The Genius of PhotographyProduced and directed by Tim kimby

Prepared by Youssef EL KAIDI

Video I

1- Brief history of photography

This video starts with a brief reference to the early beginnings of photography. Photography historians believe that this art was firstly introduced to the world in the first half of the nineteenth century, exactly in 1839. The French Louis Deguelt and the English Henry Fox Talbot were the first men to make the first initiating steps towards the art of photography by their invention of the camera obscura. An illustration of this technique is the photograph of Santa Maria Della, Venice, made by Abellardo Morell 2006. (see photograph)

Many photography historians draw the roots of this art to the spirit of romanticism and claim that the first photographers were highly influenced by this literary trend. Geoffrey Batchen, for instance, gives the examples of the romantic poets Coleridge and Wordsworth and how they wished to capture and freeze the sublime natural scenes they were fascinated with during their contemplations. So, by capturing a moment from time and fixing it in space, photography answered this kind of romantic struggle.

2- Fixing the Shadows

Henry Fox Talbot (1802) started thinking of a way to fix the fleeting shadows. In spite of his attempts he couldn’t put the three dimensional world into paper. Thus, the idea of the camera obscura started to grow and develop in his mind. In spite of its simplicity, the camera obscura technique is regarded as one of the greatest contributions to photography. Larry J. Scholl goes even further to say that modern photography is founded on Henry Fox Talbot’s simplistic experiences. A more advanced contribution will be made about three decades later by the French painter and photographer Louis Deguelt. In January 1839 he will introduce his new way of fixing the shadows to the prestigious academy Française in Paris. This new method was far different from what had been achieved by Henry Fox Talbot. This diagram shows the difference between the two photography pioneers:

Henry Fox Talbot Louis Deguelt- He fixed his images on paper- Conceptual contribution to

photography

- He fixed his images on mirror glass- Chemical contribution to

photography

Describing the people photographed by Louis Deguelt, the writer Lyle Rexer states: “The pictures of the people you are looking at are not exactly alive, but on the verge of being present.” Technically speaking, Deguelt’s photographs were much more complex and, thus, achieved the reality effect. Apparently, the beginnings of photography were all about the struggle to see which process will triumph. However, the determinants of the struggle were fairly clear: how quickly, how cheaply, how accurately could an image be made. How widely could it be distributed? Hence, money and industry were pivotal determinants in the development of photography.

3- Photography and the documentation of world change.

Evidently, the emergence and gradual development of photography coincided with the upheaval in science and technology. The invention of the telegraph, the railway, and photography did not only change the world but also the way people understand the world. Before the invention of photography time had been moving inexorably like a river; unstoppable, and perpetually flowing. The world, however, was becoming recognizably modern thanks to these emerging technologies of the mid-nineteenth century. Many of Henry Talbot’s photographs were meant to document modern London, and his curious camera revealed this city teaming with tiny details.

4- Photography as an entrepreneurship

Regardless of its aesthetic and artistic value, photography had become a source for money making and entrepreneurship. People started investing in photography because they realized that a photograph has no identity and could travel anywhere in the world. Hence, photography seemed financially very rewarding and people could accumulate wealth out of all kinds of its different aspects. By the 1850s commerce took over and for the next half century the overwhelming majority of photographs that were made, were made for commercial reasons. Accordingly, photography had become a global phenomenon and cameras were being shipped to every part of the world.

5- Studio photography

Photographers travelled all over the world with their cameras swallowing everything with a striking inclusiveness, but the heart of the art of photography remained the studio. Taking photographs in the studio entailed the mastery of the difficult arts of photography to create natural expressions on the faces photographed. One of the most dexterous and skillful studio photographers was Gaspard Félix Tournachon who is known as Nadar. Nadar used to photograph French stars and celebrities. His models looked totally authentic as they look starkly natural. He produced the best portraits of artists ever. Here are some of his portraits:

6- Kodak and the revolution of photography

Undoubtedly, we cannot speak of the history of photography without rendering tribute to one of its great pillars: George Eastman. Eastman was working in a bank but he shifted to the field which appeals to him much more which is photography. Eastman revolutionized photography by his invention of Kodak. This hand-held, technically advanced, small camera was regarded a real revolution, indeed. Literally, Kodak means nothing. The word was devised by Eastman to be remembered easily because it contains strong and incisive letters, and also because the name has no alternative meaning. It was, in fact, unique. Kodak became in vogue especially with its advertising slogan “You press the button, we do the rest.”

Eastman’s Kodak Company provided significant facilities to its customers. The company promised its clients to take care of shipping, editing, processing, printing and even mailing the photographs back to the photographer and re-load his camera with a new film. Such facilities will encourage amateur photography and give birth to outstanding, prominent photographers. The best example the video cites is Jacque Henri Lartigue. Lartigue was a fun-loving boy who is crazily fond of photography since the age of eight. Some photo historians consider Lartigue as the ultimate amateur photographer and one of the founders of modern photography. He was lucky to have this opportunity and photography was, in turn, lucky to find such a creative little boy who had a sort of instinctive genius. Lartigue had no specific style, and when you

look at his albums you think that the photographs were taken by several photographers. One of his famous photographs is that of his cousin jumping. Amateur photography was looking to the future but this future was led to two destructive bloody wars. Here everything has changed and photography found itself entangled in ideological struggle.

Video 2

Photographic Typolgies

1- August Sander2- Rodchenko3- Uji Ajay4- Man Ray

The First World War had the effect of a lasting trauma that manifested itself not only in people’s daily life marked by disillusionment but also in art, literature, and philosophy. The obliterating war machine made everything take the form of a machine. The post war era marked the triumph of the machine over all that is human. Accordingly, in the age of the machine photography, in turn, was seen as a machine-like process manufacturing objective truths purged of subjectivity and emotions. The camera in this era seemed as if to say “I’m a camera with my shutter open, quite passive, recording not thinking.”

The role of the camera at that time was highly instrumental as it was relied on for political propaganda. Hence, to hold a camera in your hand in the 1920s is to hold the future. The writer James Ajay considered the camera as the central instrument of this time par excellence. Lazlo Mohalinodge believed the camera offered a new vision that would spark the twentieth century renaissance. Thus, any one, he says, that fails to understand photography will be one of the illiterates of the future.

I- Human Typologies1- August Sander (Germany)

August Sander was a German photographer whose main interest as a photographer was human typologies. Sander’s human typology used a system of categorization based on seven social groups, mainly farmers. Sander’s photographs of these farmers tell you so much of how these people wanted to be seen, and at the same time so little about what’s actually going on inside their minds. However, these photographs were full of hints and implications. The unspoken that lies behind Sander’s photographs is a key to the condition of Germany after World War I; a condition of hyperinflation, mass unemployment, and political violence. Sander’s models would reveal that chaotic condition of post-war Germany. (see some photographs)

2- Alexander Rodchenko 1930 (Soviet Union)

Rodchenko was not content towards the traditional and conventional approaches to photography. To him, a new society demanded new ways of seeing. Fortunately, a new camera had become available to fulfill Rodchenko’s vision towards photography. Leica, a

compact, hand-held, light camera was invented to add a new flavor to the art of photography because of its simple use and new configurations. Rodchenko is considered the master of montage. He established a magazine named USSR in Construction which was a showcase for political propaganda glorifying the achievements of the Soviet Union. One of the frequently cited photographs of Rodchenko’s especially while talking about montage is the photograph of the White Sea channel workers. When you look at this photograph you wouldn’t think that it is a montage, it looks as if genuine and authentic. What’s special about this photograph is its canceled truth. The determined-looking workers are political prisoners the majority of whom will die during the construction of the channel. (See some of his photographs)

3- Uji Achay

This photographer tried to document the city of Paris and made over ten thousand photographs. This photographer used very old techniques and materials which go back to the 1850s in editing and printing his photographs till the 1920s. Various people did try to urge him to use modern materials but he said ‘I don’t know how to do that.’ In spite of his archaic materials and techniques Ajay is considered by many photographers as the motto. Joel Meyerowitz says: Ajay, to me, is our motto; he is the single greatest of photography. He stands head and shoulders over all photographers.” Clear enough, Ajay’s photography paved the way to the surrealist photography which will reach its apogee with Man Ray.

4- Man Ray

As a surrealist, the camera to Man Ray was not a machine for making documents but an instrument for exploring dreams, desires and the medium unconscious mind. Man Ray’s models’ faces were made to look as though they are made of aluminum, so metallic. His models become super people, more robotic than human. (see photographs)

Surrealist photographer were much interested in what they called ‘found objects’, objects out of context, any sort of object that appears strange enough to disrupt your mental and psychic state. Surrealist photographers turn such objects into artifacts which project you into another consciousness and another understanding. Old surrealist photographs were full of these found objects, full of people and things that nobody knew about, nobody knew what they were or who they were. In brief, during the three first decades of the twentieth century which were marked by inhumanity, machine, mass killings and political strife, photography preserved and documented what is human. By so doing, it proved that it is a humanistic rather than a mechanistic process.

Video 3

Decesive moment   : Right Time, Right Place

1- Henri Cartier Bresson2- Robert Kapa3- Tony Voccaro

The concept of decisive photography started with the French Henri Cartier Bresson with his photograph named “The Decisive Moment.” Armed with his new revolutionary camera, in 1933 he took a picture of a man jumping into a lake just at the right time. (See the photograph) This strategy has illuminated the potentials of photography till the moment. The

photographers have to wait for the decisive moment to take place. When the action of the person to be photographed enters the physical space the photographer knows how to time it so that it reaches its apogee at a point. That’s exactly the decisive moment.

One of the pioneers and notorious photographers to cite for instant and decisive moment photography is the Hungarian boy Robert Kapa who worked for the Life Magazine. Kapa became very famous for capturing the ultimate decisive moments in wars and that’s simply the reason why he is considered now as the greatest war photographer ever. He was such an astounding, risk-taking journalist who put himself within the battlefield with bullets coming all around. One of his most famous photographs is that of a Spanish loyalist soldier dying by a bullet shot into his chest. (see the photograph.)

Tony Vaccaro has also taken the experience of war photography, and he is quite often compared to Robet Kapa. Both dared to hold their cameras in the middle of fire and take instant decisive photographs of soldiers dying, rotten torn corpses etc. Vaccaro, however, doesn’t feel at ease with this comparison due to the fact that he holds different visions towards war, and towards photography. In one of his statements Kapa went to say that “in spite of its bloodshed, war is something romantic.” Vaccaro vehemently objects and says: “I’m sorry Robert, you are bad wrong.”

After World War II Kapa went to Hollywood to take pictures on the set of Hitchcock films while Vaccaro stayed in Germany documenting its occupation and reconstruction. In the aftermath of WWII, photography’s task became horribly simple: to provide undeniable historical proofs of the Nazi atrocities, documenting crime scenes of unimaginable proportions. Henryk Ross devoted the eye of his cemara to the documentation of what is called the Holocaust in Germany and the life of the Jewish community in ghettos.

In 1945 the American atomic bomb on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki caused mass death of about two thousand people in an instant. The American military’s photo records of what remained after the bomb are extensive, but unlike the records of the Holocaust the records of Hiroshima and Nagasaki completely ignored any evidence of human sufferance. What the American photographers turned their cameras away from were the human victims. This is, in fact, to subjective and it reveals how photography could be a medium for hiding, not revealing when it is entangled in ideological struggle. The Japanese photographs were taken photos of the atrocities and the destructive effect of the bomb but their cameras and photographs were confiscated by the Americans.

Conclusion.

Undoubtedly, the three videos I have used in my presentation are such comprehensive and rich videos that follow the art of photography ever since its birth, through the stages of its gradual development to the present time. The photographers, photo historians, and writers interviewed were very insightful and savvy in their comments. Also, the photographic record that has been consulted was very illustrative of what has been discussed during the time scope of the three videos. Indeed, photography has finally managed to transform our age into an age of the image.