Photography and Early Art Is Photography Art ? • Photographers emulated themes of Painting • !emes included: Landscape, Allegorical costumed "gures, Still life, Nudes and Genre views. • Some photographers were content with the photographs graphic ability to render information and ideas. • Middle and other classes had the opportunity to experience images for the "rst time. Photography and Early Art

– Photographers and Painters select themes and treatments that present situaons “naturaliscally”

– Images should have a posive and upliing message.

– Photographs should be truthful and inspiraonal

– The teaching of Art History became popular using photographs of objects and painng. NADAR (GASPARD Felix TOURNACHON). TWO cartoons. "Photography asking for just a lile place in the exhibion of fine arts.” Engraving from Pet journal pour rire, 1855. "The ingratude of painng refusing the smallest place in its exhibion to photography to whom it owes so much." Engravings from Le journal amusant, 1857. Bibliotheque Naonale, Paris. !ree main positions on the use of photography

• Photographs should not be considered “art” because they were made with a mechanical device and by physical and chemical instead of by human hand and spirit. (painters and public)

• “Photographs would be useful to art but should not be considered equal in creaveness to drawing and painng.” (Thomas Eakins, painters, some photographers and crics)

• As with etching and lithography, camera images were or could be as significant as handmade works of art and they may have beneficial influence on the arts and culture in general. G.P.A. Healy, Frederic Church and Jervis Unknown Photographer. Longfellow and Daughter McEntee, The Arch of Titus, 1871. Oil on Canvas In Healy Studio in Rome, 1868-69. Albumen Print. The Voices of opposion to Photography

France Charles Baudelaire (cric and poet) regarded photography as a “very humble servant of art and science.

England Lady Elizabeth Eastlake (one of the first to write about early photography) “PHOTOGRAPHY” She wrote, “is concerned with the relaonship of truth” and “reality”

John Ruskin (English and American cric) welcomed photography as a” mechanical invenon of value and then later denounced it as trivial” Photography and Early Art

Pictoreal !emes embraced by photographers

Nudes and costumed "gures

Landscape

Still life

Genre views Nudes and costumed "gures

Hermann Krone. Nude Study, 1850. Daguerreotype

Julien Vallou De Villeneuve. Women with Pitcher, 1855. Calotype. Amercian Painter !omas Eakins

THOMAS EAKINS. !e Swimming Hole, 1883. Nature

Charles_Marville. Salt Print from Calotype negative 1851 ASHER B. DURAXD. Trie Pool, Cliche verre from albumen print. 1859 Still Life

ROGER FENTON. Still Life of Fruit, 1860 ADOLPHE BRAUN. Flower Study, c. 1855. Still Life

VALENTIN GOTTFRIED. Hunt Picture, late ADOLPHE BRAUN. Stil lLife with Deer and 17th-early 18th century. Oil on canvas Wildfowl, C. 1865. Carbon print Genre Photography

CHARLES NEGRE. Young Girl Seated with a Basket, 1852. Salt print. What were photographers saying about the status of Photography as Art?

• Many painters/photographers believed that camera images were capable of expression, thought and feelings.

• Roger Fenton: England • Charles Negre, Gustav Legrey: France • Carleton Watkins: America !ere were other artist/painter/photographers who embraced a different vision. Oscar Gustav Rejlander 1813 –1875

Henry Peach Robinson 1830-1901 Composite Photography

“Two Ways of Life”

Oscar Rejlander . Two Ways of Life” Albumen Composite print 1857 Oscar Rejlander . Two Ways of Life” 1857

Raphael !e School of Athens (1510-1511) Composite Photography

Oscar Rejlander. Hard Times, 1860. Albumen print Composite Photography

Henry Peach Robinson. Preliminary Sketch with photo inserted, 1860. Albumen print and pastel collage on paper Fading Away Henry Peach Robinson

Fading Away. 1858. Composite Albumen Print. Narrative, Allegorical, and Genre Images Julia Margaret Cameron 1815-1879

Lancelot and Guinevere , about 1877 I Wait (R. Gurney), 1872 Narrative, Allegorical, and Genre Images Lady Clementina Hawarden 1822-1865

CLEMENTINA, LADY HAWARDEN. Young Girl with Mirror Reflection, 1860s. Albumen print. Peter Henry Emerson (1856–1936)

In the Barley Harvest from Pictures of East Anglian Life, 1888. Gravure print. Peter Henry Emerson (1856–1936) • Alfred Steiglitz