Fundamentals of Photography

This print viewing is meant to serve as a basic introduction to the medium of photography and includes images that demonstrate a range of fundamentals and techniques including camera optics, use of vantage point, framing, focus, light, time of day, and digital manipulation.

This selection also introduces viewers to a variety of traditions, such as landscape, portraiture, and street photography.

Artist: Sally Mann Title: The Perfect Tomato Date: 1990 Medium: Gelatin Silver Print Dimensions: Frame: 24 in x 30 in Credit Line: Gift of the Artist

Newhall, Beaumont American, 1908-1993

Beaumont Newhall was a leading art historian, curator, and, in his later years, photographer. In 1937, Newhall organized the first comprehensive exhibition of eight hundred photographic works at the Museum of Modern Art, where he would soon after be appointed director of the newly formed photography department. That exhibition and its accompanying catalog were pivotal in securing photography’s place within the arts. Supported by a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship, Newhall expanded the original catalog into a book, The History of Photography, 1839 to the Present. The first textbook on the subject, Newhall’s history has undergone numerous revisions and editions and today remains a standard in the field. From 1948 to 1971, he was curator and director of the International Museum of Photography at George Eastman House. Later in life, Newhall would devote himself to his own photography, formalist and tightly composed black and white images of people and architecture. While he had always been interested in making photographs--even setting up his own darkroom in the men’s lavatory at MoMA when he was first hired as a librarian in 1935-- Newhall did not have his own exhibition until he was seventy-years-old. He favored the formalism of art photography and was a strong advocate for the Modernist tradition, preferences which are reflected in his own work.

Title: Chase National Bank, New York Date: 1928 Printed: 1981 Medium: Gelatin Silver Print Dimensions: Board: 14 in x 18 in Image: 8 ½ in x 8 ½ in Credit Line: Gift of Richard Templeton Ishimoto, Yasuhiro Japanese-American, 1921-2012

A student of Harry Callahan and Aaron Siskind, Yasuhiro Ishimoto was an important figure in the cross-pollination of photographic ideas and styles between American and Japanese photography. His portrait of a city, Chicago, Chicago, published as a book (1969), is a rich study full of the details of time and place. The documentary photographer was a part of the time and place of his subject, a fact of the medium that is simultaneously restrictive and beneficial. Moving through Chicago as both citizen and visitor, Yasuhiro Ishimoto was able to create documents that speak eloquently for the culture of the city in the 1950s and 1960s. His photographs present highly original visual spaces, which suggest the politics, mentality, and history of the city.

Title: Untitled Title: Untitled Date: 1960 Date: 1960 Medium: Gelatin Silver Print Medium: Gelatin Silver Print Dimensions: Image: 7 1/8 in x 10 in Dimensions: Image: 7 1/8 in x 10 in Paper: 11 in x 14 in Paper: 11 in x 14 in Credit Line: Gift of Roberta & Jack A. Jaffe Credit Line: Gift of Roberta & Jack A. Jaffe Morell, Abelardo American, b. 1948 Cuba

The camera obscura is a device that enables an artist or draftsman to see an inverted image of the living world on a plane surface. The guiding principle of the camera obscura, which literally means, "dark chamber" is that light entering a room or camera from a single point creates an image of the exterior world. Used since the Renaissance, the camera obscura was one tool with which artists were able to accurately or realistically manage perspectival difficult scenes or subjects. In Camera Obscura Image of Houses Across the Street in Our Bedroom, Abelardo Morell employs the principles of this optical device to set up an inverted image of his street on his bedroom wall. In the images, the entire room functions as a camera, and Morell takes a picture of the phenomenon using an 8 x 10 inch view camera. Thus, the resulting image is a picture of a picture, taken of a camera with a camera.

Camera Obscura Image of Houses Across the Street in Our Bedroom Date: 1991 Medium: Gelatin Silver Print Dimensions: Image: 17 7/8 in x 22 ½ in Credit Line: Museum Purchase

Camera Obscura: The Pantheon in Hotel Albergo del Sole, Room #111, Rome, Italy Date: 2008 Medium: Digital Pigment Print Dimensions: 32 in x 39 in Credit Line: Museum Purchase Siskind, Aaron American, 1903-1991

Highly formal, yet concerned with their subject as well as the idea they communicate, The Pleasures and Terrors of Levitation photographs depict the dark shapes of divers suspended mid-leap against a blank white sky. Shot with a hand-held twin-lens reflex camera at the edge of Lake Michigan in Chicago, the balance and conflict suggested by the series' title is evident in the divers' sublime contortions. During the 1950s, Siskind's primary subjects were urban facades, graffiti, isolated figures, and the stone walls of Martha's Vineyard. Graphic in form, the subjects of each of these series resemble script, reflecting Siskind's interest in musical scores and poetry.

Title: Pleasures & Terrors of Levitation #999 Date: 1961 Medium: Gelatin Silver Print Dimensions: Frame: 17 ¼ in x 18 ¼ in Image: 10 ½ in x 13 ¾ in Credit Line: Museum Purchase Mann, Sally American, b. 1951 Lexington, VA

Sally Mann has used her 8 x 10 view camera to capture in fine detail, among other subjects, images of her children as they mimic and act out social and familial roles in the lush landscape of their rural Virginia home. For the “Immediate Family” series, Mann's children, who often appear nude, are posed or simply arrested in their activity to convey both primal and playful aspects of human behavior.

Title: The Perfect Tomato Date: 1990 Medium: Gelatin Silver Print Dimensions: Frame: 24 in x 30 in Credit Line: Gift of the Artist Abbott, Berenice American, 1898-1991

Abbott became Man Ray’s photographic assistant in 1918 after traveling to Paris with the intention of becoming a sculptor. Known for her systematic and richly detailed photographs of New York, Abbott also photographed scientific subjects for Life magazine and for three secondary school physics textbooks.

Title: Beams of Light Through Glass Date: 1958-61 Printed: 1982 Medium: Gelatin Silver Print Dimensions: Board: 24 in x 30 in Paper: 15 5/16 in x 19 5/16 in Credit Line: Museum Purchase

Title: Cycloid, from “Science Pictures” Portfolio Date: 1958-61 Printed: 1982 Medium: Gelatin Silver Print Dimensions: 4 3/8 in x 19 3/8 in Credit Line: Museum Purchase Josephson, Ken American, b. 1932

New York State (1970), from the “Images within Images” series, is one of Ken Josephson’s most famous photographs and aptly displays the sort of visual statement that inspires critics to classify his work as conceptual. In the photograph, Josephson’s arm stretches over a body of water and in his hand he holds a picture of a ship over the horizon. The boat in the picture is positioned in perspective to occupy the same space a full-sized ship in the distance would appear to take up if seen in that same spot. It is a clever illusion, yet constructed precisely to draw attention to its artifice. As with the René Magritte painting captioned “Ceci n’est pas une pipe,” we are reminded that a picture of a boat, no matter how real it looks, is still not itself a boat. It would seem an easy lesson, the picture looking so two-dimensional and foreign when held up against the world, until one remembers that the entire image is a single photograph, just as flat and counterfeit as the image pictured within it. In a sublime twist, it is a photograph that assures us that we should question the veracity of photography

Title: New York State Date: 1970 Printed: 1975 Medium: Gelatin Silver Print Dimensions: Image: 6 in x 9 in Credit Line: Gift of Manny & Skippy Gerard

Title: Bradley Date: 1968 Printed: 1975 Medium: Gelatin Silver Print Dimensions: Image: 6 in x 9 in Credit Line: Gift of Manny & Skippy Gerard Welling, James American, b. 1951

James Welling employs a wide variety of photographic tools and media. His abstract compositions are rendered as photograms, traditional gelatin silver prints, Polaroids, and digitally processed prints. His works challenge the technical and conceptual bounds of photography, while employing simple materials like crumpled aluminum foil, wrinkled fabric, and pastry dough. His series, “Degradés,” is comprised of abstract photograms made by exposing color photographic paper to various levels of light. In all of his works Welling filters the very tenets of photography, light, movement, and time, through his unique process, contributing to the continuous reevaluation of abstract photography.

Title: IP30 Date: 2001 Medium: Chromogenic Development Print; Dimensions: Frame: 24 ¾ in x 28 5/8 in Paper: 19 7/8 in x 23 ½ in Credit Line: Museum Purchase Fundamentals of Photography: Questions for Looking and Discussion

• What pulls your attention? Why? Where does your eye go next?

• What can you tell about how this image was made? Consider the techniques and visual strategies used by the artist such as use of light, time of day, vantage point, focus, framing and composition, etc.

• Are there clues in the image that suggest when and where this photograph might have been made? Describe.

• What moods or feelings are expressed in this photograph? How are they conveyed?

• If you are looking at multiple images by one artist, consider what they have in common.

• How do they differ? How do they function together?

• What do you think this artist was interested in or trying to communicate when he or she made this work? Why?

Deeper Reading: Adding Context We can learn a lot about some images just through what we observe in the photograph. In many cases learning about the artist, their intentions and the cultural and historic context in which the work was made adds much to our understanding. For example, Japanese American photographer Yasuhiro Ishimoto was held in an internment camp during World War II. When he was released he came to Chicago to study at the Institute of Design. In several of his civil rights era images made on the streets of Chicago, we notice his interest in race and power relationships.

With at least a few of the images in this set, after students carefully look at the images and consider the above questions, ask them to read about the artist and their work and learn about the cultural and historic context in which the work was made. The teacher or docent could also provide some of this information. After students have learned some context surrounding the artist and their work, ask them to reconsider the work and how this additional information impacts their understanding.