Stieglitz main interest was photography as an art form. Back then, photographs were considered science, not art. Cameras were machines and machines don't make art. People made art. He was leading a movement called Pictorialism, which promoted photography as art, the same kind of art as a drawing or painting. They understood that a photograph was created when the camera was used as a tool, just like a paintbrush was a tool. They try to show that photography is an art by manipulating their photos in a dark room, using tricks and techniques that shows the human hand in the process. Stieglitz theorized that the main object of a photo should be in sharp focus while the secondary elements should be left out of focus. This theory was called Naturalism. It was these types of photographs most closely resembled the way the human eye naturally sees things. In The Steerage, Alfred Stieglitz abandoned the idea of photographs being the same as painting. He then went on a new path to explore photos as photos on their own. He took photographs that looked like camera work and not brushwork. He is no longer concerned with photographs that look like paint work, he now puts emphasis on modern art and photographs that looks like the work of a camera rather than a paintbrush or pencil.
In his Pictorialism photographs, I see objects that you would see in a early day city. Subjects like a steam engine train or a carriage are examples of what Stieglitz would use. His subjects are also calm since Pictorialists avoid chaos. He also use weather to be a substitute for paintbrush. The tones are low and contrast are at a minimum. When he made the turning point in photography. In the photo, The Steerage, everything has a sharp focus unlike his earlier photographs.
-Warren Riparip
White's impact on photography as a medium was great. He was hailed as one of America's greatest photographers. White's impact on photography was mainly his unique and orginal ideas. Minor was known for his deep belief in the sacred and spiritual quality of photography. What was seen in the image was important, but the meaning behind the image was even more so. Minor White's life was a spiritual journey that used photography as a means to communicate his inner self to the outer world, and was heavily influenced by Christianity, Zen meditation, and Gurdjieff's teaching. He was devoted to the idea of "Equivalence", a theory of photography based on the idea that any image, regardless of how good you are, should function as an experience, as opposed to a "thing." The photograph should act as a springboard for the viewer to explore feelings and emotions within himself or herself, the photograph acting as a metaphor for a feeling.
What I see in Minor White's photography are barns, doorways, water, the sky, or simple paint peeling on a wall. He also took pictures of textural photographs of items such as a bush, a tree, cracks in the road, or even a rusted up car. Minor White would also take pictures of people but later on in his life he started taking pictures of nude men due to his sexual feelings towards men and the company of his students who were young men.
-Mark Abcede
Man Ray is a very intriguing artist. He has many different talents and works in a variety of different mediums. He is a painter, a photographer, a sculptor, a filmmaker, and a poet. He was also known as a leader of American modernism. His early work was more based around cubism and expressionism, but he soon was inspired to change his focus to surrealism and dadaism. Dadaism is an anti-art that goes against cultural and intellectual conformity. His pictures did just that, they didn’t follow the norm, but he brought the dream and fantasy of art to everyday life. Man Ray produced what he liked to call “Rayogrammes”. They are pictures that are made without a camera but on light sensitive paper. These pictures didn’t focus on the image itself but on the importance of the light and the shadows. Man Ray, for a period in his life, was a fashion photographer, and made pictures like no other. Man Ray shoots pictures not of reality but of fantasy, and the unexpected.
When I look at Man Ray’s photo’s I see an intense level of creativity. You can see the works of light, shadows and objects. He also took many pictures of nude females, and even with these you can see the different techniques of using light, and his own artistic expression. Some photo’s of the women had them with a fuzzy face, or having them stand behind odd things, or holding different objects. It wasn’t just a naked lady. He added personal affects to his art, like using a penlight to draw circles and lines throughout a photo. He was a very ambitious artist and never failed to capture the attention of his viewers.
-Jennifer Rennie
When observing Moholy- Nagy’s photographs, I notice that the majority of them consists of light, shadows and circular images. To me these images may be symbolizing the circle of life, negative and positive aspects in life, and the power within society. For example in life a circle represents a series of events that eventually ends at one point (birth to death). In society a circle may represent a group of people who share common interests, and within this group there are always norms and power above us. The large amount of light used in his pictures may be symbolizing happiness and positive aspects of life, and the shadows which follow these images may be symbolizing the negative aspects in ones life, in other words bad decisions which follow us.
-Jade Longo
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| Berlin Radio Tower |
Both Man Ray and Moholy-Nagy have an educational background in painting. Man Ray had experience in traditional styles of painting, and developed an interest in cubism, surrealism, and Dada, which can be seen in his photographs and sculptures such as “The Gift” and “Le Violin de Ingres”, meant to mock the traditional painters of that day and their perceptions that photography was not a genuine art form. Maholy-Nagy’s experience in abstract painting is evident in his manipulations of objects on and of the photographic paper itself. Initially Alfred Stieglitz championed the idea that photography was a form of painting, that the artistic eye and emotions that the photograph caused was identical, and that only the tools used to achieve the final product was different, and attempted to show this with his Pictorialist works. Stieglitz later changed his opinion and declared that photography was an art form unto itself and that it could and should not be compared to the traditional painting.
The knowledge, skill, technical procedures followed to produce a painting or photograph may differ greatly and produce a variety of final images. In terms of painting with a camera, all the photographers above have produced images which could be considered “painterly” even if it was not their original goals – from Man Ray’s Le Violin, Moholy-Nagy’s manipulation of light and photograph paper, Minor White’s experimentation with light and distance with “Frosted”, and Stieglitz’s early experimentations with lens blurring. The end goals of the painter and photographer are ultimately the same, regardless of the medium used or techniques involved – to convey and elicit emotion from and to connect to the audience, regardless of what the subject matter of the image is.
-Kienan Walker
Answered by: Mark Abcede, Jade Longo, Jennifer Rennie, Kienan Walker, and Warren Riparip
