Photography Altered Art History

This essay will investigate the work of contemporary photographer Tim Walker, and historical photographer Ansel Adams. This essay will examine the many changes of how photography has evolved through the decades from the photographer’s style, use of equipment, techniques and what photography is used for. These changes will be seen by looking at the contemporary photographer and comparing them to the historical photographer.

Marcel Duchamp stated that "It was his achievement to treat the camera as he treated the paintbrush, as a mere instrument at the service of the mind” (Biography.com, 2017). In addition, the photogram might seem expressive and abstract, yet on the contrary, it is the precise medium to document the everyday objects in an unrepeatable and somehow uncontrollable way. The artist cannot predict how the selected objects will be recorded under the light sources that were tampered with. From the first glance, the image completely dissociated from its original subject, allowing one’s memory to fill the gap. Yet below its surface, the image is an accurate documentation that captured a moment of psychical intensity. It revealed a new visual experience, using objects in the simplest way. One can say that the use of this medium disclosed reality more preciously due to its invisibility and mysterious representation (The Museum of Modern Art, 2017).

When photography began to gain not only popularity, but accessibility, it became a topic of discussion on its place in art. Whether if it should be considered a fine art or whether its place lied in documentation. However, even with documentation, a broad assumption was that there could be an immediate trust. Gardner’s Home of a Rebel Sharpshooter proved that was not always the case, that although documenting the truth of the brutality of the Civil War. The addition of the shotgun that added the idea of fighting until the last minute was actually fabricated creating a disillusion. That photography is meant to depict a standstill truth subject, but viewers of photography can forget that it is still an artwork. That a photo is an image set and

Before photography was considered a medium of personal art, it was used for the sole purpose of portraiture. Carte de visites, daguerreotypes, and even tintypes were all used as a way to convey a person’s physical appearance into a print. As camera technology evolved, so to did the way photographers take portraits. It skipped from a stale faced man behind a backdrop to colorful and interesting photographs taken of people from all walks of life. Three of the innovators of modern portraiture are Robert Mapplethorpe, Irving Penn and Diane Arbus. These photographers changed the public appearance or ordinary people and celebities while integrating their own original ideas.

Following its creation in the 1830s, photography has managed to completely change the way in which people view the world: it has quickly become ingrained into American culture, and it has depicted some of the most egregious conflicts in this country’s history. For many years, American photographers have bravely sacrificed their own lives to take pictures at numerous battlefields (in the Second World War, the Vietnam War, etc.) and have, at the same time, managed to shed light on the major suffering caused by some domestic issues (i.e. the Great Depression). Their dedication to producing such photography suggests that they knew of its great importance and therefore prompts the following question: How did photography manage to impact America’s foreign conflicts and domestic crises? Through examining the effects of some famous, pre-1975 photographs, the conclusion can be reached that photography has affected American history in numerous ways.

Photojournalism, a concept superimposed on the history of photography, came into practice following the introduction of picture magazines during the early 1900’s. The history of photojournalism takes the idea of perspective and uses photography to document occurrences that would

Besides pictorial propaganda in the news, pictorial “envelopes” were being used and distributed. The United States also took advantage of almanacs being produced and used them to advertise the government’s strong minded opinions on different issues. For example, an anti-slavery almanac was produced and distributed among the Southern States. Mathew Brady, a famous photographer, went through constant scrutiny for his work. Many people believe that he moved corpses to create a more graphic images. Not only were photographers under scrutiny, but officers as well. Officers during the Civil War would hire photographers to go behind enemy lines and gain knowledge. ”Trachtenberg said military leaders on both sides also hired photographers to gain intelligence about enemy emplacements, roads, bridges and railroads.” A famous example of a confederate spy soldier was a man by the name of A.D. Lytle. Even those these men were seen as propagandists, they were able to achieve something.”Photographers such as Mathew Brady, Alexander Gardner, and Timothy O’Sullivan found enthusiastic audiences for their images as America’s interests were piqued by the shockingly realistic medium. For the first time in history, citizens on the home front could view the actual carnage of far away

Photography, meaning “drawing with lights” in Greek, is an art as well as a science of capturing light and storing it on a medium with unprecedented accuracy. Yet, up until the late 18th century, history was mainly recorded through the techniques of painting and the press. These mediums unarguably contained a certain degree of a truth, though, it was not uncommon for events, such as war to be composed with glorified details, or an unfavorable bias from the artist at hand. Beginning in the 1830’s, cameras provided a revolutionary solution by combining the advancements in optics and chemistry. Consequently, the new medium of photography was established and forever changed how history would be visually captured. Unlike other methods, photography

For over a century there was an argument over wither photography was art or not. Photography changed that art worlds, instead, of getting a portrait painted, people can just take a picture of the person,

Careful visual observations are key when distinguishing masterpieces of photography. The attention to the slightest details and uses of many various techniques are what distance Gregory Crewdson and William Eggleston from the norm. Though it is simple to discuss the contents of a photograph, it takes a trained eye to analyze the true visual art that the picture portrays. Every image by both of these photographs contains a hidden meaning, a variety of thousands of possible interpretations made by the viewers. Composition and content are both considered and involved when the photographers make the final decisions of the arrangement. Thus, the artist’s intensions of the the subject of the image are also essential to consider. All in all, the

Photographical equipment at this pictorial was still primitive and many photographers felt that their lens’ recorded too much detail. Photographers started to employ different techniques to soften their images, their main goal was to create images that looked more abstract and with similar characteristics to paintings. This movement then transformed into naturalism where it was encouraged to treat photography as an independent art form. There was a belief that photography should be used to communicate something personal, and that the environment would be used as an inspiration.

Between the use of film or digital photography, film is the more effective method when looking for originality and creativity. With the adoption of digital photography, the younger generations, as well as the older and more current photographers are becoming lazy. These groups must recognize that the art of the photograph is being jeopardized by the digital camera and the camera phone. For the current photographers as well as amateur photographers, this essay will serve as testimony to film as well as other chemical methods, and how they shouldn’t be ignored, but preferred. The digital era has had a massive impact on the art world and all of its mediums, but for photography this impact has resulted in the removal of the human from the photograph making process. This intimate process is what makes it an art form. All of films imperfections and unique qualities, as well as its monetary value and scarcity are just a few factors that have made it so precious. To replace this entire process with a microchip is offensive and undermines the importance of the process that is needed to make a photograph. Anyone can take a picture but you must make a photograph, and this skill is being simplified to a digital camera. The impact of the digital era on photography has hindered the process of making a photograph; painting the art form obsolete in today’s society.

Images are represented by some aspects that are not there, however, once meaning is presented by an individual it can show how an image can look or once looked to other individuals in society. Berger further explains that it is unfortunate that images and or art from the past are presented as works of art and their true meaning are then altered by different learnt assumptions such as beauty, truth, genius, civilization, form, status, taste and its form because our understanding of anything can always change by time. Additionally, there is an implication that images are timeless and photography depended on what you saw, time, and space. While taking multiple photos it is then send that lighting can change the appearance of an object. Secondly, a major impact was to destroy the uniqueness of images because when a camera reproduces a painting it is then destroys the uniqueness of it.

Pictorialism was a movement during the beginning of photography that “approached the camera as a tool that… could be used to make an artistic statement” ( Britannica Academic, 2016). It focused on subject beauty and usually incorporated soft focus rather than a documentation of reality. Jerry Uelsmann is a pioneering photographer that “broke ranks” (Hershberger, 2014) with the previous generation of photographers who advocated for ‘straight photography’. The previous generation had also tried to break away from ‘pictorialist’ photography while also ridiculing it, but Uelsmann “revived and expanded Pictorialist-era techniques” (Hershberger, 2014), mainly through a medium called ‘photomontage’. This form of photomontage was created by combining multiple exposures in the darkroom. Modernist photography (also known as ‘straight photography’) expanded virally, encompassing exemplary forms of sharpness and accurate exposure, but Uelsmann’s concept of the photomontage created a new era of postmodernism for the photographer.

Art imitates life, everywhere we find art. Speeches are an art form in their own. They summarize the events going on in the country at that given time. Some artists have been so enchanted by some of the presidential, political, activists that they produced art as an expression of their opinion of a certain idea. The Civil war was the most photographed conflict of the 19th century. Mathew Brady, Alexander Gardner, George Barnard and Timothy O’Sullivan were pioneers in photography. What they captured was history with their cameras and equipment. Seventy years later, Margaret Bourke-White transformed photojournalism during the most historic time period of the 20th century, as the first woman war correspondent