Cameras before Photography
 Photography means Light Writing;
popular artistic media today that
utilizes a camera to capture images.
 The science behind the camera was
discovered in 5th Century BCE
China, but cameras did not appear
until the 11th century in modern day
Iraq.
 How do Cameras work?
 Light bounces off the object and
travels in a straight line.
 Light reflected from an object can
project an image of that object
onto a surface under controlled
circumstances. How does that
image look to us?
Image of the Castle in Prague
being projected onto a wall
using a camera obscura.
Camera Obscura
 Artists inside the
chamber would trace
the reflected view onto
paper, creating the
forerunner to the
photograph.
Illustration showing artist inside a
camera obscura.
 These dark rooms
helped artists perfect
perspective and
chiaroscuro.
In the 17th century artists discovered they did not
need to be in the chamber.
Vermeer…Painter and Photographer?
 Art historians studying
Baroque master Vermeer
debate if his works were
made with a camera
obscura.
 There is little drawing
under his works; the lines
there are simple contours.
 The mirror in the Music
Lesson also shows a
mysterious rectangular
object being reflected….
Vermeer…Painter and Photographer?

Phillip Steadman created a model of the room
and set the camera obsura up in the location
determined from the mirror image.

The image in the camera matched the
painting…even the shadows were in the correct
place!

Is Vermeer a Great Artist? OR Great Fraud?
The Modern Camera
 A light-tight box with
an opening to admit
light, a lens to focus
the light, and a lightsensitive surface to
receive and chemically
CAPTURE the image
created by the light.
 The first captured
image created by a
camera used by Joseph
N. Niepcs ca 1826.
Louis Jacques Mande Daugerre
 First inventor to capture a
clear photographic image.
 Captured the images on a
copper-plate coated with
silver iodide. The plate is
the photograph, thus a
positive image.
 Called the daguerreotype.
 10-20 minute exposure
time made it commercially
viable.
Le Boulevard du Temple, 1839.
Daguerre, Le Boulevard du Temple and Monet’s
Boulevard des Caupines in Paris, ca.1873
William Fox Talbot
 Created photographs by
capturing the image in
reverse on a plate called a
negative.
 The negative could be
used to create multiple
copies on positive images
on photographic paper.
 Called the calotype.
 This system beat out the
Daguerreotype, which
was no longer used after
1865.
Early calotype taken by Talbot
showing photographers at work, 1853.
Bearing Witness and Documenting the Everyday
Photojournalism
 Once photographs could be
reproduced in newspaper, the
field of photojournalism born.
 Due to the mechanical nature
of creating a photograph, some
mistakenly believe that a
photograph is highly objective,
without opinion or point of
view.
 The image must be framed and
captured; reality is
manipulated to suit the
photographer’s aims.
 Not mere illustrations;
oftentimes these photographs
become iconic, shaping our
collective memory of an event.
Images taken after Hurricane Katrina
devastated the Gult Coast in 2005.
Dorothea Lange, Migrant Mother, 1936.
 US government realized power
of images early; the Farm
Securities Administration of
the Dept of Agriculture
subsidized photographers to
document the crisis of the Dust
Bowl and Depression.
 Lange took several images of
this mother.
 The migrant mother’s
grandson has a website with
their story at
http://www.migrantgrandson.c
om/
“The good photograph is
not the object, the
consequences of the
photograph are the
objects. So that no one
would say, ’how did you
do it, where did you find
it, ‘ but they would say
that such things could
be.” – Dorothea Lange
Ansel Adams
 Known for his
photographs of the
American West.
 Believed the best
photographs needed to
contain a variety of values
from white to black.
 Photographer as artist
and technician.
 Avid member of the
Sierra Club; his art used
to create new National
Parks.
Ansel Adams, The Tetons and the Snake
River, Grand Teton National Park,
Wyoming, 1942.
Photography and Art
 Freed artists from creating
mimetic images.
 Early photos taken as
artistic images imitated the
subjects and poses seen in
paintings.
 Soft focus used to give an
artistic touch.
 However, since these early
images are imitating
painting rather than
exploring photography
some are pretty bad!
Henry Peach Robinson, Fading Away,
1858.
Julia Margaret Cameron
 Considered herself an amateur.
However Cameron was one of the
first to use close-ups and
carefully controlled lighting.
 Favored long exposures and
profile views.
 Created thousands of images,
portraits and posed scenes,
sometimes with her famous
friends such as Charles Darwin,
Alfred Lord Tennyson, and
Virginia Woolfe.
Julia Jackson photographed in 1886.
Certainly the work of Cameron was influential on the British artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti.
Alfred Stieglitz
 Early major proponent of
photography as an art form.
 Opened a photography art
gallery in NYC in 1905, and
published first photo journal
Camera Work from 1903 to 1917.
 Known for shooting “straight”.
Flatiron Building from Camera Work, 1903.
Henri Cartier-Bresson
 French photographer that also
found visual poetry in the
world around him.
 Felt good photography was the
result of the photographer and
not a mechanical process.
 “This recognition, in real life,
of a rhythm of surfaces, lines,
and values is for me the
essence of photography;
composition should be a
constant of preoccupation,
being a simultaneous coalition
– an organic coordination of
visual elements.”
Man Ray
 Famous photographer and
painter. Influential with
both the Dada and
Surrealist movements.
 Supported his art by taking
fashion photos for Vogue.
 Credited with inventing the
“Rayogram”, a technique in
which objects are placed on
photographic paper in the
dark room to create images.
(There is no camera).
Champs delicieux, second
Rayogram, 1922.
Cindy Sherman
 Interest in self-portraits
began from an assignment
at art school.
 Rather than true self-
portraits, she creates
stereotypical characters
recognizable by the
American/western
audience.
 Works in both black and
white, and color.
Cindy Sherman, Film Still #21
Cindy
Sherman,
Untitled
#355, 2000
The Digital Revolution
 Today’s cameras do not
use film.
 Lens focuses information
on sensors that translate
the hue and intensity of
light into digital files.
 Files are very easy to
manipulate today with
computer software like
Photoshop and
Instagram.
 Further blurs the line
between reality and
created image.
Woman sitting in front of Gursky’s
Stateville, Illinois, 2002.