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From Pictorialism to Straight Photography

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From Pictorialism to Straight Photography From Pictorialism to Straight photography - Photo-secession; Camera Work; 291 gallery - So focus, painterly style - labor-intensive processes: gum bichromate prinng (hand- coang arst papers with homemade emulsions) - Sacrifice detail precision for expressive effect (contrast – composion) - Symbolism (sculptor + philosopher + writer+ Edward Steichen, Rodin – The Thinker, 1902, gum bichromate print, photographer) 15 x 19 in - Composional choices + natural elements to unify pictorial whole (as opposed to labor- intensive prinng techniques) - Image metaphor for photography itself (light, shuer, print, reproDucon) - Pictorial effect Alfred Seglitz, Sun Rays, Paula, Berlin, 1889, gelan silver print, 9 x 6 in - Straight photography - Composion of abstract shapes, textures, volumes - Composion / class separaon - Polical statement? (on the subject maer but also on photography as a democrac form of art) Alfred Seglitz, The Steerage, 1907, photogravure, 335 mm / 13.19 inches x 264 mm / 10.39 inches - among the first photographic abstrac3ons to be made intenonally - Disrupon of original scale - Ambiguity of angle - does not depend upon recognizable imagery for its effect, but on the precise relaons of forms within the frame Paul,Strand, Abstracon, Twin Lakes, Conneccut, 1916, silver-planum print, 12 x 9 in. 1920s collec3ve portraiture - recovering the immediacy of experience by making the familiar seem unfamiliar (deparng from the habit of looking--and photographing-- straight ahead) - photography is mechanical and objec3ve à socially progressive - Woman-machine - Not an individual à collecve image Rodchenko, Woman at the Telephone, 1928, gelan silver print Sander, Hold- carrier, 1928 August Sander, Pastry Cook, gelan silver print, 1928 Sander, Disabled service man, 1928 Sander, Nun, 1921 Sander, Village schoolteacher, 1921 August Sander, Secretary at West German Radio in Cologne, 1931, Photograph, gelan silver print on paper, 26 x 146 mm Oo Dix, Portrait of August Sander, Secretary the Journalist Sylvia at West German Radio in von Harden, 1926, Cologne, 1931, mixed media on Photograph, gelan silver wooD, 120 x 88 cm, print on paper, 26 x 146 Pompidou, Paris mm Bernd and Hilla Becher, Gas Tanks, 1983-92 - FSA project - Photo-journalism / anthropology - Emapathic gaze - Iconography of the Madonna - End of rural America Dorothea Lange, A Destute Mother: The Type Aided by the WPA, 1936, gelan silver print Surrealist photography Picasso, Bull's Head, 1942 Man Ray, Minotaur, 1933, for the - They both work metaphorically Surrealist magazine, Minotaur. - Man Ray inverts the metonymic meaning Ià impossible category body/head, human/ monster, feminine/masculine Picasso, Bull's Head, 1942 Man Ray, Minotaur, 1933, for the - They both work metaphorically Surrealist magazine, Minotaur. - Man Ray inverts the metonymic meaning Ià impossible category body/head, human/ monster, feminine/masculine - Indexical nature of photography Index: 1) a mode in which the signifier might not resemble its signified object (a vehicle). 2) It is not arbitrarily assigned (like the word dog) and is directly connected in some way to the signified object. 3) Nevertheless, the relaonship between the signifier (re track), the signified object (a vehicle) and the sense behind it (a vehicle was here) may have to be learned. The link may only be inferred; for instance, smoke, thunder, footprints, flavors, a door bell ringing Man Ray, Minotaur, 1933 Bataille’s concept of “formlessness”: erasing categories of sexuality Brassai, Nudes, 1933 Phallus-female torso Brassaï, Involuntary Sculpture, 1933 .
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