Exercise 1:6: The contemporary abyss.

Exercise 1.6: The contemporary abyss. 

Through time the word sublime has been diluted and lost its true meaning.  “Oh darling you look sublime.”  “That meal was sublime.”

Edmund Burke described the sublime, “ As the strongest emotion the mind is capable of.”  It should be worrying, energising and horrifying.  I don’t believe a meal out, nor the latest look can qualify.

The visual arts alone are not capable of taking me to those heights of emotion.  Music on the other hand can.  My judgement on how affecting I find a piece of music, how sublime it is is simple; can I drive and listen to it.  One song that is never played is Strange Fruits.  Whether sung with the earthiness of Billy Holiday or the perfect tones and intonations of Nina Simone, here is an experience that drills into my soul.  The lyrics alone reach into the heart, but add the melody and that sublime moment overwhelms me.  

The song relates to a lynching in 1930 of two men, Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith,who were accused of robbery and murder.  The mob broke them out of jail with the express intent of hanging them.  The third victim, a 16 year old named James Chapman, was rescued when the sheriff finally intervened.  

While investigating the background for this exercise I came across this photograph of the event that led to the song being written.  If the lyrics of the song fail to horrify then look at the scenes of the actual lynchings.  

The truly horrifying feature is the carnival atmosphere and the mix of people with young, old, women and children.  The picture must have been taken by one of the mob as a record of the good deed they were carrying out.  

The sublime feature, the energising part of it is supplied by Abel Meerpols lyrics which in so few words describe the scene.

Southern trees bear a strange fruit,

Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,

Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze,

Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.

Pastoral scene of the gallant south,

The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth,

Scent of magnolias, sweet and fresh,

Then the sudden smell of burning flesh.

Here is fruit for the crows to pluck,

For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,

For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop,

Here is a strange and bitter crop.

Although the story and the picture supply the horror, it is the song that lifts me to the level that can be described as sublime.  There is nothing rational in why the visual cannot lift me to these height but music can.  

Exercise 1.5: Visualising Assignment Six: Transitions.

Exercise 1.5: Visualising Assignment Six: Transitions,

I have already started this exercise and am photographing three locations.  Two involve the sea and beach and one is a garden at the rear of a church.

The first is a view from Deal Pier looking north towards Sandwich.  The times available to take pictures is restricted by the pier opening times.  I would have taken pictures of the pier from the beach but a present the beach is closed due to flood defence work.  When this changes I will think again.

The second is a view of the cliffs at Kingsdown, south of Deal.  It looks pretty grim at the moment but will change with the seasons and can look pretty wild in bad weather.

The last is the garden at the rear of St. Georges Church in the centre of Deal.  It had a good mix of trees and natualised flowers and will change with the seasons.

I am open to suggestions as to other projects or locations so will keep looking.

Exercise 1.4: What is a photographer?

Exercise 1.4: What is a photographer?

De Zayas sees art and photography as separate ways of viewing the world.  He claims art to be the scene as seen and interpreted by the artist.  The artist interprets the scene, and it is through his eyes that the image, the form, must be viewed.  This leads to an emotional response, not to the scene, but to the painters interpretation of it.  He sees photography as breaking with this tradition and allowing a new way of viewing form.

The claim is made that when art turned away from the religious towards the secular it lost its way and dealt only with form.  This new art instead of concentrating on ideas dealt only with form and excluded mystery.  

Art has changed through history as form is interpreted and reinterpreted by people through the ages.  The more imaginative interpretations of form that are often represented in native or naive art became standardised into shapes and forms that we can all recognise.  In recent times modernist painters have turned their backs on this standardised way of viewing form and returned to earlier ways of interpreting it.  They seek inspiration in museums and the collections of native art.  This he sees as art feeding on art and producing nothing new.  He sees Picasso only as an “analyst”, a destroyer not an innovator. 

The claim is made that people in less developed parts of the world have a serious problem with the difference between reality and imagination.  When asked to draw real objects they will seek inspiration from their imagination and draw a fantastic image rather than an accurate one.  

Modern man, on the other hand, now records what is in front of him without recourse to imagination or embellishment.  The claim is made that despite these changes, and the suppression of imagination, art is still alive.

The work of the modernists is dismissed as merely a return the art of the savage.

Art is described as a mix of what we see and what we think we see: how we see things and how we remember them, allowing false beliefs to taint the truth.  This has led to a false truth about form and leads to painters representing form in the way they feel rather than what they see.

Imagination clouds the memory and leads to a false recollection of the past,  mixing ideas and images and creating new ones.  One must have a clear head to see true form.

Only one process can truly record form accurately and that is through the camera.  The trained photographer with a clear eye for detail is in a position to not only record true form but understand it and comprehend its beauty.

Photography cuts away the mystery and influence of imagination and allows the form to be displayed without the interference of interpretation.  The photograph allows the viewer to see the scene as it really was at the time of taking, and not as recorded according to the preferences and prejudices of the painter.  The viewer of the image can thus make up his own mind about what is in front of him.

De Zayas postulates that man’s thought processes change and move on but he predicts neither direction nor end.  

He believes in art’s influence on man, leading him into realms of fantasy and imagination and back again to rationality.  In photography man found the perfect vehicle for representing truth: the photograph.

He sees photography as a way of recording true form and cannot see any future in it as an expression of imagination.

According to De Zayas the true photographer should not allow anything to cloud the truth of the image he is about to record.  Photography is about truth and reality.  Rather than have the mind see a scene through the artist’s eyes photography captures the image that made the artist want to pick up his brush: to interpret the scene for him self.  A photograph is an image of what was in front of the camera at the taking of the image and a painting is recording of what the painter felt about what was in front when he put paint to paper.

As man becomes more objective in his quest for knowledge he has had to stand further back from that which he wishes to understand.  To stand behind a camera and view form is to be objective.  To get close to something and know how it feels before painting it is subjective.  

Reference is made to the mainly studio based Steichen and the more experimental Stieglitz.

Steichen in his studio work combines both art and truth bringing about an artistic reality. Stieglitz in his focus on object rather that subject gets closer to the truth that most modern artist try to achieve with their analytic approach.

Which is more important?  Is it better to understand and comprehend the meaning of form or bend the understanding of form to make it comprehensible?

Response.

My first response must be that this piece was written in very different political times; a time when other races could be described openly in derogatory and demeaning terms.  I will not comment on De Zayas’s description of other cultures or races other than to say he would find it difficult to find a sympathetic audience today.

What we see as art from other cultures is often not produced as art.

Ask an Australian aboriginal to draw a map and he will produce, if he wishes to, an article that we can only see as art.  To him it is a map full of dream time legends and the location of water.  With his map he would never be lost or want for water or food, we can only hang it on the wall and admire it. 

Early Western paintings and were produced to glorify God and to act as instruction for the uneducated masses.  These representations were full of symbolism and mystery depicting the myths and stories of the Bible.  It was only later that these instructional works came to be seen as art.  

De Zayas is very dismissive of the Modernists and seems to predict their early demise.  What he seems to miss was that by tapping into the this vein of early art the Modernists were able to view form in a new way; to add extra dimensions to the way we view it.  Seeing an object from more than one direction at a time, seeing something for its purpose rather than its shape, or viewing it through time.  This re-viewing of form has opened up abstract channels that are difficult for the photographer to follow.  This position could not have been arrived at by the linear progression of art before Modernism.  It took a leap back to the primitive to move art on.

De Zayas’s view of the painter versus the photographer was a valid one in its day, but is it today?  True, the artist still sees the scene, interprets it and commits that interpretation to the canvas.  Can the photographer only record faithfully the form in front of him?  

The modern photographer has choices.  He can take a straight shot of the scene and produce that image as the final act.  He can, as he takes the shot, change the scene’s colours, add tones and filters, he can distort the image or produce a panorama.  Back at the laptop, with the help of a number of programs, manipulate the image in even more ways.  He can do what the artist could always do; add that missing tree, remove the intrusive person or building, straighten out parallels or add a stormy sky.  A quick look in any fashion magazine will reveal a number of faces and bodies that are impossibly perfect or impossibly grotesque.  Photoshop has given the modern photographer the choices and opportunities for manipulation that were once the preserve of the painter.  

What he cannot do is photograph what is not there; what is only in his head.  The photographer requires an object in front of his lens while the painter requires only the image in his imagination.  

Steichen worked on making the form look perfect within a bland scene while in the work of Stieglitz we see exciting scenes full of imperfect forms.  

Do I like studio work with planned shoots, ideal lighting and lots of post production retouching, or do I like working in the street and shooting from the hip?  

Where’s the door?  I’m going out.

Exercise 1.3: Establishing conventions.

Exercise 1.3: Establishing conventions.

In gathering these twelve examples I tried to be as random as possible.  I have collected pictures from Britain, Europe and the USA.  The styles and times are different and the subjects, within the theme of landscape, vary.

Thomas Roberts. 1748-1778. Born Co. Waterford.

Many private patrons.  

Painted Irish landscapes to order for his rich land owning patrons, often of their own lands.

Irish Landscape.  Year not known. 

The picture has foreground detail in the form of the men and horses at the right lower edge.  One of the men is dressed in red and it is from this man that the eye is led away up, via the winding stream, to the rest of the image.  The stream itself is bound by high ground on both sides.  The strong tree to the left balances the massive rock outcrop to the right.  The distant hills are pale and indistinct, hinting at depth of view.  It has distinct foreground, mid ground and a background.  The clouds form a neat frame to the picture.  

Gaspar van Wittel.  1653-1736.  Born Amersford, Nederland.

No patrons.  Worked mainly in Italy painting veduti ,tourist pictures, to sell to the rich on their tour of Europe. 

View of Tivoli.  1700.  

This is a very contrived view giving a stylised impression of Tivoli, to make what Gerard Hofnung once called, “--jolly memorials for when you pass away.”  

The foreground has two red figures to the right of centre and another further up to the right.  These red highlights reinforce the diagonal line formed by the top of the acropolis, its base, and the rock outcrop on which the two men in the foreground are standing.  This gives a solidity from which the picture grows.  The two main structures forming the mid ground are connected by a stone bridge with the land on either side leading the eye away to the town behind.  The mass of the acropolis is balanced by the mountains to the left that make up the background.  The river and its waterfall lead the eye up to the mid ground where the diminishing line of buildings finish the job to move the viewer’s attention away to the left edge of the painting.  The birds over the acropolis balance the clouds. 

Thomas Gainsborough.  1727-1788.  Born Sudbury Suffolk.

Painted portraits of, and for, rich patrons after his early landscapes failed to sell in sufficient numbers.

Landscape in Suffolk.  1750.

The feature that leads one through this picture is the winding lane.  It starts to the right of centre in the immediate foreground, angles left to the group of trees and then, after turning back to the right in mid ground, disappears behind the trees on the right and on to the background.  There are strong diagonals in the dark cloud, the trees on the right, and the lane leading from low right to higher left with the pond at he lower left anchoring the scene.  The figure in red gives a focus, and starting point, to the viewer.  

Richard Wilson.  1714-1782.  Born Llanferres, Denbighshire.

Snowdon From Llyn Nantlle. 1766.

This picture has strict foreground, mid ground and background, with the two men, the light on the water, the small central peak, and the distant summit leading the eye up through the landscape.  The more usual red highlight is here replaced by a white highlight in the form of the man in the foreground.  The angles of the framing trees and the sunlit edge to the slope on the left form the diagonals that give the necessary solidity.  The top of the tree acts as a frame and turns the eye back into the picture.  The two rock masses in the mid ground balance each other.  Distance is depicted by a lightening of the the distant features.

While I was researching this picture I came across a photograph of the scene published in The Guardian.  I reproduce it to show the licence taken by the artist in painting this scene.

Gaspar David Friedrich.  1774-1840.  Born Griefswald, Pomerania.

Monk by the Sea.  1808-10.

Painted for exhibition and bought by Friedrich Wilhelm III.

The Monk by the Sea is an allegorical painting.  It was described at the time in the following terms. “The broad expanses of sea and sky emphasise the meagre figure of the monk standing before the vastness of nature and the presence of God.”  

This is a scene that Friedrich may or may not have witnessed but is none the less a powerful image.  A nice example of a single figure in a large landscape.  The monk has been placed about one third in from the left, which gives him presence, and is the anchor for the rest of the picture.  The image is heavily banded horizontally with two conflicting visual directions that counter each other very well.  The first is the opening of the dark clouds at the upper and lower edges towards the left and the other is the fainter areas in the middle cloud that are angled to the right.  The two conflicting signals lead the eye around the image.

John Constable.  1776-1837.  Born Hampstead.

Not very successful in England in his lifetime selling only twenty paintings.

The Haywain 1821.  

The perfect landscape?  

The feeling of depth in The Haywain is not achieved by the fading of colour as distance is increased but by near perfect perspective.  The flat land appears to disappear over a far off horizon.  The picture is anchored by the river edge to the left as it leads up the cottage.  There are three strong diagonals.  The first is the nearside river band, the second is the far side bank, the third is line made by the top of the trees, which is brought to a stop by the lone tree on the river bank.  The red on the horses is a strong focal point in the picture with the meandering stream leading the eye up through the aforementioned diagonals.  The foreground is formed by everything up to the far bank with the haywain the main feature.  The mid ground is formed by the land beyond, and the background is the sky.  The mass of cottage and trees to the left is balanced by the emptiness of the sky to the right.  

Albert Bienstadt.  1830-1902.  Born Solingen, Prussia.

Produced some 500 pictures with the aim of selling them.  Renowned for his rather theatrical paintings of the American west.

Yosemite Valley.  Yellowstone Park. 1868.

The use of light paint and soft focus is used to illustrate distance.  The foreground is sharp and darkened by being in the shadow.  The mid ground is lit  by, what appears to be, a setting sun, while the background is in full sunlight and almost lost in its glare.  The small group of trees in the centre foreground act as the starting point from where one is led up and right by the river.  The main  diagonal is provided by the tops of the trees to the left and the scree of the rock that matches it.  That diagonal is matched by a weaker diagonal formed by the top of the trees in the centre front foreground.  The long mass to the left is balanced by the taller, starker mass to the right.

Camille Pissarro.  1830-1903.  Born St. Thomas.  Danish West Indies.

Impressionist and Post Impressionist.  Painted for exhibition and sale.  

Lordship Lane Station. 1890.

In this picture the lead feature is the railway line, which almost cuts the scene almost in half. It starts from foreground and leads to the centre of the canvas.  Its slight curve softens what could have been a harsh effect.  There is little in the way of foreground detail but the slope of the ground on either side of the line draws ones attention down to the track which leads one up and through the landscape.  There are two diagonals running from top right down to the left.  One is the top of the far hill while the other is a dark wall or fence.  The bulk of the hill to the right is balanced by the single tree to the left.  To the right of this tree, and in the distance, is a road that turns the eye back into the picture.  The feeling of depth is achieved by both a lightening of tone as the picture recedes and by nice use of perspective in both the line and the buildings.  The mid ground is defined by the dark wall/fence and the building line while the background is really only present to the left side by the aforementioned road and the hint of far away hills.  The smoke from the engine forms a pleasing shape with the lone tree.

George Inniss. 1925-1894.  Born Newburgh, New York.

In his early career his carried commission work the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railway Co.  He returned to his first love of recording rural scenes later.

Lackawanna Valley.  1855. 

This is one of his commission works for DL&WRC and features an engine turntable.  The landscape has clear foreground, mid ground and background.  The foreground includes the man in red and tree stumps.  The mid ground starts at the fence bounding the track, road and copse.  It ends at he point where detail fades and scene fades into misty hills.  The train is clearly the star driving into the centre of the scene with its billowing white smoke.  The turntable is part of a burgeoning industrial landscape with smoking chimneys and trackside buildings.  The various triangular shapes in the lower part of the scene give the solid foundation through which the train and its track lead us.  The line formed by the man and the tree form the base from the view starts.  The lone tall tree acts as a solid frame to the left side and forces ones attention into the landscape rather that out.  

Niagara.  1889.

How different from the work above.  Here Inniss is clearly painting for himself.  It is free flowing and Turner like in its style.  The picture has three distinct zones.  The foreground is represented by the promontory with its onlookers who are highlighted by their white and orange dress.  The falls themselves dominate the mid ground.  The height of the falls is demonstrated at by the presence of the people on the promontory.  The background is filled with what look like factory building, one of which is discharging filthy brown smoke.  Is this an early criticism of man despoiling his environment?  The smoke drifting to the left leads one in that direction only to be returned by the rightwards slope of the promontory.

Two very different landscapes by the same artist.

Anonymous.

English Landscape.  18th C.

Obeying all the rules but failing to engage.  The foreground is clear and brightly painted with the ubiquitous man in red, plus others, and what may be an alfresco meal.  The tree to the right acts as a framing device and turns the viewers eye back into the picture.  The scale of objects in the mid ground fail to match their surroundings or each other.  The back ground is a mish-mash of unconnected features.  The presence of the water feature should lead the eye through the scene but singularly fails to do so with the red man cutting it off where it turns. The excess action to the left side of the picture also prevents ones attention from moving on.

Alfred Sisley.  1839-1899.  Born paris but retained British citizenship.

Had private income and painted for pleasure.

The Loing Canal at Morat.  1892.  Impressionist.

The perspective and depth of this painting is left to the accurate recording of the scene.  It is almost photographic in its pursuit of the truth.  The diagonals starting in the lower left corner lead the eye easily up and into the meat of the picture.  The trees frame the bridge and balance each other very well.  

The conventions.

The landscapes featured above cover two centuries and a number of styles.  There are however conventions that early photographers must have been seen and used and others that, although aware of, were not available to them.  

The most obvious technique not available was the use of colour.  This meant no red highlights to draw in the eye.  Even the use of a tonal hi or lo light must have been difficult to the early photographer.

The photographer, unlike the painter, was unable to rearrange the scene to suit himself; a tree missing from a scene stayed missing, an unbalanced scene could be rectified only by moving to a position where it was balanced.  

The use of powerful diagonals to anchor a picture were available to them, as was the conventions of using people in a picture to act as a size reference or to act as a focal point.  

The use of perspective in its various forms:

Linear.               Things getting small as they recede into the distance.

Atmospheric.     Objects becoming blurry and misty as they recede.

Colour or tone.  Colour was not available but tonal changes were.

Planar.              Single or multiple use of vanishing points. 

The balancing of bodies of mass within the landscape:

Large against large.

Low against tall.

Mass against nothing.

High against high. 

The use of a small person within a landscape.

The use of foreground, mid ground, and background.

The use of a feature such as water, a road, or a track to lead the viewer either into or through the landscape.

The use of the golden thirds to bring strength and an asymmetric balance to the picture.

The concept of there being an argument, a feature, as the centre of attention in the landscape.  

The idea of the frame or parergon was also there for them to see and use.

Landscape photographs from any era.

In my selection I have chosen landscapes from the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries and from both America and Britain.

They each follow one or more of the conventions listed above.

Carleton Watkins.

Vernal Falls, Yosemite Park.  1868.  A survey Photograph.

Contains well defined fore, mid and back grounds with the perception of depth given by tone and linear effects.  The river takes one from the foreground up to the falls where ones eye is led on to the large rock which forms the background.  There is a strong diagonal line from the rock on the right through the river bank and leading to the bottom left corner.  The waterfall splits the picture in half with the two halves nicely balanced by the mass of the two rock formations.

Unknown.  

Queensboro Bridge looking to Manhattan.  Early 20th C.  Bridge finished 1909.

This is a powerful picture of the near complete bridge.  The taking of the image from just off centre has added a strong diagonal to the image.  Starting at the lower left corner one is led in to the centre of the scene and the towers that form the bridge proper.  Although these towers appear small in the scene their height is clearly seen when compared to their surroundings.  The small group of buildings in the lower right are balanced by the knot of buildings about halfway up on the left.  The use of single point planar, linear and atmospheric perception effects give the image an immense depth. 

  

David Keocherian.  

Infra red Landscape.  Daily Mail 2013.

The use of infra red film for this image has led to a very frosty feel as the greens have all been changed to an icy white.  The water surface is so smooth and turgid it could almost be ice.  The composition follows the conventions of the earlier painters closely.  The angled body of water leading through the image from the lower left to the centre.   Two nice diagonals in the trees and bushes to the left reinforce the lead given by the river.   There is a neat return made by the houses on the right.  Although the two canoeists are paddling out of the image the ripples they leave behind them lead back into it.  The use of reflections in the water has allowed for a mid height horizon line.  The large light area on the left bank is countered by the brooding dark of the houses on the right.

Could easily have been a 19th C painting.

Timothy O’Sullivan.

Brown Park, Colorado.  1872.  Taken as a record.

This is such a large vista O’Sullivan has put in a lone figure to give some impression of the immense scale and size if it.  There are distinct zones with the foreground consisting of the aforementioned man and his rock.  The mid ground extends to, and includes, everything except the far hazy hills.  The river leads us through these various parts and gives us a good idea how this valley was formed.  Linear and atmospheric perspective. 

Ansel Adams.

Church, Taos Pueblo National Historic Landmark, New Mexico.  1941.

A much more complicated image than the others, partly because of the tight cropping of the image.  The feature that takes one into the picture is the open gate which in turn takes one past the church on to the land behind.  The wall and main building have been treated as one would two hills and used them to balance one another.  There are strong anchoring angles formed by the sloping roofs that give a feeling of solidity.  Despite its shallow depth it still manages to have a foreground, a mid ground and a background.

Serigrapher.  Flickr name.

View from Shining Tor.  2012.

A very pleasing landscape that has a clear anchoring foreground that leads out into the image.  The meandering road is the device that takes one through the mid ground and on to the background.   There are subtle diagonal in the shape of field edges that lead one around the rest of the image.  There is a valley that lead off towards the top right that gives another lead.  The argument in this landscape is the Tor on the vertical midline and bisecting the horizon.  

David Byrne.  Landscape Artist of the Year. 2012.  Later disqualified for over manipulation of this image.

Boats at Lindisfarne. 

  

This is not the scene as seen by David when he captured it but is still a  stunning print.  The use of the island to make the third argument in the image is well made, as is the use of the diagonal shadows to give depth and strength to the foreground.  The lowering clouds add the loneliness felt in the image.  The series of triangles leading up the left edge give support to the island.  

Conclussions.

Not only were early photographers well aware of the artistic conventions of their day but they employed them widely and adapted them for their medium.  The use of a particular form of perspective is rather forced on the photographer by what is in front of him but by slightly changing with viewing angle to one side or the other he can reinforce or negate the effect of it.  By raising of lowering his view point he can enhance or flatten the feeling of depth.  When viewing modern paintings it is easy to see that not only did past painters affected photographers but that today’s painters and photographers feed off each other.  While scouring the web for these images I sometimes had to blow up a thumbnail to full size to see whether it was a painting or a photograph.

Exercise 1.2: Photography in the museum or the gallery?

Exercise 1.2: Photography in the museum or the gallery.

Is photography an art form or is it merely a way of recording an image?

The first two examples of photographic image are the 1868 and 1875 pictures of Tufa Domes, Pyramid Lake (Nevada).

The first is dreamy representation with no distinct horizon and with what we would now call soft focus.  This is accepted as art as it is showing only an interpretation of the scene and not its full detail.  It is artistic.

The second is displaying  as much detail as was then technically possible for publication in a text book.  Out went the soft focus and dreamy feel and in came a hard horizon and a distant land shore.  The is not attempt at artful interpretation.

Note. 

With the aid of today’s technology O’Sullivan may have taken a very different picture and presented us with images far removed from what we see here.

Nineteenth century art was exhibited increasingly in exhibition spaces.  Spaces given over entirely for the purpose of viewing and criticism. The confines of private walls and the space allowed by the museum wall allowed the paintings themselves to grow into their new space and represent that space.  This allowed new styles of landscape painting where novel ways of representing perspective flourished.

Note.

Up to this time art had been the preserve of the private salon and was seen by only the privileged few.  The opening of public galleries and museums brought in the concept of public art.

Anything displayed in this way was there because it was art.  

Note.

Where does this leave the two O’Sullivan images?  Regardless of the two versions of the scene did O’Sullivan, at the time of taking, intend the produce a technical image or a work of art?  

As a broader question, can an image taken for a mundane or record keeper purpose be later regarded as art?  

Once to photographic image has displayed as art it must be accepted as art in the same way as ceramics, sculpture or paint.

Note.

The Farm Security Association was responsible for having thousands of images taken of the American Depression and its effect on the rural poor.  These were never intended to be art but the sheer power and majesty of pictures, like Migrant Mother by Dorothea Lange, had them take there place in galleries and museums and so they became art.

Is photography merely a child of technical rather than aesthetic traditions?

Galassi had a view that the perspective traditions that had been attributed to photography was accepted and widely used by painters long before invention of the camera.  Photography, therefor, was following practices that were already in use.

Note.

Painters are in a position to demonstrate true perspective by the use of grids and strict perspective lines, to ignore conventional perspective or use no perspective at all.  These choices were not available to early photographers, although the change to digital manipulation has brought many new tools to the his aid.

Stereography, the viewing of to similar pictures to make one image, gives a feeling of depth that can never be experienced by viewing a print. The effect is of course illusory even though the viewer believes he is having to refocus as his eye wanders around the image.  To increase the feeling of depth a piece of artifice was often employed, the placing of a vertical feature at the front and centre of the image, thus fooling the eye that there is a depth of field that in fact is not there. The fact that all outside visual stimuli are excluded adds to the illusion and forces the viewer’s attention in to the image.  Watching a film in a darkened cinema has a similar affect.  The stereoscope brought with it the need for a storage and retrieval system, a cabinet in which to keep the images.  This was far removed from the open wall upon which pictures had hitherto been exhibited.

Note.

Slide film and negatives were stored in a similar way and were retrieved when required.  Digital images are kept only as digital files to be viewed only when required.  Do these images become art only when displayed?

Modern scholars seem to have made the jump to have nineteenth century landscape photography categorized as art; to place it on an equal footing with other visual arts.  Views are now landscapes, photographers have careers and are capable of producing oeuvres.  If they are artists then where is their equivalent to the painters apprenticeship and the learning of their craft.  Many early practitioners had short careers but were still regarded as masters of their art.  Can one build an oeuvre in such a short time without time for consistency or coherence?  Can a collection of very different images covering a wide range of subjects also be an oeuvre?

Note

Later photographers tended to make their names in narrower fields even if they took a wide range of pictures.  

Eugene Atget worked from 1895 to 1927 producing some 10,000 listed images.  A selective viewing and collating of these images was started in 1925 and a number of his pictures were exhibited.  His work became art and the need to when, where, and why pictures were taken became necessary. This task was made difficult by the varying numbering systems applied to the images in Atgets collection which followed the numbering systems applied by the buyers of his work.  The discovery of his own card system simplified the task. 

That Atget’s work was not of a consistently good quality was, according to John Szarkowski, due to two possible reasons; the first that he got better as he got older and gained experience; the second that the work he did for himself was better that his commission work.  It is also possible that he was willing to accept an inferior photograph because the subject was more important.  What is clear is that Atget often revisited the previous site to reinterpret the scene, to take it from a new angle or under different light conditions.  It was thought necessary to order his work to determine whether the work was bigger than the man, the oeuvre was greater that its creator.  

Note.

Modern work flow practice would now have one making a first selection, work on those and discard the rest as a waste of storage space.  Thank heaven early photographers seem to have kept the bulk of their work.

The nineteenth century photographic archive is being reassessed and re grouped to suit modern into categories previously reserved for art.

Note.

Is photography art?  It became art when it was first mounted on a gallery wall, viewed as, and critcised as art.  Treat anything as and it becomes art, R MUTT being as good an example as any.  It’s art because I say it’s art.