Visual communication Produce 2, 1000-word, Research essays

Francesca Labianca

Visual communication

Produce 2, 1000-word, Research essays

Module: 4AP504

Module leader: Chris Keeble

Essay 1:  What is a photograph?

In this first essay the meaning of the word photography will be analysed, starting from a small historical account, analyse different aspects of it, from what can be a photograph, to how it can be read and the different impacts it can have on the viewer.

From a certain point of view, the photograph depends on the light (photo = light), but on the other it wants to control the light and timing.

Taking a picture means stopping time, robbing and imprisoning the story in a continuous present.

Brief introduction on the birth of photography

The dark room and, later, the camera lucida, were in use since the Renaissance.

The dark room was used by the artists, who presented to them an inverted image and rechargeable.

In 1802, in England, they used the White paper moistened with a solution of silver nitrate to "capture" small-sized objects. The first to set a photographic image was, Niépce, in 1826, with an eight hours’ exposition. It was called “Heliogrphy", and we accept it as the first" photograph "(simple and low quality) format. Niépce died in 1839, and Daguerre public his new photographic process (the daguerreotype).

One of the main features of the daguerreotype was the ability to reproduce the details. (Eg: interior atelier that has a clearly absent in Niépce).

Talbot elaborate the foundations of modern photography. In 1840 Talbot invented the calotype "beautiful image." It was the first, authentic photographic positive / negative process, still at the base of all the photographic methods; for the first time implementation is possible by a single negative image, obtaining an infinite number of prints into positive. It was the advent of the picture itself.

the camera also underwent changes. On the one hand we have the cameras Talbot, beautiful but very expensive, the other in 1888 Eastman Kodak put the first device on the market. It was a small-sized camera (it was cheap and easy to use, photograph was open to all.)

After this historic hint we analyze different aspects and functions of photography.

The first thing we're going to see is that the distinction between photos "artistic" and "documentary"; the first is a set of different assumptions from a photograph "documentary." The photographs are the things seen documents, the photographic image is accepted as analogous to the "real". But as opposed to this idea we have the photograph "artistic" that insists on the ability to express something beyond the surface appearance of things. The photograph allows us to see something else invisible.

In photography, there are six problem areas:

1- Format: The efficacy and the effect of the photo is very attached to its format. The shape of the image is immediate relative.

2- Size: Sizes of a photograph warns us according to the way in which the same picture frame space is taken (pictures cut: portrait and landscape)

3- Sizes and shapes: Focus implies an element of choice. Photography hierarchy makes it invisible, even eliminates, everything around your chosen subject when shooting.

4- Size: It can be glossy or coated but it is always flat. Although the three-dimensional illusion is.

5- Color: The traditional canon of photography color escapes from placing ourselves faced with the paradox of communicating the "realism" photo in black and white. The world is deprived of colors.

6- Time: A photo fixes a moment in time. All photographs have neither a first nor a later are responsible only for the time of their realization.

As we read a photograph?

When we look at a photographic image, we must insist on being able to read the file as a text. The photo comes to the meaning through what is called a "photo" speech, which is a language of codes with a grammar and syntax of its own.

Photographic images contains a "photo" message, which reflects codes, values ​​and beliefs of the culture as a whole.

We should not just look at the picture, but try to read it, as it happens in the visual language; there are two fundamental aspects.

- First, we must remember that the picture is itself the product. Photographer imposes, steals, recreates the scene (what he saw) on the basis of a cultural discourse

- Secondly, however, the picture encoding parameters under which we give shape to a three-dimensional world and understand it.

An example to which we refer are the identical twins of Diana Arbus; when we look at this image to the first time it seems very simple, as his title, but looking at it more and more we realize that the term "identical" is not quite adequate, in fact in the two little girls there are lots of different things, the look, the socks, the hair, the collar of clothes and even socks, but also the contest, or the image is not clear it the year it is the place where he was taking pictures.

In this picture although we can find it disturbing and not completely understood but is consistent ideally communicated with the poetics of the photographer, who is always looking for the discordant note

In any imagine the main reference is the subject of the photo. Raland barhes offers an important distinction between denotative and connotative, the first has the literal meaning of any element of the image, simply acknowledge what we are looking at, hence the player advances to the second level, "the imposition of a second meaning the real photo message, its signs are gestures, attitudes, expressions, colors and effects that have certain meanings tied to a certain company.

Barthes at this point identifies two distinct factors of our rapport with the image.

- The first defined stadium: a photo can stimulate me as it touches the sphere of my knowledge. Barthes says that "recognizing the Stadium, means coincide with the photographer's intentions, getting in harmony with them, approve, disapprove, but always understand them, discuss in me, because the culture 9 from which the stadium) is a signed contact between the creators and consumers ".The photographer knows that the viewer will make you different questions, will try to understand his point of view, why his pictures have turned as a spectator.

- The second, Punctum: this point destroys the stadium, it is much more than just a simple twist, which twists but not hard. Just like a cut it leaves a mark, a sort of scar. The difference between these two points to the interest and love.

- Many photographs are interesting but do not remain for a lifetime, they last only for the time of the vision; while others we love them and we continue to present them as if we had in front of us. The punctum is a random element, the will of the photographer, and depends rather by the person who looks at a picture, is not possible to give a universal definition of it, and not in all the pictures we can find, depends on the encounter of the image and the viewer.

In this small issue we analyzed few points regarding the photograph, you can understand from all this is that the photos are not just simple images, but something that needs a thorough examination and study, each person can have a different impact in front to them, and this may depend on the social contest, the historical period, from own own culture.

Much of this essay is inspired by the famous book by Gharm Clark, photography.

Bibliography

1-     https://monoskop.org/images/c/c6/Clarke_Graham_The_Photograph_1997.pdf

2-    http://inventors.about.com/od/pstartinventions/a/stilphotography.htm

3-    https://philgreaney.wordpress.com/tag/identical-twins/

Essay 2:  Landscape and Photography?

In this essay we are going to analyse the landscape photography, starting with a short introduction, from which and how many types exist, to some main rules of composition, disadvantages / advantages that this kind can have and when it is recommended to take shots (morning, evening, afternoon, etc.), equipment recommended.

Landscape photography is a photographic genre which can be divided into two major groups: natural landscapes and cityscapes. Natural scenery is those related to the mountain, the sea, more in general to all that is nature.

For urban landscapes rather means of city views, countries, large urban metropolis, etc ..

From the earliest times, when photograph was born, the great photographers of the past are delighted to photograph the magnificent panoramas of the places where they were born and raised; this photographic genre requires a big commitment, perseverance and good knowledge to achieve significant results.

This photographic genre most often seeks to convey a sense of peace and freedom, majesty and perfection of nature, pleasant memories of a fascinating place.

In this photographic genre there is no need to have a fast camera, because the panorama is not moving, just as you do not need to have an excessive brightness of the objectives, it is however very useful to use the tripod when we want to use the very small aperture to store more details possible of the landscape and have a wide depth of field.

The first important aspect of landscape photography is to choose the right moment to photograph. The dawn in the early morning shades creates strong, at midday the light is too strong and tends to burn The colors, the evening warm sunset shades fills landscapes of reddish tones and shadows are getting longer. Not only that, but during the whole year the seasons cause other severe changes in shades and colors of nature, plant, sea, sky, etc ..

For landscape photography is best to take pictures at dawn or at sunset to have more saturated shades of warm colors and more, during the middle of the day however is not recommended because the light is too strong and burns The colors flattening the three-dimensionality of the landscape.

Early in the morning or just before evening the soft, diffused light of these hours will know how to donate to the subject three-dimensionality and volume.

The shadows are always soft and delicate and Solid colors and well saturated.

During the sunsets tones are warmest, but we say that now have been viewed hundreds of postcards, more original rather than dawn with shades colder and therefore more suggestive.

One of the most important aspects of landscape photography is the composition of the scene being photographed.

We can take pictures with calm, unhurried choosing well the right shot that will make the best of the three dimensional scene.

The most important decision to be taken is to decide what to include in your landscape.

Sometimes it can be useful to include in the composition of some people to attract the viewer's attention to a particular point or to give a sense of proportion in relation to the rest of the photographic scene. So what we need to understand is that in this photographic genre it is absolutely necessary to study the scene and if the result does not satisfy us, we can always, for example changing the angle, trying to make things more interesting and dynamic.

Basically you should always try to concentrate on a well-balanced composition, clean from every aspect unwanted and out of context, look for homogeneous backgrounds and scenes not too distracting confusionate vision.

In landscape photography as in other photographic genres, there are some rules that can be helpful: The importance of the subject, the rule of thirds, the line of flight, the diagonals.

It is necessary to carefully assess the balance and the balanced distribution of each element that will choose to include in the final to take avoiding anything not strictly necessary that the contrary would be distracting and annoying. Classic examples of disturbing elements are the telephone poles places right behind the main subject, garbage cans, street signs, passing vehicles, contrasting buildings with the beauty of nature.

Landscape photography also includes the urban landscape, not only that of nature.

Beautiful landscapes may also be of the skyline of the metropolis, the beautiful monuments, night lights, or the architectural details of the big cities of our land, or more simply small but charming seaside countries as required or mountain villages.

There are also photographs Panoramic which are the maximum representation of the landscape as being in widescreen enclose in one imagine a vast environment.

They are created by two or more photographs which are then assembled together in post-production with famous software (Photoshop). More pictures we take of our scene and broader will be our view.

Other kind of photography are the photos in HDR (High Dynamic Range). With photo editing is very particular techniques can increase the contrast, saturation, and the dynamic range of the image, creating very suggestive effects.

Below we are going to list some strengths and weaknesses of landscape photography

merits

1- The landscape does not move, so we will not get very far and effort with the fear of not being able to photograph our subject.

2- It does not require very expensive equipment to begin shooting.

3- It facilitates color correction even if the day is not exactly perfect.

4- With careful programming, equipment, road itinerary and weather, we will have a high percentage of chance to get good photographs.

defects

1- apathetic is difficult to reach the place to take the picture also in relation to the right time of day. If we are on vacation often we have only one chance to shoot a beautiful landscape.

2- Is very easy to fall into the common error of a trivial composition or scene too full of details that create confusion.

3- apathetic there is the lack of a precise subject in the scene you're photographing, or give an incorrect depth of field.

4- Perhaps the most difficult aspect however is the objective difficulty to capture the sensations that you feel at that moment; the picture tends to lose three dimensional landscape and the majesty of nature.

  

Bibliography

1-     https://www.lensculture.com/articles/abigail-smithson-the-land-3-photographers-views-on-landscape

          2-   http://carterlandscapephotography.com.au/what-is-landscape-photography/

           3-      http://www.naturephotographers.net/np101/gt0804-1.html

Visual communication in applied photography-Pop Art

Pop Art

Pop Art is a term often used to mean the abbreviation of Popular Art, a cultural and artistic movement born mainly in Britain and the United States in the late fifties in the twentieth century. The spread of this movement takes place especially in the sixties, the years of economic boom, the extreme consumerism above all the years of protests and revolutions of students across the world.

Pop art is called popular art because the artists of this movement focus all their attention mainly on the "simple" objects that are produced by the big industries for consumption or everyday use such as canned foods, soft drinks, comics and many other everyday objects. Other artists instead use as a source of inspiration of the images created by the media at that time were now becoming more and more important for the whole economy of the rich countries, for example, images that portray the face of famous celebrities, politicians or American musicians or images used to advertise somehow manifest a famous product.

On the side we can see a famous artist Andy Warhol dedicated to actress Liz Taylor in 1963.

The artists of the Pop Art using these objects or common products to represent them outside of their usual context.In fact the object is isolated or large and, therefore, becomes protagonist of the work of art . In this way a simple object,created only for the purpose of being consumed , can express different feelings and emotions, is seen with a different eye from the careful observer and therefore the art through what approaches to everyday reality.

Many artists of the Pop Art in their works through these common objects, ironically try to protest and denounce the society they live in, where we witness the invasion of the mass media, advertising, industry and then everything else that leads to this.

Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns realised the first "combine-painting", paintings made by combining different materials and symbolic objects of mass society.

The most popular and famous artists who have done a great movement of Pop Art and widespread cultural movement, social and artistic world, are particularly Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Claes Oldenburg and Jimi Dine

The protagonists of the works of Andy Warhol are the commercial products of mass consumption or the most popular images, such as detergents, canned soups, bottled drinks, portraits of movie stars and show business. The technique used by Warhol is almost always the photographic magnification and screen printed on canvas; only the artist stretches the synthetic color on the substrate in some cases. By repeating the same image Warhol deprives it of any aesthetic and moral significance and denounced the degradation of American society.

Below we can see another work of Andy Warhol Campbell's Soup Cans titled 1962, acrylic on canvas.

 

The most famous works by Roy Lichtenstein is instead based on the comics, which in those years are becoming increasingly popular and beds for many young people. The artist enlarges a sticker normal and then isolates it from its context. Then meticulously reproduces the "screen" typeface, drawing by hand all the characteristic colorful dots, and uses a thick contour line. In this way an image created for a popular use, because it is destined to be reproduced in millions of copies becomes unique and therefore acquires a great artistic value.

Below we can see one of these works by Roy Lichtenstein Pop titled Girl with tear III.

Art movement between 1900-present day

Art movement between 1900-present day

Modern art in a term that refers to the art born in the years 1870-1970.

These changes, that art has had during all these years have certainly also due to the change of society and therefore people, thought, philosophy, we can say that art can be seen as the "reflection 'of human society.

Between 1870-1970 in the history there have been many changes, below we are going to analyze some of these movements.

Fauvism

The term Fauves (wild beasts in French) is a group of painters, mostly French, who at the beginning of the twentieth century (1905-1908) gave rise to the short time duration experience, but of great importance in the evolution art. This current is also called Fauvism.

The first to use the term fauves was an art critic, precisely Vauxcelles, he called the room where exposed these artists as a "cage aux Fauves", a "wild beasts", for the "wild" expressive violence of color .

Young Fauves discussed much impressionism, often in negative terms but appreciating the novelty of a light generated from the combination of pure colors.

Their art was based on the simplification of forms, on the abolition of perspective and chiaroscuro, the use of bright and unnatural, sharp colors on the use of pure color, often squeezed directly from the tube onto the canvas, and a clear and marked line contour. The important thing was not as academic art, the meaning of the work, but the shape, the color, the immediacy.

the purpose of this movement of art was to use art as a means of expression

the greatest exponents of this corrent are: Matisse, Rouault, Derain, Vlaminck, Alexis Mérodack-Jeanneau and Marquet

Futurism

Futurism is the most important movement that was born in Italy in the twentieth century, a movement that has tried to change the way of thinking and living of society.

The artists of futurism gather around the writer Filippo Tommaso Marinetti.

 Marinetti is the man who invented the word Futurism, with which the group claims to want to get rid of everything that was produced. The past, they think, hurts the man and makes him weak and sentimental, so it should be replaced with symbols of progress: the speed of cars, the power of the air, the energy produced in the factories. In 1909 and in those years the city are transformed into cities and industrial centers arise.

To strike the attention of contemporaries, Marinetti writes that a racing car is more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace, a famous Greek statue of a winged woman, symbol of victory: the myth of classicism opposes the myth of modernity.

The futurists love to talk about them through the challenge: go in cafes, theaters, concerts and trigger riots and unrest among the public with offensive or violent behavior sentences. It's the way they shake people, to manifest a rebellion that affects all aspects of life and reach into the homes

For even futuristic books and literature, like art, they must get rid of the rules of the past that make them boring and outdated. Marinetti therefore invents a new way to write and read the texts: in his books are not the words printed neatly, but are free on the page (for this are called parolibere). If the word indicates an explosion, such as bum, this should be written in large and from the bottom up, to the reader to imagine the roar of the explosion suddenly.

The way the words are written helps the imagination and affects the reader's attention.

Umberto Boccioni recounts in his works does he see from the balcony of his house, or walking through the streets of Milan. In The City Rises (1910-11) the movement of horses, the workers, the smoke of industries in the distance, everything becomes a raging river that rises up and sweeps streets and buildings. It is the strength of the work and the frensy of modern life that creates a vortex in which things and people mingle as if they were liquid; Boccioni believes that the bodies and objects can penetrate, get in each other, and on this issue creates some sculptures in wood and plaster.

Another place loved by Boccioni and the Futurists is the train station, another symbol of progress. There, the artist can paint the shadows of people shuffled steam locomotives and capture under the moods of those who leave and those who remain.

Dadaism

Dadaism is an artistic protest movement that was born during the First World War as a reaction to the culture and values ​​that led to the war.

The dadismo want to give scandal with an art that refuses Traditional methods and experiments with new forms of expression.

The dadismo takes its name from the "dada", a word that means nothing, it is said that this word was found by the Dadaists opening the French vocabulary at random, when they were looking for a suitable name to express their protest.

Dadaism was founded in Zurich in Switzerland, while Europe is shocked by the First World War, and Switzerland is a pacifist nation, which brought together German refugees, Romanian, French and Russian. Among them are artists, poets, actors and politicians emigrated like Tristan Tzara and Hugo Ball who in 1916 founded the Cabaret Voltaire, a literary cafe which ridicules the rationality in which the French philosopher Voiltaire believed.

Is here comes the dadismo with his revolt: The Dadaists refuse values ​​such as homeland, moral and honor that led to the outbreak of war, they believe that everything is casual and meaningless and so seek a new freedom of expression.

From Switzerland, Dadaism spreads in New York, Germany and France, and, thanks to magazines, become an international movement. Mixing literature, theater, dance, music, painting, Dadaists want to fuse art and life through provocative actions even life becomes an artistic experience.

For the first time the art does not depend more on the ability of the artist or manually by an aesthetic idea, but by chance, by the unexpected, the impromptu combination of objects or words.

Hans Arp, for example, hand ripping some squares and paste them in the order in which they fell: Art becomes the result of a casual gesture.

The big news introduced by the Dadaists is a way to "make art '. Until then artists have "created": they chose a model and have it copied with a traditional technique such as painting. The Dadaists do not create works, but built objects. Refuse techniques and I traditional subjects, do not copy reality but create taking objects from them and pasting them on wood, cardboard and even on photo paper.

Surrealism

Giving voice to the forces of imagination, dreams and the unconscious.
Born officially in 1924 with the manifesto drawn up by the French poet André Breton, Surrealism is an avant-garde movement that aims to express, either with words or with images, the free operation of thought, to free him from the control exercised by reason. The artists who are part come from different countries; the German Max Ernst and Hans-Jean Arp, the French André Masson and Yves Tanguy, the Belgian René Magritte and Paul Delvaux, the Catalans Salvador Dalí and Joan Miró. They intend to create art forms directly resulting from the powerful world of fantasy, dreams and the unconscious forces that live in the deepest and most hidden part of the human mind.

What is surreal? Literally is something super-real, that is something that goes beyond what we can see or live daily in so-called real. When the end of the First World War was born the surrealist movement, coordinated by the French poet André Breton, is quite the disappointment with the real life that leads to the search for a super-reality, a different reality, which is 'over', in other worlds: the dream, the fantasy, the underwater world in the most hidden part of the human soul and the surrealists want to bring to light through art.
Surrealism, doing just the critical and rebellious spirit of Dadaism, was thus born as a protest movement against a society that believed rich in spiritual values ​​but then was able to produce inhuman events such as the First World War. Between 1924 and 1925 this group of poets and artists is animated by a deep desire for transformation and improvement of the human condition. Unlike the Dadaist group, Breton and his friends, the poets Paul Eluard, Philippe Soupault, Louis Aragon, Benjamin Peret; the painters Max Ernst, Yves Tanguy, Hans-Jean Arp, Joan Miro, believe in the possibility of a better future and make their art available to the change. First you need to reform the same art, giving the artist complete freedom to expression,
The surrealists set out to express, both with writing with painting, man's inner forces, of which we are not aware of and that we are not able to explain, since they are located in the deepest part of the mind and inaccessible (the unconscious).
From childhood man follows rules and social behaviors that lead him into adulthood to be what society asks him to be giving priority to reason and order.
The surrealists want to eliminate with art and art itself the barrier that separates the waking from sleep. Behind these ideas there are studies of Sigmund Freud, father of psychoanalysis, the science that studies the mechanisms of the mind. As Freud treated his patients bringing in their inner surface through free association of thoughts, so the Surrealists bring to light the hidden reality by composing poems in words that, from time to time, come out without a logical order, a technique that is called automatic writing, or making paintings populated by fantastic creatures, pure imagination, that come straight from the depths of thought.
The surrealist painters are very different personality from each other, so each one plays in an original way these basic ideas: the monstrous beings Ernst to extraterrestrial worlds of Tanguy, by deliberately childish drawings of Miró the harmonious forms and dreamy Delvaux, from images Magritte's magic to the baroque paintings of Dalí
The absurdity of surrealist scenes provokes astonishment, surprise, leaves you speechless because it destroys the certainties, it questions what we are used to; the reality may be as we see it in another way: this is precisely the surreality sought by Breton and others. After recovering from the initial shock, the viewer realises that those images have stimulated other mechanisms of his mind, that not even know they had, by setting in motion his ability to imagine, awakening the imagination, giving voice to the dreams or nightmares; these images, therefore, make you think about the fact that a different world from the current is not impossible.

Pop Art

Born between Europe and America in the fifties and sixties of the 20th century, the movement of pop art reflected in their works the modern consumer society. Going into the race with the same aggressive and impersonal language of the mass media, pop art experiments new techniques, uses retouched photographs, collages and assemblages, sculptures of plaster and even theatrical gestures to unveil the latest light and shadow well-being and reporting the loss of man in front of a civilisation that desires always requires new and increasingly amplified dreams

Although the term pop comes from the abbreviation of the English word popular "popular", pop art does not identify a form of folk art, but an art that speaks a language that everyone knows: that of the mass media, advertising, television and film.

The birth of this art form takes place in England in the fifties, with a debate on the mass society; US pop art takes shape around the middle of the decade with the first research of Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns on the relationship between painting and objects.

Pop art plays with the new idols created by the media and transformed into images to admire objects like the can of Coca Cola or Campbell soup and the celebrities of the moment, from Marilyn Monroe to John and Jacqueline Kennedy.

In an age where everything is become reproducible and duplicated thanks to the possibilities offered by the industry, the art is considering its own role: the artists ask themselves whether and how to maintain the unique character of the work of art, or if there is a need to reconcile the reality of consumerism with its own language.

By the different answers given to these questions comes the diversity of styles and techniques that distinguishes the pop art: there are those who appropriates and industrial techniques obsessively repeats the images, such as Andy Warhol, who plays plaster the exalted objects from advertising, such as Claes Oldenburg. Some people even through traditional instruments enhances the same content of the mass media, such as Johns painting the American flag on the ambiguity of mind between the object and its reproduction: worth more the picture or symbol that is represented?

The leading representatives of pop art are Warhol, Oldenburg, George Segal, Johns, Roy Lichtenstein, Tom Wesselmann and James Rosenquist

The main interpreter of pop remains, however, Andy Warhol, who is also a film director Original: is able to transform from one object into a work of art produced in series, where the image repetition reinforces the message, as in the case of the series in the electric chair. When playing on cans of soup canvas confirmation that the language of advertising is become art and which tastes have become standardised.