CONTENT OF PHOTOGRAPHERS
SUMMARY
JULIA MARGARET CAMERON BORN 1815 -1879 – BRITISH
HENRY PEACH ROBINSON BORN 1830 – 1901
JEFF WALL
REFERENCES
SUMMARY
I have included photographers that style their work in directorial mode/ fictional documentary. They believe in a creative vision with their cameras, they compose their shots, direct models, use props and locations to complete an image. This has caused a lot of controversy since photography began, the conflicts surrounding debates over style and technique are philosophical clashes. The art establishment were hostile towards photography being used for creative activity but the photographer and the public did not share these views.
My research starts with photographers that stage their images, some may have been inspired from events that have already happened and they want to re-create it, others use a creative process, an image that may have been inspired from a dream or a painting. In photography, we believe that the image that has been taken is real, as we have advanced with technology the work of composites can be so skillfully done, that you cannot tell the difference between reality and fiction.
Even when directorial/documentary fictional photographs was in the early stages, the skills that photographers possessed i.e. Henry Peach Robinson and Julia Margaret Cameron meant that they were still able to produce final images that looked real.
JULIA MARGARET CAMERON BORN 1815-1879 – BRITISH
Julia Margaret Cameron’s first camera was given to her by her daughter and son-in-law, along with accompanying words “It may amuse you, Mother, to try to photograph during your solitude at Freshwater.”
Cameron was forty-eight years old, a mother of six, deeply religious, well-read but somewhat eccentric. She was friends with many of Victorian England’s greatest minds: G.F. Watts (painter), Robert Browning, Henry Taylor and Alferd Lord Tennyson (poets), Charles Darwin and Sir John Herschel (Scientists), Thomas Carlyle (Historian and Philosopher). (The Museum of Modern Art, 2020)
The camera became far more than just amusement. It became a living thing, with a voice, memory and creative vigour. Her portraits and figure studies on literary and biblical themes had never been done before. The Victorian photographs remain the most highly admired throughout history. Photography became a way for Cameron to link with her spiritual and artistic advisors, she quotes: “I began with no knowledge of the art,” she wrote. “I did not know where to place my dark box, how to focus my sitter, and my first picture I effaced to my consternation by rubbing my hand over the filmy side of the glass.” (Daniels, 2004)
Cameron mastered the production of negatives with wet collodion on glass plates. She may have started as an amateur but viewed her activity as a professional, marketing her photographs, copyrighting, exhibiting and publishing her photographs. Within eighteen months she sold eighty prints to the Victoria and Albert Museum, established a studio in two of its rooms, and made arrangements with print seller Colnaghi’s to publish and sell her photographs.
Cameron did not have any interest in establishing herself as a commercial photographer, she was more of a directional photographer, enlisting friends, family and household staff in her activities. They would be dressed in costume as if they were amateur theatrical artists. She wanted to capture qualities of innocence, virtue, wisdom, religion or passion, bringing classical, religious and literary figures into their modern era. A parlour maid was transformed into the Madonna, her husband into Merlin, a neighbour’s child was used for the infant Christ, or with swans wings attatched, into Cupid or an angel from Raphael’s Sistine Madonna. The originality of her photographs had an artistic outward appearance and spiritual content of fifteenth-century Italian painting. Cameron wanted photography to have greater dignity and secure it’s character and uses of High Art, combining the ideal with reality, incorporating devotion poetry and beauty while sacrificing nothing of the truth. She quotes to Herschel: “I believe in other than mere conventional topographic photography—map-making and skeleton rendering of feature and form.” She did not want to follow in the footsteps of other artists such as: Henry Peach Robinson and O.G. Rejlander. (Daniels, 2004)
Cameron’s photographs were not accepted by fellow photographers. The establishment considered that her images lacked the sharpness and technicalities of a photograph but credit was given for daring to be original. Cameron dismissed the condemnation of the photographic establishment, writing later that it would have dispirited her “had I not valued that criticism at its worth,” basking instead in the positive judgment of artists, friends and the Gold medal she received in Berlin after Wilhelm Vogel reported the stir that her photographs were causing. The Illustrated London News described her portraits as the nearest approach to art, the boldest and successful applications of the principles of fine-art to photography.
Camerons work ended by her departure for Ceylon in 1875, she produced around 900 images of vivid portraits and a mirror of the Victorian soul.
Key words: Religion, mother and child, directorial photography, emotions, composition, pictorial.
What do you see?
The main subject is a portrait of a mother and child,Cameron has directed her model into a pose that mirrors the iconic religious image on the left, the mother of god (Sassoferratto, Giovan Batista Salvi). The right image has the subject been placed in the centre of the frame, the viewer looking around the image from mother to child, feeling the emotion in the portrait. The background is plain avoiding any conflicting elements, the point of view draws you in and it has religious connotations that we can connect with.
How was the image produced?
Julia Margaret Cameron used a large wooden camera on a tripod, and the most common process at the time, albumen prints from wet collodion glass negatives. Considering this early process, high tonal contrasts emphasise a power of motherhood and the innocence of a child. The soft focus adds to overall gentleness and poignancy within the image.
She hasn’t produced an image with a halo but this is irrelevant to the resulting image as the denotation in both images remain the same (mother and child). Cameron wanted her photography to incorporate poetry and beauty while sacrificing nothing of the truth. The triangular shape that is made from the subjects guide the viewer around the image, looking at the thoughtful gaze of the mother and the sleeping innocent baby.
Why did she do it.
Cameron was brought up with French grandparents and mother, so she was very religious and this image of Madonna and child would have been very familiar to her. The camera became a way to be creative and use it for her many biblical and literary themed images that had not been done before. She avoided the commercial studio portraits and did not want to follow in the footsteps of other artists such as: Henry Peach Robinson and O.G. Rejlander.
The camera became far more than just amusement. It became a living thing, with a voice, memory and creative vigour. The originality of her photographs had an artistic outward appearance and spiritual content of fifteenth-century Italian painting. She wanted her photographs to show wisdom, virtue and passion by bringing her images into the modern era.
Inspiration
Julia Margaret Cameron had an extraordinary ability to inspire feelings with a powerful spiritual content, it is a quality that separates her work from that of the commercial portrait. Cameron dismissed the condemnation of the photographic establishment and is considered one of the most important portraitists of the 19th Century. I hope to create the same emotions and sensitivities within my own work.
HENRY PEACH ROBINSON BORN 1830 – 1901 – BRITISH
Henry Peach Robinson was an English photographer whose Pictorialist photographs and writings made him one of the most influential photographers of the second half of the 19th century.
Robinson began at 21 as an amateur painter but photography was his real passion. In 1857 he opened a photographic studio in Leamington, England. He started to make photographs that were inspired by the themes and stories that were popular at the time. He would use natural settings and imitated that he was outside within his studio. When producing ideological images of the country side he would use actors or society ladies, the reality of real people from the countryside did not fit his ideal, he found that they were too awkward.
Robinson created the image Fading Away from his imagination, the depiction of a young girl’s peaceful death and her chair surrounded by her grieving family. This made many viewers feel uncomfortable and they felt that it was too painful of a subject to be rendered by a medium like photography. The controversial image made him the most famous photographer in England and he became the founder of the Pictorialist movement. (A photographic image that produced a painterly effect).
Robinson published a handbook ‘Pictorial Effect in Photography’ that became the most influential work in English on photography and aesthetics. The photographer Peter Henry Emerson argued that photographic images should never be altered after exposure, he criticized Robinson’s practice of painted backdrops and costumed models and denounced its worth. Despite this, Robinson continued to receive official honours. In 1892 he became the founding member of the Linked Ring, an association of prestigious art photographers.
Key words: Family, directorial photography, emotions, composition, pictorial.
What do you see?
The main subject in the image is the girl in the chair, he has directed the model to pose as if she is dying. The foreground consists of a small table with a blanket on it. The young girl is one of the lightest parts of the image and I find myself looking straight to her, through the window and to the man in the background, the eye is drawn to the left side of the image where the mother is situated and then to the table in the foreground. From there you are directed to the right side of the image where the sister is looking over her sibling. The viewer can feel the emotion surrounding the young girl and the title of it suggests end of life.
How was the image produced?
After learning the daguerreotype process from a colleague, he began experimenting with calotype and collodion processes. ‘Fading Away’ is a composite photograph made from five negatives. The tableaux scene shows the young girl on her death bed when in actual fact she was a healthy 14 year old. The rest of the group in the image were also models.
The composition of the negatives are done so successfully, it is a believable scenario. It is a highly emotional image and emphasizes a great sadness that comes in the event of a death. The costume designs have high tonal contrasts between each model. The eye goes straight to the subject and around the image at each member of the fictitious family in triangular format.
The whole image has been put together with such precision that makes it look like just one shot. The image is very poignant and was controversial at the time but it was reflective in its content and aesthetics.
Why did he do it?
Robinson revealed how photography could be used not just for the reproduction of images but also applied to literary interpretation. It was a form of creative expression stemming from his early interests of sketches, etchings and water colour paintings.
Robinson’s interest in the art of composition made him combine the fundamentals of painting into his photography. He wanted to achieve realism in his photography and used various manipulation techniques to print several negatives together to get the desired result. It was something that the collodion process could not do. He wanted his images to retain an aesthetic quality while the integrity of it was not compromised.
Inspiration
Henry Peach Robinson was inspired to explore combination printing by the artist Oscar Gustave Rejlander, a portrait photographer who had produced an allegorical tableau entitled ‘The Two Ways of Life’ (1857) created with over 30 separated negatives. See below:
A selection of images from the book ‘Henry Peach Robinson’, Master of Photographic Art 1830 – 1901
JEFF WALL BORN 1946 – CANADIAN
Jeff Wall is a Canadian photographer and writer whose work showcases and challenges some of the most dominant assumptions about art and art-making. A lot of Walls subject matter comes from moments that he has witnessed, read or heard of, within his own life. He remembers what he has seen and doesn’t replicate it exactly, he recreates the scene to his own liking. He changes visual and physical elements, depicting scenes as frozen moments in the middle of an event.
Wall allows fine art to enter the imagery of the everyday while indulging his own visual and narrative desires, therefore inviting viewers to indulge in their own as well. (Wall, n.d.)
To make a picture Wall likes to be moved by it, he likes to see the beauty, rhythm and space for it to communicate to a viewer, see the image below, a photograph that he comments about in the video following it:
This video became a way to understand Jeff Walls working methodologies and his opinion on recreating images. During the recording he makes it known that he does not stage his images because this gives the viewer an idea that you are looking at a stage. Wall classes his work as recreations of scenarios that he has seen or heard of, therefore it becomes cinematic photography. Walls photomontage of the scene Dead Troops Talk (see image below) has been assembled so skilfully that the viewer believes the scene is real and therefore evidences the art to directing his actors, just as they would in a film. A.D. Colemans definition on Directorial mode in photography was an article that highlights the difficulty that photography faced in its legitimisation as a creative art form and consequently faced philisophical clashes in the art world. This is difficult for myself to comprehend because when an artist attempts to make a photograph unique, the creative assembly of a scene within photomontage helps the photographer define their own style.
REFERENCES:
JULIA MARGARET CAMERON
Cotton, B. (2014). Julia Margaret Cameron: Madonnas and multiple portraits. [online] The Julia Secession. Available at: https://juliamargaretcameronsecession.wordpress.com/2014/07/23/julia-margaret-cameron-madonnas-and-multiple-portraits/comment-page-1/ [Accessed 15 Feb. 2020].
Daniels, M. (2004). Julia Margaret Cameron. [online] Metmuseum.org. Available at: https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/camr/hd_camr.htm [Accessed 15 Feb. 2020].
The Museum of Modern Art. (2020). Julia Margaret Cameron | MoMA. [online] Available at: https://www.moma.org/artists/932 [Accessed 15 Feb. 2020].
HENRY PEACH ROBINSON
Encyclopedia Britannica. (2020). Henry Peach Robinson | British photographer. [online] Available at: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Henry-Peach-Robinson [Accessed 29 Feb. 2020].
Harding, C. (2013). Introducing Oscar Gustave Rejlander, the father of art photography. [online] National Science and Media Museum blog. Available at: https://blog.scienceandmediamuseum.org.uk/oscar-gustav-rejlander-pioneered-combination-printing/ [Accessed 29 Feb. 2020].
Harker, M. (1988). Henry Peach Robinson, master of photographic art, 1830-1901. Oxford: Basil Blackwell Inc, pp.137-162.
Historiccamera.com. (2012). Henry Peach Robinson at Historic Camera. [online] Available at: http://www.historiccamera.com/cgi-bin/librarium2/pm.cgi?action=app_display&app=datasheet&app_id=1646 [Accessed 29 Feb. 2020].
Robinson, L. (n.d.). History of Photography: Henry Peach Robinson | Photofocus. [online] Photofocus. Available at: https://photofocus.com/photography/history-of-photography-henry-peach-robinson/ [Accessed 29 Feb. 2020].
JEFF WALL
Wall, J. and de Duve, T., 2015. We Are All Actors. [online] YouTube. Available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8P9S6FeAuU> [Accessed 28 March 2020].
Wall, J., 2006. Men Waiting. [online] Guggenheim. Available at: <https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/20297> [Accessed 28 March 2020].
Wall, J., 1992. Dead Troops Talk (A Vision After An Ambush Of A Red Army Patrol, Near Moqor, Afghanistan, Winter 1986) – Jeff Wall | The Broad. [online] Thebroad.org. Available at: <https://www.thebroad.org/art/jeff-wall/dead-troops-talk-vision-after-ambush-red-army-patrol-near-moqor-afghanistan-winter> [Accessed 28 March 2020].
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