph splashed on the front of Electronics magazine, taken by British-born engineer Dr Michael Tompsett.
Archives in contemporary photography: Read text about the resurgence of archives in contemporary photography by theorist David Bate: archives-networks-and-narratives_low-res, make notes and reference it by incorporating quotes into your essay to widen different perspectives. Comment on quotes used to construct an argument that either support or disapprove your own point of view.
Origins of Photography: Study this concept 2: Photography is the capturing of light; a camera is optional developed by PhotoPedagogy which includes a number of good examples of early photographic experiments and the camera obscura which preceded photography. It also touches on photography’s relationship with light and reality and delve into photographic theories, such as index and trace as a way of interpreting the meaning of photographs.
Photography did not spring forth from nowhere: in the expanding capitalist culture of the late 18th and 19th centuries, some people were on the look-out for cheap mechanical means for producing images […] photography emerged experimentally from the conjuncture of three factors: i) concerns with amateur drawing and/or techniques for reproducing printed matter, ii) light-sensitive materials; iii) the use of the camera obscura — Steve Edwards, Photography – A Very Short Introduction
Studio Portraits Moodboard (include various lighting methods)
What is studio lighting and why do we use studio lighting?
Add diagrams / images of lighting set-ups too
What is the difference between 1-2-3 point lighting and what does each technique provide / solve
What is Rembrandt lighting, Butterfly lighting, Chiarascuro ? Show examples
What is fill lighting?
Include your own studio portrait experiments showing a variety of lighting techniques and outcomes.
Present a series of final images in virtual gallery
Your photos….
You must complete a range of studio lighting experiments and present your strongest ideas on a separate blog post
Remember to select only the most successful images
You should be aiming to produce portraits that show clarity, focus and a clear understanding of a range of lighting techniques
Editing should be minimal at this point…we are looking for your camera skills here
But…be creative and experimental with your approach “in camera”…extremes, uniqueness and possibly thought provoking imagery that will improve your ideas and outcomes.
To get you started we are going to learn some more studio methods…using a variety of simple lighting techniques.
In most cases we can make use of natural or available / ambient light…but we must be aware of different kinds of natural light and learn how to exploit it thoughtfully and creatively…
intensity of the light
direction of the light
temperature of the light (and white balance on the camera)
Rembrandt lighting is a technique for portrait photography named after Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn, the great Dutch painter. It refers to a way of lighting a face so that an upside-down light triangle appears under the eyes of the subject.
In Hollywood in the early 20th century, the legendary film director Cecil B. DeMille introduced spotlights to create more realistic effects of light and shadows into the ‘plain’ studio lighting setup that was generally in use. Rembrandt lighting is one effect that was created by this, and it became widely used in promotional photographs of film stars showing them in a dramatic and eye-catching way.
Marilyn MonroeKeanu Revees
Why use Rembrandt Lighting?
By using Rembrandt lighting you instantly create shadows and contrast – and of course, the characteristic ‘triangle of light’ beneath the subject’s eye
Rembrandt lighting adds an element of drama and psychological depth to the character of your sitter.
It’s effective, not just because it gives an individual ‘look’ to your portrait photography, but also because it acts as a photographic device to draw the eye.
You can do this in so many ways in photography – leading lines, depth of field and negative space are all methods of drawing the viewer’s eye to the focal point/subject of the image.
In portraiture, the eyes of your subject are nearly always the main point of focus. The triangle of light, placed just below the eye on the shadow side of the face, will increase the emphasis and the viewer really will be ‘drawn in’ to your image.
So, use Rembrandt lighting to create not just dramatic portrait photography, but also portrait photography that grabs the viewer’s attention and draws their eye to your subject. After all, this is the aim of portraiture – it’s all about your subject – adding in creative lighting helps to enhance the impact of the photograph.
Light set-up using one key light to the right
How to Create a Rembrandt Lighting Setup
Light: Lighting styles are determined by the positioning of your light source. Rembrandt lighting is created by the single light source being at a 40 to 45-degree angle and higher than the subject. Use cans use both flashlights and continuous lights.
Lens: Use a 35mm or 50mm if space is at a premium – or if you’re looking at including more of the subject than just the head and shoulders. A 50mm works really nicely for portraits and will give a nice depth of field if you’re shooting at a shallow aperture. But a 35mm will give you a wider point of view and is great to fit more of the body in of your subject.
Camera settings (flash lighting) Tripod: optional Use transmitter on hotshoe White balance: daylight (5000K) ISO: 100 Exposure: Manual 1/125 shutter-speed > f/16 aperture – check settings before shooting Focal lenght: 105mm portrait lens
Camera settings (continuous lighting) Tripod: recommended to avoid camera shake Manual exposure mode White balance: tungsten light (3200K) ISO: 400-1600 – depending on how many light sources Exposure: Manual 1/60-1/125 shutter-speed > f/4-f/8 aperture – check settings before shooting Focal lenght: 50mm portrait lens
Rembrandt lighting using hard light
Rembrandt lighting using soft light
BUTTERFLY LIGHTING
Butterfly lighting is a type of portrait lighting technique used primarily in a studio setting. Its name comes from the butterfly-shaped shadow that forms under the nose because the light comes from above the camera. You may also hear it called ‘paramount lighting’ or ‘glamour lighting’.
What is butterfly lighting used for?
Butterfly lighting is used for portraits. It’s a light pattern that flatters almost everybody, making it one of the most common lighting setups.
Butterfly lighting was used to photograph some of the most famous stars from classic Hollywood, and that’s why it’s also called Paramount lighting.
With it, you can highlight cheekbones and create shadows under them as well as under the neck – which makes the model look thinner.
Lighting: Butterfly lighting requires a key light that can be a flash unit or continuous. If continuos, it can be artificial or natural. In other words, you can use strobes, speedlights, LEDs or even the sun.
A butterfly lighting effect refers to the setup and not to the quality of light – it can be soft or hard light depending on the effect you want.
If you want to create a soft light, you’ll need to use modifiers. A beauty dish is perfect for glamour photography as it distributes the light evenly and smooths the skin. You can also use a softbox or an umbrella.
Instead, if you want to have hard light, you can leave the light source as it is. Alternatively, you can use grid spots to direct it and create different effects – check out MagMod gels for some creative options and examples of what hard light is used for.
Experimentation: Once you have the key light set up, it’s time to fill the shadows. You can use a reflector to bounce the light back up and soften the shadow under the chin and the one from under the nose.
To do so, position the reflector under the subject’s face. Start at waist level and see how it looks. If the shadows are still strong, move it closer to the face and so on.
Experiment with different positions to achieve different effects. You can also change the colour of the reflector. A white one will give you a neutral tone, while a golden one gives a warming overcast.
Once you’re happy with your butterfly lighting, direct the model to have a striking fashion pose or whatever the desired pose or expression you’re looking for.
Just keep in mind that the subject’s face needs to be towards the light in order to have the butterfly shadow under the nose.
CHIARUSCURO
A visual element in art, chiaroscuro (Italian for lightdark) is defined as a bold contrast between light and dark). A certain amount of chiaroscuro is the effect of light modelling in painting where 3-dimensional volume is suggested by highlights and shadows. It first appeared in 15th century painting in Italy and Flanders (Holland), but true chiaroscuro developed during the 16th century, in Mannerism and in Baroque art.
Dark subjects were dramatically lighted by a shaft of light from a single constricted and often unseen source was a compositional device seen in the paintings of old masters such as Caravaggio and Rembrandt.
Johannes Vermeer, The Girl with the Pearl Earring, 1665—-chiaruscuro as employed by the Dutch Masters
Chiaruscuro in film: Film noir (French for “black film”), is a cinematic term used primarily to describe stylish Hollywood crime dramas, particularly those that emphasize moral ambiguity and sexual motivation. Hollywood’s classic film noir period is generally regarded as stretching from the early 1940s to the late 1950s. Film noir of this era is associated with a low-key black-and-white visual style that has roots in German Expressionist cinematography, while many of the prototypical stories and much of the attitude of classic noir derive from the hardboiled school of crime fiction that emerged in the United States during the Depression.
Chiaroscuro in photography: Chiaroscuro using one key light and a variation using a reflector that reflects light from the key light back onto the sitter.
Back light / rim light
Chiarascuro used to illuminate features
Have a look at the work of Oliver Doran a studio portrait photographer in St Helier, Jersey
Using Flash
Bouncing the flash to soften its effects
Above : An example of “bouncing” the flash to soften the effects and create a larger “fill” area…try this wherever there are white walls/ ceilings
Flash units offer a range of possibilities in both low and high lighting scenarios that you could explore such as…
flash “bouncing”
fill-in flash
TTL / speedlight flash
remote / infra-red flash (studio lighting)
fast + slow synch flash
light painting c/w slow shutter speeds
Evidence of Your Learning
During this unit we would expect all students to complete 2-3 blog posts detailing how you are experimenting with various lighting techniques eg REMBRANDT LIGHTING/ BUTTERFLY LIGHTING / CHIARUSCURO + SPliT LIGHTING
Rembrandt Lighting
Add information / links showing how Chiarascuro has been used since the Renaissance in painting…but also how it used now in photography and film
You must describe and explain your process with each technique…add your images to your blog as you progress, print off your successful images and evaluate your process using technical vocab and analysis skills. Think carefully about the presentation of your ideas and outcomes…compare your work to relevant portrait photographers as you develop your studio portraiture – see below
INSPIRATIONS: PORTRAITURE
Annie Leibovitz, Irving Penn, Rankin, Nadav Kandar, Richard Avedon, Yousef Karsh, David Bailey, Mario Testino, Steve McCurry, Jill Greenberg, Nick Knight, Tim Walker, Corrine Day, Jane Bown, Rineke Djikstra, Thomas Ruff et al…
Annie Leibovitz is an American portrait photographer best known for her engaging portraits, particularly of celebrities, which often feature subjects in intimate settings and poses.
Irving Penn was an American photographer known for his fashion photography, portraits, and still lifes. Penn’s career included work at Vogue magazine, and independent advertising work for clients including Issey Miyake and Clinique.
Salvadore Dali
John Rankin Waddell, known as Rankin, is a British photographer and director who has photographed Kate Moss, Madonna, David Bowie and The Queen. The London Evening Standard described Rankin’s fashion and portrait photography style as high-gloss, highly sexed and hyper-perfect.
Watch film where Rankin photograph a group of GCSE students and talk to them about his career and beauty in photography
Nadav Kander is a London-based photographer, artist and director, known for his portraiture and landscapes. Kander has produced a number of books and had his work exhibited widely.
As Molesworth notes, “Each of these artists has engaged portraiture—a genre of image-making as old as modernity itself—as a means of connecting themselves to other artists. The results are three bodies of work that play with the historical conventions of the genre while nibbling away at its edges.”
Aneesa Dawoojee – Gloves off: The Fighting Spirit of South London A diverse London based community bonded by strength, hardships and determination. With an underlying theme of life’s struggle and overcoming it. The journey of real Londoners bonded by a sport that sees no colour. Each person stripped away from their environment and placed against a fine art backdrop in order to take away judgements and let them speak as one voice. Compassionate visual stories that offer hope.
Portrait of Britain vol. 5 Portrait of Britain returns this year with images that define contemporary life in Britain. Alongside the many events that have shaped 2022 – the outbreak of war, record-high inflation, soaring temperatures, and the death of the Queen, to name a few. This year’s winners provide a snapshot of a frenzied year through 99 compelling portraits. Designed to illustrate the diversity of life in modern Britain, the award invites us to reflect on the multiplicity of voices and stories across the country, forming a precious historical record of British life.
Published by Hoxton Mini Press – Explore more here
Expected Final Outcomes
A Case Study and Practical Responses to a photographer who employs a range of lighting techniques
1 x Final Portrait using natural light + analysis and evaluation
1 x Final Portrait using 1 point lighting + analysis and evaluation
1 x Final Portrait using 2 point lighting + analysis and evaluation
Show you can provide evidence of head shots, cropped head shots, half body, three-quarter length and full length portraits.
Show that you can employ interesting angles and viewpoints…
Make sure you ANSWER THESE QUESTIONS IN YOUR BLOG
Why do we use studio lighting?
What is the difference between 1-2-3 point lighting and what does each technique provide / solve
What is fill lighting?
What is Rembrandt lighting, Butterfly lighting, Chiarascuro ? Show examples + your own experiments
Consider Composition
The Triangle
Rule of Thirds
The rule of thirds in photography is a guideline that places the subject in the left or right third of an image, leaving the other two thirds more open.
ENVIRONMENTAL PORTRAITS usually depict people in their…
working environments
environments that they are associated with…
“An environmental portrait is a portrait executed in the subject’s usual environment, such as in their home or workplace, and typically illuminates the subject’s life and surroundings. The term is most frequently used of a genre of photography”
Paul Heartfield
2 Week Plan
Research and develop ideas
Analyse and interpret key artist examples
Plan and execute a range of photoshoots outside of school (HW)
Select and edit final images
Present and evaluate final ideas
We will be studying the history, theory and concept of environmental portraits…their purpose and role in our day to day lives too.
What to include in your Blog Post:
Introduction to Environmental Portraiture: – Create a blog post titled ‘Environmental Portraits’ – Add a Mood board: Create a mood board: Choose a range of environmental portrait photos to put into a grid of images (minimum of 9) to show your understanding of what an environmental portrait can be… You must include a range of approaches in your mood-board… – Introduction:Give an introduction to ‘Environmental Portraiture’ – define what an environmental portrait actually is. Think about the ways in which we use these portraits, and what they can say about us / reveal / conceal
Research and Analysis: – Research one photographer (Chosen by your teacher) and then pick one of their photos to analyse in depth. – Extension- research August Sander and Typologies…include specific examples of their work and show that you can analyse and interpret their image(s). –Click Here for a strong example of an artist analysis of August Sander – Click here for notes on analysing Arnold Newman’s photo of Alfred Krupp
Photoshoot Plan: – Design a mind-map / spider-gram / flowchart of your environmental portrait ideas / possibilities. – After your mind-map, create an Action Plan – Think about the ways in which we use these portraits, and what they can say about us / reveal / conceal – Think about who you could photograph – perhaps people in their home environment, work environment, hobby environment etc… – Think about how you will set up the environment so that the frame captures a narrative. -It’s also important to consider the pose, position and composition – remember that Typologies are presented as ‘Types’ and often have similar compositional elements. – Click here to see an example photoshoot plan
Photoshoots: – Conduct your photoshoots outside of school. – Upload your Contact sheet: Add your contact sheet to your blog – Selection Process: Show your selection process (use colour coding in lightroom) – Give overview of your best photos
Editing: Show your editing process to enhance the images: Cropping / Brightness & Contrast / B&W or Colour / Sepia etc
Final Images: Add your Final images and Evaluation Present your final images: in ArtSteps (at least 3 strong images, but ideally about 6-9 so you can present like a typology).
August Sander – The Face of Our Time
One of the first photographic typological studies was by the German photographer August Sander, whose epic project ‘People of the 20th Century‘ (40,000 negatives were destroyed during WWII and in a fire) produced volume of portraits entitled ‘The Face of Our Time’ in 1929. Sander categorised his portraits according to their profession and social class.
The art of Photographic Typologies has its roots in August Sander’s 1929 series of portraits entitled ‘Face of Our Time’, a collection of works documenting German society between the two World Wars. Sander sought to create a record of social types, classes and the relationships between them, and recognised that the display of his portraits as a collection revealed so much more than the individual images would alone. So powerful was this record, the photographic plates were destroyed and the book was banned soon after the Nazis came into power four years later.
Typology: A photographic typology is a study of “types”. That is, a photographic series that prioritizes “collecting” rather than stand-alone images. It’s a powerful method of photography that can be used to reshape the way we perceive the world around us.
The term ‘Typology’ was first used to describe a style of photography when Bernd and Hilla Becher began documenting dilapidated German industrial architecture in 1959. The couple described their subjects as ‘buildings where anonymity is accepted to be the style’. Stoic and detached, each photograph was taken from the same angle, at approximately the same distance from the buildings. Their aim was to capture a record of a landscape they saw changing and disappearing before their eyes so once again, Typologies not only recorded a moment in time, they prompted the viewer to consider the subject’s place in the world.
The Becher’s influence as lecturers at the Dusseldorf School of Photography passed Typologies onto the next generation of photographers. Key photographic typologists such as Thomas Struth, Thomas Ruff, Thomas Demand and Gillian Wearing lead to a resurgence of these documentary-style reflections on a variety of subject matter from Ruff’s giant ‘passport’ photos to Demand’s desolate, empty cities.
Typologies has enjoyed renewed interest in recent years, thanks partly to recognition from galleries including the Tate Modern who hosted a Typologies retrospective in London in 2011. With it’s emphasis on comparison, analysis and introspection, the movement has come to be recognised as arguably one of the most important social contributions of the 20th century.
What to include in your Artist Analysis:
Short Bio
Overview of the photographer’s techniques / subject. (In August Sander’s Case, include details around: Who he photographs, how he photographs them, typologies, documenting & truth telling, add a quote from August Sander
Analyse 2 pieces of August Sander’s photography: Who is in the photo? how are they posed? how are they framed? what is their gaze?
August Sander – Master Mason – 1926Arnold Newman – Leonard Bernstein-1968Igor Stravinsky, composer. New York, 1946.Credit…Arnold Newman/Courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery
Mary-Ellen Mark – Circus Performer – 1970
Karen Knorr produced a series of portraits, Belgravia and Gentlement of the wealthy upper classes in London
Jon Tonks, from his celebrated book, Empire – a journey across the South Atlantic exploring life on four remote islands, British Overseas Territories, intertwined through history as relics of the once formidable British Empire.Alec SothAlec Soth
Listen to Alec Soth talk about the story behind the portrait of Charles.
Vanessa Winship is a British photographer who works on long term projects of portrait, landscape, reportage and documentary photography. These personal projects have predominantly been in Eastern Europe but also the USA.
Vanessa Winship: In her series Sweet Nothings she has been taking photographs of schoolgirls from the borderlands of Eastern Anatolia. She continues to take all photographs in the same way; frontal and with enough distance to capture them from head to toe and still include the surroundings.Michelle Sank: from her series Insula – a six month residency in Jersey
Michelle Sank: Maurice from Sank’s series My.SelfSian Davey and her project Martha capturing her teenage daughter’s life on camera
Read about Siân Davey on the ways psychotherapy has informed her photography here
Sian Davey’s first book Looking for Alice explore all the tensions, joys, ups and downs that go with the territory of being in a family—and finding love for a child born with Down syndrome.
Laura Pannack is a British social documentary and portrait photographer, based in London. Pannack’s work is often of children and teenagers. Explore more of her work here
callum on the lawns – 2The Cracker – Laura Pannack
Read Laura Pannack’s best photograph: four teenagers on a Black Country wasteland here
Alys Tomlinson is an editorial and fine art documentary photographer based in London. See more of her work here
Lost Summer: These images were taken between June and August 2020. With school proms cancelled due to the Covid-19 pandemic, I photographed local teenagers dressed in outfits they would have worn to prom. Instead of being in the usual settings of school halls or hotel function rooms, I captured them in their gardens, backyards and local parks.
Class Task: Analyse and Interpret – Alfred Krupp
Use marker pens to create a poster that artculates iyour knowledge and understanding of the image below.
You will use the PhotoLiteracy Matrix to discuss technical, visual, conceptual and contextual aspects of the image…
Arnold Newman 1963.
Then add your poster and a summary to your blog
>>You can find resources here<<
M:DepartmentsPhotographyStudentsResourcesPortraitureTO DO
and here : M:DepartmentsPhotographyStudentsPlanners Y12 JACUnit 2 Portrait Photography
Look at these influential photographers for more ideas and information…
August Sander (1876 – 1964)
Paul Strand (1890 – 1976)
Arnold Newman (1918 – 2006)
Daniel Mordzinski (1960 – )
Annie Leibovitz (1949 – )
Mary Ellen Mark (1940 – 2015)
Jimmy Nelson (1967 – )
Sara Facio (1932 – )
Alec Soth
Vanessa Winship
Karen Knorr (Gentlemen, Belgravia)
Rob Hornstra
Michelle Sank
David Goldblatt
Sian Davey
Laura Pannack
Alys Tomlinson
Deanne Lawson
Thilde Jensen
Jon Tonk
Bert Teunissen
Key features to consider with formal / environmental portraits…
formal (posed)
head-shot / half body / three quarter length / full length body shot
high angle / low angle / canted angle
colour or black and white
high key (light and airy) vs low key (high contrast / chiarascuro)
Technical > Composition / exposure / lens / light
Visual > eye contact / engagement with the camera / neutral pose and facial expression / angle / viewpoint
Conceptual > what are you intending to present? eg : social documentary / class / authority / gender role / lifestyle
Contextual >add info and detail regarding the back ground / story / detail / information about the character(s) / connection to the photographer eg family / insider / outsider
Classroom activity: Environmental portrait of a student
Photo-Shoot 1– homework –due date = Mon 11th November
Take 100-200 photographs showing your understanding of ENVIRONMENTAL PORTRAITS
Remember…your subject (person) must be engaging with the camera!…you must communicate with them clearly and direct the kind of image that you want to produce!!!
Outdoor environment
Indoor environment
two or more people
Then select your best 5-10 images and create a blog post that clearly shows your process of taking and making your final outcomes
Remember not to over -edit your images. Adjust the cropping, exposure, contrast etc…nothing more!
Remember to show your Photo-Shoot Planning and clearly explain :
who you are photographing
what you are photographing
when you are conducting the shoot
where you are working/ location
why you are designing the shoot in this way
how you are going to produce the images (lighting / equipment etc)
More Examples
Environmental portraits mean portraits of people taken in a situation that they live in, work in, rest in or play in. Environmental portraits give you context to the subject you are photographing. They give you an insight into the personality and lifestyle of your subject.
Portrait 1: This particular image was photographed by Jane Bown of Quentin Crisp at home in Chelsea in 1978. Quentin Crisp was an English writer, famous for supernatural fiction and was a gay icon in the 1970s. This image was taken in his “filthy” flat as Bown describes. In the back ground we can see piles of books on top of the fireplace shelf which represents his career as a writer and a journalist. It looks as though he is boiling water on the stove which looks out of place because the room looks as if it is in the living room. As you would not normally place a stove in your lounge. He was living as a “Bed-Sitter” which means he had inadequate of storage space, this explains why his belongings were cramped in one room.
Portrait 2: This image was captured by Arnold Newman. He is also known for his “environmental portraiture” of artists and politicians, capturing the essence of his subjects by showing them in their natural surroundings. Here is a portrait of Igor Stravinsky who was a Russian pianist, composer and musician. In this photograph, the piano outweighs the subject which is him and depicts the fact that music was a massive part of him and his life. His body language looks as if he is imitating the way the piano lid is being held up, he is using his hand as a head rest. Another element in the photograph, is that the shape of the piano looks like a musical note which again symbolises his love of music.
Portrait 3: This photograph was also taken by Arnold Newman of John F. Kennedy, an American politician who served as the 35th President of the United States of America. This pictures was taken on a balcony at the White house. Mr. Kennedy isn’t directly looking into the camera, he is looking at the view outside which suggests his role as a president because at the time he was one of the most powerful man in the world. He is looking at the scenery, people and his surroundings. The image was taken at a low angle to depict the huge building and the strong lines symbolise power, dynamism and control.
Ideas for your environmental photo shoot
Who
Barber/Hairdresser
Dentist/Doctor
Postman
Market trader
Florist
Tattooist
Musician
Barista
Fishmonger
Butcher
Baker
Farmer
Cleaner
Chef/Cook
Stonemason
Blacksmith
Fisherman
Builder/Carpenter
Sportsman/Coach
Taxi driver
Where
Central Market
Fish Market
St Helier Shops
Hair salons/barbers
Coffee shop
Farms
Building Sites
Harbour
Sport centres/fields
Taxi Ranks
Offices
WHEN
You will have to think ahead and use your photo shoot plan. You may have to contact people in advance, by phone, or arrange a convenient time. (Ask if you can return later in the day).
Remember to be polite and explain what your are doing and why!
It may surprise you that most people will be proud of what they do as it is their passion and profession and will be happy to show it off!
Don’t be scared. Be brave. Be bold. Be ambitious!!!
10 Step process (this is a general list of things you should include in all projects).
Mood-board, mind-map of ideas. Definition and introduction to environmental portraits (AO1)
Statement of intent / Proposal of your own ideas
Artist References / Case Study (must include image analysis) (AO1) Arnold Newman, August Sander + one of your choice…
