photography lecture year zero 2013
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photographyTRANSCRIPT
‘Pictures We Know’ ( the Iconic photograph)
A little bit of history
Sir John Herschel first used the
term ‘photography’ in 1839,
Derived from the Greek words for
light and writing.
Photography is a mix of three ideas.
Camera Obscura (dark room)
Lens: Earliest over 3000 years old
Chemical developing : discovered in 1727
.
The first successful picture was produced in June/July 1826 by Niépce,
using material that hardened on exposure to
light.
It required an exposure of eight hours
View from a window at La Gras Niépce
The French government bought the rights to the photographic process in
1839.
And made it public
Louis Daguerre an (early pioneer) named it the Daguerreotype.
1837 Daguerre
Two early examples
Edgar Allan Poe 1848
Abraham Lincoln 1846
anyone could take a photograph with
no talent for drawing or painting,
the new invention was an
overnight success
David Hockney’s Secret Knowledge
Edward Steichen 1915
‘a different idea of beautiful photography’
What does Sontag mean by this?
The epigraph of a book of Walker Evan’s photographs
uses a passage from Poet
Walt Whitman;
…I do not doubt there is far more in trivialities, insects,
vulgar persons, slaves, dwarfs, weeds, rejected
refuse, than I have supposed
Today between us we take
1000’s of photos from family snapshots
to more professional work
using SLR-DSLR- compact digital
cameras, phones, ipods, ipads etc etc
Mass Observation?
The Mass observation movement
recorded the everyday.
1930s -
It asked people on chosen single days
to write diaries
and take photographs
to record the moment in history
Humphrey Jennings
(a founder member) was asked to
take 900 photographs of Bolton in
1937
it became a study called
Worktown
An audience of madam Butterfly
A Day out at Blackpool arcades
Fruit machines at Blackpool
Blackpool beach
Cow with 5 legs
Working mans hair specialist
Left: Children at Play.
Above: outside the polling station
In the Pub
Park bench
Even professional photographers take family snapshots
From Richard Billingham’s family study Ray’s A Laugh
Martin Parr
A few of Martin Devenney’s
MARY and Tom
Martin Devenney The Clock
Most of us take photos of the everyday because its easier
we’re surrounded by it
but there are very few iconic images from the everyday
Charles Emmet Lunch on the Rockefella centre 1932
Walker Evans - Robert Frank
Evans
Frank
Good photographs of the every day –but not the most recognisable of images
Robert Frank
The Americans 1958 Influenced by Walker Evans
took a trip across the USA and photographed it.
Part of the beat movement/
friend of Alan Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac
(who wrote the forward to the book)
Why then do some photographs make the leap
to greater cultural significance?
What is an icon?
Icon
1.a. An image; a representation. b. A simile or symbol.
2. A representation or picture of a sacred or sanctified
Christian personage, traditional to the Eastern Church.
3. One who is the object of great attention and devotion; an
idol.
4. Computer Science. A picture on a screen that represents a
specific command.
If something is ‘Iconic’
it represents a
whole cultural field
Why are these images iconic? Iconic of what?
London
45
Religious Iconography and
Images of the Crucifixion
Juan de Flandes, The Crucifixion, around 1519
47
Rembrandt Slaughtered Ox 1683
No coincidence that images of the crucifix
often become iconic photos’ in themselves
Robert Capa Moment of Death 1937
Nic Ut 1972 (Pulitzer prize)
Abughraib torture photo
The crucified pose
Madonna 2006
Beckham
Liam Gallagher (Mojo 2007)
If an image is iconic it is regularly copied or repeated
in culture
Iconic Art
The 'Great Wave off Kanagawa' is probably the
most famous Japanese woodblock print.
The Great Wave off Kanagawa - by Hokusai Katsushika, 1830 (ish)
first design for a series
of originally 36 famous
views of Mount Fuji,
Japan's sacred
mountain.
Che Guevara by Alberto Diaz Gutierrez,
(Korda)
original
Cropped 63
Jim Fitzpatrick (1968)
64
65
Photograph by Manny Garcia
Shepard Fairey.
Iconic photographs used by Warhol
69
Crime and the iconic image
David Bailey’s Box of Pin Ups
Lewis Morley 1963 Christine Keeler
Myra Hindley
Marcus Harvey 1998
Maureen Hindley and David Smith
The iconic war photograph
Gettysburg Timothy O’Sullivan 1863
Aftermath of war in Charlston 1865
Revealed in 1920 Photo’s by soldiers
Dead on the Beach George Strock 1943 Life
President Franklin D.
Roosevelt
was convinced that Americans
had grown too complacent
about the war, so he lifted the
ban on images depicting U.S.
casualties
Quote from Life magazine about the
photo.
“Why print this picture, anyway, of three
American boys dead upon an alien
shore?” Among the reasons:
“words are never enough . . . words do
not exist to make us see, or know, or feel
what it is like, what actually happens.”
Iwo Jima 1945 . Mount Suribachi. Joe Rosenthal
1945
Raising the Flag
Afghanistan
Vietnam ( The first war of images)
Napalm Nick Ut 1975. ‘The photo to end the war’
Saigon Execution Eddie Adams 1968
Another Pulitzer prize
Buddhist Monk sets himself alight 1963
South of the DMZ Larry Burrows 1966
Tiananman Square protests June 5, 1989, Jeff Widner
The photo is the truth?
Liberation of Buchenwald 1945
Bosnia 1992. Penny Marshall (ITN) with her
cameraman Jeremy Irvin,
five photographs taken by Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths 1917 The Cottingley Fairies
Images by Brian Walski
Soldier from A Civilian From B
To create C
Microsoft ad American and Polish versions
Notice the extra person behind the raised arm for this college prospectus
Don’t have to photoshop you can just arrange photos to
be taken
Iraq 2003 Hungry 1956
War Crime
Celebrity Sport
Everyday life
No one knows what photos will capture the imagination of the public
No one knows what photographs will stay and which will disappear with yesterdays newspapers
Once they stay They become part of our cultural language