Photography

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Edward Weston
Born on March 24, 1886, in Highland Park, Illinois, Edward Weston's father gave him his camera at age 16. Much of his photography in the early 1920s can be identified as Pictorialist style, meaning they imitated paintings. In 1923, he travelled to Mexico, where he opened a photographic studio with his lover, Tina Modotti. During this time, Weston took a number of the portraits and nudes for which he's known today. Several Mexican artists of the time, including Diego Rivera, David Siqueiros and Jose Orozco,

(USA) 1886-1958

‘I see no reason for recording the obvious.’
called Weston a pioneer of 20th century art. In 1926, Weston returned to the United States, settling in California, where he continued to create nudes, close-ups, natural forms and landscapes, among several other works. In the 1940s, he took several portraits of his family members that are now considered among his best work. In 1946, New York City's Museum of Modern Art featured an exhibit of Weston's work that included 300 prints. Weston died in Carmel, California, on January 1, 1958.

Nautilus
1927 Nautilus is a black-and-white photograph taken by Edward Weston in 1927 of a single nautilus shell standing on its end against a dark background. It has been called "one of the most famous photographs ever made" and "a benchmark of modernism in the history of photography." In February, 1927, Weston visited the studio of local artist Henrietta Shore and noticed several paintings she had made of sea shells. Only one of these paintings is known to still exist (as of January, 2011), and it shows a stark and solitary nautilus on a dark background, not unlike Weston's final photographs. He made it clear in his writings that the paintings had a strong effect on him.

Pepper no.30
1930
Pepper No. 30 is one of the best-known photographs taken by Edward Weston. It shows a solitary green pepper in rich black-and-white tones, strongly light from above. In the late 1920s Weston began taking a series of close-up images of different objects that he called "still lifes". For several years he experimented with a variety of images of shells, vegetables and fruits, and in 1927 he made his first photograph of a pepper. He received mixed feedback about that image, but two years later he started a new series that focused on peppers alone. He recorded twenty-six negatives of peppers taken during 1929, mostly taken against plain burlap or muslin backdrops.

Pepper No.30

(1930)

Pepper no.30 includes the use of form, colour, value, space and contrast. The use of form is obvious in this piece, because the focal object is very real looking and it has lots of depth to it. The photographer effectively combines colour, value and contrast, because the monochromatic colour scheme combined with a large range of value and contrast (light and dark), all work together to emphasize the twists and curves of the pepper. I believe the artist is trying to create a theme of darkness and loneliness, because the pepper is the only component, which blends into the background leading me, the viewer to assume the object is isolated from something. I believe the artist created this photograph to represent his isolation from everything else, so that others too can understand how he feels. Weston’s view of the world is likely a darker view, where he believes people aren’t friendly.. Edward Weston was born in 1886, and died in 1958. Today, some refer to him as “one of the most innovative and influential American photographers” while others think of him as “one of the masters of 20th century photography.” Weston lived through WW1, the Great Depression, and WW2 – so much of his life was influenced by war and poverty, both of which can force people to feel isolated, and believe the world is an evil, dark place. Although throughout his life, there was lots of fighting; there were many opportunities for change and new creations. This is why he felt comfortable to explore new areas of art, that hadn’t been explored yet. I also think the death of Weston’s mother, and the re-marriage of his father to a woman he didn’t like, caused him to feel alone and unheard as well. Another interesting thing to consider with Edward Weston's pepper is how his lighting and cropping of the image contributes to how we interpret the photograph. He crops it very tight and has a dark background, which forces us to focus on the pepper without much consideration for where it is or its surroundings.

Ansel Adams
Ansel Easton Adams (February 20, 1902 – April 22, 1984) was an American photographer and environmentalist best known for his black and white landscape photographs of the American West, especially of Yosemite National Park. With Fred Archer, Adams developed the Zone System as a way to calculate the proper exposure

(USA) 1902-1984

‘You don’t take a photograph, you make it.’

‘I want to be a machine.’
and adjust the contrast of the final print. The clarity and depth from this characterized his photographs and the work of those to whom he taught the system. Adams usually used largeformat cameras despite their size, weight, setup time, and film cost, because their high resolution helped ensure sharpness in his images.

The Tetons and the Snake River
1942
Adams's photograph The Tetons and the Snake River has the honour of being one of the 115 images recorded on the Voyager Golden Record aboard the Voyager spacecraft. These images were selected to show information about humans, plants and animals, and geological features of the Earth to a possible alien civilization. These photographs mirror his favourite saying, a Gaelic mantra, which says "I know that I am one with beauty and that my comrades are one. Let our souls be mountains, Let our spirits be stars, Let our hearts be worlds."

Leaves in Glacier National Park
1942
Adams first visited Yosemite National Park in 1916 with his family. He wrote of his first view of the valley: "the splendour of Yosemite burst upon us and it was glorious... One wonder after another descended upon us... There was light everywhere... A new era began for me." His father gave him his first camera, a Kodak Brownie box camera, during that stay and he took his first photographs. He returned to Yosemite on his own the following year with better cameras and a tripod. In the winter, he learned basic darkroom technique working part-time for a San Francisco photo finisher. He explored the High Sierra, in summer and winter, developing the stamina and skill needed to photograph at high elevation and under difficult weather conditions

David Bailey
David Royston Bailey, CBE (born 2 January 1938) is regarded as one of the best British photographers. Born in East London, he became a photographic assistant at the John French studio, then photographer for John Cole's Studio Five before being contracted as a fashion

(UK) born 1938

‘I always go for simplicity.’
photographer for British Vogue magazine in 1960. Along with Terence Donovan and Brian Duffy, he captured and helped create the 'Swinging London' of the 1960s. In 2012, the BBC made a film of the story of his 1962 New York photoshoot with Jean Shrimpton.

‘I want to be a machine.’

Jean Shrimpton
David Bailey is an extremely influential photographer whose career has continued right through the 60’s and 70’s to the present day. His work is mostly portrait, one of his most famous being Jean Shrimpton; whom he shot for Vogue. Bailey was dyslexic and he struggled at school so he turned to art. He was heavily influenced by Hollywood films and is very proud of his working class background; this “individuality” eventually helped him to be in the position of shooting 800 sets of Vogue in one year!

The Beatles
In this photograph David Bailey has also used a white background which helps to show the contrast between the background and the black suits John Lennon and Paul McCartney are wearing. In contrast to the first image, here more parts of the body are being shown in this portrait instead of just including head and shoulders. As this photograph includes two people the portrait is not as close up as the previous one. The facial expressions are neutral and are not portraying any specific emotions. However the gesture of having your hands over someone’s shoulders suggests these two are close friends.

Although there is artificial lighting used in this and many other of David Bailey's portraits, the tone is not as strong as in the first photograph. This could be because the lighting used is limited so the contrasts between the darker and lighter areas are not as strong. I think David Bailey could have used diffused lighting in this piece so it is softer. Most of the tone is shown towards the bottom of this portrait, around their hands and at the end of his fingertips. As David Bailey mainly worked in the 60's there were no digital cameras at the time so most of his photographs would have been taken using a black and white film camera. In most of David Baileys photographs he uses a direct approach to taking portraits, which makes the image central to the picture frame.

Mario Testino
Mario Testino (was born on October 30, 1954) is a Peruvian fashion photographer. His work has been featured in magazines such as Vogue and Vanity Fair. His career highpoint came when he

(Peruvian) Born 1954

‘I like getting my ideas from the things of now.’
was chosen by Diana, Princess of Wales, for her Vanity Fair photo-shoot in 1997. Testino has been regularly employed by the British royal family ever since.

‘I want to be a machine.’

“I usually try to make my images look like they just exist, like no effort was put into it.”

"I spend my life looking and choosing and approving and changing," says the 58year-old Peruvian, whose work regularly appears in Vanity Fair and Vogue the world over. "At the end of the day, my eyes are really tired because everything that I do is to do with looking: I have to choose what I am going to do, where am I going to do it, how am I going to do it, with whom am I doing it, what light will I use..."

Cindy Sherman
Cynthia "Cindy" Morris Sherman (born January 19, 1954) is an American photographer and film director, best known for her portraits. In 1995, she was the receiver of a MacArthur Fellowship. Through a number of different series of works, Sherman has sought to raise challenging and important questions

(USA) Born 1954

‘I didn’t have any interest in traditional art.’

‘I want to be a machine.’
about the role and representation of women in society, the media and the nature of the creation of art. Her photographs include some of the most expensive photographs ever sold. Sherman lives and works in New York.

Untitled Film Still #3
Modelling in several roles, she reveals gender as an unstable and constructed position, which suggests that there is no normal biological female identity. Women adopt several roles and identities depending on their circumstances. Therefore, the roles in the Untitled Film Stills series vary from an immature schoolgirl to an attractive seducer and from a glamour diva to a caring housewife. More importantly, her work encourages selfreflection in the viewer. As Cindy Sherman says, “I’m trying to make other people recognize something of themselves rather than me.”

Untitled #138
In the 1980s, Sherman started using bright light and high-contrast colour to her work. Moving away from female stereotypes like the Untitled Film Stills series, she begins to deal with topics such as eating disorders, insanity and death, thinking about the consequences of society’s stereotyped roles for women rather than about the roles themselves. Sherman’s Untitled # 132 (1984) and Untitled # 138 (1984) represent a fashion victim. Her facial features are exaggerated, she models in fashionable clothes by top designers such Jean-Paul Gaultier. However, the clothes do not feel comfortable and attractive. The woman loses her self-confidence and cannot bear the pressure of her forced role.

Robert Capa
Robert Capa (born Friedmann Endre ErnÅ‘; October 22, 1913 – May 25, 1954) was a Hungarian combat photographer and photojournalist who covered five different wars: the Spanish Civil War, the Second SinoJapanese War, and World War II across Europe, the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, and the First Indochina War.

(Hungarian/American) Born 1913-1954

‘The pictures are there, you just take them.’

‘I want to be a machine.’
He documented the course of World War II in London, North Africa, Italy, the Battle of Normandy on Omaha Beach and the liberation of Paris. His action photographs, such as those taken during the 1944 Normandy invasion, show the violence of war.

Falling Soldier
Capa first became famous in 1939 during the Spanish Civil War for a controversial war photo. The picture was named "Death of a Loyalist Militiaman" but is commonly called "Falling Soldier". It was an action picture (published in Vu magazine) of a Spanish Republic soldier who had just been shot and was falling to the ground. This picture is still one of the most famous images of war of all time. This photo helped him gain world-wide fame. However, now people are suggesting that the photo was staged. They believe that Capa lied about the location where the picture was taken.

D-Day landings Omaha Beach
June 6 ,1944

His most famous work occurred on June 6, 1944 (D-Day) when he swam ashore with the second assault wave on Omaha Beach. He was armed with two Contax II cameras mounted with 50 mm lenses and several rolls of spare film. Capa took 106 pictures in the first couple of hours of the invasion. However, a staff member at Life in London made a mistake in the darkroom; he set the dryer too high and melted the emulsion in the negatives in three complete rolls and over half of a fourth roll. Only eleven frames in total were recovered. Capa never said a word to the London bureau chief about the loss of three and a half rolls of his D-Day landing film.

Man Ray
Man Ray (born Emmanuel Radnitzky, August 27, 1890 – November 18, 1976) was an American who spent most of his career in Paris, France. He was a large contributor to the Dada and Surrealist movements. He produced major works in a variety of styles and materials but considered himself a painter

(American) Born 1890-1976

‘All critics should be assassinated.’

‘I want to be a machine.’
above all. He was best known in the art world for his new photography, and he was a renowned fashion and portrait photographer. Ray is also known for his work with photograms, which he called "rayographs" in reference to himself.

For Man Ray, photography often operated in the gap between art and life. It was a way of documenting sculptures that never had an independent life outside the photograph, and it was a way of capturing the activities of humans. His work as a commercial photographer encouraged him to create fine, carefully composed prints.

"Nature does not create works of art. It is we, and the faculty of interpretation peculiar to the human mind, that sees art." Man Ray - "Photography can be art" "A camera alone does not make a picture. To make a picture you need a camera, a photographer and above all a subject. It is the subject that determines the interest of the photograph." Man Ray - Oct. 2, 1966

Henri Cartier-Bresson

(French) Born 1908-2004

“I want only to capture a minute part of reality.’

Henri Cartier-Bresson (August 22, 1908 – August 3, 2004) was a French photographer thought to be the father of modern photojournalism.. He helped develop the street

photography or life reportage style that was coined The Decisive Moment and has influenced generations of photographers who followed.

‘I want to be a machine.’

Not long after the war, Cartier-Bresson travelled east, spending a lot of time in India, where he met and photographed Mahatma Gandhi shortly before his assassination in 1948. CartierBresson's following work was to document Gandhi's death and its immediate impact on the country became one of Life Magazine's most prized photo essays.

“Think about the photo before and after, never during. The secret is to take your time. You mustn't go too fast. The subject must forget about you. Then, however, you must be very quick.” “Actually, I'm not all that interested in the subject of photography. Once the picture is in the box, I'm not all that interested in what happens next. Hunters, after all, aren't cooks.”

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