#lecture write-up

History & Theory of Photography - Post War Photography

Muteness, freeze-frames can be considered as still photography, but they are only effective as part of a movie. Instantaneous photography was not available at the beginning of photography. William Henry Fox Talbot does not write of stillness in ‘The Pencil of Nature’ as the still quality of photography was only recognised with the introduction of the moving image and cinematography.

People and Water. Daguerre’s ‘Boulevard du Temple’ 1838 shows buildings which cannot move, people which can, but also people that have moved and so can no longer be seen and so we cannot be sure when looking at a photograph, whether we are looking at the subject or the way the camera has rendered the subject as both come hand in hand. Photography can be used to capture things which painting cannot, the camera can represent a splash, whereas painting can actually be a splash. Although this seems only relevant to photographing water, photography is a medium which without water, wouldn’t exist, even without wet photography and dark rooms, dry photography still needs a certain amount of water to function.

The institutions of the mass media have great cultural and political power. They are able to shape opinion and form social norms, they dominate media ideology. 

Mass media magazines are historically one of the primary contexts for photography. Much of the most significant photographic work made for magazines and newspapers was and is destined to be thrown away, but these images can also be recycled and re-shown in books, exhibitions and websites - it just means that they are not longer original and this is especially true of documentary photography, photojournalism and fashion photography.

Histories of photography often focus on photographers with artistic ambitions and not those who work solely for the printed page. These almost abandoned images can be seen accompanying writing, but the design, sequencing and layout are what shape the reading of the photograph.

For our images and text assignment we will be selecting one of each and writing of the relationship between the two. The text we use should be of academic writing and be relevant to our image, however we should use more texts to further inform our writing.

Eventually everything will reach it’s best. Artists will technically know everything that they need to know, so they will need to find a reason to carry on painting, to render each others art ‘pure’ - and this to discover its standards of quality to prove that the kind of experience they provide is valuable on it’s own right, and not to be obtained from any other activity.

Kitsch is ‘ersatz culture - destined for those who insensible to the values of genuine culture, are hungry nevertheless for the division that only culture of some sort can provide.’ Kitsch is for the people that don’t appreciate the aspects of art.

Qualities unique to painting: - Flatness of the canvas - The shape of the support, frame - The properties of the pigment.

A lot of genres of photography are borrowed from other arts and mediums, we were focussing on how photography has been influenced by fine art paintings. We also discussed how this photography can then be used with fashion and documentary, all deriving from fine art. Still life photography is often seen as a lower genre, used for technique. Portraiture, landscape and interior photography were seen as much more advanced ways of using the camera, however, over time, still life photography has been granted recognition and it is now seen as the basis upon the photographic society in which we live.