#cogc research

[joanstuart]

A History of Photography from Daguerreotype to Digital V&A London

The Royal Photographic Society and teamed up with the V&A’s national collection of art and photography to showcase one of the world’s largest and most important photography collections in the world.

Since its invention in he 1830’s, photography has transformed the way we document and express the world we see.  This collection displayed includes outstanding examples of a range of processes from early daguerreotypes to contemporary digital.

It had informative video clips of:

·     Claudet and Daguerreotype process

·     Talbot and Calotype

·     Wet Collodion

·     Magic Lantern Slides

·     Autochromes

·     Introduction of 35mm slides and Kodachrome

The exhibition started with a display from the artist Thomas Ruff who had undertaken a project editing and manipulating he the pioneering work of Linnaeus Tripe (1822 – 1902).  During the 1850’s Tripe went to India and Burma and made some of the earliest photographs of ancient runs and religious monuments.  Tripe often retouched his paper images by hand and it was this and the damage that had occurred to the negatives over time that attracted Ruff to the work. Digitally interpreting Tripe’s photograph collection, he has given them new life

Rangoon Pagadoa   - Thomas Ruff, 2018

Breathing in the Beachwood – Gary Fabian Miller, 2004- Over 24 days Miller gathered leaves and placed them onto a photographic enlarger.  This arrangement shows the chlorophyll gradually turning the leaves green – showing a parallel between nature and the process of photography both depending on light.

42ndand Vanderbilt – Peter Funch, 2012  - Over the course of 9 years Fucnh photographed commuters at an intersection Manhattan.  At some points he managed to capture the same individuals on different days transforms daily gestures and expressions into a series of character portraits.

Highlights from the McCartney Collection, late 1960’s - 2004– Some portraits form Linda MCartney and her daughter Mary.

Valentine to Charis – Edward Westin 1935– Westin met the model and writer in 1934 and was besotted by her.  This represents his valentine gift to her and includes his camera and lenses plus some other objects of significant between them.

Luminogram – Otto Steinert 1952– A doctor and self-trained photographer which he created with long trails of light on a long rope with a long exposure.

Tea Merchant (On Duty) and Tea Merchant (Off Duty) – Charles Lutwidge Dodgon (otherwise known as Lewis Carroll) – 1873  - An accomplished amateur photographer of one of his most frequent child sitters.

Hippocampus at the Zoological Gardens, Regent Park, London - Don Juan Carlos – 1852– Poor beast captured on the banks of the Nile in 1849 and sent to Queen Victoria as a gift.  This scene is taken from within the cage making the onlookers appears as if they are captive.

Clare Booth Luce – Edward Steichen – 1938– In the early 1900’s Steichens work frequently featured in Vogue and Vanity Fair.

[joanstuart]

Developing Photography & Art

El Lissitzkywas a Russian born artist, designer, typographer, photographer and architect who designed many exhibitions and propaganda for the Soviet Union in the early 20th century. His development of the ideas behind the Supermatist art movement were very influential in the development of the Bauhaus and the Constructivist art movements. His stylistic characteristics and experimentation with production techniques developed in the 1920s and 30s have been an influence on graphic designers since.

From 1922 to 1925, Lissitzky experimented with photograph collage and photograms.  While working on photograms, Lissitzky experimented with photomontage as well. He was able to achieve vibrant compositions using several printing exposures in order to utilize the effects of transparency. These experiments help him in many advertisements he produced starting from 1924 until 1925.

László Moholy-Nagyis arguably one of the greatest influences on post-war art education in the United States. A modernist and a restless experimentalist from the outset, the Hungarian-born artist was shaped by Dadaism, Suprematism, Constructivism, and debates about photography. When Walter Gropius invited him to teach at the Bauhaus, in Dessau, Germany, he took over the school's crucial preliminary course, and gave it a more practical, experimental, and technological bent. He later delved into various fields, from commercial design to theater set design, and also made films and worked as a magazine art director. But his greatest legacy was the version of Bauhaus teaching he brought to the United States, where he established the highly influential Institute of Design in Chicago.

Artists used to be dependent on the tools of perspective drawing, but with the advent of the camera they had to learn to see again. They had to renounce the classical training of previous centuries, which encouraged them to think about the history of art and to reproduce old formulas and experiment with vision, thus stretching human capacity to new tasks.

Aleksander Mikhailovich Rodchenko was a Russian artist, sculptor, photographer and graphic designer.He was one of the founders of constructivism and Russian design.  

Rodchenko was one of the most versatile artists to emerge after the Russian Revolution. He worked as a painter andgraphic designer  before turning to photomontage and photography. His photography was socially engaged, formally innovative, and opposed to a painterly aesthetic. Concerned with the need for analytical-documentary photo series, he often shot his subjects from odd angles—usually high above or down below—to shock the viewer and to postpone recognition. He wrote: "One has to take several different shots of a subject, from different points of view and in different situations, as if one examined it in the round rather than looked through the same key-hole again and again."

[joanstuart]

Time to Shine

See the story

WIP - Developing my Portfolio

[joanstuart]

Everyday Climate Change:- Boy with Ducks – Mekong Delta Suthep Kritsanavari

We had a visit to the Street Level Exhibition on Climate Change.  A very strong exhibition with emotive images from different photographers in different part of the world.

The image which resonated with me most was Boy with Ducks in the Mekong Delta.  This image shoes a farmer boy in Vietnam or Cambodia herding his duck though fields.  In the foreground and for about a third of e image there is a gaggle of geese/ducks – they are all walking the same way from the left to the right of the image. In the middle part of the image there is a boy with a very long stick walking beside the ducks, also from left to right.  He is wearing trousers and a white shirt but is distinctive because of his traditional cone shaped Vietnamese hat the upper third of the image shows the fields and cloudy sky.  The clouds appear to be moving from right to left – inferring the boy and gees are walking again the winds.

I was first drawn this image as it looks almost like a painting, the detail is so explicit, and the colour cast subdued.  The photographer may well have planned tis shot in advance it is so perfectly balanced and calm.

Although there is a very powerful message I the image in relation ton climate change regarding the perfect weather conditions is secondary to the beauty of the image and that in itself makes the message more poignant.

[joanstuart]

Richard Misrach

Was born 1949 in  Los Angeles and  is an American photographer a strong advocate of the introduction of colour to fine art  photography in the 1970’s.  At this time colour for professional photographers was considered to be unprofessional and only to be used for  holiday snaps

He is perhaps best known for his depictions of the deserts of the American West, and for his series documenting the changes brought to bear on the environment by various man-made factors such as urban sprawl, tourism, manufacturing,floods, fires, and the testing of explosives and nuclear weapons by the military.

One of his best known for Desert Cantos, his ongoing study of the American desert and man’s relation to it. The project presents a variety of images, from traditional landscapes to the space shuttle landing, which Misrach considers a singular work, with each canto acting as the equivalent of a (book) chapter heading. Misrach also works in a social documentary style, which can be seen in his Louisiana photographs of Cancer Alley, the corridor between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, and the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. In addition, he also has taken pictures of the desert sky; the Golden Gate Bridge; the beaches, water, and jungles of Hawaii; Stonehenge; and the Pyramids.

[joanstuart]

Richard Mosse

Two wonderful images from Richard Mosses’s projects Infra ( DRC c2013) and Heat Maps (Greece, 2016).

Richard Mosse was born in Kilkenny, Ireland, in 1980. He lives and works in New York and Berlin. He received a first class BA in English literature from King's College London in 2001, an MRes in cultural studies from the London Consortium in 2003, a postgraduate diploma in fine art from Goldsmiths, University of London in 2005 and a photography MFA from Yale School of Art in 2008.

He has worked in Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Palestine, Haiti and the former Yugoslavia. He is best known for his infrared images from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) - Infra - where he worked between between 20010 and 2015.For his infrared photographs he used a large format camera and the now-discontinued Kodak Aerochrome film. Aerochrome  - discontinued in 2009, originally intended for aerial vegetation surveys and for military reconnaissance, it picks out  Chlorophyll in plants, which absorbs certain wavelengths of light within the visible light spectrum so as to identify camouflaged targets. It registers light that can't be seen by humans rendering the grass and trees and soldiers' uniforms in vivid hues of lavender, crimson and hot pink

Patented by the US military, it is normally used in battlefield surveillance, reconnaissance and ballistics targeting, but Mosse has used the weapon against its intended purpose. He has taken something designed to help hunt and kill an enemy and manipulating it to capture and comment on the most pressing subject of our times – the great migration of so many people.

“You can see their blood circulation, their sweat, their breath. You can’t see the pupils of their eyes, but a black jelly instead. But, in fact, it allows you to capture portraiture of extraordinary tenderness. We often shot at night, from miles and miles away, so we were shooting people who were not aware of being filmed.”

“So we captured some extremely authentic gestures – people asleep, people embracing each other, people at prayer. There’s a stolen intimacy to it. There’s no awareness, there’s no self consciousness. It’s a two-step process – dehumanising them and then making them human again.”

Other  human rights projects include - Incoming, Enclave

[joanstuart]

Analogue Film Camera

[joanstuart]

Photography Inspiration