Introduction to PhotographyPre-Photographic Inventions

Camera obscura

• A box (in earlier times a room) with a hole and a lens at one end

• An image is projected onto the opposite end

• The image is traceable with pen and paper

Photogram

• A flat object is placed on photo-sensitive paper

• The paper is exposed to light and a silhouette is rendered

Early PhotographsDaguerreotype• A unique item of very high clarity• Has a mirror surface• Three-dimensional effects are striking• Highly vulnerable to physical damage

and scratching• Placed in an individualized frame with

a top• Very expensive procedure• No negativesCalotype• Makes a positive and a negative image• Negatives were not clear• Has a grainy texture

Questions about the Nature of Photography

• Photography has become accepted as a fact. How can we question the facts that photographs present?

• How can the vantage point change our impression of a subject in a photograph?

• How is time the subject of all photographs?

• Is photography a mirror of the world, or a window onto the world?

Louis Daguerre

• 1787 – 1851• Produced his first photo in 1939• Inventor of the Daguerreotype• This used a copper plate with a finely polished silver layer on its surface. It was made

light-sensitive by reaction with iodine (and later bromine) vapour which produced a coating of silver iodide. Following an exposure - perhaps 10 minutes using a camera in bright sunlight - the almost invisible image was made visible by suspending the plate above a heated mercury bath. The mercury did not alter the silver iodide, but where an image had been formed this consisted of small particles of silver. This combined with the mercury to form a light gray silver amalgam in the lighter parts of the image. The darker parts of the scene were unchanged silver iodide and this was dissolved using a strong salt (sodium chloride) solution, revealing the polished silver surface. Later hypo (sodium thiosulphate) was found to be better for this 'fixing' process.

Early Photography

Daguerre, Still Life in a Studio• First photographs imitate

painted still lives• Long shutter speeds meant that

inanimate objects were a natural choice

• Variety of textures in this photography to reveal its capabilities” cloth, flask, sculpted cherub heads, framed painting, relief sculpture, etc.

• Reference to the vanitas of Dutch still life painting

Nadar

Ever open to new ideas and discoveries, Nadar was the first in France to make photographs underground with artificial light and the first to photograph Paris from the basket of an ascendant balloon. Even though a proponent of heavier-than-air traveling devices, he financed the construction of Le Giant, a balloon that met with an unfortunate accident on its second trip. Nonetheless, he was instrumental in setting up the balloon postal service that made it possible for the French government to communicate with those in Paris during the German blockade in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870.

Ruined financially by this brief but devastating conflict, Nadar continued to write and photograph, running an establishment with his son Paul that turned out slick commercial work. Always a rebel, at one point he lent the photo studio to a group of painters who wished to bypass the Salon in order to exhibit their work, thus making possible the first exhibition of the Impressionists in April, 1874. Although he was to operate still another studio in Marseilles during the 1880s and '90s Nadar's last photographic idea of significance was a series of exposures made by his son in 1886 as he interviewed chemist Eugene Chevreul on his 100th birthday, thus foreshadowing the direction that picture journalism was to take. During his last years he continued to think of himself as "a daredevil, always on the lookout for currents to swim against." At his death, just before the age of ninety, he had outlived all those he had satirized in the famous Pantheon, which had started him in photography

Manet Delacroix

•Portrait photography becomes popular with shorter shutter speeds

•Deeper richer black and white tones in more modern photography

•Figures still had to hold a pose for a long time

•Stern, severe, commanding presence

•Artistic genius at the summit of his career

•Autocratic looking

Muybridge, Horse Galloping

•Muybridge settled a debate about whether or not a horse, in full gallop, would naturally have all four hoofs off the ground at the same time

•Successive camera shots at paced intervals revealed the answer

•Multiple-camera motion studies with a zoopraxiscope

•The transitional figure between still photography and motion pictures

1878

Jean-Francois Millet

• 1814-1875• First exhibited in Salon in 1840• Started with Mythological subjects, influenced by

Poussin• Took up Peasant Life as the main subject later• Realist in that the subject matter was presented in

an acceptable form with a religious or idyllic gloss

The Gleaners, 1857

Gustave Courbet 1819 – 1877Photo by Nadar

“...in our so very civilized society it is necessary for me to live the life of a savage. I must be free even of governments. The people have my sympathies, I must address myself to them directly.”

RealismCourbet, Burial at Ornans• Bleak landscape for funeral setting• Monumentalizes something of no importance to the Salon public• Drab common faces• S curve of composition• Arrangement seems casual• Figures occupy a shallow space• Transcendent meaning of death missing• Rural society in myth: peasant and master work together• Characterization of each figure: some bored, some grieving, some self-

important• Dog: a half-breed, distracted as many of the people are• Cross rises above the scene into the sky• Many wear black, overall tonality is earthy

A Burial at Ornans1849-1850 (10’ x 21’)

The Painter’s Studio: A Real Allegory, 1855

The Painter's Studio is an allegory of Courbet's life, bringing together the different people he encountered. The painting is also a picture of the ages of man; it represents all stages of life, from the child at his mother's breast to

the gravedigger in the background. In The Painter's Studio, Courbet also portrays representatives of society's

upper, middle, and lower classes.

The Stone-Breakers, 1849-50

•Dehumanizing labor given grandeur•Anonymous people•Dignity of menial tasks•Faceless people•Emotionless•Earthen tones•Monumentality

Honore Daumier, a French artist, was deeply interested in people, especially the underprivileged. In Third-Class Carriage he shows us, with great compassion, a group of people on a train journey. We are especially concerned with one family group, the young mother tenderly holding her small child, the weary grandmother lost in her own thoughts, and the young boy fast asleep. The painting is done with simple power and economy of line. The hands, for example, are reduced to mere outlines but beautifully drawn. The bodies are as solid as clay, their bulk indicated by stressing the

essential and avoiding the nonessential. These are not portraits of particular people but of mankind.

Daumier, Third Class Carriage•Crude third class railcar•Poor can only afford third class tickets•Unposed, casual, seemingly unplanned•Impersonal•Physically crowded•Dignity of the poor•Given a religious overtone

The Horse Fair 1853 -55

Marie Rosa Bonheur (March 16, 1822 - May 25, 1899)

First Feminist Painter??

Realism in America

Eakins, The Gross Clinic, 1875• Dr. Samuel Gross, lecturing,

turning from his patient• Patient lies on his right side, knees

pulled up• Operated on back of thigh near

knee• Head of patient under a gauze with

anesthesia• Socks on feet: clothing did not

have to be removed during an operation

• Doctors wear professional clothes• Patient’s relative allowed into the

operating room

• Foreground hazy, clear image of operation, background hazy

• Operation held in an amphitheatre that seated 600

• Surgical proceedings done between 11-3 for light

• Patient treated for osteomyelitis using a new technique

• Warm unifying color• Rembrandt-like quality in Dr. Gross’

head• Somber quiet atmosphere• Painted for the Centennial Exhibition

in Philadelphia in 1876http://www.jefferson.edu/eakins/grossclinic.cfm

Realism in AmericaHenry Ossowa Tanner, The Thankful Poor• His genre paintings challenge society views of African-

Americans• Painted to counter negative stereotypes• Popular representations of the time have African-Americans

depicted as throwbacks to tribal rituals • Aimed at revealing the universality of the human experience• Profound truths in simple experiences• Influence of Rembrandt• Grandfather and grandchild painted in detail• Sense of religious sanctity handed down through the generations• Grandfather presides of a simple meal, though poor, they are

thankful• Figures treated solemnly with great dignity• Sober, devout, religious Christians

                 

                          

                 

                          

1859 - 1937

Daughters of Edward Darley Boit

1882

•Children are relaxed; casual grouping of figures•Objects make the children look smaller•Slightly self-conscious adolescent•Large and encompassing space•Girls are in their world, we are intruding•Scattered effect of composition•Rectangular arrangements•Cf. Velázquez•Color harmonies and delicate and silvery patterns•Composition and color schemes in grays and blacks•Figures emerge from dark backgrounds into a world of half-lights and half-shadows

Winslow Homer, Veteran in a New Field, 1865

•Man harvesting wheat

•Veteran: uniform and canteen on the ground

•Veteran returns from harvesting men in the Civil War to harvest wheat

•References to the death of Lincoln

•Scythe a symbol of death

•Faceless

•Task of making transition to peace time employment, emphasis on creation of food to nurture life instead of killing