{"id":1121,"date":"2015-10-19T18:29:50","date_gmt":"2015-10-19T18:29:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/courses.candelalearning.com\/zelixart102\/?post_type=chapter&p=1121"},"modified":"2016-02-25T16:02:14","modified_gmt":"2016-02-25T16:02:14","slug":"introduction-to-photography","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/suny-arthistory2\/chapter\/introduction-to-photography\/","title":{"raw":"Introduction to Photography","rendered":"Introduction to Photography"},"content":{"raw":"[caption id=\"attachment_1122\" align=\"alignright\" width=\"300\"]\"This Figure 1. Eastman Kodak Advertisement for the Brownie Camera, c. 1900[\/caption]\r\n\r\nPhotography undergoes extraordinary changes in the early part of the twentieth century. This can be said of every other type of visual representation, however, but unique to photography is the transformed perception of the medium. In order to understand this change in perception and use\u2014why photography appealed to artists by the early 1900s, and how it was incorporated into artistic practices by the 1920s\u2014we need to start by looking back.\r\n\r\nIn the later nineteenth century, photography spread in its popularity, and inventions like the Kodak #1 camera (1888) made it accessible to the upper-middle class consumer; the Kodak Brownie camera, which cost far less, reached the middle class by 1900.\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_759\" align=\"alignright\" width=\"300\"]\"A Figure 2. Eadweard Muybridge, Thoroughbred bay mare<\/em> \"Annie G.\" galloping, Human and Animal Locomotion, plate 626, 1887[\/caption]\r\n\r\nIn the sciences (and pseudo-sciences), photographs gained credibility as objective evidence because they could document people, places, and events. Photographers like Eadweard Muybridge created portfolios of photographs to measure human and animal locomotion. His celebrated images recorded incremental stages of movement too rapid for the human eye to observe, and his work fulfilled the camera\u2019s promise to enhance, or even create new forms of scientific study.\r\n\r\nIn the arts, the medium was valued for its replication of exact details, and for its reproduction of artworks for publication. But photographers struggled for artistic recognition throughout the century. It was not until in Paris\u2019s Universal Exposition of 1859, twenty years after the invention of the medium, that photography and \u201cart\u201d (painting, engraving, and sculpture) were displayed next to one another for the first time; separate entrances to each exhibition space, however, preserved a physical and symbolic distinction between the two groups. After all, photographs are mechanically reproduced images: Kodak\u2019s marketing strategy (\u201cYou press the button, we do the rest,\u201d) points directly to the \u201ceffortlessness\u201d of the medium.\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_1124\" align=\"alignright\" width=\"300\"]\"This Figure 3. Alfred Stieglitz, The Terminal<\/em>, photogravure, 1892[\/caption]\r\n\r\nSince art was deemed the product of imagination, skill, and craft, how could a photograph (made with an instrument and light-sensitive chemicals instead of brush and paint) ever be considered its equivalent?\u00a0And if its purpose was to reproduce details precisely, and from nature, how could photographs be acceptable if negatives were \u201cmanipulated,\u201d or if photographs were retouched? Because of these questions, amateur photographers formed casual groups and official societies to challenge such conceptions of the medium. They\u2014along with elite art world figures like Alfred Stieglitz\u2014promoted the late nineteenth-century style of \u201cart photography,\u201d and produced low-contrast, warm-toned images like The Terminal <\/i>that highlighted the medium\u2019s potential for originality.\r\n\r\nSo what transforms the perception of photography in the early twentieth century? Social and cultural change\u2014on a massive, unprecedented scale. Like everyone else, artists were radically affected by industrialization, political revolution, trench warfare, airplanes, talking motion pictures, radios, automobiles, and much more\u2014and they wanted to create art that was as radical and \u201cnew\u201d as modern life itself. If we consider the work of the Cubists and Futurists, we often think of their works in terms of simultaneity and speed, destruction and reconstruction. Dadaists, too, challenged the boundaries of traditional art with performances, poetry, installations, and photomontage that use the materials of everyday culture instead of paint, ink, canvas, or bronze.\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_1126\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"1051\"]\"A Figure 4. (left) Picasso, Still Life with Chair Caning<\/em>, 1912, oil, oilcloth and pasted paper on canvas with rope frame; (center) Giacomo Balla, Hand of the Violinist<\/em>, 1912, oil on canvas; (right) Hannah H\u00f6ch, Cut with the Kitchen Knife Dada Through the Last Weimar Beer-Belly Cultural Epoch of Germany<\/em>, 1919\u201320, photomontage[\/caption]\r\n\r\nBy the early 1920s, technology becomes a vehicle of progress and change, and instills hope in many after the devastations of World War I. For avant-garde (\u201cahead of the crowd\u201d) artists, photography becomes incredibly appealing for its associations with technology, the everyday, and science\u2014precisely the reasons it was denigrated a half-century earlier. The camera\u2019s technology of mechanical reproduction made it the fastest, most modern, and arguably, the most relevant form of visual representation in the post-WWI era. Photography, then, seemed to offer more than a new method of image-making\u2014it offered the chance to change paradigms of vision and representation.\r\n\r\nWith August Sander\u2019s portraits, such as Secretary at a Radio Station<\/i>, Pastry Cook<\/i> or Disabled Man<\/i>, we see an artist attempting to document\u2014systematically\u2014modern types of people, as a means to understand changing notions of class, race, profession, ethnicity, and other constructs of identity. Sander transforms the practice of portraiture with these sensational, arresting images. These figures reveal as much about the German professions as they do about self-image.\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_1128\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"933\"]\"Three Figure 5. August Sander, Disabled Man<\/em>, 1926; Pastry Chef<\/em>, 1928; Secretary at a Radio Station, Cologne<\/em>, c. 1931[\/caption]\r\n\r\nCartier-Bresson\u2019s leaping figure in Behind the Gare St. Lazare<\/i> reflects the potential for photography to capture individual moments in time\u2014to freeze them, hold them, and recreate them. Because of his approach, Cartier-Bresson is often considered a pioneer of photojournalism. This sense of spontaneity, of accuracy, and of the ephemeral corresponded to the racing tempo of modern culture (think of factories, cars, trains, and the rapid pace of people in growing urban centers).\r\n\r\nUmbo\u2019s photomontage The Roving Reporter<\/i> shows how modern technologies transform our perception of the world\u2014and our ability to communicate within it. His camera-eyed, colossal observer (a real-life journalist named Egon Erwin Kisch) demonstrates photography\u2019s ability to alter and enhance the senses. In the early twentieth-century, this medium offered a potentially transformative vision for artists, who sought new ways to see, represent, and understand the rapidly changing world around them.\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_1134\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"622\"]\"A Figure 6. (left) Henri Cartier-Bresson, Behind the Gare St. Lazare<\/em>, 1932;\u00a0(right)\u00a0Umbo (Otto Umbehr), The Roving Reporter<\/em>, photomontage, 1926[\/caption]","rendered":"
\"This<\/p>\n

Figure 1. Eastman Kodak Advertisement for the Brownie Camera, c. 1900<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Photography undergoes extraordinary changes in the early part of the twentieth century. This can be said of every other type of visual representation, however, but unique to photography is the transformed perception of the medium. In order to understand this change in perception and use\u2014why photography appealed to artists by the early 1900s, and how it was incorporated into artistic practices by the 1920s\u2014we need to start by looking back.<\/p>\n

In the later nineteenth century, photography spread in its popularity, and inventions like the Kodak #1 camera (1888) made it accessible to the upper-middle class consumer; the Kodak Brownie camera, which cost far less, reached the middle class by 1900.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Figure 2. Eadweard Muybridge, Thoroughbred bay mare<\/em> “Annie G.” galloping, Human and Animal Locomotion, plate 626, 1887<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

In the sciences (and pseudo-sciences), photographs gained credibility as objective evidence because they could document people, places, and events. Photographers like Eadweard Muybridge created portfolios of photographs to measure human and animal locomotion. His celebrated images recorded incremental stages of movement too rapid for the human eye to observe, and his work fulfilled the camera\u2019s promise to enhance, or even create new forms of scientific study.<\/p>\n

In the arts, the medium was valued for its replication of exact details, and for its reproduction of artworks for publication. But photographers struggled for artistic recognition throughout the century. It was not until in Paris\u2019s Universal Exposition of 1859, twenty years after the invention of the medium, that photography and \u201cart\u201d (painting, engraving, and sculpture) were displayed next to one another for the first time; separate entrances to each exhibition space, however, preserved a physical and symbolic distinction between the two groups. After all, photographs are mechanically reproduced images: Kodak\u2019s marketing strategy (\u201cYou press the button, we do the rest,\u201d) points directly to the \u201ceffortlessness\u201d of the medium.<\/p>\n

\"This<\/p>\n

Figure 3. Alfred Stieglitz, The Terminal<\/em>, photogravure, 1892<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Since art was deemed the product of imagination, skill, and craft, how could a photograph (made with an instrument and light-sensitive chemicals instead of brush and paint) ever be considered its equivalent?\u00a0And if its purpose was to reproduce details precisely, and from nature, how could photographs be acceptable if negatives were \u201cmanipulated,\u201d or if photographs were retouched? Because of these questions, amateur photographers formed casual groups and official societies to challenge such conceptions of the medium. They\u2014along with elite art world figures like Alfred Stieglitz\u2014promoted the late nineteenth-century style of \u201cart photography,\u201d and produced low-contrast, warm-toned images like The Terminal <\/i>that highlighted the medium\u2019s potential for originality.<\/p>\n

So what transforms the perception of photography in the early twentieth century? Social and cultural change\u2014on a massive, unprecedented scale. Like everyone else, artists were radically affected by industrialization, political revolution, trench warfare, airplanes, talking motion pictures, radios, automobiles, and much more\u2014and they wanted to create art that was as radical and \u201cnew\u201d as modern life itself. If we consider the work of the Cubists and Futurists, we often think of their works in terms of simultaneity and speed, destruction and reconstruction. Dadaists, too, challenged the boundaries of traditional art with performances, poetry, installations, and photomontage that use the materials of everyday culture instead of paint, ink, canvas, or bronze.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Figure 4. (left) Picasso, Still Life with Chair Caning<\/em>, 1912, oil, oilcloth and pasted paper on canvas with rope frame; (center) Giacomo Balla, Hand of the Violinist<\/em>, 1912, oil on canvas; (right) Hannah H\u00f6ch, Cut with the Kitchen Knife Dada Through the Last Weimar Beer-Belly Cultural Epoch of Germany<\/em>, 1919\u201320, photomontage<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

By the early 1920s, technology becomes a vehicle of progress and change, and instills hope in many after the devastations of World War I. For avant-garde (\u201cahead of the crowd\u201d) artists, photography becomes incredibly appealing for its associations with technology, the everyday, and science\u2014precisely the reasons it was denigrated a half-century earlier. The camera\u2019s technology of mechanical reproduction made it the fastest, most modern, and arguably, the most relevant form of visual representation in the post-WWI era. Photography, then, seemed to offer more than a new method of image-making\u2014it offered the chance to change paradigms of vision and representation.<\/p>\n

With August Sander\u2019s portraits, such as Secretary at a Radio Station<\/i>, Pastry Cook<\/i> or Disabled Man<\/i>, we see an artist attempting to document\u2014systematically\u2014modern types of people, as a means to understand changing notions of class, race, profession, ethnicity, and other constructs of identity. Sander transforms the practice of portraiture with these sensational, arresting images. These figures reveal as much about the German professions as they do about self-image.<\/p>\n

\"Three<\/p>\n

Figure 5. August Sander, Disabled Man<\/em>, 1926; Pastry Chef<\/em>, 1928; Secretary at a Radio Station, Cologne<\/em>, c. 1931<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Cartier-Bresson\u2019s leaping figure in Behind the Gare St. Lazare<\/i> reflects the potential for photography to capture individual moments in time\u2014to freeze them, hold them, and recreate them. Because of his approach, Cartier-Bresson is often considered a pioneer of photojournalism. This sense of spontaneity, of accuracy, and of the ephemeral corresponded to the racing tempo of modern culture (think of factories, cars, trains, and the rapid pace of people in growing urban centers).<\/p>\n

Umbo\u2019s photomontage The Roving Reporter<\/i> shows how modern technologies transform our perception of the world\u2014and our ability to communicate within it. His camera-eyed, colossal observer (a real-life journalist named Egon Erwin Kisch) demonstrates photography\u2019s ability to alter and enhance the senses. In the early twentieth-century, this medium offered a potentially transformative vision for artists, who sought new ways to see, represent, and understand the rapidly changing world around them.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Figure 6. (left) Henri Cartier-Bresson, Behind the Gare St. Lazare<\/em>, 1932;\u00a0(right)\u00a0Umbo (Otto Umbehr), The Roving Reporter<\/em>, photomontage, 1926<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t

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Candela Citations<\/h3>\n\t\t\t\t\t
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CC licensed content, Shared previously<\/div>