Exploring Photography: From Camera Obscura to Modern Art

Hello everybody welcome back to art appreciation this is module 5 um there's going to be two parts for this one so um

this is part one which is going to be about photography and then part two is going

to get us kind of going into 19th century art so photography literally means light

writing um although as your textbook points out light drawing may be a more accurate

term like drawing um photography can either be a practical tool or an art form this work of art here is Alma lon's

clouds was painted around 1940 um skilled photographers not only have to select a camera lens a camera

lens and film but also have to make choices about composition angle Focus distance light and depth of

field in this work of art um we can see such decisions so the angle is very low to the ground looking up the

photographer chose to not let us see um as much sorry the photographer chose not to let as much light into the camera so

we see more sky it's not all washed out um we see a deep depth of field which means um that things further away

from the camera are in focus and we see a very balanced composition

so the first sort of pre photography thing we had was the camera obscura so for the camera obscura the

images came through a hole and were mirrored on the opposite side and they so they were able to be traced so this

was usually used as a tracing tool um it was really more of a drawing technique

so we had the image perfectly flipped um reflected usually in a in a room um but there are cam camera obscura

boxes you can actually make your very own camera obscura if you want to can do it with a shoe box

um and so here we see the example there's the tower outside there's a little pole in a dark room and it comes

in and it's flipped [Music] so we had the image but we didn't really

have a way to fix the image onto a substrate so we've talked about what fix means before so fix means to make the

image permanent um so when we say to fix the image it means it's going to go away it's not going to stay on whatever it's

shown onto so it's not going to stay on the paper it's not going to stay on the wall it's not going to stay on a piece

of metal um it just goes away so here is another example of a camera

obscura you can see the box so the mirror would be used it would have the reflected image um and it would be used

so that you could trace it so again we have hole this one actually has a lens instead of just a

normal hole it shines onto the mirror the mirror shines it up on to the back of the paper where it can be

traced so here's sort of a timeline on photography photography is fairly new in terms of the history of the

world um so we have the first photographic process um around 1824 so really 200

years ago which is very short period of time in the grand scheme of things we're 2,000 years from the date

Zero to give you perspective so just a very small percent of that about 10% of

that um we've had photography so um the problem with uh nps's process is

that the images didn't stay um they would fix for a short period of time but then they would go away again um usually

within a few weeks or a month or so then 1834 William Henry Fox tabbit began his

research um 1838 Luis JZ M de invented the deera type um he worked directly with

neeps um so they worked closely together and then 18 41 William Henry Fox Tabit presented his cotype process so people

were sort of working along the same um lines at the same time um and then in 1888 we have the

eastn Kodak company which really made photography available for the masses so here is um an example of one

of ne's parints it's very grainy um it's very hazy you can tell its

buildings um but it's just not well done it's not very sharp so this is while he was working on

his process in 1826 next we have um an example of a degara

type um so dear is generally considered the um inventor of Photography really he

just is the first to have a fixed image and publish his findings um William Henry Fox

tabbit just like maybe a year before actually um perfected his cype process but he didn't publish his

findings and so therefore dear is credited with it because he shared it with the masses

first and we'll talk more about all these different types in just a moment here's another example of

dear's dear type so the deer types were printed on metal um and then the calotypes were

printed on paper so this is one of tabit's um calotypes so the first image would be a

negative similar to how we would have in a film camera today and then the printed image would be um you would have to

print from your negative to get a positive um The Good the benefit of the C type is that you can make

copies whereas with the degar type you could not you were one image through the camera at a time because it was printed

on metal you couldn't make a copy of that so I know with the dear type it looks white that's actually the silver

of the metal shining through so again the main differences between the two types um is the the substrates

that they're on so this one's on metal this is on paper you also can get kind of a warmer image with the

calotypes so some of the calotypes actually appear to be brown instead of black part of that is to do with the

paper um some of that is to with the actual chemicals in printing and again the dear type is a

positive print the calotype starts as a negative print and then you make a positive from your

negative so dear types had sharper images they were clearer um but cypes

again could be easily copied so they both had um really long exposure times which is part of the reason people

didn't smile in early photographs um you know there's a lot of well you may not know but there there's a lot of

Mythology about why people didn't smile in early photographs and there's things about it stealing your soul and all of

that but really if you have to sit still um for a minute and a half to have your photo taken or five minutes are you

going to want to smile that whole time and is your face going to let you smile that whole time well probably

not so um usually people did not smile because they had to sit for so long um they actually had like these framework

structures that they would use to hold people still they would be behind the person so you couldn't see in the

photograph but it would hold their head still hold their neck still hold their back

still that's also why people were usually seated um because it would be a while

you had to sit there a while so they both had really long exposure times originally photographs were sort

of novelty items um and even Tabet pushed for them to be used for documentation or for scientific

purposes so the first uses were not for art they were for um scientific uses they were for documentation

um or for novelty go get your portrait taken over time with experimentation and um

adaptations um exposure times quickened so we didn't have to sit as long for a photo we could do photos in today we can

do fractions of seconds to take a photo so that allowed the quicker exposure times allowed it to be more

widely used and that's where Kodak comes in so in 1888 the Eastman Kodak company was

founded by George Eastman in Rochester New York the name Kodak actually comes from the sound the camera mate um so

George Eastman thought that that click sound sounded like Kodak Eastman's goal was to make

photography more accessible to the masses and he really succeeded in that um the famous slogan you press the

button we do the rest is still known today the name Kodak again comes from the sound of the camera um the Kodak

company created more sensitive materials that allowed for faster shutter speeds these faster cameras allowed amateur

users to easily take photographs the Every Man's photography was still about documentation or novelty

not really about art so you were not going to use your codak camera to take artistic

photographs so let's move on to some techniques so first we're going to start with a diagram of a

camera so again the camera looks similar to the camera obscura our modern day camera so for this example we are using

film instead of digital but they're almost the same so you're going to have your lens

your lens is going to either magnify or um not the outside world into the camera it sort of focuses the image you're

going to have a shutter your shutter is what allows the light to enter or um not to enter the

camera your shutter speed is what dictates time so if you have a 1 1,000th of a second shutter

speed that means that your shutter is going to open and close very quickly to let light in the

camera and then we also have um we have the film back here if it's a film camera if it's a digital camera it's going to

have a sensor usually the sensor sits right behind the shutter and your sensor is

what depicts the image pixelates it makes it that digital form um we also have aperture here

aperture is going to be the opening so aperture and shutter speed um mostly aperture really dictate

things like depth of field which we briefly have mentioned we're going to go into more in depth here in a little

bit aperture is also called f stop so if you hear f- stop at any point um I know when I took photo classes at JSU if you

ever take photo classes at JSU um we had to memorize f- stops and shutter speeds um but the f-stop is just the aperture

on your camera if you have um a really nice uh DSLR camera it's usually going to have f-stop and it's not going to say

aperture it's going to say f- stop they're the same thing so here we're going to talk about depth

of field so this is a shallow depth of field on your left a deep depth of field on your right so shallow depth of field

means or basically depth of field means how much is in Focus so a shallow depth of field things close to the camera are

going to be in Focus things far away are not deep depth of field you're going to be able to have a lot of stuff in focus

so um a shallow depth of field comes from a smaller opening of the aperture a deep depth the field comes

from a larger opening of the aperture I said that backwards I'm so sorry the bigger the opening the

shallower the depth of field the smaller the opening the deeper depth the field which that also means the bigger the

number the deeper the depth of field it depth of field gets really complicated but yes the bigger the

opening the shallower the depth of field so this aperture is probably opened up about this much inside the

camera whereas the aperture for this one is probably very very small like tip of your pencil small

so let's move into a little bit of um a little bit of history as we go through some of these techniques so this

is an image by Alfred stet this is the steerage um it was taken in 1907 but it wasn't actually printed until about

1913 it's also one of the good things about photography is um you can take the picture and you

don't actually have to do anything with it for a while film lasts for a good bit before you actually have to um develop

or print it so Alfred stiglet was an early Crusader for photography as an artistic

medium he opened a photography Gallery in New York City in 1905 where he displayed his own photographs as well as

others working in photography as an artistic medium so he's one of the first to really promote photography's

potential as an art form instead of just for documentation or know novelty many credit the rise of

Photography as an artistic medium to Man Ray I know he sounds like a SpongeBob villain um but that is actually his

name um but man ray did a lot of experimentations with photography um and he actually invented

What's called the rayograph um today we call it a photogram um but he is credited as

creating rayographs um but he did use them for art they kind of sort of existed prior

to him but people didn't do them for art they just kind of did them usually as a test of your paper or of your

chemicals but basically a rayograph is you take a piece of photos sensitive paper um you lay things on top of it

smush them down with a piece of glass expose it to light and then you develop it so um if you have things sitting

still for longer they're going to be more white if you have things sitting and then you pull them off before the

exposure time's all the way finished you're going to have gray areas if you have transparent items they're going to

make different sort of shapes so they can be a lot of fun to play

with so he experimented with a lot of light and Shadow techniques um and along with Picasso worked sort of with light

painting which is where they um we have like light painting is still practiced today um but they sort of did it in a

way where they would lay light over subjects instead of shining the light into the camera they they did that too

but just they did they experimented there was a lot of experimentation going on

Man Ray worked from the early 1900s until his death in 1976 he primarily worked in the dada and

surrealist Styles and he always considered himself a painter not a photographer his photo experimentation

and manipulation influenced other artists and photographers giving rise to photography as an artistic

medium so here we see the this is another um experimentation process this is called

solarization um so basically you sorry my cat just fell out of the window um so basically you take an image

you print it on the paper which you expose it to light there's three processes when you are developing film

or um when you're making a print using film so you there's three different chemicals

sorry you expose the the paper to the image um usually by putting in it in enlarger then you put it in the

developer then you put it in the stop and then you put it in the fix and the fix is what makes the image stay well if

you put it in the developer then you put it in the stop and then you expose it to light

again then you develop and stop and fix it again you sort of get these dark outlines and so that's called

solarization so you get these weird little outlines around things photographs as art were meant to

evoke a viewer response so again that's sort of one of our purposes of art is V evok viewer

response the creation of art photographs by Man Ray very much related to the art of the time um the do and surrealist

movements were all about viewer response and evoking a response using abstract expressions and

forms so this time in art allowed photography to exist in an art form so with the inventions and

experimentations of Man Ray the dividing line was being established between photography as art and photography's

documentation again the main two the main purpose between the two to was purpose so were you taking a photo to

document this event this thing that was happening um or were you taking it with Artful purpose in

mind so there is a debate about what's low ART versus high art um when we talked about Renaissance art we talked

about how um the differences in the North and South so southern Europe had a lot of paintings they valued paintings

then in northern Europe paintings weren't as much they weren't worth as much um tapestries were worth more and

gilded Works were worth more and so we still sort of have that distinction today what's what is low ART

versus what is high art what is worth more um usually things like folk art are considered low art they're not worth as

much things like paintings are considered high art sculpture is high art

art um and so photography kind of has gone back and forth it's sort of a debate is photography a high art or is

it a low art is it worth as much as a painting um and even some still argue photography should not be considered art

at all if you go to the library and you try to find information about photography in the art section you're

not really going to find anything you have to go to technology um and and that's usually

where photography lives in the Dewey Decimal System photography lives in the um technology area not in the art

area so this debate is still happening today I like to break down photography into three different categories these

are not official categories this just helps me to distinguish between the different types especially

for the purposes of teaching this class so not all photographs fit into these three categories um but it is a

good starting point and a lot of photographs are going to fit into multiple

categories um but my three are fine art photography documentary photography and social

photography so fine art photography would be art that or photography that's made with a purpose to evoke viewer

response um or relate an idea to the audience so text is not always needed to understand a fine art photograph they're

usually planned and designed just like any other work of art so this example is Edward

Steen so he used light effects to create mood in photo photography so this one actually dates from 1904 um it's a

platinum print so metal is what makes the dark areas in a photo photograph um usually it's silver but a

platinum print is going to have a little bit of a different color tone to it so that's why we have to distinguish that

it's Platinum um he like man ray experimented with light and exposure to create images

that evoked of your response so this one was supposed to be um so it's moonrise so it's sort of like the time of between

night and day so the sun's gone down the moon's coming up so it has sort of this Moody effect um

it's very dark very mysterious almost a little creepy but also still a little

calming so he did this before Man Ray if you look at the date 1904 um but because of the art styles

that were in place at the time it was not really appreciated as an art form until later

here's another example of his experimentation so he uses light and Shadow here so we have people standing

we have this huge head of George Washington um sort of being projected with shadows coming from the

people all of this is experimentation with the light and capturing it with photography and then we have well this

is sorry this is still fin art photography this is just a more modern example so we have uh David L Chappelle

this is his behold it was created in 2017 um he uses photo manipulation to create surrealist works of art so his

photographs are often compositions of different photographs put together to create one

image he uses computer software to create his effects um he's also able to do that because of modern digital

photography so these are not captured on film they're captured with a digital camera edited in software like photoshop

on a computer a lot of them are not printed they exist in the digital realm and so

we're meant to view them on a screen so they're meant to have that glow if you printed this image it's not

going to look the same it's going to be sort of too much it's going to be washed out

almost because there's so much color it's not going to print the way it views on a

screen um here's some more of his examples sometimes he also uses models um like so small models and then takes a

picture and then makes them look big in relation to other things um if you are interested in

seeing more from him um there is a video for him for in under additional resources next we have Jerry ulman he's

another example of uh fine art photography Jerry ulman um works with film not with

digital so this is his Untitled made about 1999 to to 2004 so like David L Chappelle Jerry Olman

uses photo manipulation so he creates surrealist works of art the difference again is

that he uses film he is working in a dark room using light um and enlargers instead of on a

computer which is actually a much more difficult process I include a video also of his process in um the additional

resources folder if you're interested in that but um how ulman's process works is he

exposes different pieces of images from film onto a piece of photosensitive paper he uses techniques of burning and

dodging oh I've got a pop up coming up um Hees techniques of burning and dodging so burning is when you um allow

more light to hit the paper dodging is when you allow less light to hit certain parts of the paper

so burning and dodging are commonly used in photography but they're usually used for things like exposure um not

necessarily for photo manipulation so usually if you want your Sky to be darker you're going to do burning there

you're going to allow more light to hit the sky um when you're exposing your

paper um or vice versa if you want your land escape to be lighter you're going to do

dodging to not let as much light hit there but again all of these are different photos that are all being

exposed onto one piece of photo paper to create something new here's some more examples of Jerry

yulman so here we can see an example of that burning and dodging so he dodged to make this sort of person shape in the

water so he kept the where the places where more light hits are is going to be darker when you're exposing the

paper where light hits is going to be black so moving on to documentary photography

Ry so documentary photography is created with the intention of capturing a moment in time or An Occurrence Um this can be

documenting for Science History or to spread information to the public it's usually accompanied with text as sort of

an explanation of what the viewer is seeing so you're usually going to be able to read exactly what you're looking

at so we're going to look at two different examples this we're going to look at doroth l first then we're going

to look at anel Adams but they're both documentary photographers um and their photography sometimes is also considered

high art because it they do take things like um composition into account um and they do they are meant to evoke a viewer

response but their main purpose was documentation so doroth Lang created documentary photographs of the Dust Bowl

in the depression workers her work was funded by the New Deal Farm Security Administration as a

way to introduce America to Americans so this was around the Great Depression her portraiture focused on

the emotions of the people in distress to evoke a sense of sympathy from the viewer it's meant to sort of spread

awareness of what was happening but also do document for government records there are still records of her photographs in

archives in Washington DC I think there may also be some film that never was printed of

hers so usually she would be out in the field she would take photos on film she would mail them back to Washington or

send them back with a Messer um and then they would keep the film in prints she didn't always print

her own images so this one is um more commonly known as migrant mother

but basically it's the um it's an example of this family is starved they're poor they don't have a lot um

and sort of that that Agony of that like she has small children which at this time would have implied that she should

be young yet she has these hard lines on her face these worry lines on her face um that make her look older than

she actually is her children are sort of clinging to her she's got holding an infant in her arms so it makes you feel

the viewer response is sympathy so here are a few more again we have some poor people with

their children we have um immigrant images here

again they're meant to sort of evoke sympathy now we'll look at anel Adams so he documented images of yusim Valley and

Sierra Nevada he was also an environmental activist that called for the preservation of the Wilderness you

can really see that in his photography it's sort of a almost a call to action of these beautiful places exist and we

need to keep them beautiful so his photographs show these Sublime Landscapes with the purpose of

showing the viewer the beauty of the wild that needs to be preserved um he uses what's called

straight photography technique which means there's no photo manipulation at all so I feel like I need to remind that

remind you all of that when we look at some of these um they look like they should be edited edited images but they

are not um he was another one that um would take the pictures on film and sometimes

would send the film off instead of actually developing it himself so here's some more examples of

anel Adams so both dorothia Lang and anel Adams photographs called for social

change they showcased things of the world and presented a call to action for the

public so next we're going to talk about social photography and social photography is more prominent today um

than it has been ever before so social photography is created by almost everyone to Showcase oneself or one's

own life many people associate this with social media but it really dates back to the invention of the Kodak camera um

it's just more accessible now because almost everyone has a camera in some form whether it be on your phone on your

computer an iPad some other tablet most people have access to a computer in some

form but even with the Kodak camera people took photos uh birthday parties weddings these would be social

photographs they're a lot of these can also fit under documentation some of these can also fit under um Fine Art it

just depends again they things can fit into multiple categories it just helps me

distinguish by setting up these three so here um we see these are images from Zena's

Instagram um so these photographs are edited they often have filters um but the main purpose of them is to show

others what's happening what's going on in someone's life they are not really meant to evoke a viewer response some of

them can still be artistic in form like their composition is there um but they're not really meant to evoke a

viewer response they're more meant to be hey this is me um so again some photographs can fit

into different categories so social photographs can also be documentary photographs looking through someone's

Social Media feed can be kind of like looking through documentation of their life um depending on how some long

somebody's had whatever service and how often they post you can view like 10 years

go all the way through and see changes in their life changes in somebody's Behavior changes in um their Outlook and

their opinion depending on what they post um so it really can be documentation even if you're taking

pictures of your friends birthday party and you're sharing it on social media um that can still be documentation but it's

still social as well and sometimes we have um social photography that can also be fine

art so this is Brook Shaden um this is her photo worlds above um Brook Shaden is actually a semi

photographer um but most of her images exist online she shares them on Instagram she has a website she does a

lot of um tutorials with that are photosho official tutorials on how to edit

images so many of her images are self-portraits that she uses as a mean to express herself in her inner thoughts

a lot of them are meant to evoke a viewer response which would make them Fine

Art um again she shares these images on social media they don't always exist in

a museum they don't always exist in a gallery um I think she used to post or not post

she used to um have Gallery showings of her art so she would print them and hang them in a gallery I'm not sure how much

of that she still does today she makes a lot of money with her digital presentence her online

presents um there's also a video in the additional resources on how she edits her images cuz she puts a lot of work

into these like every single bird you see will be a different image edited and

then the reflection added to the water she makes a lot of tiny little bitty choices and does a tiny little

bitty details and edits them in her in Photoshop to create these images so here's some more examples of

hers um I think she might have had at some point a um video tutorial on how she did this image specifically but each

crack is brought in from a different image um this crack across this bathtub she made um she made the bathtub smaller

she made her figure larger and placed it into the tub she built these walls these were not

the walls that were originally around the tub she removed the faucet and things like that

um so a lot heavy heavy heavy photo manipulation to create these images then our last example is

Anastasia um I'm going to butcher that last name so I'm not even going to try embarrassed myself enough with my poor

pronunciations um but she also primarily posts on Instagram um a lot of her work is also

considered Fine Art um she she does some photo manipulation a lot of her stuff is done

in camera she does actually hire live animals for her photos um so those are not photoshopped animals um she has a

whole series that she did with a bear which is crazy to me but they're gorgeous

um but her um images primarily exist online she does do prints she actually sells prints on her website I she does

display her work in galleries as well so the debate of whether photography should be considered high

art low art or art in general is still ongoing um but because of advancing technology in the field it feels to be

moving more towards art realm depending on the purpose so that's why we talk about it in these

classes so um don't forget to go back and watch part two U make sure you put part one and two into the same

document um and then answer your lectur questions at the very bottom and I will see you all in the

next part