Francesca
Labianca
Visual
communication
Produce 2,
1000-word, Research essay
Module:
4AP504
Module
leader: Chris Keeble
Essay 1 :
Women in photography?
In this essay we are going to analyse the big
role women took in photography, starting with an accurate introduction to
understand when these did manage to get involved with this art; concluding with
the topic of researching about some of the most famous female photographers of
the history.
The world of photography is often associated
with great names of male photographers.
During the twentieth century it is precisely
rooted in the idea that photography is an activity mainly male, but is totally
wrong: many are, in fact, women who sis ono dedicated to this art.
Already in the nineteenth century, in Britain
and North America, more women of high social classes used the machine
photographic like fun: there are many Victorian women who began taking pictures
for the family album, they became real professionals.
Among these we must remember Julia Margaret
Cameron.
Her technique was often considered deficient,
indeed most of the time Its negative is ruined and ill-prepared, but the taste
of composition was out of the question; what characterizes more than anything
else her photography is the technique with which Julia Margaret achieves the
result, her photographs are deliberately blurred, shadowy, little and often
outlined ovals, her favorite subject were children and adolescents.
The most severe critics interpret all this as
a technical error and poor mastery of the medium, although appreciated the
formal composition.
But most of the photograph was a great tool
for emancipation of women.
Being considered as the "new industrial
art", this activity was initially snubbed by "purist art" and
there was no written regulation that would limit access to women, as happened
in painting or sculpture.
As a result, many people were to adopt the
"new industrial art".
Photography became an opportunity for
independence with regard to family obligations, and soon many ladies became
part of circles and professional circles.
Later, in the first half of the twentieth
century, the number of photographers increased incredibly.
In the US women began to work in photographic
studies as substitutes or photographers specializing in portraiture children.
When photography began to become more and
more industrialized, many were then taken in the development laboratory and
printing. Some managed to open a studio of their own with considerable success
like Sophia Goudstikker in Monaco and Madame Yevonde in London.
With the spread of photojournalism, there was
a new opened field involving photographers like Claude Cahun, Hannah Hoch,
Lotte Jacobi and Lucia Moholy.
Lucia Moholy was also the first to write
books dedicated to photography and always she ventured into war zones, in
exotic countries and, even worse, in the world of politics. One of the most
important names in the history of women's photograph to remember is definitely
that of Margaret Bourke-White;
She was the first foreign photographer to be
allowed to take pictures in the USSR, the first woman war correspondent and the
first woman photographer for the weekly “Life”.
Her professional carrier began in 1927. At
the age of twenty years began to take industrial photographs; Margaret
Bourke-White has an incredible will power, mania for perfectionism and a great
desire to compete not only with photography but also with rather unusual themes
for a woman: the world of industry, the very timely, I reportages on America
and on the contemporary.
In 1929 she makes the big turning by meeting
Henry Luce, editor chief editor of “Times”, who invites her moving to New York
to assist him in the establishment of a new illustrated magazine “Fortune”.
Despite her travels and the relationship with
Fortune, until 1936 she maintained her own study for the industrial jobs and
corporate without neglecting the different possibilities for books, exhibitions
and independent works.
The cover of the very first publication of
Life magazine, of 23 November 1935, was dedicated to her. It was a shot of the
finished work of the Fort Peck Dam in Montana. An image that went around the
world and which marked a turning point of the feminine universe photographer
profession.
From this moment Margaret started assiduous
collaboration with the prestigious magazine, by shooting for covers and the
reporting of the Second World War, the siege of Moscow, the war in Korea, the
South African uprisings.
Bourke-White will dedicate most of his
carrier to Photojournalism.
In 1928 she stated in a newspaper that
"The industry is the true place of art" and two years later that
"The bridges, ships, factories have an unconscious beauty and reflect the
spirit of the moment".
In the composition of her first pictures, you
may notice a close relationship with cubist painting, overlapping planes,
abstract geometry, and was no doubt equally important for the influence of
Russian and German expressionist film, from which the drama of the effects deriving
light, and the suggestion for the abstract.
Only towards the end of her long and
distinguished profession, in the early fifties, she sees returning the passion
for the abstract with some interesting aerial photography experiments that run
many paintings of the late fifties sixties.
Another big name is Dorothea Lange,
documentary photographer between the years 30 and 50, Her works have mainly
focused on documenting the misery of the disadvantaged neighborhoods and
immigrant status, laborers and workers.
This photographer, whose most famous shot is
“Migrant mother”, worked on the creation of the agency Magnum, and was also one
of the founders, along with Ansel Adams, Barbara Morgan, and Minor White, the
magazine Aperture.
Imogen Cunningham started to photograph as a
young girl, in the late nineteenth century, but then he was selfless devoted to
chemical studies until its way back to its intersection with a thesis on
chemical processes for photographic development, and that is how his talent
found its way to blossom.
In the forties Imogen becomes part of the f /
64 becoming a prominent component of the straight photography movement with
works that receive much acclaim, that will accompany him in a long career up to
his nineties, until the exhibitions at the MOMA in New York in the seventies.
One of the most fascinating parts of the work
of Imogen Cunningham is the one carried out in the thirties, when he began his
study in botanical photography, undertaken with an intriguing attraction not so
much towards the plant as such but more for what it was able to transmit in
photography.
The plant becomes almost abstract, with
traits that are formed by the intersection of the natural line, shadows,
overlapping leaves and dramatic light.
Bibliography
1- http://www.digitalcameraworld.com/2012/03/08/most-famous-female-photographers/
2- http://www.oxfordartonline.com/public/page/benz/themes/AmericanWomenPhotographers
3-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_photography
Essay2: Politics in
photography?
This essay will analyse how photography has been
used as an intermediate weapon for propaganda, war, social changes etc.., and
how it has not been viewed as art but a key that society can reflect and relate
to
Photography has completely changed the world, our
lives and our opinions on things. Photography is world’s most popular hobby and
it is not just a picture on a piece of paper;
it is used in movies, television, and in the
newspapers. We use it to document family milestones, capture beauty, reveal the
ugliness of war and stalk celebrities.
During the American civil war, the people were
shocked by the photographs of battle when they were published in the
newspapers. This was the first time war had been photographed for the public,
and the first time they had seen the reality of death. Before this they only
heard stories and were told of the
heroes but these stories were not always true. When
they saw the pictures, the fields of the dead, the blood on the ground, people
running around with a gun in their hand and blood all over their body, their
ideas of war were totally changed. They had heard of death but actually seeing
it was a whole different story. They began to look at war as a more serious
life or death situation.
Truism sees the camera
incapable of lying and therefore as a recording agent truthful reality but this
type of photos is the only evidence of what has been, the historical moment to
which otherwise we would not have access. As documents, these images are
windows on a world otherwise lost, and it is right and important to define
documentary photographs. However, the idea of documenting the history in a
literal and objective, is an illusion of short duration since it ignores the
cultural and social background of the image by a neutral documenter
photographer, invisible and passive; It is among the first photographers
"documentary", which we find much of the ambivalence about the
veracity of the photographic condition, which made use of the camera as a means
to expose and thus bring to light events that would otherwise have remained
invisible. A pioneer in this field was Jacob Riis.
In 1870 Riis
disembarked in America. Become a journalist for the "New York
Tribune". He was the first to use photography as a tool of social
criticism to illustrate his articles about the miserable living conditions of
immigrants in the slums of New York. "After seeing published for the first
time on the" Daily Graphic "journalistic photography, Riis realized
that words alone were not enough strength of conviction and decided to resort
to the use of photography, sure of the fact that only caused shock from viewing
images so harsh and crude could give birth to a movement of opinion in the
country capable of pushing politicians and administrators to give a positive
solution to this terrible problem.
Since ancient times,
those in power have made extensive use of visual media on hand to show their
strength to the conquered peoples: the Greek and Roman bas-reliefs telling the
exploits of generals and emperors, while the medieval frescoes were designed to
explain the religion to the faithful in largely illiterate and at the same time
to celebrate the power of the Church and of the reigning princes.
In the nineteenth
century, political power appropriates the undoubted power of communication
inherent in photographic technique, not only to convey effective messages also
to the many who still did not know how to read, but also as a cataloging tool
and control. It can be traced back to the Second Empire of Napoleon III
(1852-1870) the first systematic use of photographs to document political
successes, while the collapse of the Paris Commune (1871), the Third Republic
Government uses images taken by journalists in days of the barricades to
identify and arrest the leaders of the insurrection.
The twenty-fifth
President of the United States, William McKinley (1843-1901), is the first to
conduct aggressive election campaigns of 1896 and 1900 illustrated by printing
thousands of flyers and becoming an example for rivals and successors. A few
years later, at the outbreak of the First World War, the countries involved
develop a massive propaganda iconography, ranging from posters that invite to
join, or to raise loans to finance the cost of the conflict, to others who
foment hatred towards the enemy while, with photographs, newspaper readers
closer to the reality of the front. The US government is in favor of entering
the war beside the Entente, but public opinion shows itself opposed to a
conflict considered only European "," why in 1916 President Woodrow
Wilson set up a Governmental Commission for Propaganda.
A
good example for propaganda is how politics related to photography during the
presidential elections in 2008 , The Barack
Obama "Hope" poster is an image of Barack Obama designed by artist Shepard Fairey, which was widely
described as iconic and came to represent his 2008 presidential campaign. It
consists of a stylized stencil portrait of Obama in solid red, beige and (light
and dark) blue, with the word "progress", "hope" or
"change" below (and other words in some versions).
The
design was created in one day and printed first as a poster. Fairey sold 290 of
the posters on the street immediately after printing them. It was then more
widely distributed—both as a digital image and other paraphernalia—during the
2008 election season, initially independently but with the approval of the
official Obama campaign.
Our world no longer has its focus on words and
paintings but now it is focused on the photograph. Photography has completely
changed how we perceive ourselves and the world.
in recent years in the field of fashion photography
adversely affects mainly young people who are constantly bombarded with
pictures presenting lifestyles dream, being diverted from reality Photography
has changed the world way more than any other thing in the media; which most of
the time these are picture mounted or readjusted, communicating a big lie.
Bibliography
1-
http://www.photosensitive.com/documentary-photography.php
2-
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/power-to-the-pictures-the-evolution-of-propaganda-2075321.html
3-
http://www.historytoday.com/jonathan-marwil/photography-war
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