Stieglitz or Steichen?

In a history of the twentieth century - who had the greater influence on the direction of modern photography?


Alfred Stieglitz or Edward Steichen ?

Make your case with approx 1,000 words

Submission: Monday 12th November - 12 noon: lecture theatre 1

History part 3: Modernism & Propaganda

We covered a lot of ground in this lecture:

Documentary projects used the veracity of photography to publicise and inform:
Mass Observation - UK documentary project 1937 - 1953
Farm Security Admistration - massive US project
Florence Thomson - the "Migrant Mother"
Walker Evans - the Robbie Williams of the FSA
August Sander - Faces of the Twentieth Century (before the Nazis put him in prison)

Wikipedia on Propaganda
Nazi propaganda

Some images have become iconic:

Joe Rosenthal's picture at Iwo Jima
Associated Press counter accusations of fakery

Flags of our Fathers - Hollywood movie with a twist
Team America World Police

William Eugene Smith perhaps the World's greatest photographer

Minamata - Smith never fully recovered from being beaten up while trying to photograph the plight of a Japanese fishing vilage being poisoned by an untouchable and unaccountable chemical industry in the 1970s

The Family of Man exhibition in 1955 (curated by Edward Steichen)

Tutorials - Monday 29th October

Today, in my office:

2.45pm Kyle

3.00pm Ryan

3.15pm Ben

3.30pm Howard

Wednesday - Studio

I have some lighting techniques to demonstrate tomorrow morning - the afternoon will be free for anyone who wants to shoot in Studio 22 - or ask questions.

Zone

This is a Zone ruler of 'reflected light luminosity':


John Blakemore describes each Zone like this:

Zone 0 Featureless black
Zone I Very dark black - no detail
Zone II First sense of separation in dark areas but no detail
Zone III Clear detail in darkest areas
Zone IV Dark hair, shadow in landscape
Zone V Mid-tone (18%) grey, tanned skin, grass or stone
Zone VI Caucasian skin
Zone VII Whites retaining full detail, skin in sunshine
Zone VIII Bright surfaces, whites with little texture left
Zone IX Glaring surfaces, highlights without detail


John doesn't bother with Zone 0 and neither will we

John's Zone book

The Zone system on Wikipedia
The Zone system explained by American nerds

You can take a reflected light reading off anything - if you can visualise what "Zone" it is, and adjust your exposure setting accordingly. I'll explain more soon.

For next Monday, please try to shoot the negatives for a Zone ruler: four stops over and four stops under a Zone V (grey card exposure) of an evenly illuminated, textured surface. You should have 9 frames of increasing density.

(Remember... it won't go wrong if you follow the instructions...)

Naked vs Nude

Manet's Olympia

This is an enormous subject - worthy of a whole semester to itself. It's impossible to give a complete and balanced overview, but here are a few ideas and links. Please make some notes in your workbook.

Joel-Peter Witkin

Wikipedia on JPW
JPW gallery
8mm

Lois Greenfield

John Berger Notes on 'The Gaze' from "Ways of seeing"

Sally Mann

Laura Mulvey biography

BW information

This is Kodak Tri-X

Not to be confused with the much newer (and turbo-charged) T-MAX films 100, 400 and 3200 ISO

Here are some of the links to the areas I skirted over:
Silverprint - the best materials retailer (and genuine advice)
Ilford photo click on 'products'
Fuji pro - links to film info pdf + data guide
Kodak pro
Kodak B/W films
Kentmere - excellent papers
Fotospeed - excellent too + lith material specialist

Modern films are brilliant. T-Max 100 & 400 are amazing - but it gets expensive if you use T-Max developer everytime (which you should, or else there's not much point). So, age-old Tri-X in cheap D76 actually works really well if your follow this recipe...

Kodak Tri-X 400 - rated @ 200ISO
Dev 8 mins in D76 1dev+1water @ 20deg C
(Rating Tri-X at 200 ISO deliberately lets more light in, which saturates the silver halide crystals, reducing their size. Cutting the development to 8 mins - a little less than Kodak recommend - compensates for what would otherwise be overexposure)

Also:
Kodak T-Max 3200 - rated @ 1600ISO
Dev 9 mins in T-Max dev 1dev+4water @ 20deg C
(The same grain-calming technique works here too)

Soup in their eyes

Perhaps you might want to vote for your favourite...

Post a comment

Give someone the gift of feedback

Don't be shy... you know you want to

(See you all on Monday 22nd)

Andy

Anja

Barry

Ben

Claire

David

Howard

Jaime

Jenni

Kyle

Louise

Natalie

Nick

Ryan

Stuart

Tertia

Theo

Constructed Image assignments - Studio

City
Using any means, techniques and format in the studio, make an image of the ‘city’. Any city - however you want to represent it and whatever you want to say about it
Required: One print – minimum size 12”x16”
Resources:
Thomas Demand
Thomas Demand - more
Andreas Gursky

Hotel menu
A prestigious hotel chain requires images to illustrate the following items:

Continental breakfast
Morning coffee
Light lunch
Afternoon tea
Pre-dinner drinks

One with deep depth of field - complete sharpness - running through the composition

Another with selectively placed, shallow depth of field drawing attention to a specific part of the composition

Each picture MUST contain at least one translucent and/or reflective object within the composition No people or hands

Required: Two 5”x4” colour transparencies mounted in presentation sleeves

Constructed Image assignments - Location

Weston
Using silver halide materials, make a B/W image of a single fruit or vegetable in the style of Edward Weston. Quality is very important - consider the format you use.
Required: One print – minimum size 10”x8”
Resource: Edward Weston's techniques

Autumn
Using a table-top set-up make an image to iIllustrate the word ‘Autumn’ – for the front cover of The House of Fraser seasonal promotions catalogue. The actual word ‘Autumn’ must NOT appear in - or be added on top of - the image. Natural light and/or artificial lighting can be used. Keep production notes in your workbook.
Required: One print – minimum size 10”x8”


Infra-Red
Make infra-red photographs using film
Recipe: Kodak HIE 35mm IR film, Wratten 25 (red) filter, Rate @ 400ISO, meter TTL, Bracket +1 +2, -1 -2, Develop for 11mins in neat D76 @ 20 deg c, print on grade 4 or 5 paper
Attempt to make infra-red photographs using a DSLR
Include control shots to demonstrate the differences
Required: Four B/W infra-red images + four control shots + workbook notes
Resources:
Infrared myths
Shooting digital infra-red
Ken Rockwell's Photoshop fakery

The Amateur and Modernism

I was very pleased to see so many of you this morning. Thanks. I hope you find the Monday morning sessions useful.

Here are a few links to some of the areas we touched on.

Pictorialism is the peculiar form that photographers with artistic aspirations felt their work needed to take for Photography to be regarded as 'Art'. The leading group called themselves The Photo-secession

A collection of links about Alfred Stieglitz:
Wikipedia on Stieglitz
The Steerage
Gallery 291

We'll return to Edward Steichen in the next lecture. He had some interesting ideas: Steichen quotations

Modernism is when a medium stops pretending to be something it isn't, and celebrates its own strengths. The Museum of New Mexico have a Modernism microsite - which you can explore

Disruptive Technology is an interesting idea about landmark inventions that cause a seismic change

Paul Strand's white fence


EdwardWeston.com

Light

Following today's presentation on light you might want to follow some of these links:

How light works
Refraction
Colour Temperature - short version
Colour Temperature - long version

Unusual tutorial on light - worth a look

Ishihara colour blind tests


Please make some notes in your workbook about pinhole photography

Constructed Image

Soup assessment will be in Lecture Theatre 1 at 9.00am on Weds 10th

Afternoon session will be in a classroom - TBC

Snaparazzi

Snaparazzi

We are all photographers now

Daguerre
Fox Talbot
Amateurs

Yale University Photography lecture notes
A very good resource - worth a read, and full of links to areas we will cover in later weeks

Please make some notes in your workbook about Daguerre and Fox Talbot

Basics

Well done with the question paper. Remember, it was anonymous, so no-one knows how you did - except you.

If you need any help with one or more areas, you might want to look at the appropriate link:

Aperture & Exposure

Exposure & 18% grey card

Lenses & focal length

f stop ratios

ISO

Film

If you know of any links you think are particularly good, please share them by clicking on the 'comment' link next to the pencil icon and post the URL