Surrealism - Man Ray - Le Violon d’Ingres 1924

Man Ray - Le Violon d’Ingres 1924

With strange juxtapositions and its softness this image by Man Ray is typically surrealist. The use of the female nude is also often strongly associated with surrealism. This is a technically great photo with a lot of thought put into composition and lighting.

This image has very curved lines that flow through the image. As Mary Warner Marien says, ‘photography could be the visual equivalent of free association’. Basically meaning that surrealists such as Man Ray use photography to show an unconscious flow of ideas (Marien, 2010, 253). This image side steps the normal perception of reality and favours a reality that is of the unconscious, thus ultimately showing the desires Man Ray has of the female form. For surrealists photography and the use of the camera could help this side stepping process because there was always an element of chance to what they did and they felt they could capture the chaos around them. The deliberate flowing nature of the images lines strongly put these ideas forward. Ideas generally flow, wave like, and this image visualises this thought process. The lighting also connotes these ideas through the lighting, there is a definite deliberate light and dark side on the background. This shows people all have contrasting thoughts, sometimes very dark sometimes light. On one level you can take this image as a funny image comparing the female form to a violin. Whereas on a darker level it shows the photographers deep sexual desires, putting forward the idea the female is an object to be used just like an instrument.

This is indeed a thought provoking image, a strong provoking image at that.

Steerage

Alfred Stieglitz - The Steerage

This image by Alfred Stieglitz is a straight photo, showing Stieglitz’s ideas of what photography should be. Clearly a photography, rather than the pictorial like images of prior, Stieglitz has created an image that is more about the formal elements. He is trying to move away from pictorialism because pictorialism is trying to be stylistic, he wants his photography to be its own entity and have its own style. This break from pictorialism at the time would have been a breath of fresh air and also a big leap forward in ideas of what a photograph should be and this adds a real exciting element to this image.

Stieglitz is a formalist so he often uses shapes in his images.  Graham Clarke, in his book The Photograph, has wrote about how much of a contrast Stieglitz is from photographer Lewis Hine. Hine’s images are often comments on society and his imagery often has underlying points within it. In stark contrast Stieglitz cared more about form than that of the social aspects in his imagery (Clarke, 1997, 169).

Although not meant to be, this image really does show an insight to the culture at the time. You can tell by the clothes people are wearing in the image, hats on the top deck and shawls on the bottom, that there is an obvious divide between the two classes in this image.  The way Stieglitz has managed to capture this image while only thinking of form is very intriguing to say it shows such diversity. A great image indeed.

Image Makers Image Takers

Image Makers Image Takers is a fantastic book for any budding photographer, systematically looking at what moves and motivates photographers, the book gives personal accounts from many photographers. The broad range of photographers featured in the book helps give me the reader an insight into all types of photography. This broad range has really given me a good look into all forms of photography and shown me a few good ideas along the way. The latter part of the book gives interviews with people in jobs that surround photography such as editors, curators and publishers. This section helps to show other jobs in photography and it, for me, is really interesting to get these points of view.

I really love the introduction of the book, it starts off with a quote from Ansel Adams, “You don’t take a photograph, you make it”. This quote really sums up the book and photography for me, photography is an art and involves a really creative mind. Behind every great photo is a great story and you often have to create this story. This is one of the main themes of the book, the thoughts behind the images. Through reading this book I have learned the importance of thinking my images through before taking them. This can be planning a photo shoot or just lining up the picture correctly using the formal elements. In the end this can be the difference between a good and a great image.

One of my favourite interviews is with Jehad Nga a photojournalist who has travelled to many conflicted countries. I really love some of his work, and how it really captures the essence of the people in it. There is a controlled element of danger in his work, he goes to great lengths to capture his images and the dangers he faces while doing so are quite apparent. For me this is quite an inspirational thing to do as he risks his life for his photography. At one point in the interview after being asked if a photographic schooling is important he says, “The most important thing to develop is the relationship between you and your eye”. By ‘the relationship between you and your eye’ he means that you need to be able to visualize a good shot rather than just point and click, it takes more than just camera skills to take great photos.

This book has inspired more than taught me technically. I have found it really interesting and I feel that my knowledge of what it takes to become a photographer has improved. It’s fantastic to read personal interviews with some of my favourite photographers and this has left me with the desire to get out there and take some great images. Photography is more than just pressing a button; it’s about bringing together formal elements and storytelling using the expression of art and design. Having a good eye can help too. This book really has motivated me to get out there and take some photos.

Pictorialism

Maternal Love by Clarence White 1905

This is an image by Clarence White a founding member of the Photo-Secession movement.  This pictorial image, as the title suggests, the ‘love’ or relationship between a mother and a daughter. A look of remorse strewn across her face, the girl is shown glancing away from a ghostly figure of her ‘mother’.  Being softly focused, grainy in appearance with a slight hue this image is very typical of the pictorialism. A double negative has been used to create the ghostly figure of the mother, this connotes that the mother could have passed away or not in her life any more. The way the mother is looking at the daughter however appears to be a look of love as if to say the mother is still watching over the daughter. On many levels this is an already dark image with its dark shades and being mostly black, but the ghostly mother figure just adds to the ambiance. The Victorians were so melancholy and macabre, this image demonstrates that with the ghostly figure, this also seems to reflect upon the spirit photography going on at the time.