Researching Photographers

Robert Adams, May 8th, 1937

Orange, New Jersey

Attended University of Colorado - transferred- University of Redlands in California

Photographed Western landscapes of North America

Human influence, neutrality, neutral position

For 5 years (1974) experimented. Photographed at night  for opposite of high altitude daylight

"element of risk"

In Robert Adams pictures I find a connection amongst all of them in a focused reality that freeze frames the image to observe the life happening at the specific time. What i found interesting was his experiment that he started taking photos in colorist tones then went off taking photos only at night to catch natures nocturnal lifestyle and to show us the side of patterns and colors that create whole different feelings of darkness.

 "Venetian Canal" 1894

 

"Winter- Fifth Avenue" 1893

"The Terminal"  1893

Alfred Stieglitz (1864-1890)

Hoboken, New Jersey

Charlie Institute (Private School in New York)

Wrote regularity for the The American Amateur Photographer magazine 

Joint exhibition of the Boston Camera Club, Photographic Society of Philadelphia and the Society of Amateur Photographers of New York

Two of his best known images, "Winter, Fifth Avenue" and "The Terminal".

In Aldfred Stieglitz photographs I feel a reality in witch conveys his use of the serpia color element. At one  time it can sofen an event or structure, a calm canal in a city, or while in others captures the cold and brittle feel of the snowy blizzard.

 

Helen Levitt 

(August 31, 1913 – March 29, 2009)

Brooklyn

Dropped out of High School, taught herself Photography

American photographer, 70 years

"Street photography" New York City 

..."the most celebrated and least known photographer of her time."

Children street culture: Chalk drawings

Still photography

The feelings I get from Helen Levitt photographs is the unlimited reality of city life and all the aspects that make it so impacting to us as civilians. In a few photo's I posted the color stands out stating that physical exsitance of the objects and their connection to what is actually happening in the picture. The pattern I see most after observing Levitts photos is the repetitive image day to day encounters.

Major, the pitbull/boxer mix

I chose this picture of my friends dog, Major, because its a simple yet descriptive image that captures a meaningful memory where I've once spent a lot of my time. The simplicity of the close up shot has a person to focus on that one object, to directly think about what the dogs reaction is and the relationship between the dog to the photographer. When it comes to identify the photograph there is really more behind its direct figure than what is said, just how William Eggleston's samples in his own series of photographs in his book.

Homework 1/26/11 Quotes

"It would be marvelous if this were the case, if the place itself, and not merely the picture, were the work of art.: - Pg. 5

"It would be marvelous to think that the ordinary, vernacular life in and around Memphis might be in its quality more sharply incised, formally clear, fictive, and mysteriously purposeful than it appears elsewhere, endowing the least pretentious of raw materials with ineffable dramatic possibilities." Pg. 5

"Photography is a system of visual editing." Pg 6

"What he means is that a photographer wants form, an unarguably right relationships of shapes, a visual stability in which all components are equally important. " Pg. 7

"In this peculiar art, form and subject are defined simultaneously." Pg. 7

"...color has induced timidity and an avoidance of those varieties of meaning that are not in the narrowest sense aesthetic." Pg 9

"They seem concerned simply with describing life." Pg 12

"It is not impossible to describe one subject in two different ways." Pg 12

"Such a reading might damage the picture only for the very impressionable, and might prompt some others to look at the picture longer than they would have without the encouragement of words." Pg 13


"...the pictures reproduced here are no more interesting than the person who made them, and their intelligence, wit knowledge and style.." Pg 13

"A picture is after all only a picture, a concrete kind of fiction, not to be admitted as hard evidence or as the quantifiable data of social sciences." Pg 14