Installation Art

Installation art.

Installation art describes an artistic genre of three-dimensional works that are often site-specific and designed to transform the perception of a space. They are also made with the viewer in mind so they are often interactive so that the viewer is fully submerged into the artwork.

Bill Viola “The messenger”

His work “The Messenger” consists of a man rising from the depths of water and slowly falling back into the darkness so that that the cycle can start again. The work reminds me of the cycle of life and death, the man taking his first breath from the water symbolises the new life and the man disappearing with darkness reminding me of death .The piece of work is was displayed in Durham Cathedral as part of the “celebrations of UK Year of visual arts.”

Viola’s work caused a lot of controversy because of where it was placed. The man is naked, and that was the cause of the trouble.  The cathedral thought that the audience would see it as moral outrage and obscenity but the response of the public proved to be far more mature then the people who assumed they were protecting people’s morals. It was decided by the cathedral that they would put canvas screens around the piece of work so that people who didn't want to see didn't have to. Even though we are born naked the cathedral saw this as an obscene thing to be put into the cathedral.  The fact that the work had to have screens put around the work made the work seem less important as art and more as a work of obscenity that was forbidden to see.  The artwork was site specific meaning that the artwork was created for the cathedral, it wouldn't have looked right in any other place then there because of the way it was about religious mysticism.

Photography: A critical introduction surveyors and surveyed.

Photography: A critical introduction surveyors and surveyed. Pages 102 - 115.

In my piece of text it is talking about how documentary photography is changing.

In documentary: new cultures and spaces.

This paragraph talks about how documentary photography only use to be used to draw the attention of the audience to a particular subject, but now it is used to show how ordinary people lived. It also tells us that the means of documenting is not to take a photo to analyse what it is about but is a “witness to nothing of great importance.” This meaning that the subject matter of documentary is expanded to include whatever the photographer wants.

Theory and the critique of documentary.
In this paragraph it talks about how photographs are seen as “pieces of texts that need to be structured and encoded”.  It talks about how looking at the work expresses power and control over the spectator.

Cultural politics and everyday life.
In this paragraph it talks about how instead of documentary photography being about “ordinary and everyday life” recordings it was also being shown as a way of showing our own particularity and differences.  Feminist groups took photos to politicise concepts such as motherhood to overcome the limitations of documentary photography.

The real world in colour.
In this paragraph it is talking about how the use of colour in documentation shows us things that we might have never seen before and how it can express and induce feelings.  It also talks about how colour was regarded as lacking the technical control that black and white photography has. “To work in black and white now is to make a deliberate statement or to reference work from the past in a particular way.

Documentary and photojournalism in the global age.
This paragraph talks about how documentary has moved on from social and politic views and is now being seen as more art on gallery walls. It also talks about how documentary is running out of history with new technologies that mean less time printing images.

Photography as family therapy.

Martina Lopez

Lopez began working with her family's photographs as a way of reconstructing memories and exploring feelings of loss and change. She created works dedicated to her father, mother, and her eldest brother who was killed in Vietnam. She remarked that many of the memories of her oldest brother were in part constructed from his presence in family photographs. Working with snapshots from family vacations Lopez began to stitch together new images of her family that would exist in an artificial space of her own creation outside of a specific moment in time. 

"By extracting people from their original context and then placing them into fabricated landscapes, I hope to retell a story of their being, one which allows the images to acquire a life of their own. While the pieces from photographs verify an actual lived experience, the landscape stands as my metaphor for life, demarcating its quality, where the horizon suggests an endless time." - Martina lopez.

The figures in Lopez's images vary in scale and placement within each scene and are rendered in monochromatic tones so they seem to have no direct connection to the fabricated landscapes they occupy. The surreal landscapes, composed of disjointed topographies that are appropriated from other sources and from photographs made specifically for the piece, become a stage setting in which the placement of each character is carefully choreographed.  

The Abject Body

The abject body

The human body to some is a beautiful thing, a thing to desire. An abject body is something that is seen as disgusting, death, disease, deformity and even the grotesque.  

                       Gods of Earth & Heaven, LA, 1988,

Joel-Peter Witkins book “Gods of Earth And Heaven” looks at the themes of an abject body. He would use models such as dwarfs, people with lost limbs, transsexuals, hermaphrodites and even body parts. These models which the audience might consider to be ‘freaks’ shows the boundaries or what is considered to be ‘normal’ or ‘abnormal.

Jo Spence and Tim Sheard, Exiled, 1989. From Narratives of Dis-ease (1989).

Jo Spence an artist that photographed her challenge through breast cancer challenged the view that a normal appearance is deemed socially desirable. She was against society’s imposed pressure to conform and conceal disfigurement. Through her images she showed us her breast cancer scars with the word ‘Monster’ written on herself to show that she is not socially acceptable and has an abject body. Her book  "Cultural Sniping: The Art of Transgression..1995" transgression meaning the action of going beyond or overstepping some boundary or limit talks about the social boundaries that we as people set up for ourselves for which is to be seen as 'normal' and 'abnormal'(abject).

Post war years

Post war years

Joseph Rosenthal is an American photographer who took the iconic World War II photograph “Raising the flag on Iwo Jima.” Rosenthal saw these soldiers putting the flag up but he was late to take the photograph so he asked them again to put the flag up so the photograph is staged. It shows the struggle and the American flag shows a form of independence.

George Rodger was a British photojournalist noted for his work in Africa and for taking the first photographs of the death camps at Bergen-Belsen at the end of the Second World War. His photographs were highly influential in showing the reality of the death camps. He was appalled to realise that he was looking for photos that had graphically pleasing compositions and was traumatised by it so much that he could not work as a war correspondent again.

America had to re-establish itself over the war. Robert Frank’s “The American” showed the underbelly of society and looked at things that most people did not see or chose to ignore, it also revealed a profound sense of alienation, angst, and loneliness. The photos show the divide between the wealthy and poor. 

In 1960 a new photography was born; Fashion. Artists such as William Klein  (America) and David bailey (England). David bailey took photos of celebrities like Mick Jagger and William Klien took photos for vogue.  The sexual liberation of the 60’s when the pill was invented saw a time of change and people wanting to move forward.

Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech gave people in America hope but he sadly died 24 hours later.

South Vietnam police chief Nguyen Ngoc Loan shots a young man, whom he suspects to be a Viet Kong soldier

Modernism

Modernism

Modernism was the start of the 20^th century.  An era called constructivism which was a new vision where propaganda was used. The Russian revolution in 1917 used propaganda to brain wash people with political messages

Gustav Klutsis (1895 - 1938) was a photographer known for his photomontage.  His propaganda imags show dynamic compositions, distortions of scale and space, angled viewpoints and colliding perspectives which make them perpetually modern.

Art deco emerged in the late 1920's and was a visual arts design style. It is an eclectic style that combines traditional craft motifs with Machine Age imagery and materials.  The Bauhaus school created objects that were both functional whilst using rich colours and bold shapes. 

The decisive moment is a moment in time that when you are taking a photo all the elements to make it good come together at the right moment. In Henri Bressons “Behind the Gare St Lazare” it shows the perfect timing of the person jumping over the water.

A consumer society started to take over where machines and mass production replaced the handmade. The machines were seen as being more efficient. Fritz Lang had an idea of dystopia (meaning everything bad) where we lived in a world dominated by machines and man might lose control. Charlie Chaplin's 'Modern Times' reflects this where he is used to test a machine and things don’t go they was as planned.
American society saw the camera as a tool for reform.

Romantics, Pictoralists and the Photo secession

Romantics, Pictoralists and the Photo Secession.

 The 18^th century saw the emerging feelings of people wanting to go back to a pre-industrial era. This photograph of Alice Liddell, the girl which inspired the creation of the classic novel Alice’s adventures in wonderland starts to define the feelings of wanting to go back to older times. The pre-Raphaelite movement also shared this notion influencing the writing and painting of the era.  It saw a gothic revival where architecture was influenced such as the houses of parliament and Westminster. 

Julia Margaret Camerons “The mountain nymph sweet liberty” shows the innocence of the person and gives the picture a mythical and natural concept.

Alfred horsley Hinton was a landscape photographer whos work was part of the pictoralist movement. it refers to a style in which the photographer has somehow manipulated what would otherwise be a straightforward photograph as a means of "creating" an image rather than simply recording it. Thus making photography an art process itself. 

Dr Peter Emerson 1896. His photographs are early examples of promoting photography as an art form. The photograph shows how romance was associated with work.  

Secession refers to a number of modernist artist groups that separated from the support of official academic art and its administrations in the late 19th and early 20th century. Art nouveau challenged the nature of the art movement . It was inspired by natural forms and structures, not only in flowers and plants but also in curved lines. Architecture such as the Casa Mila in Barcelona designed by Gaudi reflected the art nouveau movement. 

The Steerage is a photograph taken by Alfred Stieglitz in 1907. The scene depicts a variety of men and women travelling in the lower-class section of a steamer going from New York to Bremen. The photograph shows the division of the poverty where the poorer class is at the bottom and the rich are at the top looking down on the poor. 

George Eastman created Kodak  in 1900.

The Kodak brownie was the first mass produced and affordable camera invented in 1900. The brownie could be used by a family and be returned when it needed developing. This made photography even more widely available and affordable.

Edward Steichen’s “Flat iron” of the flat iron building in New York shows the emergences of artificial light within photography. It shows the invention of the light bulb and the invention of night time photography.

Foreign Travellers and English Naturalists

Foreign Travellers and English Naturalists

In 1851 Frederick Scott Archer invented the wet collodin process which replaced Talbolts Calotype process. The collodin process was much faster and was confined for landscape photography because of the microscopic fine detail of the photo. The disadvantages of the wet collodin process were that you had to be fast so that the chemicals wouldn’t dry out on the plate and if you wanted to do a landscape photo you would have to take all you darkroom stuff with you so you’d have a lot to carry.

In 1854 In Andre Adolphe Eugene Disdiri created the “Carte De Visite” a calling card for the wealthy made from several portraits on a glass plate or contact print. 

In 1837 Queen Victoria came to the throne and calling cards were made so that the poor could see what she looked like. This photo was taken during her mourning period.

In 1859 Charles Dodgson wrote Alice’s adventures in wonderland which has lots of photography references like the rabbit hole being an aperture and everything being backwards and upside down like looking through a camera. 

Photography became more creative and was able to catch a moment in time. Nadar who was a French photographer photographed the actress Sarah Bernhardt making all the attention around her head and shoulders. By looking out of the frame and not directly at the camera, she depicts a longing and seductive look and it gives us permission to look at her.

In the 1850 classical music became romantic. It was due to composers making music about what they felt, instead of trying to make things academically perfect but unemotional.

Every 10 years a census is took to find out different information in 1851 a census was took to find out how many there photographers there where .
1841- 3 Photographers
1861- 51 photographers
1862 - 2,534 photographers

This shows that with the evolution of photography more and more people was interested in it and because it was becoming more cheaper people with less income were able to take part.

Jean Francois Antoine created the Stereoscopic daguerreotype which is a 3D effect created by placing two cameras spaced to imitate human binocular vision. In a special viewer the images appeared to be a three dimensional image.

Rodger Fenton was commissioned to photograph soldiers in the Crimea war in 1855. 
This photograph called “Valley of the shadow of death” is controversial because it was set up deliberately with the cannon balls.

Gustave le Gray put two negatives together to make one exposure creating seascapes by using one negative for the water and one negative for the sky. This meant that you could  have different exposures for each section and then when the two negatives put together creates a perfect picture exposure.

In 1850 “The big stink” meant that more children were dying from unhygienic water and cholera. This meant that more people were taking pictures of their dead children.  In Henrys Robinsons “Fading Away” it shows a young girl with her family possibly being held by her sibling.

Oscar Gustav Rejlander was a photographer who was a photo merger which meant he put negatives together to create large pieces of photography. In his photo called “The two ways of life”  

The photograph shows two young men and their father, the men choosing between a righteous or an immoral way of life. The group on the left of the scene represent the evil path, a pair of men gamble and two sirens try to tempt the man. On the right Religion, Knowledge and Mercy are among those who represent the righteous way of life. 

William Mumler was an American “Spirit” photographer who used double exposure to trick his guests into thinking their dead relatives were in the photo with them.  Mumler was brought to trial for fraud in April 1869. 

Before Photography

Before Photography

The enlightenment or the age of reason was an era that was challenging the Christian faith and religious dogma. The age of reason rejected the thought of the supernatural and focused on nature as experienced by human beings, this was called empiricism and the enlightenment took this as its main drive

Prior to the age of reason religious dogma had been the explanation for all things. It was sparked by Physicist Isaac Newton, philosopher John Locke and Pierre Bayle. Photography was born of an era of classicism which barks back to an ancient Greek and Roman sources. The Greeks adopted this view of thinking and called it philosophy which means “The study of the fundamental nature of knowledge, reality, and existence.”

Joseph Wright of Derby, an English artist painted pictures of scientific scenes. This shows that through scientific method it challenged the ideas that were grounded in tradition and faith. A painting called “An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump” 1768 shows people gathered around a table looking at an experiment that took air away from a bird which showed the nature of the air and the ability to support live.

The camera obscura meaning room (Camera) and dark (obscura) is an optical device that produces an image of its surrounds onto a surface. Artists found it hard to draw correct perspective of places such as landscapes and cities so the camera obscura allowed artists such as Vermeer to trace accurate representations.  It was used in the renaissance period artists such as Vermeer used this device as a way to capture highly detailed drawings of his subjects. Another artist called Filippo Brunelleschi observed that with a fixed single point of view, parallel lines appear to converge at a single point in the distance. Brunelleschi applied a single vanishing point to a canvas, and discovered a method for calculating depth.

In a famous noted experiment, Brunelleschi used mirrors to sketch the Florence baptistry in perfect perspective. He was able to mathematically calculate the scale of objects within a painting in order to make them appear realistic.

In 1727 a professor of anatomy named Johann Heinrich Schulze discovered that silver salts darkened when exposed to the sun, and in 1777 is was discovered that silver nitrate darkens quicker with blue light. In 1799 Francois Chaussier read that new combinations of sulphur and alkalis meant that an image could be fixed.

In 1815  Joseph Nicephore Niepce was the first to officially fix an image using Hyposulphurous acid and its compounds. He fixed an image called “View from the Window at Le Gras” (1826) which took 8 hours to expose.

1839 photography was born!

Jacques Mande Daguerre announced his invention in 1839 using a piece of polished copper plate, polished to a mirror like finish, the surface was fumed with iodine and exposed to produce a fixed image. 

His first image of a boulevard in France required an exposure of at least 10 minutes. This makes the street below look empty but any moving objects would have been lost during the exposure.

Also In 1839 Hippolyte Bayard invented his own process that gave a direct positive onto paper.

At the same time but in the UK Henry Fox Talbolt invented the Calotype which used paper coated in silver iodine. His first negative was of “The Latticed Window” taken at Laycock Abbey in August 1835. Talbot had also experimented with items such as lace and flowers which was another way of preserving.

The British empire in 1838 was obsessed with collecting objects and sent people all over the world to discover new things. Exotic items, animals and even people were brought back to the UK for the purpose of documenting, categorising and collecting. A photograph became increasingly seen as means of documenting and recording.  Thus the museum was established.

Sir John Frederick William Herschel invented the word “ Photography” which means “Light drawing”

America - Tintype
French - Daguerreotype
England - Calotype