Chapter 13
Photography
Objectives
After studying this chapter, students should be able to:
 Explain the fundamental differences between photography and painting
 Describe the ways photography has influenced painting, and painting has influenced
photography.
 Enumerate the basic characteristics of early photography.
 Distinguish between photography that is Pictorial, Straight, the F/64 Group,
Documentary, Snapshot, and Color.
Outline of Chapter
A. Photography and Painting
B. Photography and Painting: The Pictorialists
1. Used painting techniques to elevate photography to realm of art.
2. Pictorialists controlled details by subordinating them.
3. Important part of subject matter is centered in the frame.
4. Lighting, also borrowed from painting, was sharp and clearly directed.
5. Subject matter is usually dramatic.
6. Image is in soft focus, Rembrandt-like, centrally weighted, and balanced
symmetrically.
7. Evoked emotions that bordered on the sentimental (i.e., emotionally shallow).
8. Sentimentality is the falsifying of feelings by demanding easy responses.
C. Straight Photography
1. Stieglitz: Pioneer of Straight Photography
2. The F/64 Group
a. Group derives its name from the small aperture, F/64, that ensures depth of
field.
b. Interested in formal quality, not sentimental subject matter.
D. The Documentarists
1. Time is factor in portraying a disappearing world.
2. Can develop instinct for powerful formal statement in crisis moment.
3. Atget’s Paris scene reflects a photograph more than object of photograph.
4. Direct photograph is characteristic, eliminating concern for the formal.
5. Best documentarists search for coherence of elements and decisive moment: peak
of intensity defined with reference to light, spatial relationships, and expression.
E. The Modern Eye
1. A rebellion against earlier movements.
2. Has low technical demands, allows for cluttered composition, and catches reality.
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3. Led to questionable legislation and reduced function for public funding
(Mapplethorpe).
F. Color Photography
1. Often subject matter favors nuances of lighting, texture, structure, not the subject.
2. Similar to pictorialism in that it is of picturesque subjects: National Geographic.
Terms Used in Chapter 13
pictorialist
sentimentality
framing
straight photography
F/64 Group
Documentarists
Possible Discussion/Lecture Topics
1.
Can photography reveal more about reality than painting?
2.
Discuss in detail Stieglitz’s Paula. You can find the photograph on www.Google.com
by entering Stieglitz “Paula”. In this photograph, you will find an excellent example of
pictorialism. Juxtapose that with Stieglitz’s Steerage (available also on Google).
Afterwards, ask students to discuss one of Stieglitz’s photographs of Georgia O’Keeffe.
They should write a group paper on their analysis. Which of Stieglitz’s techniques does
he use in this photograph? Explain.
3.
Discuss photography as art with students. Ask them to compare two portraits: one by
Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres entitled Pauline Eleanore de Galard de Brassac de
Bearn, Princesse de Broglie painted in 1853, oil on canvas, hanging in The Metropolitan
Museum of Art, New York (available on www.Google.com). The other is by Julia
Margaret Cameron in 1867 (in the text on p. 359). In these two portraits, created within
14 years of each other, what differences are apparent? What are the details of the
similarities and the differences? How do students respond to each?
Study Guide (based on text)
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9.
What camera preceded the photographic camera?
When was the permanent photograph invented and by whom?
What are the characteristics of the camera lens? Study Delaroche’s painting.
What effect does widening the aperture of a lens have on depth of field?
Why did Baudelaire think that photography was art’s “mortal enemy”?
What are the subject matter and the content of O’Sullivan’s Canyon de Chelley?
What are pictorialists? What are the characteristics of their approach to photography?
What is straight photography? What are its characteristics?
What is a documentarist? What are characteristics of this kind of photography?
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10.
What are each of the following photographers best known for: Alfred Stieglitz, Edward
Weston, Ansel Adams, Eugene Atget, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Diane Arbus, and Cindy
Sherman?
Exercises
1. Compare O’Sullivan’s photograph (Figure 13-5) with Adams’s version. Is the subject matter
the same in both photographs? Explain in a journal entry.
2. Take ten photographs that illustrate an idea. For example, you could illustrate poverty, greed,
materialism, abandonment, or power. There certainly are other possibilities. Make a collage of
your photographs and find a poem that seems to say the same thing. Attach the poem in some
way to your collage. You may wish to choose the words to a song.
3. To take notice of the wealth of information which we do not see, throw a hanger. Walk to that
spot and take 10 photographs without moving from that spot. Create a collage of the
photographs that you have taken. On the back of your collage, write a journal entry that explores
the things that you saw that you had not noticed before.
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