PHOT 154, History of Photography, Grossmont College, the photography of movement, Muybridge, Marey, Eakins, futurism, photography and the invention of moving pictures, lumiere brothers, autochrome, Photography and Social Reform, Lewis Hine, Jacob Riis

1. With a Kodak in the Land of the Navajo, Eastman sponsored photographic
book and exhibition, 1909.

2. Edward Sheriff Curtis (1868-1952), photographed Native Americans of the
Northwest, Southwest and Great Plains.

3. Curtis, platinum print

4. Curtis was not an objective documentarian. His work was / is
considered to be a romantic attempt to manufacture a nostalgic
view of the “vanishing noble savage.”

5. Curtis, Medicine Man, platinum print
• Curtis manipulated his images for emotional effect.
• Costumes (many of which were no longer used by the subjects), wigs, props and
backdrops were used.
• Sculptural lighting, silhouettes, print manipulation (burning / dodging) were used.

6. Curtis produced dramatic, formal and what he felt were dignified portraits.
• From 1900 - 1930, Curtis worked with approximately 80 Native American groups, producing
over 40,000 images. He wrote 4 books, supervised 16 others, and made recordings of
native language and music.
• His monumental work, called the North American Indian (1907-1930), contains 2,200
images, 20 volumes of text of about 350 pages each.

7. Curtis, Singing to the Snakes, gelatin silver print
• Although Curtis’ work has been criticized for its “romantic treatment of native people as
exotica,” it provides some of the only photographic evidence of artifacts, costumes,
ceremonies, legends and songs of many tribe’s previous existence.

8. Jacques-Henri Lartigue, In My Room: Collection of My Racing Car , 1905.

9. Lartigue, My Cousin Bichonnade , 1905.

10. Lartigue, Zissou in His Tire Boat, Chateau du Rouzat , page from diary,1911.

11. Lartigue, 1911

12. Lartigue, Woman With Fox Fur, Ave des Acacias, 1911.

13. Lartigue, Wheeled Bobsleigh, designed by Jacques-Henri Lartigue, 1911.

14. Lartigue, 1911

15. Edward Muybridge, The Horse in Motion, 1878.

16. Edward Muybridge, The Horse in Motion, cabinet card,1877.

17. Muybridge’s most important motion studies were published in 1887
as Animal Locomotion, a collection describing in sequential frames,
animals and humans in motion.

18. Muybridge, from Animal Locomotion.

19. Muybridge, from Animal Locomotion.
• Muybridge used several cameras at once. He attached a special roller shutter
(which worked on the principle of a window shade) in front of each camera lens.
• The shutters were operated by an electromagnetic system - which let them be
fired at selected intervals - they could then be opened and closed in succession
or simultaneously.
• Usually, models were photographed against a white or black background, which
was divided by lines into a grid of sequences so the images could be easily
drawn and analyzed.

20. In nearly two years of work, Muybridge produced 10,000 images
depicting movement - using photographs and the phenomenon of
persistence of vision (the sensation that images are continuous) to
show an audience moving pictures.

21. Muybridge, cover of Scientific American, Zoetrope
Cover of Scien

22. Muybridge, Zoopraxiscope, 1872. The device consisted of a glass
disk with images arranged in consecutive order and an equal
distance apart. When the disk is placed in the slotted viewer and
rotated, the static images produced motion.

23. Muybridge, disks for use with Zoopraxiscope

24. Muybridge wanted to put together a visual dictionary of human and
animal locomotion for artists. He was concerned with how subjects
looked in motion - the beauty of movement.
• He would sometimes take single images from different sequences to construct a
new sequence. Then he rephotographed them and printed to give the illusion of
movement.
• While his constructions may not be verifiably scientific for the analysis of
locomotion, his cinematic montages provided a new way of seeing, and artists
began to incorporate motion - as seen by the camera - in their work.

25. Thomas Eakins, A May Morning in the Park, oil on canvas, 1879.
References Muybridge’s studies of the horse’s gait - a blending of scientific
accuracy with artistic expression.

26. Eakins, Pole Vaulter, multiple exposure ptrint.

27. Etienne Jules Marey with photographic gun.
Marey was a physiologist primaily interested in the analysis of how muscles
moved.

28. The camera gun was based on the rotating bullet chamber of a
revolver.
At first the device produced a sequence of separate images on one disk.

29. Later, Marey devised a system that used a plate which held still
momentarily - allowing for sequential motion - which was more
suggestive of flowing or uninterrupted movement, in time and
space, on a single plate. He called it photochronography.

30. The displacement of static time into an endless flow of movement altered
the way many artists depicted time and space in their work.
Duchamp, Nude Descending a Staircase, 1912 Marey, Walking Study, 1882
Painting style is derived from Cubism - the first abstract style of the 20th
Century. Subjects were represented as many-sided.

31. Georges Braque, oil on canvas. In Cubist art, objects, landscapes
and figures are represented as many-sided.

32. Cubism was the most radical way of representation in almost 500 years. Since the
Renaissance, almost all painting and photography had used the one-point
perspective: a geometrical system for depicting the illusion of reality - based on the
fact that objects seem to get smaller as they go further from one’s eye.
• Cubists developed their own system. Three-dimensional subjects were fragmented and
redefined from various points of view simultaneously.
• Cubist art didn’t present a coherant view of the subject, and had little to do with nature.

33. Picasso, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, 1907.

34. Alvin Langdon Coburn, Vortograph 1
Coburn clamped 3 mirrors together facing one another to form a hollow
triangular prism through which he photographed bits of crystal and wood
on a glass tabletop.
Ezra Pound, a poet and part of and English group of painters called the Vorticists
called the instrument a Vortoscope, and the resulting images Vortographs.
Vorticism was an English variant of Cubism.

35. Coburn, Vortograph 2

36. Coburn, Vortograph Portrait of Ezra Pound

37. Italian Futurists
Giacomo Balla, Speed of a Motorcycle, oil on canvas, 1913.
• Italian Futurists celebrated technological progress and the machine age.
• Were influential to vorticism - as well as surrealism, dadaism and constructivism.
• Partly inspired by stop - action photographs.

38. Balla, Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash, oil on canvas, 1912.

39. Anton Giulio Bragaglia, Typist, 1911. Used photography to try to
make visible what the eye itself can’t perceive.

40. Bragaglia, Change of Position, 1911.
“We are not interested in the precise reconstruction of movement which has already
been broken up and analyzed. We are involved only in the area of movement which
produces a sensation.” Term: Photodynamism

41. Bragaglia, Portrait of Balla, 1912
Bragaglia’s theory was that speed applied to actions or objects renders them
immaterial - not consisting of matter - and invisible. “Appearance is replaced by
transparency.” Bragalia’s photodynamics are fluid “visual representations” of
energy.”

42. Kasebier, Portrait of Alfred Steiglitz, 1906
As Cubism emerged (about 1906), Alfred Steiglitz - who was still championing
Pictorialism - underwent a change in his views corncerning photography.
In 1907 Steiglitz decided that for photography to grow it had to stop copying
other mediums and return to its’ “original foundation - the direct, unmanipulated
camera made view.”
The accurate recording of reality by the camera that made clairty and detail a
priority would be essential points in judging the value of a photograph.

43. Stieglitz, the Steerage, gelatin silver print, 1907

44. Stieglitz, the Steerage, gelatin silver print, 1907
• Stieglitz recognized the camera’s potential for instantaneously framing situations from life.
The resulting negative was printed without cropping. Using the full frame of the negative
was an announcement that the finished piece had been visualized before the shutter was
released.
• The composition stood on its own innate structure, and didn’t rely on any post-visualization
techniques.
• The full frame indicated that a photograph should look like a photograph, not an etching or
a painting.
• These “straight photography” ideals would eventually dominate artistic photographic
practice.

45. In 1913 the Association of American Painters and Sculptors staged the first
International Modern art Show at the Armory of the 69th Regiment of New
York -which came to be known as the Amory Show
It was the first large exhibition of modern art that introduced photography, cubist,
expressionist and post expressionist art to a new audience.

47. With the help of Edward Steichen, Stieglitz opened the Little Galleries of
the Photo-Secession, located at 291 Fifth Avenue in New York. The
galleries later became known as 291. Stieglitz used the galleries to
introduce modern art to America.
Matisse, oil on canvas Cezanne, oil on canvas, 1895

48. Stieglitz, 291 Gallery, 1905

49. Stieglitz, 291 Gallery, 1905

50. Rodin, Thinker, Picasso, Still Life With Chair, 1902

51. Modern art was seen as radical - Stieglitz said he wanted to shock the
American public out of their conplacency.
“In all phases of human activity the tendency of the masses has been
Invariably towards ultra conservatism. Progress has been
Accomplished only by the fanatical enthusiasm of the revolutionist, whose
extreme teaching has saved the masses from utter inertia. In this country
photography has also followed this law, and whatever have been the
achievements which have won it exceptional distinction, they have been
attained by the efforts of the enthusiastic so-called extremists.” - Stieglitz

52. Strand, Abstraction, Porch Shadows, 1915,
Strand, Shadows Abstraction, New York, 1917.

53. Strand, Photograph-New York (Woman with sign that reads
“Blind”), from Camera Work, 1917.

54. Strand, Wall Street,1916.
“I was trying to recreate the abstract movement of people moving in a city;
what that kind of movement really feels like and is like.”

55. A new set of Western ideas, artistic, cultural and spiritual, evolved
during the early Modernistic period (1880-1920)
• Modernist artists did away with historical subject matter and the convincing
depiction of nature, in favor of portraying contemporary events and experimental
representation.
• Aristocratic, church and state patronage declined in the late 19th century, which
meant that artists no longer had to answer to those powers and their values.
Artists were freer to experiment with content.
• Aesthetic formalism emerged at this time. Emphasized form over content. A
belief that pure forms could become as important as subject matter.
• Modernist artists also believed that meaning is inherently placed in an artwork by
the artist and read by the viewer.
• Individual freedom over social authority. “Art for art’s sake.”

56. Strand, Typewriter Keys, New York, 1917.

57. Strand, White Fence.

58. Stieglitz, Portrait of Georgia O’Keefe, New York, 1918-20.

59. Stieglitz, Portrait of Georgia O’Keefe, New York, 1918-20.

60. Stieglitz, Hands of Georgia O’Keefe, New York, 1918-20.

61. Stieglitz, from Equivalents 1920-23 - metaphors for emotion and
psychological states.

62. Portrait of Stieglitz and O’Keefe
• Stieglitz devoted his entire life of creative effort to photography.
• One of the most important cultural forces of the 20th century.
• His own photography and the work of those he nurtured became
the foundations of 20th century photography.
• He did more than any other individual to promote photography
as an art at the same level as other art mediums.

63. Edward Steichen, self portrait age 17

64. Steichen, the Pond, 1908

65. Steichen, Brooklyn Bridge, platinum print

66. Steichen, the Mirror.

67. While in Europe during 1901-1902, Steichen continued to work in painting
and photography. He was elected to be a member of the Linked Ring, and
became friends with the sculptor Rodin and other modern artists. He
arranged for work by Rodin, Matisse, Cezanne, Picasso and Brancusi to be
shown at the 291 gallery.

68. Steichen continued to exhibit his work in the U. S. while he was
Europe. He was one of the founders (with Kasebier and Stieglitz) of
the Photo-Secession…

69. …and designed the cover for Camera Work magazine. (The
magazine without an “if” - fearless - independent - without favor).

70. Lumiere Brothers, Autochrome - an image made on glass.
• Strach grains dyed the primary colors red, green and blue.Then mixed
and put on a glass plate.
• Plate was covered with a sticky substance to act as an adhesive.
• Plate was then coated with black powder, varnished, coated with
sensitized emulsion and exposed in camera. The results were a
positive transparency.

71. Starch grains and illustration of autochrome packaging

72. Steichen, Autochrome portraits

73. Steichen, Self Portrait in studio, 1917.
Steichen remained a peripheral member of the 291 group until he
finally broke with Stieglitz in 1917.

74. Steichen, Charlie Chaplan for Vanity Fair magazine, 1923.
Stieglitz resented the fact that Steichen used his artistic talents to do
commercial work.

75. Steichen, for Vanity Fair magazine, 1923.
• Became the chief photographer for Vogue and Vanity Fair magazine in
1923.
• Photographs are characterized by a great sense of drama, character,
lighting and pose.

76. Steichen, George Gerswin for Vanity Fair magazine, 1923.

77. Steichen, for Vanity Fair magazine, 1923.

78. Steichen, fashion (after art deco) for for Vogue magazine, 1920s.

79. Steichen, fashion (after art cubism) for for Vogue magazine, 1920s.

80. Steichen, for Vanity Fair magazine, 1920s.

81. Steichen, for Kodak.

82. Steichen, advertising, textile design.

83. Steichen recognized the power of photography as mass media. He
understood the public appeal, the commercial usefulness, and the
persuasive quality of photography. It was his blending of commercial
concerns with artistic vision that makes his work significant and influential.