‘Paper Movies’ Research Task;
1. What is the significance to us of the ‘Photographic Journey’ in three decades from the 1950’s
- The significance to us would be that the photography industry is changing in the way people take photographs and also the way they look at the things they are going to photograph.
2. Joel Sternfeld is seen using what type of camera? Why would he be using this as opposed to digital?
- He uses a large format 8x10 camera. He seems to know this camera very well as he has probably been using it for a long time so is used to shooting with it and feels more comfortable shooting with this as oppose to digital.
3. Why has Robert Frank’s book ‘The Americans’ had such an impact on modern photography.
What ‘narrative’ is pervasive throughout his book?
- It was ‘One of the foundation stones of modern photography’. The photo book never went down well in America, it was badly received as he was photographing negative real life things people did not want to see and this spoiled peoples perception of having a good life in America as they had always thought. The way the book was laid out was so the viewer was only focused on one image at a time to take in that image with nothing surrounding it.
4. William Klein had one particular photographic outlet for the expression of his photography – How would you describe his attitude to photography?
- He was said to have anarchic energy and he was offensive and aggressive as he tried to provoke situations when photographing, he is fearless. His attitude towards photography is he wings things a lot and thinks accidents are a good thing as that’s where many of his good images have came from. He’s not interested in the image more about the way way it can be framed or cropped, raw material. He won his first camera in a card game at 18 and seems to not have much respect for photography as he was originally an artist. He is a very laid back guy and does not really care about making things look perfect he just wants to capture what is going on.
5. What made Joel Meyerowitz reject Henri Cartier Bresson’s decisive moment concept for his New York Street Photography?
- This was because he thought New York was sizzling with energy, it’s dynamic and full of beautiful possibilities and he wanted to capture this. He likes shooting close to people without them knowing.
6. Iconic NY Street Photographers Garry Winogrand, Diane Arbus & Lee Friedlander oand English Photographer, Tony Ray Jones who was heavily influenced by the above noted the key pointers to being a successful Street Photographer………
- Be more aggressive. Get involved, talk to people. Stay with the subject. Be patient. Take simpler pictures. Don’t take boring pictures. Get in closer.
7. Why have British ‘street photographers’ gravitated to the beach as an ideal location for their subject matter?
- As this is where the ‘nation reclined and bared its soul’. Here there are family dramas, explicitly, dreams of love and disappointment of everyday life and this gives photographers opportunity to capture moments like this. They said at the beach people reveal themselves more than they would normally do.
8. ‘Surface rather than soul’. What does that mean to you?
- They said ‘The taken for granted backdrop which the drama plays out’ and to me this mean it’s not about the people in the image it’s also about what goes on behind those people in the image, they also said ‘Things rather than people’.
9. The Road trips of Stephen Shore & Joel Sternfeld
- Stephen Shore photographed everything, to the bed he slept in, people he met, food he ate, buildings that he saw, streets that he walked down and anything else that came his way, it was like a visual diary. Where as Joel Sternfeld done quite the opposite as he said he shot only two negatives a day as that’s all he could afford.
10. Why would William Eggleston be regarded by photographers as ‘King’?
- He was well known for the coloured photographs he took within his home town. Some may refer to his work as ‘Strange baffling beauty’. He also once described his work as ‘Democratic’, he was at war with the obvious. His images were very unreadable and they were powerful colour images, he used colour to twist the content of an image. It was difficult for people to talk about his work as he doesn’t talk about it.
