Activity #9: Write About It! - RE-DO

Photography and Visual Arts

After the invention and widespread use of the camera, the visual arts medium of camera art was introduced by the process called photography. Since then, photography changed the appearance of visual art in a variety of different and contrasting meduims. While photgraphy most closely resembled painting, visual artists thought the new technology of photography would be a way of freeing painting and sculpture from practical tasks such as recording appearances and events. During World War I, a cultural movement began in Zurich, Switzerland and peaked between 1916 and 1920 called "Dada" or "Dadaism." It primarily involved vusual arts as it changed or revolutionised the way individuals communicated through literature, theater, and graphic design and concentrated the anti-war politic by rejecting art through anti-art cultural works. Dada activities included public gatherings, publications of art/literature journals which conveyed information to the masses usually portrayed in a combination of photographs pasted together to communicate their anti-war message. A famous Dada artist named Hannah Hoch (Germany 1889-1978) was one of the first pioneers of the artform known as "photomontage." Her most famous piece entitled, "Cut With The Kitchen Knife" (1919), was made by combining pieces of images from newspapers of that time which was re-created to make a new statement about life and art in the Dada movement. It was a very clever of communicating a message within another message which is still very much in vogue today. It was not until later in the twentieth century that photography was used to explore abstraction and nonrepresentational as a photographic art medium. It was also about the time that an American artist named Ansel Adams (1902-1984) began photographing landscapes in the Southwest. He was a visionary figure in nature photography and wilderness preservation across America from 1923-1974. He is best known for his black and white photographs of California's Yosemite's Valley.

Earlier, however, some photographers thought that the detailed objectivity made photography less like art and more suited to science. So, they used a variety of techniques to undercut the objectivity of the camera in a movement called "pictorialism," producing photographs that were gauzy with images which seemed more like a painting, and therefore, more like art. An example of this is seen in Henry Peach Robinson's "Fading Away" (1858) in which the photographic artist conveys a sentimental story in a composite print created from five separate photographic negatives. (Getlein, p 219).

However, in France during the last third of the nineteenth century, a style of painting called "Impressionism" was introduced in which artists advocated capturing the impressions of light and shade characterized by the representation of a scene, object, or figure by applying of dabs of color in order to give an impression of the view rather than an accurate, photographic-like depiction." Many well-known photographers worked hard in making photography an accepted art photographer who was instrumental in forcing the art world to recognize photography "as a distinctive medium of individual expression," as seen in his famous photograph "The Steerage" (1907), a photograph of working class people crowding two decks of a transatlantic steamer. In 1920, he insisted that "photographs look like photographs" so that the medium of photography be considered with its own aesthetic credo and so separate it from other art forms such as painting thus, defining photography a "pure" fine art form and used the term "straight photography" in contrast to "pictorial photography" which practiced manipulation of the image before and after exposure.

In conclusion, photography changed the appearance of visual arts. As it provided visual artists a way to quickly capture a scene or duplicate a portrait of someone without having them sit in one position, often for long periods of time, as well as, provided other means of communication through other visual arts mediums.

1. Getlein, Mark. "Living with Art" Eighth Ed. (New York) McGraw-Hill (2007). Ch 9.

2. Wikipedia. Visual arts. URL: http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_arts (3/01/2007).

3. Humanity Unit. "ARTS EDUCATION: Visual Arts 10, 20, 30" Saskachewan Education (1993). Regina, Saskachewan Canada. Curriculum and Instruction Branch (03/25/07).