California Modernists

California Modernists

Looking at Modernism and the f/64 Group

Modernism the Rejection of Pictorialism

Modernism Vs Pictorialism

Paul Strand

Modernism – Exploiting Photography’s strengths of detail, sharpness and tone range to intensify realism

Pictorialism - Photographers would try to emulate, or straight up copy, the styles, and effects of contemporary painters, drawers, and etchers – soft focus, heavy manipulation in the darkroom

Alfred Stieglitz

ModernismThe Straight Approach (America)

Unmanipulated Tonal Quality

Recognising the purity of the medium

Image sharpness

Detail

Rejection of the academic art movements

Recognising photography as an independent art form

Documentary

Not borrowing techniques from artists

Personal Vision

Paul Strand

Quotes:

“It is one thing to photograph people. It is another to make others care about them by revealing the core of their humanness.”

“Look at the things around you, the immediate world around you. If you are alive, it will mean something to you, and if you care enough about photography, and if you know how to use it, you will want to photograph that meaningness. If you let other people's vision get between the world and your own, you will achieve that extremely common and worthless thing, a pictorial photograph.”

ModernismThe New Vision (Europe)

Manipulation of imagery Experimenting with the medium

To see the world in new challenging ways

Photomontage / Photograms

Political tool

Combination of photographs with modern typography and graphic design

Developed out of the horrors of WW1

Influenced Dadaist and Surrealist movements

Composed of fragmented images

Anti–art traditions

ModernismThe New Objectivity (Germany)

Unmanipulated Tonal Quality

Focusing on the formal elements

Recognising the purity of the medium

Image sharpness

Detail

Rejection of the academic art movements

Recognising photography as an independent art form

Documentary

Intensify realism

Not borrowing techniques from artists

1931 Modernism & California Modernists

Lineage of California Modernism

This period was heavily influenced by Moholy-Nagy and Pure Photography

Precisionism

The New Vision (Europe): Photography between the World Wars

The New Vision (America): Precisionism ‘absolute unqualified objectivity’ – Moholy-Nagy term

Emphasized material qualities of the real world

Aesthetics influenced by Strand, Kertesz, Moholy-Nagy, experimental photography of avant-garde in europe.

Precisionists - A Visual Style

Artists were associated through common style and subject, not a unified group or manifesto (like Photo Secession)

Highly controlled approach to technique and form

Reduced compositions to underlying shapes and geometric forms

Partially influenced by photographers like strand, using sharp focus, unexpected viewpoints, emphasis on form (sometimes abstracted)

Distinctly American – subjects were American landscape and regional culture

U.S was expanding communications technology, industrial production and urban construction

Images from the early Precisionists focused on industrial spaces, architecture, buildings, and overwhelming urban sprawl.

Photographs had clear outlines, minimal detail, and smooth handling of surfaces.

Sharp focus and lighting, unexpected viewpoints and cropping, with an emphasis on the abstract form of the subject

Charles Sheeler, 1915

Worked on films with Paul Strand

‘Precisionist’ Photographers of the West Coast

On November 15, 1932, at the M. H. de Young Memorial Museum in San Francisco, 11 photographers announced themselves as Group f/64:

Ansel Adams Imogen CunninghamJohn Paul Edwards Preston HolderConsuelo Kanaga Alma LavensonSonya Noskowiak Henry Swift Willard Van Dyke Brett Weston

Edward Weston

The chief object of the Group was to present in frequent shows what it considers the best contemporary photography of the West; in addition to showing the work of its members, it included prints from other photographer similar to that of the Group.

The name referred to the smallest aperture available in large-format view cameras at the time and it signalled the group's conviction that photographs should celebrate rather than disguise the medium's unrivalled capacity to present the world "as it is."

Differentiate from the New York Art Scene – something going on else where

Exploration of the West ….

Heavily influenced by straight photography.

In reaction to Constructivists: “These cheap abortions … have nothing to do with Art, nor Life, nor Photography … I am in the mood to stir things up.” – Edward Weston

f/64 Manifesto

Glossy papers instead of matte or artist papers, the surfaces of which tended to disperse the contours of objects.

Contact printing, (a method of making prints by placing photographic paper directly in contact with the negative, instead of using an enlarger to project the negative image onto paper)

The group's effort to present the camera's "vision" as clearly as possible included advocating the use of aperture f/64 in order to provide the greatest depth of field, thus allowing for the largest percentage of the picture to be in sharp focus

The camera was able to see the world more clearly than the human eye - it didn't project personal prejudices onto the subject.

Striving for aesthetic beauty

Straight photographic procedure

Sharp Images

Maximum depth of field

Carefully composed images

Photographed the world around them

Depicting life ‘as it is’

Emphasis on form

Contact printing on glossy paper

Only founding female member of f/64 Group

Started in Pictorialism

Moved to modernist approach after the Pictorialist era

Hired to photographic scientific botanical specimens while studying at University

Imogen Cunningham 1883 - 1976

A founding member of Group f.64, Cunningham was a pioneer of sharp-focus “straight photography” — a style which would usher the medium of photography into the modernist era.

Studied at University of Washington in Seattle

Her earliest prints were made in the tradition of Pictorialism

Went onto study at Technische Hochschule in Dresden, Germany, from 1909 to 1910

1920s Cunningham began to change her style, creating close-up, sharply detailed studies of plant life and other natural forms. Her experiments with form allied her with other Modernist photographers at the time, and in 1932 Cunningham joined the association of West Coast photographers known as Group f.64.

Rejected the soft-focused sentimental subjects that were then popular.

Was in favour of images which convey a “sensuous delight” in nature.

She ran a portrait gallery and taught at several California art schools

http://www.sfmoma.org/explore/multimedia/interactive_features/7

http://photography2westthamescollege.wordpress.com/unit-13-contextual-studies/imogen-cunningham/

“I was poor. When you’re poor you work, and when you’re rich you expect somebody to hand it to you. So I think being reasonably poor is very good for people.”

Edward Weston

Quotes: “Anything that excites me for any reason, I will photograph; not searching for unusual

subject matter, but making the commonplace unusual.”

“I start with no preconceived idea - discovery excites me to focus - then rediscovery through the lens - final form of presentation seen on ground glass, the finished print previsioned completely in every detail of texture, movement, proportion, before exposure - the shutter's release automatically and finally fixes my conception, allowing no after manipulation - the ultimate end, the print, is but a duplication of all that I saw and felt through my camera.”

Consider to be one of the great Modernists

A very versatile photographer:

Happily worked in Colour A master darkroom printer

Diverse and talented photographerMaster of light and shadow

Photographed in any light – not necessarily the soft, easy, light that many other photographers waited for.

Edward Weston 1886 – 1958

PortraitsStill life

LandscapeNudes

Weston became successful working in soft-focus, pictorial style; winning many salons and professional awards.

Weston gained an international reputation for his high key portraits and modern dance studies. Articles about his work were published in magazines such as American Photography, Photo Era and Photo Miniature.

In 1922 Weston visited the ARMCO Steel Plant in Middletown, Ohio. The photographs taken here marked a turning point in Weston’s career. During this period, Weston renounced his Pictorialism style with a new emphasis on abstract form and sharper resolution of detail. The industrial photographs were true straight images: unpretentious, and true to reality.

1936 marked the start of Weston’s series of nudes and sand dunes in Oceano, California, which are often considered some of his finest work.

“The camera should be used for a recording of life, for rendering the very substance and

quintessence of the thing itself, whether it be polished steel or palpitating flesh.”

He could photograph any subject matter – he said he

could “find beauty in anything.”

After moving back to California in 1926, Weston began his work for which he is most deservedly famous: natural forms, close-ups, nudes, and landscapes. Between 1927 and 1930, Weston made a series of monumental close-ups of seashells, peppers, and halved cabbages, bringing out the rich textures of their sculpture-like forms.

Ansel Adams

Quotes: “Photography, as a powerful medium of expression and communications, offers an

infinite variety of perception, interpretation and execution.”

“The [35mm] camera is for life and for people, the swift and intense moments of life.”

Custodian in YosemiteJapanese internment camps

Born and raised in San Francisco

Work extensively in Yosemite and helped to preserve Yosemite and other wilderness areas as National Parks.

Environmentalist – Sierra Club

“A photograph is usually looked at – seldom looked into.”

Ansel Adams 1902 - 1984

A visionary figure in nature photography and wilderness preservation.

An environmental hero and a symbol of the American West

Inspire an appreciation for natural beauty and a strong conservation ethic.

Adams was often criticized for not including humans in his photographs and for representing an idealized wilderness that no longer exists.

http://photography2westthamescollege.wordpress.com/unit-13-contextual-studies/ansel-adams-working/

“Millions of men have lived to fight, build palaces and boundaries, shape destinies and societies: but the compelling force of all times has been the force of originality and creation profoundly affecting the rooms of human spirit.”

Modern

Natural landscape

Visual Characteristics

High contrast

Strong Geometric form

Broad tonal range

B&W

Sharp images

One of the first organized Photography movement in the U.S outside of NYC

This movement elevate photography to art using its technical aesthetic inherent qualities

Group did not stay together, the Great Depression diminished the desire for a collective art purpose

Group consisted of some of the well known and influential photographers today

California Modernists / West Coast Precisionists / Group f.64