Essay Victorian's Secret: Sexual Revelations

During 1892, Lewis Hines graduated from high school and worked in an upholstery factory and in the next several years Hine worked several jobs while he was studying stenography, drawing, and sculpture. Hine eventually earned a Master’s degree in education from the University of Chicago. Hine’s first passion was not photography rather it was teaching. His first job was as a teacher at the Ethical Culture School in New York City. Hine’s had a friend named Frank Manny who was the one that convinced Lewis Hine to become the school photographer at the Ethical Culture School, where he gained technical skills (Hine, 11). Lewis Hine started off with a ten-dollar box camera and soon after set up a dark room at school that lead him to start an after school camera club, where he learned about art photography along the students (Freedman, 9). According to the book “Crusade for the Children,” by 1908 Hine spent several years as an amateur, photographing immigrants, Bowery inhabitants, and Lower Eastside hovel children. Soon after Hine quit teaching because he was interested in portraying the difficulty of the poor (Trattner, 105). Hine spent some time working for The survey magazine but later was hired by the National Child Labor Committee by 1906 Hine started work on a freelance basis (105). According to the book “Kids at work,” by 1908, by the time he left the Ethical Culture School,

These two skills are what makes her work extraordinary and undoubtedly art of the highest caliber. First of all, the integrity of her images is questioned after learning that they are largely staged. This argument is invalid because photography--much like sculpture and painting-- requires models and careful staging in order to get the desired result. This helped her to protect her subjects, and she did this by “carefully composing photographs to ward off the evil eye” by using focal points and light. The Perfect Tomato is the perfect example of the use of lighting in Mann’s photographs. Her daughter, Jessie, gracefully poses on the Mann family lunch table with a meal of tomatoes surrounding her. Jessie’s nude body is the focus of the photograph with the bright, white light illuminating her figure, and the surrounding background of the image is very dark and heavy. The lighting gives an angelic quality to the photograph which distracts the mind from the fact that the child is nude. Examples such as these occur in all of Mann’s works. Unfortunately, these clear reasons why Mann’s work is ethical and beautiful are not enough for her

For this essay the works of Robert Draper, author of “Why Photos Matter,” and Fred Ritchen, author of “Photography Changes the Way News is Reported,” will be analyzed. Though both deal with the topic of photography, their take on the matter is very different. While Ritchen is a photographer who writes on “what professional photographers will be doing in the future,” Draper is a writer for the National Geographic writing on how the photographers of the magazine share “a hunger for the unknown.” Both writers, however, write on the topic of photographers having a deeper understanding of their subjects, Ritchen due to research and practice, and Draper because the photographers “sit [with] their subjects, just listening to them.” In both essays the need for a deeper understanding of the

The original thought that photos were far superior to other visual aids have been re-evaluated in consideration of graphic artwork. The invention of photography initially provided the belief that a photo was simply a reproduction of the original. The progression of improved photographic equipment supplied the photographer with the choice of what to include or exclude from a picture. As an example, Jacob Riis transferred his belief of a sturdy, upstanding family with high morals into his photos by taking pictures of families in their apartments. However, his photo labeled “Five Cents A Spot” reflect an alternate picture of men and women packed in one apartment supported his viewpoint of the people’s poverty. Considering the subject matter of his reports it is a small wonder that his photos were not connected with a direct bias for both article and

Prostitution looms large in the Victorian consciousness. The image of the fallen woman reflects the Victorian upper classes' ideas about sexuality, gender and class. The prostitute is a staple of 19th century fiction. Debate about prostitution is also a reflection of cultural anxiety about urbanization.

No matter it’s effect, photography was and is very pivotal throughout society. Photography can be a beautiful but yet haunting form of art. It displays an image which is characterizing

Before starting this project, I knew very little about photography, photographers, or exactly how much impact photographical images have had on our society. I have never taken a photography class, or researched too in depth about specific pictures or photographers. This project has allowed me to delve deeper into the world of photography in order to understand just how much influence pictures can have over society’s beliefs, emotions, and understandings’. I have have chosen two highly influential photographers, Diane Arbus and Dorothea Lange, who I have found to both resonate with me and perfectly capture human emotions in way that moves others.

From when I was two years old until I was ten, my parents routinely shuttled my brother and I to the local Sears store every few months to get our pictures taken. My brother and I would sit patiently, smiling, in front of the background my parents chose while the photographer snapped away. After, all the pictures would be analyzed, the best ones selected and picture sizes determined. About an hour after arriving in the mall, my family and I would leave with multiple printed pictures in hand, ready for distribution to relatives or a photo album. Yet, after I turned ten, my mother increasingly opted to take pictures of my brother in I at home with her own camera and printer. This shift from going to Sears to get

The photograph is a very powerful medium. The French painter Paul Delaroche exclaimed upon seeing an early photograph “from now on, painting is dead!” (Sayre, 2000). Many critics did not take photography seriously as a legitimate art form until the 20th century. With the

Meanwhile, photography as a commodity in the industrial world at that time, its status in galleries and museums is determined by the price it sells, which means the higher the price is, the higher position it stands. This situation increases the gap between this photography and another type of photography, which works simply for exposing abuses caused by jobs, races, sex, social classes and etc. that people are unfamiliar to accept and consume.

The famous photographer Sally Mann photographed her children while they grew up in rural West Virginia. The images she made showed them lying naked in fields, skinny dipping, falling down, and other every day interactions. Critics were shocked at these naked, uncensored familial portraits and considered them to be child pornography. In New York vs. Ferber, a major tenant of the child pornography law includes the “lascivious exhibition of the genitals” (Adler, p.230). Especially in art, however, who is to say what the

Sally Mann’s style incorporates black and white photographs of her children, which are presented with “ordinary moments of childhood, suspended in time and transformed into aesthetic objects, takes on a distorted, even uncanny quality” (Arnason and Mansfield 719). Sally Mann photographed The New Mothers in 1989. This photograph’s most dominant elements are value and space. Having the photographs black and white really enhances the visibility of values. Most of Mann’s work is outside and has a define depth of field to blur out the background and emphasize the focus of the children. This compositional style helps to identify the high and low key values within the photos. The clothes, the reflection of the sun on the girls’ hair, and the girls fair skin are the part of the image that show high-key values, while the rest of the photo in more middle and low-key values. The intense depth of field increases a feeling of space for the viewer. In the photo you can see that the two young girls and their stroller is all in a line horizontally. Behind the girls you can notice they are outside in a open area because of the blurred grass and trees behind them. This photograph’s most dominant principles are movement and variety. The depth of field and lack of distraction in the background of the photo allows your eye to focus and move around with the subjects in the photo. The height of the subjects forms a triangle shape, which is

Discuss Charlotte Bronte’s portrayal of childhood in Jane Eyre. Charlotte Brontë’s ‘Jane Eyre’ was a controversial novel for its time. It traces the heroine from an orphan child to a contented adult woman. Through the trials Jane experiences Brontë highlights many hypocritical aspects of Victorian society, mainly focusing on the religious hypocrisy of the era. Subtitled ‘An Autobiography’, the novel in parts closely resembles Brontë’s own childhood and her evocation of Jane’s experiences of Gateshead and Lowood remain as vivid as ever for the modern reader.

Benjamin’s death in 1940 at the age of 48, is rumored to be a suicide when the Naza’s took office, but is still a mystery. His ideas and concepts however, would live on for decades to come. Much of what he wrote about when discussing art came essentially after the development of photography and film. In his work, “Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” Benjamin addresses his perception of the changes in art and the aesthetic experience congruent with societal changes. He writes with concern of how the great artworks are viewed after the introduction of photography and film. His idea of mechanical reproduction changed the art world as society knew it, particularly in how the public views artwork and the value of that work as more and more people are able to own, view and discuss it. This paper will specifically look at aspects of Benjamin’s groundbreaking essay and how educators can relate his ideas to the practices in their art classrooms.

Susan Sontag said photographs sends across the harmlessness and helplessness of the human life steering into their own ruin. Furthermore the bond connecting photography with departure from life tortures the human race. (Sontag 1977:64)