Found Photograph from Minnesota - grey miller

This photograph was found in the book “Double Exposure: Images of Black Minnesota” and the photo was taken by John Glanton. This photo can be found on page 133. All the photos in this book were taken in the 1940s and 50s in Minneapolis, Minnesota. This photo was moving to me because the person in the photo kind of looks like me and my sibling. I am Blaxican (Black and Mexican-American) and I rarely see people who look like me in archives, so it was affirming to think that this person may have had a similar ancestry as me and had been apart of a Black community in the Midwest (I’m from Evanston, Illinois). This made me think of Willis’ quote when discussing images of Black men. She said her “…intention was to challenge those images and the history books by identifying the breadth and depth of experiences of black people as recorded in photographs”. Looking at these archival photos reminds me of the diversity within the Black community.

Picture by Brian Palmer (Left), Valeria Sandino (Right)

This photo taken by Brian Palmer spoke to me at first glance. It reminds me of a photo I took about 3 weeks ago with an old, passed down digital camera. It is of Bariloche, Argentina inside of the neighborhood I once grew up in as a child.

I was able to capture a child in my picture as well as the surrounding expansive forest, snow, soccer goal, and truck. Brian's photo stood out to me as nature was also very prevalent in the photo (taken in a forest) and because they both hold similar meanings.

I moved to Argentina when I was about three years old because my mother and her whole family are from there. Getting to know and love Argentina, living there until third grade, took an immense toll on me once we moved back to Miami, FL. Brian's photograph was taken after moving to Virginia, the home of his father's family, as an attempt to combine his African-American past with the collectively built American narrative. This photograph I captured speaks to me as a fragment of my past and present self; the photo incorporates a young girl amongst the beautiful, natural scenery of my childhood home: Bariloche, Argentina. Meanwhile, now I am older and able to capture my former home that I still carry immense love for, perhaps at the same time capturing a glimpse of my younger self through the young girl (caught by chance) on the photograph.

Valeria Sandino

Picture by Dana Scruggs(left), Jiapeng Tang (right). 

In the right picture: Zihan Xu

What is home? Can we build a home for ourselves in a place far from our hometown? Home seems to be more than just decoration. Look at this place in the photo: white walls, gray floors, and a sofa left by the previous occupant. We are all just travelers to this city, but in such a simple space, after a day being exposed to tons of information, the noise of the traffic, and light reflected by the glass of buildings, at the end of it, we meet and speak out freely. We only physically change this space a little, but we have already had a deep connection with it, and it's the home we've built.

Picture by Brad Ogbonna(Montauk, N.Y.) Lijing Dai(New York,N.Y.)

I feel emotionally connected to Brad’s self-portrait above. The delivery of the emptiness and fullness in his photo conveys a sense of peace and healing for me. Instead of framing the surroundings, Brad turns the camera to himself. Maybe he was not fully prepared for this self-portrait but I can see there is a calmness and happiness on his face away from social media and stressful things. I was inspired by the kind of unpreparedness for taking my self-portrait.This photo was accidentally taken by my film camera when I didn’t realize there was still a last film in it. Although it didn’t show my whole face in the photo, it naturally presents my real body gesture and situation at that moment which helps me check myself and somehow portraits the real me.

Lijing Dai

Butterfly Trail

The depiction of the butterfly varies from person to person. For me, Ive always noticed the way in which they carry themselves, a mix between rising and falling. The cracks in their wings brought together to make these intricate designs. Designs that are meant to fool the eye .

In looking at the city, whether from a bird's eye view - thought a key hole, from the street or from inside it can feel like a dystopia. Seemingly stretching on forever - another trick to the eye.

My mother has always told me that a butterfly needs to be somewhere just as beautiful, hopeful, light, fun and ever changing as they are. However, their essence should be forever present in a fragmented dystopia like New York.

While working with this project I took these two ideas and attempted to display the essence of the butterfly. I've always associated the trail of a butterfly as a vibrant gold. Flowing though the city to find some sort of shelter. To me the greenhouse of my uncle - or the idea of an isolated area where life is meant to be sheltered and taken care of.

For the presentation of the city I wanted the images to be fragmented. When I looked over a city from a rooftop I get a sense of the dystopia the most. While the trail of the butterfly seemed appropriate to actually have the butterfly itself seemed out of place almost inappropriate to let something so delicate in something so harsh.

Brewer R.

Kayla Gilly Final Project

Urban Oasis - Final Project

New York City is known to be one of the most dense, bustling cities in the world. When people think of New York, they think of the architecture, the skyline, and what makes it a city. Little do people think about the beautiful pockets of nature and serenity that you can find in the middle of the city. I went around the city and shot various different parks, such as Central Park, Morningside Park, Prospect Park, Riverside Park, Fort Tyron, Inwood Hill, New York Botanical Garden, small neighborhood gardens, and just outside the city limits, Sleepy Hollow. There are so many aspects to enjoy about these places, such as the cherry blossoms in April and all the waterfalls and ponds. While looking at my photographs, you may notice how certain parts of the photo (trees, grass, clouds, people, flowers, etc) are significantly lighter and more contrast-y than other parts of the photo. That is because I used infrared 35mm film with an infrared lens filter to take these photos. Infrared is a type of photography that is known to detect heat, which is best done by capturing living things. So, that's where my idea of capturing natural life in New York came from. The infrared inspired me to photograph nature more, and will continue to do so.

Skater Girls

Ella Caridi

Juno is a known skater in Washington Square Park; she carries a sense of personal style. She wears loose baggy jeans and big oversized jackets that fit her as a skateboarder, “astetic” and her personality. I wanted to capture who Juno is as a person. I photographed her around the city, specifically the Lower East and Upper West  Side. The photos taken on the Upper West  Side suggest that “this person looks out of place.” She skates up and down the street and creates an environment for herself by doing tricks on her skateboard around the Met steps and inside the Met fountain. In addition, I photographed her in scenery that contrasted Juno’s “astetic” at the Washington Mews and a grand church on the Upper West Side. However, by bringing Juno and her friends (Chuck and Aurora) to locations with a vibrant atmosphere, they both have distinct styles of clothing by wearing colorful pieces and unique accessories that match the background of the east side with colorful posters, basketball courts, and stickers on the bottom of their skateboards. The photos contrast the idea of “this person looks out of place.”Photos of the girls create scenes between themselves in the Lower East Side. Overall the images create a place for the images to almost speak for themselves and allow the audience to create their interpretation of these photographs.

Finnley Xuereb

This project was born out of a long process of learning and creating, while I began creating this because of my love for John Coplan’s Body Parts and the way he transforms the body less into an individual but more of a moving living mass. While I wanted to follow in his footsteps I chose to focus more on the presence of an image. I wanted to see how I could make the nude the norm with something else that steals its attention. Fabric came to me when thinking about clothes, and while I wanted to originally put them on the images, I found it better to put them anywhere but on the images. I wanted to test the thought process of an audience when they have to make an effort to see the images, and while I still play with this, my project took a turn. The black square in the middle is meant to be annoying, it is meant to make you want to know what is under it. Not only is the frame bigger than the images, but the “image” is covered. The power of this black square comes from its individuality. It stands out ironically since it is the only fully black image. I wanted to make the audience hate that it was covered, the presence that this image takes is created form its difference from the rest. Even with nude images besides it, you still crave more, want more, look for everything you don’t have. This project helped me explored the body, but also the theory and logic behind playing with the weight of an image, even if you can’t see it.

"LIPRESSIONS"

Lips: On a cold February evening, I sat in my room reminiscing through the thousands of personal photographs on my computer. Photo by photo, my attention began to focus on the individual mouths of the people in my life. At that moment, I became fascinated by the uniqueness of a person's mouth/teeth/smile. I thought it to be ironically cliche of me, being the daughter of a dentist, to suddenly become interested in the dental and facial variations of people's mouths. Especially after refusing to even consider medical school and following in my mother's footsteps. But then again, my newfound fixation was connected to my upbringing. Growing up in the suburban South, I was taught to be respectful and smile to everyone, and not make grotesquely strange faces in order to make a good impression. 

Impressions:  In being told that social impressions were important, I wanted to turn the meaning impression towards the physical markings left by our lips. I connected how similar lips are to fingerprints. They too have their own unique impression from their size, skin pattern, and color. When a lip impression is transferred from one item to another it leaves bits of information. Lips leave impressions on people through kissing and on objects like cups, straws, and silverware. And so this sparked my interest in producing images that focused on the impressions people leave behind, both socially and physically. 

-Gabby Bates, 23

Cotton Reading Response (isa)

Hiroshi Sugimoto is a photographer who reads space, memory, and beauty in relation to the passage of time. He documents the essence of time by preserving it not as a rigid linear, chronological sequence of events but rather as a circular, interwoven fluid form in each of his photographic series. Regardless of what he decides to photograph, whether it be dioramas or famous historical wax figures, white screens illuminated in an abandoned theatre, the expansive nature of seascapes, a candle burn time, or blurred forms of renown architecture, Sugimoto masterfully uses photography as a medium to bend time. 

His series of photographs, Dioramas immerses us in the coexistence of fake reality; Theatres suggests apocalyptic times; Seascapes deal with transcendence of space relative to time; In Praise of Shadows and Portraits explores the past anachronistically by tracing fire and human evolution; and Architecture traces the beginning of landmarks to its contemporary present: modernist architecture (Sugimoto). The camera thus becomes a time capsule, presenting figments of the spatiotemporal, polymorphous characteristics he seems to envision and produce in each frame. 

Regarding the technical aspects of his practice, Sugimoto is calculated and precise. He is held to high regard as his exacting photographic works are of high caliber and require impressive dexterity as his analog process mostly is with gelatin silver print. He meticulously and strategically controls the photographs, crafting them as envisioned in his mind. Take, for example, his Sea of Buddha series, which took seven years lobbying for permission to photograph a spiritual and sacred site (Mason). He uses a black-and white 8×10 large-format camera to focus on the richness of detail and tonality of darkness to light comprised from a spectrum of grey that would otherwise be lost. The phrase “Time Exposed” was coined by Sugimoto, and this term refers to his painstakingly long process of opening the shutter for hours at a time to add an element of time (David, Caplan). This endeavor is particularly notable in his series Theatres and Seascapes, both of which are his ongoing, lifelong projects that use long exposure. Both series are abstract and allow the viewer to think and engage with the work. As light is reduced to black and white, his photographs appear to be grounded in minimalism and simplicity but the context of his works reveal a much more nuanced, layered complexity to them. Though compositionally similar and taken with linear perspective, since it is in frontal view, the resulting outcome of the photographs each possesses a unique, individual quality inherent to all. Sugimoto deliberately constructed many iterations of each project, and made each one personal by varying the duration of the shot and traveling across the world to spatially take such a multitude of photos. 

In Theatres, Sugimoto employs the “Time Exposed” technique for the duration of each movie, filling life and motion into a blank, white void of nothingness and absence on screen (McGrath)​​. But perhaps it isn’t all that empty; the photograph comes alive through interpretation and, of course, the opulence surrounding the frame in the theatre itself. Despite the fact that the on screen projection cannot be seen with the naked eye, it intrinsically is captivating as the photograph plays with our relative perception of space and time. Its stillness and quietude also comes to terms with the sensory overload of afterimages, frames overlapped to make the entirety of the movie (Dunne). Viewers can visualize the impact because the series lies in paradox and dichotomy—it is both grounded in reality but magical and surreal, frozen in time but also playing in motion, a physical space masked in the metaphysical… Such subtle and fleeting nuances of photography give rise to the timelessness in his series. (Riordan)

Enter into the alluring peace and sheer calmness of the scene as the viewer indulge in the tranquility of the experience, one that is intangible and otherworldly: the Seascape series. In this series, the element of water and air work in conversation with another. Again, Sugimoto maintains certain technical aspects like the composition, angle, framing, and point of view, but the weather conditions, lighting, time, and space all influence the photograph, making them all different from the rest. Some are more subdued with a blurred gradient plane while others have a more defined convex, allowing the viewer to get lost and then found in human consciousness. There is something quite unsettlingly quiet and lonely. But at the same time, the interconnectedness of the development of time and beauties within nature evokes a certain kind of nostalgia, a close memory, or of humanity that cannot quite be pinpointed exactly. 

As mentioned before, the eye cannot see the photographs he takes on both of these series, but rather the camera does, making it almost an impossible feat. In the culmination of his works, he does not capture reality by documenting just that one moment in time. Instead, he takes the time to look at what is being seen through the camera and focuses on the how; for instance, he would hone in on how he would be able to make his vision come to fruition without having to tinker with the scene post-production. Hyperaware and perceptive of the world around us, Sugimoto is a collector that constantly goes “hunting for antiques,” which is not surprising given his constant desire to seek new ideas and his pursuit in offering both creative and philosophical insight on visual photography (Force).

Though he does not disclose much about his personal life, Sugimoto was born and raised in Japan, traveled throughout the Soviet Union as well as Europe, moved to Los Angeles, and then to New York (Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth). Perhaps the displacement prevails in his works due to his search of identity as an artist with diverse range of experiences. Or maybe his estrangement are reflective in his personal struggles with his wife when it “was difficult to live as two artists together, so [they] decided to divorce” (Force). Furthermore, critics often muse on Sugimoto’s oeuvre, asking if “Eastern spirituality [is] implicit in [his] work” in an interview with HuffPost, in which he responded with “... whether it's Eastern spirituality or Western spirituality... There is a spirituality” (Cué). Moreover, the Hasselblad Center in the Göteberg (Sweden) Museum of Art, applauded Sugimoto for his mix of “Eastern meditative ideas with Western cultural motifs” (Britannica).  Nevertheless, Sugimoto is a famous contemporary photographer with challenging, ambivalent notions that skillfully basks in artistic representation is at the forefront of the art world.

In examining his iconic oeuvres, we can see he imbues thematic, conceptual notion that unifies works from different times and places, executing each of his enigmatic series with utmost perfection. The novelty and originality of his works invites thought-provoking discourse, raises constant questions, and draws for introspection (or so-called soul-searching), each of them in their own right. 

Administrator. “Review: Theaters by Hiroshi Sugimoto.” Musée Magazine, Musée Magazine, 17 Oct. 2016, https://museemagazine.com/culture/2016/9/27/review-theaters-by-hiroshi-sugimoto.

“Artworks.” Hiroshi Sugimoto, https://www.sugimotohiroshi.com/artworks.

Cué, Elena. “Interview with Hiroshi Sugimoto.” HuffPost, HuffPost, 7 Dec. 2017, https://www.huffpost.com/entry/interview-with-hiroshi-su_b_8924692. 

Dunne, Carey. “Hiroshi Sugimoto's Otherworldly Photographs of Movie Theaters.” Hyperallergic, 4 Oct. 2016, https://hyperallergic.com/323313/hiroshi-sugimotos-otherworldly-photographs-of-movie-theaters/. 

Force, Thessaly La. “Seeing like a Camera: Hiroshi Sugimoto.” Apollo Magazine, 14 Feb. 2015, https://www.apollo-magazine.com/seeing-like-camera-hiroshi-sugimoto/. 

“Hiroshi Sugimoto: Capturing the Transience of Time.” Photogpedia, 14 Mar. 2021, https://photogpedia.com/hiroshi-sugimoto/. 

“Hiroshi Sugimoto.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., https://www.britannica.com/biography/Hiroshi-Sugimoto. 

“Hiroshi Sugimoto: End of Time.” Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, https://www.themodern.org/exhibition/hiroshi-sugimoto-end-time. 

Mason, Brook. “Spiritual Side: Hiroshi Sugimoto Explores Space and Time with His 'Sea of Buddha'.” Wallpaper.com, Wallpaper*, 19 Feb. 2016, https://www.wallpaper.com/art/spiritual-side-hiroshi-sugimoto-comments-on-space-and-time-with-his-sea-of-buddha-series. --Jennifer You

Brewer Roberts Mini Research - Lee Friedlander

Lee Friedlander, an American photographer, worked in his style despite the opinion of others. Throughout his career, there were different areas and concepts he worked on and executed well. He started with famous musicians to snapshots/street art, portraits, civil rights movements, flowers and trees. There is a shortage of what he has not covered throughout his life. The way in which we understand and view contemporary American culture now was hugely affected by Friendlanders' collection of images. 

Friedlander began his career using a 35-millimeter black and white film studying in Los Angeles before moving to New York in the fifties. At this point, he was capturing images for the Atlantic Records label, primarily the jazz and blues musicians at the time, like Duke Ellington, Charles Mingus, and John Coltrane. He was different from the type of artist to be satiated by staying with the one subject matter of photographing musicians. He started in the fifties going all the way to the nines, almost reaching 2000, moving from the musicians to the "snapshot aesthetic" we are all very familiar with today—the time when he can be most recognizable for his impact on the photography world. In my own opinion, looking at his work from this point of his career onward reminds me vividly of Vivan Maier. I turned to her when I first started film photography since she is also known for being one of the first to work with snapshots, 'abstract' portraits, and street life in a bigger city. Both these artists' worlds produce a reflection of themselves as they look into the window of a store or car. Within the images of self-portraits in different forms, he was also capturing the street life behind him, where he was diving into the snapshots and the streetlife aesthetic. 

Around the 1950s, Friedlander managed to have full access to the prayer pilgrimage for freedom; at this time, he was only at the age of 22. The collection titled Let Us March On was a documentary project that, at the time, was seen as 'loose style.' Critics often referred to his work as sloppy, careless, and rushed; however, today, we view it as one of the most common and popular ways of capturing images, especially in places like New York. The idea of street photography as we know it today was impacted heavily by him for these reasons. Images that were once seen as sloppy, careless, and rushed are now what many of us set out to do, with a bit of a different mindset now. 

Let Us March On was a product of the commemoration of the third anniversary of the Brown vs. Board of Education decision. In the collection, Friedlander lets the images carry the energy that was suspended in the air that day. The viewer of these images can be simultaneously inserted and removed, which varies throughout the whole collection. Capturing moments of people cheering and placing the viewer right in the crowd along with everyone who was actually there. In some of his images there would be one person who stood out in the crowd, those who made this intense eye contact with the camera. Distinctly placing these people who made direct eye contact with the camera in the front and the occasional side eye is seen from those around the pronounced subjects. Friedlands had none of those in the images posed to the point of facial expression, leaving them raw and original to what he saw in that moment, as a result, he was able to extract that energy from the crowd, which simply put much more emphasis on the bigger point of the anniversary. "What I am suggesting is that through photographic means Friedlander has managed to address issues that were (and to a degree still are) central to art culture." (editorial ASX) The heightened feeling of a self-aware understanding in his images became a recognizable trademark in many of his images, and it is a common technique now to draw in the viewer, pronounced in this collection and his snapshot street photography. 

Moving away from his work capturing civil rights movements, getting into the 1990s he started working with nudes. This traces back to this time in the 50s where he was working mainly with other artists and celebrities in a much more staged atmosphere. Lee Friedlander: Nudes was a project that took him over thirteen years to complete, ranging from intimate and vulnerable portraits to something more abstract, primarily highlighting the torso or limbs. One of Friedlander's notable features was recreating paintings from famous art. Artists such as Newman Barnett and Jackson Pollock viewed these ideas seem a bit far-fetched; however, mindset of the rest of the artist is similar to Friedlander and they all date close enough to him that they were his inspiration. Some of Jackson Pollock's most notable abstract splatter paint artwork was produced in 1949, a year before Friedlander started working with those musicians. New Barnett has very minimalistic pieces containing negative space and nothing but a line like Cathedra produced in 1951, right when Friedland started his career. Even the nudes in the set ups have been noticeably similar to paintings by Marc Chagall of a woman laying on a sofa, legs draping off, appearing to be floating herself. 

The timing of these other artists and techniques was all right before Friedland really became popular, which suggests that all these people were a source of his inspiration. All of these artists had this tendency of not caring what others thought of their work, including Friedland, and all these artists have been so influential in what we produced to this day.

(all images on slides)

Sources

All-About-Photo.com. “Lee Friedlander.” All About Photo, 12 Apr. 2023, https://www.all-about-photo.com/photographers/photographer/10/lee-friedlander. 

amer4127. “Lee Friedlander: Photography and the Aesthetics of Abstract Painting (2012).” AMERICAN SUBURB X, 29 Mar. 2019, https://americansuburbx.com/2013/06/lee-friedlander-photography-and-the-aesthetics-of-abstract-painting.html. 

“Lee Friedlander.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., https://www.britannica.com/biography/Lee-Friedlander. 

“Lee Friedlander: Nudes: Moma.” The Museum of Modern Art, https://www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/341. 

“Lee Friedlander: Nudes: Moma.” The Museum of Modern Art, https://www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/341. 

Maher, James. “Lee Friedlander, Photographing the American Psyche.” New York Photography, Prints, Portraits, Events, Workshops, James Maher Photography, 15 Apr. 2022, https://jamesmaherphotography.com/street_photography/lee-friedlander/. 

Eli Jones - Sally Mann 

Virginia born Sally Mann is a photographer that many would acclaim to be one of the greats from the past century. Her use of personal experience and familiar subject matter provide a unique perspective that only she could have access to. She creates images of moments that are significant to her life and feel timeless. Today let's explore what is possibly her most famous series titled, Family Pictures, where she photographs her children. Mann is able to symbolize the passage of time, and the significance of memory through these images. How does she do this? and what aspect does Black and White contribute to the overall mood of the series?

It is undeniable that Mann’s Black and White photographs are taken and developed in a haunting tone. Her pictures are almost completely timeless, and have an overall glow that feels like a flashback to a fantastical land. To most, her photos have a foreign aspect to them, and the rural lifestyle is unfamiliar. The darkness of the surrounding nature is unsettling, while the children are doing what they consider daily activities. Many found problems in this work because of its tendency to highlight taboo subject matter. Photographs in, Family Photos, show Mann's children smoking cigarettes and performing in rather dangerous activities. Yet, many can still find a relationship to the images because of their rooted connection to adolescence. 

Many artists find inspiration through the past and tie it to the feeling of nostalgia. Mann's photos serve as more than a documentation of her children, but also a homage to the youth of her own childhood. While her decision for Black and White is a representation of her overall style, I think it also helps create an image that feels eternal. Conceptually, Black and White is to be looked at for its subject matter, rather than its clever use of color grading. Since Mann’s subject matter is the main focus of each photo, the colorless imagery works well. To make a photograph feel timeless it must be done with heavy intention, and the choice of B&W is definitely a key factor to it. Black and White has been around since some of the earliest types of photography, so it is no surprise that Mann utilized it as a tool to create an image that seems to feel everlasting. 

While the pictures feel timeless to any outsider, to Mann, this series is a time capsule. Family photographs are a joy to look back on because of their heavy relation with memory. One can look at an image and recall a moment that was once forgotten. Since taking these pictures in the late 80s and early 90s, Mann's children have grown much older. These images allow her to memorialize a time that is now gone. 

Work Cited 

“Family Pictures.” Sally Mann, https://www.sallymann.com/new-gallery-1/.

“Sally Mann.” Gagosian, 12 Apr. 2018, https://gagosian.com/artists/sally-mann/. 

Henry Lee_ Mini Research

Henri Cartier-Bresson

“Of all the means of expression, photography is the only one that fixes a precise moment in time.”

Henri Cartier-Bresson captured crucial moments in people's lives all around the world in an intuitive and poetic documentary style approach. In terms of exact visual arrangement, his images delivers  meaning, mystery, and comedy to fleeting moments. 

“Of all the means of expression, photography is the only one that fixes a precise moment in time.”

Henri Cartier-Bresson captured crucial moments in people's lives all around the world in an intuitive and poetic documentary style approach. In terms of exact visual arrangement, his images delivers  meaning, mystery, and comedy to fleeting moments. 

Henri cartier-bresson is widely regarded as one of the founding fathers of photography as well as a pioneer in the technique of capturing genuine moments in photographs. He is a French humanist photographer who is regarded as a master of candid photography. Moreover, he was one of the first people to utilize 35 millimeter film and is now considered to be one of the most esteemed street photographers. Throughout his career, Henri often highlighted the importance of capturing the exact moment of his object. He introduced the term "decisive moment," which is now frequently used by photographers to refer to seizing the perfect moment for an image that one wants to create. The key concept of "decisive moment"  is intriguing not just because it depicts images as unanticipated meetings of time, light, and subjects. How many photos were missed? What would it be if a famous photo was taken a few seconds later? How many great photos were missed because no one had a camera?  Thus, capturing the crucial moment takes more than just being ready to shoot. It also entails huge effort of exploring the streets while waiting for the proper moment, light, and subjects, which Cartier-Bresson did well. 

Throughout his career, he largely concentrated on photographing humanist subjects, which is similar to photojournalism but is more interested in issues of personal matters than news. We can observe some of the signature techniques that made Henri stand out as one of the most influential photographers of the 20th century in his work.  First, to make his subject stand out, he frequently uses a figure-to-ground composition, for instance. Because of the link between the subject and the background, this approach was an excellent means to make the subject more robust in the frame because Henri used black and white photography in his works. The viewer will be able to clearly distinguish between the object and the background in black and white photography.

Second, Henri was proficient managing the use of shadow in his photo. Shadows are essential in photography. From his work, “Marseille, France”, because of the shadow that Henri intended, it looks like the man is asleep in a tower under the decorated roof. Shadows give various meanings to your photos, making them more interesting. Lastly, Henri mostly achieved his fame on shooting photo in the perfect moment, which is now known as “the decisive moment”. The decisive moment has influenced photo composition throughout the history. Knowing when to capture a scene is more crucial than framing. If you see Bresson's puddle-diving man is below, it's detailed and raises questions. The photo's components were different one second before or after. This is the intriguing point of this technique that the viewer gets interested in the image and raises some questions.   

ExpertPhotography. “6 Henri Cartier Bresson Photography Style Tips.” ExpertPhotography, 11 Apr. 2023, https://expertphotography.com/henri-cartier-bresson-composition/. 

Gabby Bates Mini Research

Alfred Stieglitz

Analog Photography

4/13/23

As one of the many innovators in Photography, Alfred Stieglitz was central in defining photography as a modern art form. His knowledge and skill with the camera radically changed photography from a mechanical craft to an art medium. Stieglitz's work is a reflection of his efforts to prove to America and the world that photography was a modern visual art.

Born on January 1st, 1864 in Hoboken, New Jersey to German immigrants Edward and Hedwig Steglitz. Alfred’s parents later moved to Manhattan on the upper east side. They made it an effort to enrich their children in education and the arts, as appreciators of the arts themselves. According to Alfred, he had many photographs taken of him, mainly because his mother “took great pleasure in having [him] photographed, [and]show portraits to her friends ”(20). But what most intrigued him was what went down in the darkrooms where he’d see photographers go in to develop the pictures. In 1882 Alfred traveled to Berlin, Germany to study abroad. He initially studied engineering but found the classes un-enriching to his education. He later bought his first camera and enrolled in a Photochemistry course by Dr. Hermann Wilhelm Vogel. There he learned in depth the technicality of photochemistry. His first camera was an 8 x 10 plate film camera with no shutter and required a tripod. The photos taken on this camera were printed on “the smoothest possible platinum” paper imported from England. Later throughout his career, he would use the Folmer & Schwing, Eastman, Kodak, and Reflex cameras. His early photographs as a student were made up of picturesque scenes that were compared to the framework of a painting. The techniques used to craft his photographs were platinum palladium prints. These were chemicals that could expose the chemical painted paper and could be manipulated into tones of black, gray, and brown.

Stieglitz’s style of photography is categorized in the American Modernism Art Movement. From the late 19th century to the mid-20th century, Modernism was an art movement that strived to break away from past/dated forms of expression. The art movement was the rejection of Victorian values and ideals about art. It embraced experimentalism as the final form was from abstractions. There was an emphasis on the materials used and the techniques used to perfect such abstract qualities. The narrative that speaks throughout his art is the intimate relationship he has with nature, and the people he admires. His art is the love and appreciation of the world and the connection humans have with it. He photographed objects and moments that he awed, but others deemed unimportant or ugly –“Recalling those early days, I remember my father coming upon me as I was photographing in the middle of Fifth Avenue. “Alfred, he said to me, “how can you be interested in that hideous building?” “Why, Pa '' I replied, “it is not hideous, but the new America” (45). Stieglitz had a very passionate drive to produce photographs. His methodology consisted of experimentalism and innovation, because his goal was to re-imagine photography and share stories of American life. Art critics of Stieglitz's time like Sadakichi Hartmann, also noted that Stieglitz’s craft “ lies in his bold independence which enabled him to resist all temptations to overstep the limits of photography. He never applied anything but photography "pure and simple" and disdained the assistance of retouching… He realizes that artistic photography, to become powerful and self-subsistent, must rely upon its own resources and not ornament itself with foreign plumes in order to resemble an etching, a charcoal or wash drawing, or the reproduction of an old master”. His methods were often seen as rebellious as he was “told that the camera and its materials had inherent limits, [nonetheless] he defied them” in order to go beyond the standard (9). Another example was “when told that the camera could only be used in daylight. He shut up his camera in a cellar illuminated only by a weak electric light bulb, focused on a dynamo, and made a 24-hour exposure. The resulting negative was a perfect one, effectively refuting the necessity of daylight for photography”(10).

The reason I chose Alfred Stieglitz was because I was drawn to the portraits of famous modernist artist, Georgia O’Keeffe. The book I found in the full collection of photographs was titled –Georgia O'Keeffe: A Portrait by Alfred Stieglitz– which opened up with an introductory summary of Stieglitz’s life and personal accounts by O’Keeffe herself. Stieglitz began photographing O’Keeffe shortly after their relationship began and throughout their marriage. These portraits of O’Keeffe were specifically capturing the most intimate parts of her body that made her an artist. Her hands are a prominent motif that repeats in these portraits as they are positioned as the focal point of the photograph, to the point of obsession. O’Keeffe was Stieglitz’s artistic muse and lover as the two artists inspired the other. Throughout their relationship, Stieglitz captured the contorting dance-like movements in her hands to her focused eyes and nude body. Even O’Keefe mentioned that “his (Stieglitz) idea of a portrait was not just in one picture. His dream was to start with a child at birth and photograph that child in all its activities as it grew to be a person and on throughout its adult life. As a portrait it would be a photographic diary” (O'Keeffe). Stieglitz’s attention to composition and camera angles are what most caught my attention as they are so skillfully intimate and beautiful. 

Work Cited

Bry, Doris, et al. Alfred Stieglitz: Photographer. Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, 1965.

Greenough, Sarah, and Richard Whelan. Stieglitz on Photography: His Selected Essays and Notes. New York City, Aperture, 2000.

Hartmann, Sadakichi. “An Art Critic’s Estimate of Alfred Stieglitz” 1898. The Photography Criticism Cyber Archive: Photography Criticism. https://www.nearbycafe.com/photocriticism/members/archivetexts/photocriticism/hartmann/hartmannstieglitz.html

 Kuiper, Kathleen. "Modernism". Encyclopedia Britannica, 28 Mar. 2023, https://www.britannica.com/art/Modernism-art.

Lesser, Wendy. "Foursome' and 'Alfred Stieglitz' Review: The Intimate Gallerist." The Wall Street Journal, 5 Apr. 2019, Accessed Apr. 9 2023. www.wsj.com/articles/foursome-and-alfred-stieglist-review-the-intimate-gallerist-11554476394.

Norman, Dorothy. Alfred Stieglitz an American Seer. New York City, Aperture, 2016.

Stieglitz, Alfred. The Alfred Stieglitz Collection Archive. Art Institute of Chicago. 

Stieglitz, Alfred. Georgia O'Keeffe: A Portrait by Alfred Stieglitz ; with an Introduction. New York City, Museum, 1978.

Mini research paper - Kayla Gilly

“I feel I'm anonymous in my work. When I look at the pictures, I never see myself; they aren't self-portraits. Sometimes I disappear.”

—- Cindy Sherman 

Cindy Sherman’s photographs interrogate our culture’s construction of identity, appearance, and femininity. In her most notable body of work, Untitled Film Stills (1977-1980), Sherman disguises herself as various generic female characters and stereotypes. The series contains sixty nine black and white images in which Sherman becomes both the photographer and the subject as she mimics tropes of female heroines from 1950s and 60s Hollywood films. Untitled Film Stills catalyzed Sherman’s exploration of the superficiality of appearance, which has continued to be a core interest in her work over her forty year long career. 

The use of black and white film is effective to convey this ambiguity and distance. Sherman says, “the characters are questioning something – perhaps being forced into a certain role.” In most of the images, the subject looks or turns away from the camera. Since each still does not point to a particular reference or film, the black and white images help to unify the series. In each image, both Sherman and the character are grappling with concepts of identity and truth. Who really are these characters if their persona’s are only dictated by external societal expectations and pressures? Sherman comments on this issue saying, “I suppose unconsciously, or semiconsciously at best, I was wrestling with some sort of turmoil of my own about understanding women. The characters weren’t dummies; they weren’t just airhead actresses. They were women struggling with something, but I didn’t know what” ((Cindy Sherman’s Untitled Film Stills). The use of black and white sheds light on this “not-knowing,” or this subconscious turmoil Sherman portrays through her characters. 

Scholars have analyzed Sherman’s portrayal of “damsel in distress” heroines in Untitled Film Stills through the lens of the male gaze, a term coined by Laura Mulvey in 1975. According to Mulvey, women from  “literature to visual arts – have always been depicted from a masculine perspective as sexualised objects” (Ricci).  Sherman notes that she was “not consciously aware of this thing, the ‘male gaze.’ It was the way I was shooting, the mimicry of the style of black-and-white grade-Z motion pictures that produced the self-consciousness of these characters, not my knowledge of feminist theory” (Ricci). Untitled Film Stills has been interpreted as a defiance against the representation of women and their bodies in mass media. Sherman chose to make the printed images cheap and trashy looking, like they were found in magazines (Cindy Sherman’s Untitled Film Stills). Scholar Douglas Crimp designated Sherman’s work as ‘a hybrid of photography and performance art that reveals femininity to be an effect of representation.’ Sherman hopes that the series is “seen as feminist work, or feminist-advised work,” but she does not identify with the feminist cause as the primary reason behind it. She tells Tate Magazine, “I’m not going to go around espousing theoretical bullshit about feminist stuff” (Berne).

Regardless of Sherman’s stance on her work being linked to a feminist effort, Untitled Film Stills surfaces a compelling conversation regarding how artwork may reclaim women’s struggles, or glamorize them. In Sherman’s case, the work’s purpose is to call out the irony associated with classic feminine tropes and personas. Sherman’s visual depiction of  quintessential narratives of heroines existing under the patriarchy is a reclamation of women’s identity. The melodramatic images in Untitled Film Stills read as both provocative and cleverly satirical. The images ask the viewer to contemplate what remains when the costumes, makeup, and props are stripped away. To what extent is our identity a facade? Can women maintain unique identities despite social constructs, or do societal pressures make us ‘disappear?’ 

Works Cited

Berne, Betsy. "Studio: Cindy Sherman." Tate Magazine, 1 June 2003, www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/cindy-sherman-1938/studio-cindy-sherman. Accessed 12 Apr. 2023.

"Cindy Sherman's Untitled Film Stills – Her Groundbreaking Self Portraits." Public Delivery, 25 Nov. 2019, publicdelivery.org/cindy-sherman-untitled-film-stills/. Accessed 12 Apr. 2023.

Eckardt, Steph. "Cindy Sherman's Latest Guise: Extreme Vulnerability." W Magazine, 3 May 2016, www.wmagazine.com/story/cindy-sherman-metro-pictures-aging-interview. Accessed 12 Apr. 2023.

Ricci, Benedetta. "Portraits of America: Cindy Sherman's Untitled Film Stills." Artland Magazine, magazine.artland.com/portraits-of-america-cindy-shermans-untitled-film-stills/. Accessed 12 Apr. 2023.

Vogel, Carol. "Cindy Sherman Unmasked." The New York Times, 16 Feb. 2012, www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/arts/design/moma-to-showcase-cindy-shermans-new-and-old-characters.html?auth=login-email&login=email. Accessed 12 Apr. 2023.