World off art 8th edtion by henry m sayre chapter 11

National Museum of Photography, London.Digital image courtesy of Getty's Open Content Program... Digital image, Museum of Modern Art, New York/Scala, Florence.. Color and Digital Photogr

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Photography and Time-Based Media

11

Learning Objectives

1 of 3

1 Describe the origins of photography

and the formal principles that most inform it.

2 Describe how color and digital

technologies have transformed

photographic practice.

Learning Objectives

2 of 3

3 Outline the basic principles of film

editing, including montage, as well as the technological developments that advanced the medium.

4 Outline some of the ways that video

art has exploited the immediacy of the medium while at the same time

critiquing popular culture.

Learning Objectives

3 of 3

5 Discuss some of the technological

innovations that have advanced based art into the digital age.

1 of 3

• Catherine Opie's series of photographs for the Cleveland Clinic installation was created over the course of 12 months.

 It illustrates the fundamental ability of photography to capture moments in

time.

• Photography began in 1838 with still

images.

Catherine Opie, Untitled #13 (Spring), from Somewhere in the Middle, suite of 22

photographs installed at the Cleveland Clinic's Hillcrest Hospital

2011 Inkjet print, 50 × 37-1/2"

© Catherine Opie [Fig 11-1]

2 of 3

• Eadweard Muybridge captured

photographs of a horse trotting with the use of a trip wire.

• Thomas Edison and W K Laurie

Dickson invented the Kinetoscope,

which used celluloid film to produced

images that could "move" by being

advanced on a roll.

Eadweard Muybridge, Annie G., Cantering, Saddled.

December 1887 Collotype print, sheet 19 × 24-1/8", image 7-1/4 × 16-1/4" Philadelphia

Museum of Art

1962-135-280 © 2015 Photo Philadelphia Museum of Art/Art Resource/Scala, Florence

[Fig 11-2]

3 of 3

• The first projected motion picture for

large audiences debuted in 1895.

• Soon, sound was added to film to better simulate real life.

• The history of time-based media

involves increasing semblance to real

life.

Poster for the Cinématographe, with the Lumière Brothers film L'Arroseur Arrosé (Waterer

and Watered) on screen.

1895 British Film Institute

Mary Evans/Iberfoto [Fig 11-3]

The Early History and Formal Foundations of Photography

• The photograph is a process of "instant assemblage" and "instant collage."

• Walker Evans's Roadside Stand near

Birmingham, Alabama represented the

artist's desire to capture every aspect

of American visual reality.

• Tension between form and content is a common theme of photography.

Walker Evans, Roadside Stand near Birmingham, Alabama.

1936 Library of Congress

[Fig 11-4]

Early History

1 of 6

• A darkened room called a camera

obscura was used by artists to create

nature accurately in the sixteenth

century.

projects a scene upside-down on the the opposite wall.

not independently preserve it; artists

traced on canvas or paper.

The first published illustration of a camera obscura observing a solar eclipse.

Published in 1544 by Dutch cartographer and mathematician Gemma Frisius Woodcut

Bridgeman Images [Fig 11-5]

Early History

2 of 6

• William Henry Fox Talbot used paper

coated with light-sensitive chemicals to

produce photogenic drawings.

• Independently in France, a process

yielding a positive image on a polished metal plate was called the

daguerrotype.

 It was so realistic that it was declared

"Painting is dead!"

William Henry Fox Talbot, Mimosoidea Suchas, Acacia.

ca 1841 Photogenic drawing National Media Museum, Bradford, U.K

1937-366/14 National Media Museum/Science & Society Picture Library [Fig 11-6]

Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre, Le Boulevard du Temple.

1839 Daguerreotype Bavarian National Museum, Munich

© Corbis [Fig 11-7]

Early History

3 of 6

• The popularity of the daguerrotype

made portraits available to more than just the upper classes, who would have been able to afford painted portraits.

• However, its disadvantages involved

preparation, time, and utmost care; it also could not be reproduced.

Early History

4 of 6

• Talbot's method of calotype, or

exposing sensitized paper to light,

became the basis of modern

photography.

 His photograph, The Open Door, shows

how photography became a work of art

in its own right.

Henry Fox Talbot, The Open Door.

1843 Calotype National Museum of Photography, London.Digital image courtesy of Getty's Open Content Program [Fig 11-8]

Early History

5 of 6

• Frederick Archer introduced a

wet-plate collodion process in 1850.

 It was a cumbersome process but had short exposure time.

• Julia Margaret Cameron set up a studio

in her chicken coop and photographed many influential British men.

 The Portrait of Thomas Carlisle was an

attempt to capture the inner man.

Julia Margaret Cameron, Portrait of Thomas Carlyle.

1863 Albumen print, 14-7⁄16 × 10-3⁄16" The J Paul Getty Museum.Digital image courtesy of Getty's Open Content Program [Fig 11-9]

condemnation of the horrors of war.

 Both foreground and background are

blurred to draw attention to the corpses.

Timothy O'Sullivan (negative) and Alexander Gardner (print), A Harvest of Death,

Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, July 1863, from Gardner's Photographic Sketchbook of the War.

1866 Albumen silver print (also available as a stereocard), 6-1/4 × 7-13⁄16" The Library of

Congress [Fig 11-10]

Form and Content

1 of 4

• By emphasizing formal elements over

representation, an artist can underscore the abstract nature of photographs.

• The Steerage by Alfred Stieglitz

portrays the artist's interest in spatial

relations.

 The photo's geometry was inspired by

the work of Charles Sheeler.

Alfred Stieglitz, The Steerage.

1907 Photogravure, 12-5/8 × 10-3/16" Museum of Modern Art, New York

Provenance unknown, 526.1986 © 2015 Digital image, Museum of Modern Art, New York/Scala, Florence © 2015 Georgia O'Keeffe Museum/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New

York [Fig 11-11]

Form and Content

 Walker Evans captured heroism in his

subjects for Let Us Now Praise Famous

Men.

Charles Sheeler, Criss-Crossed Conveyors—Ford Plant.

1927 Gelatin silver print, 10 × 8" Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

© Lane Collection Courtesy Museum of Fine Arts, Boston [Fig 11-12]

Walker Evans, Alabama Tenant Farmer's Kitchen (Washstand with View into Dining Area

of Burroughs Home, Hale County, Alabama).

1936 35mm photograph

Courtesy of Library of Congress Image copyright Walker Evans Archive, Metropolitan

Museum of Art, New York [Fig 11-13]

Form and Content

3 of 4

• An-My Lê's series of photographs, 29

Palms, shows soldiers preparing for

deployment to Afghanistan and Iraq.

 Her work deals with reenactments of

war through training exercises;

O'Sullivan's work was similarly staged to heighten the dramatic effect of the

image.

An-My Lê, 29 Palms: Night Operations III.

2003–04 Gelatin silver print, 26 × 37-1/2"

© An-My Lê, courtesy of Murray Guy, New York [Fig 11-14]

Form and Content

4 of 4

• Henri Cartier-Bresson discussed the

relationship between form and content to the instant composition allowed by

photographs.

 Athens shows a second story

Classical-style facade above two women walking

past on the street below.

the location and waited for the subjects to appear at the "decisive moment."

Henri Cartier-Bresson, Athens.

1953

Magnum Photos, Inc [Fig 11-15]

The Photographic Print and its

Manipulation

1 of 2

• Fred Archer developed the Zone

System for darkrooms.

 A zone represents the relation of the

image's brightness to the value the

photographer wishes it to appear in the final print.

 He also adjusted his camera's aperture

to establish the desired luminescence

prior to taking the photograph.

The Photographic Print and its

Manipulation

2 of 2

• Dodging is a technique that decreases

the exposure of selected areas the

photographer wishes to be lighter.

• Burning increases the exposure to areas

of the print that should be darker.

• Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico

features both of these techniques to

create the feeling of a changing world.

Ansel Adams, Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico.

1941 Gelatin silver print, 18-1/2 × 23"

© Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust/Corbis [Fig 11-16]

Color and Digital Photography

1 of 6

• Color was associated with advertising and was ignored by fine art

photographers until the 1960s.

• Gary Alvis, who worked with both color and black-and-white, maintained the

tension in The Painted Hills with cool

and warm colors.

Gary Alvis, The Painted Hills, John Day Fossil Beds National Monument, Oregon.

2008 Six-stitch Cibachrome print, dimensions variable

© Gary Alvis [Fig 11-17]

Color and Digital Photography

Jerry Uelsmann, Untitled (rock component).

© 1970 Jerry N Uelsmann [Fig 11-18]

Jerry Uelsmann, Untitled (tree component).

© 1970 Jerry N Uelsmann [Fig 11-19]

Jerry Uelsmann, Untitled (hands component).

© 1970 Jerry N Uelsmann [Fig 11-20]

The Creative Process

• The Darkroom as Laboratory: Jerry

Uelsmann's Untitled

 Formal relations among elements

influence his decisions most.

 The second version of Untitled features

hands echoing the lines of the mountain

in the background.

• In the artist's words, it is "obviously symbolic, but not symbolically obvious."

Jerry Uelsmann, Untitled (first version).

© 1970 Jerry N Uelsmann [Fig 11-21]

Jerry Uelsmann, Untitled (second version).

© 1970 Jerry N Uelsmann [Fig 11-22]

Color and Digital Photography

3 of 6

• Nan Goldin worked primarily in color

because she could not get access to a darkroom.

artificial light to enhance the vibrancy of the colors.

greens contrast with the red of the

subject's lips and bangle as well as orange leaves in the vase.

red-Nan Goldin, Vivienne in the green dress.

1980

Courtesy of Matthew Marks Gallery [Fig 11-23]

Color and Digital Photography

4 of 6

• The rise of color photography coincided with the growing popularity of the color television.

 Polaroid cameras and inexpensive

processing for Kodak film contributed to this movement.

• Today, digital technologies transform

photography into a highly manipulable medium.

Color and Digital Photography

5 of 6

• Andreas Gursky's Ocean II is a

sweeping view of the world's oceans

made from high-definition satellite

photographs.

 The cloudless parts of the oceans and

land had to be generated digitally.

 The image is disconcerting, like an

inside-out atlas where oceans are edged

by land.

Andreas Gursky, Ocean II.

2010 Chromogenic print, 11' 2-1/4" × 8' 2-1/8" × 2-1/2"

© 2015 Andreas Gursky/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn [Fig

11-24]

Color and Digital Photography

6 of 6

• Constructing Helen from Helen's

Odyssey features an enlarged model

Helen transformed to gigantic

proportions.

 It parodies academic paintings like

Alexandre Cabanel's Birth of Venus.

Eleanor Antin, Constructing Helen, from the series Helen's Odyssey.

2007 Chromogenic print, 5' 8" × 16' 7"

Courtesy of the artist and Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York [Fig 11-25]

Alexandre Cabanel, The Birth of Venus.

1863 Oil on canvas, 4' 4" × 7' 6" Musée d'Orsay, Paris

Inv RF273 Photo © RMN-Grand Palais (musée d'Orsay)/Hervé Lewandowski

[Fig 11-26]

1 of 5

• Cubist painter Fernand Léger created

the film Ballet Mécanique to study a

number of images repeated again and again in film.

• Assembling a film through editing is a

kind of linear collage.

 The first great master of editing was D

W Griffith, who invented a filmmaking

vocabulary in The Birth of a Nation.

Fernand Léger, Ballet Mécanique.

1924 The Humanities Film Collection, Oregon State University

© 2015 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris [Fig 11-27]

Battle scene from The Birth of a Nation, directed by D W Griffith.

1915

[Fig 11-28]

 A medium shot shows the waist up.

 A close-up shows the head and

3 of 5

• Shots

 The iris shot opens a scene with a

widening circle and closes it by

shrinking the circle back down.

 The pan, or panoramic vista, moves the

camera from one side of the scene to

the other.

 A traveling or tracking shot moves

the camera parallel to the action.

4 of 5

• A flashback involves narrative

episodes that took place before the

start of the film.

• Cross-cutting is an editing technique

that moves focus back and forth

between two scenes at an ever faster pace.

5 of 5

• Another great innovator in film was Sergei

Eisenstein, who utilized the montage to

create a multifaceted narrative.

 Battleship Potemkin is based on an

unsuccessful uprising against the Russian monarchy in 1905.

• Douglas Gordon's extremely slow-motion

film 24 Hour Psycho is a contrast to the

montage.

Sergei Eisenstein, Battleship Potemkin.

1925 Film still

Goskino/Kobal Collection [Fig 11-29a]

Sergei Eisenstein, Battleship Potemkin.

1925 Film still

Goskino/Kobal Collection [Fig 11-29b]

Sergei Eisenstein, Battleship Potemkin.

1925 Film still

Goskino/Kobal Collection [Fig 11-29c]

Sergei Eisenstein, Battleship Potemkin.

1925 Film still

Goskino/Kobal Collection [Fig 11-29d]

Douglas Gordon, 24 Hour Psycho.

1993

Photo: Studio lost but found (Bert Rossi), Courtesy of Gagosian Gallery © Douglas

Gordon From Psycho, 1960, USA Directed and produced by Alfred Hitchcock, Distributed

by Paramount Pictures Universal City Stuidoes, Inc [Fig 11-30]

The Popular Cinema

1 of 3

• Audiences of popular cinema expect an entertaining narrative.

• Charlie Chaplin was one of the greatest

Hollywood stars, merging humor with a

sympathetic character in the silent film

The Gold Rush.

• By 1939, Hollywood had reached a

zenith and produced films in a variety

of genres.

Charlie Chaplin in The Gold Rush.

1925 United Artists

Everett Collection [Fig 11-31]

The Popular Cinema

2 of 3

• Citizen Kane was esteemed as featuring

a wide variety of editing effects unique

to film at the time.

• Before the production of Gone with the Wind, art director William Cameron

Menzies spent two years creating

storyboards for each of the movie's

scenes.

Orson Welles in Citizen Kane.

1941

Kobal Collection Citizen Kane © 1941 RKO Pictures, Inc All rights reserved [Fig 11-32]

William Cameron Menzies, Storyboard for the burning-of-Atlanta scene from Gone with

the Wind.

1939

MGM/Photofest [Fig 11-33]

Burning-of-Atlanta scene from Gone with the Wind.

1939

MGM/Photofest [Fig 11-34]

The Popular Cinema

3 of 3

• The studio of Walt Disney produced

animated films featuring up to 24

drawings per each second of film time.

• After World War II, directors were

viewed as the auteurs of their works.

 Federico Fellini, Ingmar Bergman, Luc Godard, and Alan Resnais

Jean-• Star Wars inaugurated a new era of

"blockbuster" Hollywood films.

 Artists were more easily able to work

with film when the handheld video

camera was introduced in 1965.

• Nam June Paik used altered televisions

in his large-scale installations that

explore film.

Video Art

2 of 9

• Megatron/Matrix featured 215 monitors

programmed with live video images

from the Seoul Olympic games and

animated montages.

• Video Flag was created as three

separate flag sculptures.

 Over time, parts for maintaining the

video monitors became obsolete and

were replaced by new technology.