Aristotle, Euclid, Arabian scholar Hassan ibn Hassan of the 10th century, and other artists, like Leonardo da Vinci, also used the camera obscura. The same simple law of optics applies. When a box of any size is blackened and the wall covering is pierced with a small hole, the focused image will appear on the opposite wall in an upside-down position. Pinhole photographers now make all kinds of pinhole cameras in creating all kinds of images. Artists, like Jessica Fergusson, use a pinhole camera to capture something mysterious or unexpected. She believes that this is how memories or dreams work (Meyers).
Photograms can be less manipulated by the artist or camera (Meyers, 2004). This was the discovery of Susannah Hays one rainy winter a few years ago. Photogram techniques are part of the beginners' curriculum on photography and summer camps. But she discovered what appeared to be organic, patterned forms from an otherwise smooth surface. On the other hand, Abelardo Morell uses a large-format view camera to take the image of the upside-down, outside world. He used this in shooting the Empire State Building on a bed in midtown Manhattan, the Chrysler Building on the wall and floor of a New York hotel room, and Central Park upside-down in an office (Meyers).
Alternative uses of x-ray fine art photography are not new, either. Dan Tasker used x-rays in producing images of flowers (Meyers, 2004). But his products were ignored and almost forgotten until found a few years ago. These were recognized as pioneering works and auctioned at attractive prices. Although pinhole photography is not new, it is considered fashionable today. An exhibition by 45 international artists who used pinhole...
Photography and Images Our Memory, Our Identity, Our Reality: The Affects of Photography "In teaching us a new visual code, photography alters and enlarges our notions of what is worth looking at and what we have a right to observe. They are a grammar and, even more importantly, an ethics of seeing." ~Susan Sontag, On Photography "Hence it is essential that any theoretical discussion of the relationship of black life to the visual, to
Photography In this photograph, the prominent motif is a flag of the United States. The lines on the metallic roof converge in linear perspective, drawing the viewer's eye to that flag. Based on the number of stars in the flag, the photograph was taken prior to the admission of Alaska or Hawaii to the Union, possibly dating the picture to before Hawaii's statehood of 1959. Three white men are walking in
Later on, throughout the 1930s, fashion photographs were principally created in studios, to take advantage of being able to carefully control lighting, composition and pose (Grossman 1). However, outdoor photo shoots were not unheard of. It has been noted that these outdoor photographs "carried an allusion of authenticity and spontaneity that made the fashionable clothes appear more vibrant than the sculptural effects of studio photographs could achieve" (Grossman 1). With
Jeff Wall's interview with David Shapiro is interesting because Wall talks about how he began as a painter before moving to photography and then into art theory (though he doesn't consider himself an art theorist). What I liked was how each transition made sense the way he described it. Essentially, Wall was looking for a new mode of expression and the form that he chose, whether photography or writing, was
Annie Leibovitz's images of celebrities in costume or a photographer who dresses him or herself up as a different persona in a clearly ironic fashion (such as a woman who might dressed in drag to show the culturally constructed nature of gender) may be examples of more emotionally and intellectually truthful forms of photography than candid snapshots that falsely show a happy family. Even a journalist taking photographs of a
Alfred Stieglitz: The Changing Face of Photography Alfred Stieglitz is considered to be one of the primary early definers of the nature of photographic art. His life and career spanned from 1864 to 1946, encompassing the tail end of the Civil War through World War II. "Stieglitz witnessed New York transform from a sleeping giant of cobblestone streets and horse-drawn trolleys to a vibrant symbol of the modern metropolis, with soaring
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