Derek Henderson, check out his series "I go down to the river to pray"
Mike Peters
Alec Soth
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
3 Portraits 2.1
From time to time I like to put up work from newer artists who I think are doing something interesting. Here are 3 photographers worth looking at. Feel free to post comments or show us work in the next class by contemporary artists you think are relevant to what we are learning about.
Derek Henderson, check out his series "I go down to the river to pray"
Mike Peters
Alec Soth
Derek Henderson, check out his series "I go down to the river to pray"
Mike Peters
Alec Soth
2 totally different approaches to portrait photography.
Last class we looked at some of the artists / advancements in the photographic world from roughly 1865 - 1900 or so.
During the second class, we discussed how Nadar used lighting to accentuate the features of his subject. One of his contemporaries, but also rivals, was another French portrait artist named Etienne Carjat. Much like Nadar he used his portraits as studies for caricatures.
portrait and caricature of French poet / artist Victor Hugo. 1867
Julia Margaret Cameron had different ideas with her portraits. She used a lack of focus in an attempt to bring out the inner character of her subjects. There were mixed views about her work; many thought they were simply unprofessional, or wrong. Why would someone make an out of focus photograph on purpose? Others were impressed with her approach and thought it was a breath of fresh air into the often stale world of portrait photography.
Cameron's niece, Julia, was a favorite subject of hers.
"When I have had such men before my camera my whole soul has endeavored to do its duty towards them in recording faithfully the greatness of the inner as well as the features of the outer man. " Julia Margaret Cameron
During the second class, we discussed how Nadar used lighting to accentuate the features of his subject. One of his contemporaries, but also rivals, was another French portrait artist named Etienne Carjat. Much like Nadar he used his portraits as studies for caricatures.
portrait and caricature of French poet / artist Victor Hugo. 1867
Julia Margaret Cameron had different ideas with her portraits. She used a lack of focus in an attempt to bring out the inner character of her subjects. There were mixed views about her work; many thought they were simply unprofessional, or wrong. Why would someone make an out of focus photograph on purpose? Others were impressed with her approach and thought it was a breath of fresh air into the often stale world of portrait photography.
Cameron's niece, Julia, was a favorite subject of hers.
"When I have had such men before my camera my whole soul has endeavored to do its duty towards them in recording faithfully the greatness of the inner as well as the features of the outer man. " Julia Margaret Cameron
Friday, February 20, 2009
Eviction: the new face of war photography.
Anthony Suau, a Time photographer based in the U.S., has won the World Press Photo of the Year 2008 award with this picture showing an armed officer of the Cuyahoga County Sheriff's Department moving through a home in Cleveland, Ohio, following eviction as a result of mortgage foreclosure. Jury chair MaryAnne Golon said: "The strength of the picture is in its opposites. It's a double entendre. It looks like a classic conflict photograph, but it is simply the eviction of people from a house following foreclosure. Now war in its classic sense is coming into people's houses because they can't pay their mortgages". The prize-winning entries of the World Press Photo Contest 2009, the world's largest annual press photography contest, were announced February 13, 2009.
Look at the other winners at Reuters
A slight review from the last class.
After Niepce's death Daguerre had accidently discovered a process of latent development where the image was invisible to the naked eye until treated with a developer chemical (Think of this like when you are making a print in the dark room. First you expose the paper, but after the light turns off and the exposure is finished, you can't actually start seeing the image until you put it in the developer.)
Talbot came across a discovery of using gallic acid to treat photographs much later than Daguerre (which is another reason why his process wasn't as popular at first) and by the fall of 1840, exposure times could be cut down from the expected half hour to 30 seconds on a very bright day.
in 1847 people started using glass negatives coated with albumen (egg whites) to help with the definition and fading problems that were plaguing paper photography, but while the glass negatives had no grain, the procedure was complicated and the exposure time was longer than what was needed for daguerreotypes.
In 1850 Fredrick Scott Archer, an English engraver turned sculptor, published a method of sensitizing a newly discovered colorless and grainless substance, collodion, to be used on glass. Because the exposure was a lot shorter when the plate was used in a moist state (20 times shorter compared to previous methods), the process became known as the wet plate or wet collodion method. An immediate drawback to this process was having to carry a mini darkroom with you to sensitize and then develop every plate you wanted to expose, but the crisp definition and contrast were exactly what many photographers were looking for that paper negatives couldn't offer and the collodion method went on to really expand photographic activity in virtually every genre of the medium.
Unlike Talbot, who tried to say that the collodion method was already covered by one of his calotype patents, Archer looked at his discovery as a gift to the world and did not look to make any money from it (he died impoverished in 1857, only 7 years after his discovery.)
example of a print from wet plate collodion
1854: James Ambrose Cutting invents the ambrotype, a on glass using the wet plate collodion process. The main difference is that the image appears positive and you don't have to make a print from it. Exposures were also made while the plate was still wet with collodion and then dipped in silver nitrate. Exposure ranged from roughly 5 - 60 seconds depending on light conditions. The plate is then developed and fixed. The resulting negative, when viewed by reflected light against a black background, appears to be a positive image: the clear areas look black, and the exposed, opaque areas appear light. (while being a totally different process and final result, the whole aspect of a negative appearing as a positive isn't too far off from daguerreotypes)
ambrotype
Also in 1854: André-Adolphe-Eugène Disdéri introduces a style of photography using albumen paper. It came to be called the carte-de-visite because the size of the mounted albumen print (4 by 2.5 inches [10.2 by 6 cm]) corresponded to that of a calling card. Disderi used a camera with 4 lenses to produce 8 negatives on a single glass plate. This sped up the whole process by only needing to work with 1 plate to produce up to 8 images that would later be separated. Albumen paper was also used to print from single glass negatives.
carte-de-viste
Throughout the 1850s, the ambrotype was becoming more and more popular, weeding out the daguerreotype's popularity, but as the 1860's came along, the tintype started doing just the same to the ambrotype. The tintype (also known as melainotype or ferrotype) was first described in France by Adolphe-Alexandre Martin in 1853 but later patented in the US by Hamilton Smith and by William Kloen of Great Britain both in 1856. The tintype was much like the ambrotype except instead of using glass, there was a black enameled iron and the emulsion was gelatin silver based. Another advantage of the tintype was that they were able to be processed and developed much quicker than previous methods, making them much more practical from a business and customer standpoint.
tintype
- - -
Nadar used direct lighting on his subjects to bring out the features he would normally be accentuating for his caricature work. He used his portraits to assist with his first “PanthéonNadar,” (1854) a set of two gigantic lithographs portraying caricatures of prominent Parisians. Nadar also went on to pioneer aerial photography which was an important advance in map making. He took his first aerial photograph from a hot air balloon in 1858.
Portrait of our favorite critic and photography hater Baudelaire. Late 1850s.
Daumier's satirical lithograph of Nadar elevating the heights of photography.
- - -
In the 1840s, a time when most photographers preferred the clarity of a daguerreotype, David Octavius Hill (Scottish) was using the calotype process to look at composition and overall character instead of specific detail
- - -
Roger Fenton was most likely the first war photographer.
Roger Fenton self portrait.
Along with his assistant Marcus Sparling, their documentation of the Crimean War predated the American Civil War by about 7 years. Fenton had set up their dark room in a wagon and took about 360 photos using the wet plate collodion process. Instead of showing a lot of the action of war, Fenton concentrated more on the mundane. Due to his involvement with the government he chose to show only the “acceptable” parts of the conflict, even his account of the Charge of the Light Brigade (also a poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson) was put in a heroic and glorious account.
Fenton was able to return to London and actually exhibit some of his work. The more noted photographs were turned into wood engravings and printed in the Illustrated London News. After the war, Fenton kept up with architectural and landscape photography until his retirement from the field in 1862 when he decided to to return to practicing law.
Dr. Robert Leggat article about war photography.
Mathew Brady thought it would be a good idea to photograph the entire American Civil War and was sure the American government would later purchase his photos and he would at least make back the $100,000 or so he had invested in the project. While Brady hired roughly 20 photographers such as Alexander Gardner and Timothy O'Sullivan to work under him, part of the deal was that they could not attain any personal credit for their work and everything shot by them was to be signed as Mathew Brady. This of course did not suit some of the photographers and they went on to branch off and do their own work without the supervision of Brady, who actually didn't even shoot the actual war that much but was more in charge of the supervisions and organization of the project. The war had come to an end in 1865 and by 1873 Brady was far in debt, having to sell off his New York studio. He did, however, manage to finally get the gvt. to buy his project for a whopping $2840...for those of you with minimal math skills that's a loss of $97,160.
Mathew Brady, General Ulysses S. Grant, Cold Harbor, Virginia, 1864.
Many of the photographers hired by Brady, such as Gardner were unhappy with not being able to take credit for their work and went on to quit. Gardner had opened up his own studio in D.C. and kept working on the Civil War project without the assistance of Brady and actually had the Photographic Sketch Book of the Civil War, a two-volume collection of 100 original prints, published in 1866.
When Daguerre exclaimed that photography was "an absolute truth, infinitely more accurate than any painting by the human hand," he probably wasn't thinking of how photographers would be using this public perception to not only push their agenda but just as simply fool the public. While the war photographers of the time were not necessarily trying to do either, the facts are simple: photographing action in the 1860s was really hard, photos were staged, war scenes were tampered with for the sake of better photos. Is this acceptable? Does the photographer have a right to do such a thing? Does it matter if the photograph is an absolute truth if it serves a greater purpose like changing people's perception of the world for a greater truth or is that too close to propaganda?
The Library of Congress has some great information about photographing the Civil War if you want to keep looking at that subject matter.
Abraham Lincoln photo from 1862 by Alexander Gardner
Timothy O'Sullivan started out working with Brady and decided to branch off so he could document the Western American landscape. From 1867 to 1869, he was official photographer on the United States Geological Exploration of the 40th Parallel where his job was to photograph the West to attract settlers.
- - -
William Henry Jackson, another American photographer of the West whose pictures helped convince the Congress to establish National Parks, Like Yellowstone.
- - -
Felice Beato was the 1st photographer to devote himself entirely to photographing in Asia and the Near East. His work ranged from portrait to war photography, and it is believed that he was the first photographer to show human corpses on a battlefield.
- - -
John Thomson (Scottish) followed Beato's lead and headed to the Far East for his documenting purposes. Upon returning to Europe, his work documenting the street people of London helped define social documentary photojournalism. (We'll talk about this in Class 3)
- - -
Gustave Le Gray was a French photographer pioneering the way we now look at subject and technical matter within the medium. While he often worked with traditional landscapes, he brought new techniques of combining multiple exposure to make one print, and was not afraid to turn his camera towards a subject that was generally considered not worthy of a photograph, like a factory building.
- - -
Henry Peach Robinson (English) much like Le Gray often used multiple negatives to make one print, but in his case it was mostly for fictionalized serials like the one above.
Talbot came across a discovery of using gallic acid to treat photographs much later than Daguerre (which is another reason why his process wasn't as popular at first) and by the fall of 1840, exposure times could be cut down from the expected half hour to 30 seconds on a very bright day.
in 1847 people started using glass negatives coated with albumen (egg whites) to help with the definition and fading problems that were plaguing paper photography, but while the glass negatives had no grain, the procedure was complicated and the exposure time was longer than what was needed for daguerreotypes.
In 1850 Fredrick Scott Archer, an English engraver turned sculptor, published a method of sensitizing a newly discovered colorless and grainless substance, collodion, to be used on glass. Because the exposure was a lot shorter when the plate was used in a moist state (20 times shorter compared to previous methods), the process became known as the wet plate or wet collodion method. An immediate drawback to this process was having to carry a mini darkroom with you to sensitize and then develop every plate you wanted to expose, but the crisp definition and contrast were exactly what many photographers were looking for that paper negatives couldn't offer and the collodion method went on to really expand photographic activity in virtually every genre of the medium.
Unlike Talbot, who tried to say that the collodion method was already covered by one of his calotype patents, Archer looked at his discovery as a gift to the world and did not look to make any money from it (he died impoverished in 1857, only 7 years after his discovery.)
example of a print from wet plate collodion
1854: James Ambrose Cutting invents the ambrotype, a on glass using the wet plate collodion process. The main difference is that the image appears positive and you don't have to make a print from it. Exposures were also made while the plate was still wet with collodion and then dipped in silver nitrate. Exposure ranged from roughly 5 - 60 seconds depending on light conditions. The plate is then developed and fixed. The resulting negative, when viewed by reflected light against a black background, appears to be a positive image: the clear areas look black, and the exposed, opaque areas appear light. (while being a totally different process and final result, the whole aspect of a negative appearing as a positive isn't too far off from daguerreotypes)
ambrotype
Also in 1854: André-Adolphe-Eugène Disdéri introduces a style of photography using albumen paper. It came to be called the carte-de-visite because the size of the mounted albumen print (4 by 2.5 inches [10.2 by 6 cm]) corresponded to that of a calling card. Disderi used a camera with 4 lenses to produce 8 negatives on a single glass plate. This sped up the whole process by only needing to work with 1 plate to produce up to 8 images that would later be separated. Albumen paper was also used to print from single glass negatives.
carte-de-viste
Throughout the 1850s, the ambrotype was becoming more and more popular, weeding out the daguerreotype's popularity, but as the 1860's came along, the tintype started doing just the same to the ambrotype. The tintype (also known as melainotype or ferrotype) was first described in France by Adolphe-Alexandre Martin in 1853 but later patented in the US by Hamilton Smith and by William Kloen of Great Britain both in 1856. The tintype was much like the ambrotype except instead of using glass, there was a black enameled iron and the emulsion was gelatin silver based. Another advantage of the tintype was that they were able to be processed and developed much quicker than previous methods, making them much more practical from a business and customer standpoint.
tintype
- - -
Nadar used direct lighting on his subjects to bring out the features he would normally be accentuating for his caricature work. He used his portraits to assist with his first “PanthéonNadar,” (1854) a set of two gigantic lithographs portraying caricatures of prominent Parisians. Nadar also went on to pioneer aerial photography which was an important advance in map making. He took his first aerial photograph from a hot air balloon in 1858.
Portrait of our favorite critic and photography hater Baudelaire. Late 1850s.
Daumier's satirical lithograph of Nadar elevating the heights of photography.
- - -
In the 1840s, a time when most photographers preferred the clarity of a daguerreotype, David Octavius Hill (Scottish) was using the calotype process to look at composition and overall character instead of specific detail
- - -
Roger Fenton was most likely the first war photographer.
Roger Fenton self portrait.
Along with his assistant Marcus Sparling, their documentation of the Crimean War predated the American Civil War by about 7 years. Fenton had set up their dark room in a wagon and took about 360 photos using the wet plate collodion process. Instead of showing a lot of the action of war, Fenton concentrated more on the mundane. Due to his involvement with the government he chose to show only the “acceptable” parts of the conflict, even his account of the Charge of the Light Brigade (also a poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson) was put in a heroic and glorious account.
Fenton was able to return to London and actually exhibit some of his work. The more noted photographs were turned into wood engravings and printed in the Illustrated London News. After the war, Fenton kept up with architectural and landscape photography until his retirement from the field in 1862 when he decided to to return to practicing law.
Dr. Robert Leggat article about war photography.
Mathew Brady thought it would be a good idea to photograph the entire American Civil War and was sure the American government would later purchase his photos and he would at least make back the $100,000 or so he had invested in the project. While Brady hired roughly 20 photographers such as Alexander Gardner and Timothy O'Sullivan to work under him, part of the deal was that they could not attain any personal credit for their work and everything shot by them was to be signed as Mathew Brady. This of course did not suit some of the photographers and they went on to branch off and do their own work without the supervision of Brady, who actually didn't even shoot the actual war that much but was more in charge of the supervisions and organization of the project. The war had come to an end in 1865 and by 1873 Brady was far in debt, having to sell off his New York studio. He did, however, manage to finally get the gvt. to buy his project for a whopping $2840...for those of you with minimal math skills that's a loss of $97,160.
Mathew Brady, General Ulysses S. Grant, Cold Harbor, Virginia, 1864.
Many of the photographers hired by Brady, such as Gardner were unhappy with not being able to take credit for their work and went on to quit. Gardner had opened up his own studio in D.C. and kept working on the Civil War project without the assistance of Brady and actually had the Photographic Sketch Book of the Civil War, a two-volume collection of 100 original prints, published in 1866.
When Daguerre exclaimed that photography was "an absolute truth, infinitely more accurate than any painting by the human hand," he probably wasn't thinking of how photographers would be using this public perception to not only push their agenda but just as simply fool the public. While the war photographers of the time were not necessarily trying to do either, the facts are simple: photographing action in the 1860s was really hard, photos were staged, war scenes were tampered with for the sake of better photos. Is this acceptable? Does the photographer have a right to do such a thing? Does it matter if the photograph is an absolute truth if it serves a greater purpose like changing people's perception of the world for a greater truth or is that too close to propaganda?
The Library of Congress has some great information about photographing the Civil War if you want to keep looking at that subject matter.
Abraham Lincoln photo from 1862 by Alexander Gardner
Timothy O'Sullivan started out working with Brady and decided to branch off so he could document the Western American landscape. From 1867 to 1869, he was official photographer on the United States Geological Exploration of the 40th Parallel where his job was to photograph the West to attract settlers.
- - -
William Henry Jackson, another American photographer of the West whose pictures helped convince the Congress to establish National Parks, Like Yellowstone.
- - -
Felice Beato was the 1st photographer to devote himself entirely to photographing in Asia and the Near East. His work ranged from portrait to war photography, and it is believed that he was the first photographer to show human corpses on a battlefield.
- - -
John Thomson (Scottish) followed Beato's lead and headed to the Far East for his documenting purposes. Upon returning to Europe, his work documenting the street people of London helped define social documentary photojournalism. (We'll talk about this in Class 3)
- - -
Gustave Le Gray was a French photographer pioneering the way we now look at subject and technical matter within the medium. While he often worked with traditional landscapes, he brought new techniques of combining multiple exposure to make one print, and was not afraid to turn his camera towards a subject that was generally considered not worthy of a photograph, like a factory building.
- - -
Henry Peach Robinson (English) much like Le Gray often used multiple negatives to make one print, but in his case it was mostly for fictionalized serials like the one above.
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Photo Auction Today.
If anyone has an extra $10,000 lying around and some time to kill you can go to this auction today and buy some work from photographers we have talked about in class. If that's a little bit out of your league, you can check the online gallery
SWANN GALLERIES' FEBRUARY 19 AUCTION OF 100 FINE PHOTOGRAPHS FEATURES SCARCE 19th -CENTURY ALBUMS, CLASSIC 20th-CENTURY IMAGES AND CONTEMPORARY ART
On Thursday, February 19, Swann Galleries will conduct an auction of 100 Fine Photographs. The offerings span the entire history of photography, from 19th-century albums through recent works by contemporary artists.
Among the earliest items are rare American daguerreotypes and scarce albums, such as Francis Frith's Egypt and Palestine, Photographed and Described, Vols. I & II, London, 1858-59 (estimate: $6,000 to $9,000); Cités et ruines Américaines, Mitla, Palenque, Izmal, Chichen-Itza, Uxmal, by the French archaeologist Claude-Joseph Désiré Charnay, with 47 albumen photographs of Mexico, including two panoramas, Paris, 1862 (refer to the department for estimate); and a suite of three albums entitled Photographic Pictures Made By Mr. Francis Bedford During the Tour in the East in which, by command, he accompanied His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, with 172 albumen photographs, including views of Egypt, the Holy Land and Syria, and Constantinople and the Mediterranean, London, 1862 ($40,000 to $60,000).
Also from the 19th century are western landscapes by William Henry Jackson, including Shoshone Falls, circa 1883, and The ‘W,' Pike's Peak Carriage Road, circa 1885, mammoth albumen prints ($5,000 to $7,500 each); Edward S. Curtis's studies of Native Americans, as well as A Souvenir of the Harriman Alaska Expedition, May-August 1899, Cook Inlet to Bering Strait and the Return Voyage, Vol. 2, with 107 silver print photographs by Curtis and others, 1899 ($10,000 to $15,000).
There are many appealing images of New York City, including Berenice Abbott's George Washington Bridge II, silver print, 1937, printed 1940s ($5,000 to $7,500), and Flatiron Building, oversize silver print, 1938, printed 1980s ($8,000 to $12,000); Samuel Gottscho's View of New York City, silver print, circa 1930, printed 1940s ($3,000 to $4,500); and Brett Weston's New York (Manhattan Bridge), warm-toned silver print, 1946 ($3,000 to $4,500).
Among Modernist works are André Kertész's Chez Mondrian, silver print, 1926, printed 1960s ($7,000 to $10,000); Henri Cartier-Bresson's Marseilles, silver print, 1932, printed 1980s ($5,000 to $7,500); Margaret Bourke-White's Untitled (Curtiss Gulfhawks), warm-toned silver print, circa 1933 ($8,000 to $12,000); and Manuel Alvarez Bravo's Un Pez que Llaman Sierra [A Fish Called Sword], silver print, 1944, printed 1950s-early 1960s ($10,000 to $15,000).
Among striking portraits are Mike Disfarmer's Mary Jo Seymore, vintage silver print of a G.I.'s gal saluting the camera, circa 1944 ($7,000 to $10,000); Philippe Halsman's Albert Einstein, silver print, 1947, printed 1970s ($5,000 to $7,500); Horst P. Horst's Jacqueline Bouvier [Kennedy], silver print, 1953, the year she married J.F.K.; and Lawrence Schiller's Marilyn Monroe, oversize silver print, 1962, printed 1990s (each $7,000 to $10,000).
Other mid-century highlights include vintage silver prints of Dave Heath's Vengeful Sister, Chicago, 1956 ($6,000 to $9,000); Harry Callahan's Weed, Ai-en-Provence, 1958 ($7,000 to $10,000); and Minor White's Moon & Wall Encrustations, Pultneyville, New York, 1964 ($10,000 to $15,000).
An assortment of desirable contemporary artworks features Joel-Peter Witkin's Canova's Venus, N.Y.C., silver print, 1982; Tina Barney's Beverly, Jill and Polly, color coupler print, 1982 ($7,000 to $10,000 each); and Kara Walker's Testimony, portfolio with five photogravure images of her silhouettes and projections, 2005 ($10,000 to $15,000).
The auction will begin at 1:30 p.m. on Thursday, February 19.
An illustrated catalogue, with information on bidding by mail or fax, is available for $35 from Swann Galleries, Inc., 104 East 25th Street, New York, NY 10010, or online at www.swanngalleries.com.
For further information, and to make advance arrangements to bid by telephone during the auction, please contact Daile Kaplan at (212) 254-4710, extension 21, or via e-mail at dkaplan@swanngalleries.com.
SWANN GALLERIES' FEBRUARY 19 AUCTION OF 100 FINE PHOTOGRAPHS FEATURES SCARCE 19th -CENTURY ALBUMS, CLASSIC 20th-CENTURY IMAGES AND CONTEMPORARY ART
On Thursday, February 19, Swann Galleries will conduct an auction of 100 Fine Photographs. The offerings span the entire history of photography, from 19th-century albums through recent works by contemporary artists.
Among the earliest items are rare American daguerreotypes and scarce albums, such as Francis Frith's Egypt and Palestine, Photographed and Described, Vols. I & II, London, 1858-59 (estimate: $6,000 to $9,000); Cités et ruines Américaines, Mitla, Palenque, Izmal, Chichen-Itza, Uxmal, by the French archaeologist Claude-Joseph Désiré Charnay, with 47 albumen photographs of Mexico, including two panoramas, Paris, 1862 (refer to the department for estimate); and a suite of three albums entitled Photographic Pictures Made By Mr. Francis Bedford During the Tour in the East in which, by command, he accompanied His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, with 172 albumen photographs, including views of Egypt, the Holy Land and Syria, and Constantinople and the Mediterranean, London, 1862 ($40,000 to $60,000).
Also from the 19th century are western landscapes by William Henry Jackson, including Shoshone Falls, circa 1883, and The ‘W,' Pike's Peak Carriage Road, circa 1885, mammoth albumen prints ($5,000 to $7,500 each); Edward S. Curtis's studies of Native Americans, as well as A Souvenir of the Harriman Alaska Expedition, May-August 1899, Cook Inlet to Bering Strait and the Return Voyage, Vol. 2, with 107 silver print photographs by Curtis and others, 1899 ($10,000 to $15,000).
There are many appealing images of New York City, including Berenice Abbott's George Washington Bridge II, silver print, 1937, printed 1940s ($5,000 to $7,500), and Flatiron Building, oversize silver print, 1938, printed 1980s ($8,000 to $12,000); Samuel Gottscho's View of New York City, silver print, circa 1930, printed 1940s ($3,000 to $4,500); and Brett Weston's New York (Manhattan Bridge), warm-toned silver print, 1946 ($3,000 to $4,500).
Among Modernist works are André Kertész's Chez Mondrian, silver print, 1926, printed 1960s ($7,000 to $10,000); Henri Cartier-Bresson's Marseilles, silver print, 1932, printed 1980s ($5,000 to $7,500); Margaret Bourke-White's Untitled (Curtiss Gulfhawks), warm-toned silver print, circa 1933 ($8,000 to $12,000); and Manuel Alvarez Bravo's Un Pez que Llaman Sierra [A Fish Called Sword], silver print, 1944, printed 1950s-early 1960s ($10,000 to $15,000).
Among striking portraits are Mike Disfarmer's Mary Jo Seymore, vintage silver print of a G.I.'s gal saluting the camera, circa 1944 ($7,000 to $10,000); Philippe Halsman's Albert Einstein, silver print, 1947, printed 1970s ($5,000 to $7,500); Horst P. Horst's Jacqueline Bouvier [Kennedy], silver print, 1953, the year she married J.F.K.; and Lawrence Schiller's Marilyn Monroe, oversize silver print, 1962, printed 1990s (each $7,000 to $10,000).
Other mid-century highlights include vintage silver prints of Dave Heath's Vengeful Sister, Chicago, 1956 ($6,000 to $9,000); Harry Callahan's Weed, Ai-en-Provence, 1958 ($7,000 to $10,000); and Minor White's Moon & Wall Encrustations, Pultneyville, New York, 1964 ($10,000 to $15,000).
An assortment of desirable contemporary artworks features Joel-Peter Witkin's Canova's Venus, N.Y.C., silver print, 1982; Tina Barney's Beverly, Jill and Polly, color coupler print, 1982 ($7,000 to $10,000 each); and Kara Walker's Testimony, portfolio with five photogravure images of her silhouettes and projections, 2005 ($10,000 to $15,000).
The auction will begin at 1:30 p.m. on Thursday, February 19.
An illustrated catalogue, with information on bidding by mail or fax, is available for $35 from Swann Galleries, Inc., 104 East 25th Street, New York, NY 10010, or online at www.swanngalleries.com.
For further information, and to make advance arrangements to bid by telephone during the auction, please contact Daile Kaplan at (212) 254-4710, extension 21, or via e-mail at dkaplan@swanngalleries.com.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Susan Meiselas at Pratt
Get psyched! This should be pretty interesting.
Pratt's School of Liberal Arts and Sciences will host renowned photographer Susan Meiselas as its Scholar in Residence from March 31 to April 2. Meiselas' keynote presentation will take place on Wednesday, April 1 at 5 p.m. in Memorial Hall and is free and open to the public.
www.susanmeiselas.com
Pratt's School of Liberal Arts and Sciences will host renowned photographer Susan Meiselas as its Scholar in Residence from March 31 to April 2. Meiselas' keynote presentation will take place on Wednesday, April 1 at 5 p.m. in Memorial Hall and is free and open to the public.
www.susanmeiselas.com
Friday, February 13, 2009
Don't bring in hard drives to class tomm.
Sort of a boring post here, but don't bring in your hard drives to class tomorrow to copy my artist directory. I keep uploading more work to it and don't want to have everyone bring them in twice or three times throughout the semester. I will put up reference text / photos about everyone we talk about in class on the blog. I'll prob have you bring in hard drives class 4 or 5 at the latest, giving me a little more time to keep adding to it.
We'll be going to Yosi Milo Gallery around 3 pm. It is on 25th street. Weather.com says it will be pretty sunny and in the high 40s.
See you in about 14 and a half hours.
We'll be going to Yosi Milo Gallery around 3 pm. It is on 25th street. Weather.com says it will be pretty sunny and in the high 40s.
See you in about 14 and a half hours.
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
more about calo/talbotypes
William Henry Fox Talbot. 1800 - 1877.
Some calotypes:
Again, I know it is on a computer screen but try to look at the different qualities of Daguerreotypes and Calotypes.
Check these sites for more info on the calotype process:
http://foxtalbot.dmu.ac.uk
http://www.mhs.ox.ac.uk/features/ephotos/ctypes.htm
http://www.daguerre.org
This site has a great database of old daguerreotypes to browse through. Also, check the FAQ section to help you understand more about the process.
Daguerreotypes vs. Calotypes
Talbot & the calotype: To create a photogenic drawing, Talbot first coated a sheet of drawing paper with the chemical compound silver chloride and put it in a camera obscura. He exposed the paper by letting light hit it and produced an image of the scene with the tones reversed (much like today when you shoot a roll of film, you get a negative image). He then placed the negative against another coated sheet of paper to produce a positive image. (think of this when you are making a contact sheet. you start out with a celluloid negative and you put it against photo sensitive paper to create a direct positive. Except talbot was using paper for both process.)
Daguere & the daguerreotype: The image is exposed directly onto a mirror-polished surface of silver bearing a coating of silver halide particles deposited by iodine vapor. In later developments bromine and chlorine vapors were also used, resulting in shorter exposure times. The daguerreotype is a negative image, but the mirrored surface of the metal plate reflects the image and makes it appear positive in the proper light. Thus, daguerreotype is a direct photographic process without the capacity for duplication.
Daguere started his work on the development of the Daguerreotype with Niepce but made the more important breakthroughs after Niepce's death (probably why they are not called the dagniepcetypes or niepdagtypes)
The main differences are that calotypes are negatives that are later printed as positives on paper and that daguerreotypes are negative images on mirrored surfaces that reflect a positive looking image.
While Daguerre had monetary funding and go ahead from the French Academy of Sciences, his competitor Talbot had to look towards his own private funding to push his methods. The French looked at their invention as free to the world (though Daguerre did register a patent in Britain for it making it "free to the world" everywhere but Britain, and this slowing down the advancements of photographic processes by there being only a small handfull of people who could legally make daguerreotypes in the whole country.) Since Talbot not only lacked the funding of Daguerre but also his financial status, he looked to making his investment money from working on his photographic finds back by patening his method and charging anyone who wanted to use them (though he lated waived the fees for amateurs using the calotype system for recreational purposes)
While we know why Talbot took out his patent and charged money for for a license, once can only make an educated guess as to why Daguerre would want to restrict the use of "his" invention in the same country that a competitor of his was equally as destined to make it to the history books.
At first Talbot had a lot of trouble figuring out how to properly fix his images (think of when you are developing film or photos and you use "fixer" to keep it from fading and become permanent) giving another reason to the already unique daguerreotypes to become much more popular. However, while the Daguerreotypes were at first much more popular, their years of practical production didn't really make it past the late 1800s (there are still people making them for artistic purposes) Talbot's invention and negative to positive process was much more influential to further developments in the photography industry and holds much more relevancy to anyone still working with film / traditional printing.
This is Talbot's "The Open Door" from 1843. This print was highly admired by the British press for it's high tonal qualities. A lot has been written about this photo, here is a little excerpt on the Metropolitan Museum's website
Here is an example of a pretty famous daguerreotype. This is the first known photographic image of the moon. It was taken by John Whipple in 1851.
Here is a cool website called the Dag Lab that goes into further explanation of the process of making Daguerreotypes.
The Getty Museum site has some interesting videos as well.
I know it's kind of hard to imagine how a daguerreotype can look so different from the conventional paper prints we are used to seeing and that jpegs on the internet don't quiet do it justice which is why I will be bringing in some original daguerreotype examples to our next class.
Daguere & the daguerreotype: The image is exposed directly onto a mirror-polished surface of silver bearing a coating of silver halide particles deposited by iodine vapor. In later developments bromine and chlorine vapors were also used, resulting in shorter exposure times. The daguerreotype is a negative image, but the mirrored surface of the metal plate reflects the image and makes it appear positive in the proper light. Thus, daguerreotype is a direct photographic process without the capacity for duplication.
Daguere started his work on the development of the Daguerreotype with Niepce but made the more important breakthroughs after Niepce's death (probably why they are not called the dagniepcetypes or niepdagtypes)
The main differences are that calotypes are negatives that are later printed as positives on paper and that daguerreotypes are negative images on mirrored surfaces that reflect a positive looking image.
While Daguerre had monetary funding and go ahead from the French Academy of Sciences, his competitor Talbot had to look towards his own private funding to push his methods. The French looked at their invention as free to the world (though Daguerre did register a patent in Britain for it making it "free to the world" everywhere but Britain, and this slowing down the advancements of photographic processes by there being only a small handfull of people who could legally make daguerreotypes in the whole country.) Since Talbot not only lacked the funding of Daguerre but also his financial status, he looked to making his investment money from working on his photographic finds back by patening his method and charging anyone who wanted to use them (though he lated waived the fees for amateurs using the calotype system for recreational purposes)
While we know why Talbot took out his patent and charged money for for a license, once can only make an educated guess as to why Daguerre would want to restrict the use of "his" invention in the same country that a competitor of his was equally as destined to make it to the history books.
At first Talbot had a lot of trouble figuring out how to properly fix his images (think of when you are developing film or photos and you use "fixer" to keep it from fading and become permanent) giving another reason to the already unique daguerreotypes to become much more popular. However, while the Daguerreotypes were at first much more popular, their years of practical production didn't really make it past the late 1800s (there are still people making them for artistic purposes) Talbot's invention and negative to positive process was much more influential to further developments in the photography industry and holds much more relevancy to anyone still working with film / traditional printing.
This is Talbot's "The Open Door" from 1843. This print was highly admired by the British press for it's high tonal qualities. A lot has been written about this photo, here is a little excerpt on the Metropolitan Museum's website
Here is an example of a pretty famous daguerreotype. This is the first known photographic image of the moon. It was taken by John Whipple in 1851.
Here is a cool website called the Dag Lab that goes into further explanation of the process of making Daguerreotypes.
The Getty Museum site has some interesting videos as well.
I know it's kind of hard to imagine how a daguerreotype can look so different from the conventional paper prints we are used to seeing and that jpegs on the internet don't quiet do it justice which is why I will be bringing in some original daguerreotype examples to our next class.
Niepce / Daguerre
As you recall from the first class Joseph Nicéphore Niépce (1765 – 1833) and Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre (1787 – 1851) were both very important figures in the origins of photography. Niepce (pictured directly below) was noted as the first photographer to create a permanent image in 1826.
Niepce's 8 hour exposure made with a camera obscura and pewter coated with bitumen (an asphalt that hardened when exposed to light) from 1826. Keep in mind that Niepce had been working on obtaining a permanent photograph since the late 1700s so it took him a good 30 years or so of work to create his early permanent photographs (which he referred to as heliographs, "sun writings")
Daguerre (pictured above) and the invention of the Daguerreotype: With the Daguerreotypes, images were exposed directly onto a mirror-polished surface of silver bearing a coating of silver halide particles deposited by iodine vapor. (As time went on he started working with other chemicals such as bromine which resulted in shorter exposures) The daguerreotype is a negative image but the mirrored surface of the metal plate reflects the image and makes it appear positive in the proper light. The Daguerreotype was a direct photo process which was unable to be duplicated, meaning 1 final image was all you were going to get.
Daguerreoype of Edgar Allan Poe from the 1840s
early Daguerreotype kit
Advertisement for traveling Daguerreotype photographer E.S. Hayden.
Here is a cool website called the Dag Lab that goes into further explanation of the process of making Daguerreotypes.
The Getty Museum site has some interesting videos as well.
Niepce's 8 hour exposure made with a camera obscura and pewter coated with bitumen (an asphalt that hardened when exposed to light) from 1826. Keep in mind that Niepce had been working on obtaining a permanent photograph since the late 1700s so it took him a good 30 years or so of work to create his early permanent photographs (which he referred to as heliographs, "sun writings")
Daguerre (pictured above) and the invention of the Daguerreotype: With the Daguerreotypes, images were exposed directly onto a mirror-polished surface of silver bearing a coating of silver halide particles deposited by iodine vapor. (As time went on he started working with other chemicals such as bromine which resulted in shorter exposures) The daguerreotype is a negative image but the mirrored surface of the metal plate reflects the image and makes it appear positive in the proper light. The Daguerreotype was a direct photo process which was unable to be duplicated, meaning 1 final image was all you were going to get.
Daguerreoype of Edgar Allan Poe from the 1840s
early Daguerreotype kit
Advertisement for traveling Daguerreotype photographer E.S. Hayden.
Here is a cool website called the Dag Lab that goes into further explanation of the process of making Daguerreotypes.
The Getty Museum site has some interesting videos as well.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
