this blog is on break

I will be teaching history of photography at pratt manhattan again for the spring 2009 semester. The blog will return when the new class begins.

post wwII developments

Some of you were either late or exhausted from presenting your b & w finals and ended up missing (part of) class. So, here are some photographers we discussed, look them up for more information.


Eliot Porter, subtle color studies of birds in nature. His work was appreciated for both its artistic and scientific qualities.


Ernst Haas, an Austrian photographer producing some of Life's earlier color photo essays.


Minor White, influenced by Weston's beliefs of photography's descriptive powers and Stieglitz emotional expressiveness.


Aarom Siskind, another photographer who found himself being influenced by the Abstract Expressionist style many painters were experimenting with.


Harry Callahan, like Siskind paid a lot of attention to linear form and also taught at the Institute of Design, the school that had been started in 1937 in Chicago by Moholy-Nagy as the New Bauhaus.

Some students from the Institute of Design:


Gary Winnogrand


Ken Josephson


Barbara Crane


Bill Brandt, english photographer often shooting the human figure up close and working with pattern / abstract design.


Otto Steinart, German working with a lot of close up photography.


Shōmei Tomatsu, working in Tokyo, doing a lot of street photography as well.

I'll put up part 2 of what you guys missed on wed. or thurs.

Next class we will meet in room 304 @ 1pm. There will be a guest lecture presented for the alternative process class we have been invited to.

African American Sharecroppers

Last class Robbie was asking about if there were any photographers documenting the African American sharecroppers of the south during the time of the FSA and after.

We spoke of Alfred Eisenstaedt, who many of you were already familiar with because of this photo



But he was also creating ones documenting the African American sharecroppers of southern states such as the family of Lonnie Fair in Mississippi.

3 Portraits Part 5

Robin Schwartz


Nicola Kast



Jessica Roberts

Life photo archive available on google

This is awesome. Search millions of photographs from the LIFE photo archive, stretching from the 1750s to today. Most were never published and are now available for the first time through the joint work of LIFE and Google.

3 portraits part 4

Jacques-Henri Latrigue "Zissou, Rouzat" 1911


Gordon Parks "American Gothic" from his work with the Farm Securities Act 1924


Andrew Newman photo of Robert Moses 1959

from the magnum blog...

Magnum advice for young photographers.

Destruction / Decay

Ralph Eugene Meatyard: El Mochuelo (Boys with a Noose), 1962



Danny Lyon's 1967 project documenting the destruction of lower manhattan

Abandoned buildings.

Last class Nathan told me he was interested in photographing abandoned buildings. I went to school with Tom, who has a series called abandoned but not lost. Some of these images are really beautiful, and Tom writes his accounts of going to the places as well. Some of the stuff is just out there.







I know this is photo history, but the more you guys tell me what you are interested in, the more photographers I can show you, and that includes contemporary work as well, so keep it coming. I'll try to find some older work along these lines as well.

ICP assignment.

All 4 shows at ICP were great! Now, here is your assignment. Choose one of these. Write a short informal response (< 1 page) Post it here as a comment or bring it in to class (I'm gong ot end up posting it here anyway, so either way you better make sure it's good) If anyone wants to do 2 reviews, I'll give you a little extra credit.

a) Pick two of the shows and review them together. If you would like, you could pick one specific image from each instead of reviewing the shows as a whole.

b) Are Susan Meiselas or Cornell Capa taking advantage or their subjects, empowering them, both, or neither?

c) Compare Eugene Smith's work to Natcheway's.

d) Knowing what you learned in class and seeing the America and the tintype show, what relation can you make of the medium to Polaroids.

From the Washington Post

When photography, activism meet

ICP on Sat.

Class, please bring $8 (and a metrocard) with you to class as we will be going to ICP to see these 4 shows. I know there are tons of free galleries out there, but every one of these shows is so relevant to what we are learning about; we have to go! Robbie, I know you said you will probably be missing this class, so make it up by going to see this next week. There may be a really short assignment about it, so keep checking back here. We'll be leaving class at around 2:15 to give us enough time to get up to 43rd st. and really get a look at the 4 shows.



America and the Tintype


Susan Meiselas: In History


Living with the Dead: W. Eugene Smith & WWII



Cornell Capa: Concerned Photographer.

Stephanie Lyn Slate

Last class we had a guest lecture by Stephanie Lyn Slate Here's some examples of her work.

NY Times audio slideshow about John Coffer.

This is an interesting 3 minute audio slideshow about an artist named John Coffer who lives / creates photographs as if he were still in the 19th century.



John Coffer website