DB Week1 Photography and Society - Activity 1: What We See

The area of impact I decided to choose was under the section "What We See" the article is called Photography Changes How Art History Is Taught by Diane Moss.

In this Article, Moss talks about in the late 19th century Harvard University students started putting up poster images from magazines, and photographs of paintings. This was not specific to the year 1900 or Harvard specifically as College students did so as well. The Harvard President Charles Elliot, as well as other educators were buying photographic reproductions of art works at high quality to control and teach high culture to their students. Local firms such as the Perry Picture Company, Boston critics, and educators started to express concern that if the Universities and Colleges gave out high quality Photographic Reproductions of paintings that they would disappear or appear in their opinion a less desirable environement such as shop windows, personal scrapbooks, and on student's walls. The Colleges chose to continue selling or lending to local residents or students to spread the display of art work. Charles Elliot, wanted to teach his students about the history of art and get them away from textbook learning. He hired art historian Charles Edward Norton in 1874 who taught his students to use and study the photographs and compare them to one art work. When the Harvard's Fogg Art Museum opened in 1895, they were devoted to purchasing reproductions of art and hundreds of pictures of European masterpieces for students to compare during the school year. Photographs of the world's art works soon entered other universities and colleges to teach their students the same way as Harvard taught their students. The students were familiar with the art works and studied them and cmpared them with their own photographs of friends, and family. The students continued to take what they learned in their art history classes and decorate their rooms with photographs of art work or paintings. Today, students still use photographs of paintings from the internet to put them on websites such as facebook.

DB 3 - Presentation Week 3: Can art be mechanically reproduced?

Yes, when something is reproduced it can be called art because it is as close to to being an exact copy of an artwork that you can get. When art gets reproduced the copy is almost the same, but if you look closely at the photograph of a setting or painting you can see things in the setting or painting that the camera caught while taking the photograph that your naked eye couldn't see or didn't notice. When you saw the setting or painting while taking the photograph. A photograph even if reproduced should be considered art if it had something like Fading Away by Henry Pitch Robinson on it. Fading Away in my opinion has as much right to be called art as the Mona Lisa by Leonardo Da Vinci does even if it was reproduced one hundred times. That photograph is still famous even now though not many people have heard of it these days.

The importance of the mechanical reproducibility of the art is that the mechanical reproduction can be brought may not touch the work of art, yet the quality of its presence is always depreciated. For example, for a landscape which passes in review before the spectator in a movie, In the case of an art object, a sensitive nucleus basically, it's authenticity is interfered with where no other object is vulnerable on that. The authenticity of art is the essence of everything ranging from its beginning, ranging from its substansive testimony to the history it has experienced over the years. The historical testimony of the art work depends on its authenticity.

The impact of mechanical reducilbility on society is that mechanical reproduction of art changes the reaction of the masses toward art. For example, the reactionary attitude the people had toward a Picasso painting changes the progressive reaction toward a Chaplain movie. The progressive reaction is characterized by the direct, intimate fusion of visual and emotional enjoyment with the orientation of the expert. The greater the decrease in the social significance of an art form, the sharper distinction between criticism and enjoyment by the public. Individual reactions are predetermined by the mass audience response that is about to be produced and this is nowhere more pronounced than in the film. A painting has always had an excellent chance by one person or a few people at a time.

I think Photography is another form of art because it takes time to paint a portrait, however with photography you can just the photograph of a landscape for example and it could be considered art because artists also paint landscapes the difference between painting and photography is the time it takes to make the art. Some people feel that some controversial photographs don't deserve to be called art due to different reasons such as death or sadness, but even though the emotion in the photograph you are looking at is sad people can be happy because what they are looking at is beautiful and can make you appreciate the landscape, colors, emotion, etc in the photograph.

I think photography is a tool for the artists because they take photographs of any setting with people in it and call it a "masterpiece" or art. The photographer can also just use the picture to put it in a newspaper like David Hill, and Robert Adamson. For example, David Hill, and Robert Adamson took a picture of John Henning and the daughter of Lord Cockburn in a scene from Sir Walter Scott's Novel "The Antiquary" in 1845. There is a story underneath the photograph talking about combination printing which is two negatives masked and part of the print was made of one and part from the other. The artists also use photography and photographers especially from newspapers, magazines, Television, etc, to get more attention for their paintings or photographs to advertise them so that the artist can have more people come and pay to see their art and they can make some money for their hard work, while the people spread the word if they like the art and more people come to look at the painting or photograph and before you know it the artist will be famous known by a lot of people like Paul Strand.

Fading Away is a composition of five negatives in which he (Robinson) depicts that a girl is dying of Teuberculosis and the despair of the other members of the family as all they can do is watch. If somebody examined a large copy of the print they can see the "joins" especially the triangle of grey with no detail in it. These were contact prints as at that time there was no means of enlarging the photograph. At that time it was perfectly normal for painting a picture such as this and since Henry Robinson was a photographer and he took this photograph. This was a controversial photograph and some felt that it was not a suitable subject for photography. However, this photograph caught the attention of Prince Albert, who bought a copy of this photograph and issued an order for every composite photograph produced subsequently.

Digitization is basically print media. Digitization has not only changed the types of cameras that are being used, but the type of photographs that are being taken and the type of photographers that are taking them. Page design has evolved so much that it is consumed more easily and is supposed to serve the public by giving them the news that they want. Because of this, a new kind of Journalist is being made out of the technological changes and the shift in cultural expectations of the media.

Assignment 1 Part 1 Web 2.0 Journal Blog

Assignment 1 Part 1 Web 2.0 Journal Blog

Topic 1: The role of portraits in the early days of photography and portraits today.

1. What are main differences and similarities between portraits in the early days of photography and portraits today?

Photography and portraits in the early days were available only to people with a lot of money, had some status, or both. Back in the early days a photograph was expensive mainly due to the new technology being developed at the time. As time passed more photographers started to appear and photography was also made available to the people that wanted to become photographers that were middle class. The photographs and portraits in the early days were mostly always done in a studio. At the present time with the technological advancements we have made since the early days photographs can be taken anywhere. In the early days it would take hours to set up everything for taking one self-portrait photograph of somebody. In the present it would only take a very short time to do the same thing due to the new technological advancements we have made with cameras.

2. Who was the photographer and who was the subject of photographs in the past and today?

In the past photographers were people that spent most to all of their time doing photography every week. The reason the photographers did this is the cameras were very hard to use so the photographers using these cameras had to know and understand every part of the camera to use it properly when taking photographs. In the past developing a photograph was very difficult and took a lot of time making the photographer have patience while developing any photograph. Photography was not a career that provided stable income for the photographers because they were not famous. In today's society anybody that owns a camera can be a photographer. In the past it required a lot of training to be a photographer, but in the present it still requires training but not as much as it did in the past.

3. What was the impact on technology on the portraits in the past and today?

Technologies impact on portraits in the past allowed portraits to appear in a photograph of black and white due to colored photographs not being invented yet. In the present we have new technology that we have made with our cameras that now allow us to take colored photographs instead of the old black and white ones that were used in the past.

This is an example of a self-portrait in black and white.

This is a self-potrait in color.

As you can tell from looking at both of the photographs  that the technological advances that have been made since the 1830's has been huge for the photography and art. There were Daguerreotype photographs that were revolutionary for 20 years. Photography has advanced far since the Daguerreotype photographs and we are still advancing our technological advances today. From a self-portrait in black and white to the now colored photographs. The world of photography seems bright for the present and future photographers and it is all thanks to the first photographers like Louis Jacques Mande Daguerreo, and Henry Talbot that started photography and we are still using it today.



In 1839, French photographer Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre showed the world the first photographs and they were very detailed and at the time was a "one of a kind" photograph. A Daguerrerotype is a photographic image on a highly polished, silver-plated sheet of copper, sensitized with iodine vapors, exposed in a large box camera, developed in mercury fumes, and stabilized with salt water.
(Daguerre, Para 4) Daguerre later named his invention the Daguerreotype and told other people how to make the photographs. Most of the Daguerreotype photos were burned when Daguerreo's laboratory burned to the ground later in 1939 leaving very few copies of the daguerreotype photographs. (Daguerreo, Para 6)

This is a Daguerreotype photograph.

     

 













References:
http://29.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lk8vhptHkx1qcl8ymo1_500.jpg
http://ih3.redbubble.net/work.2508017.2.flat,550x550,075,f.self-portrait-color-version.
http://www.wired.com/ly/wired/news/images/full/Daguerreotype_Daguerre_Atelier_1837.jpg
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/dagu/hd_dagu.htm
http://www.metmuseum.org/special/French_Daguerreotypes/dawn_more.htm

Daniel, Malcolm. "Daguerre (1787–1851) and the Invention of Photography". In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/dagu/hd_dagu.htm (October 2004)