Experiment #2(part 1): Environmental portraiture

The Original Papparazzo: WEEGEE
Weegee, Murder Is My Business
The Weegee Exhibition is coming to Ryerson Image Centre from October 14-December 13 (Toronto field trip, anyone?)

 

GARY WINOGRAND

Garry Winogrand (American, 1928–1984)
New York, 1968
Gelatin silver print;
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, (GW.SFMOMA.003)
http://www.metmuseum.org/Collections/search-the-collections/645534

Exhibition at the MET | check out the video in the middle of the page

At National Gallery of Art (Washington,DC)

Questioning the ethics of street photography
Excellent perspective on Winogrand’s portrayal of women

Fraenkel Gallery | Winogrand’s In The Street portfolio

10 Things Gary Winogrand Can Teach You About Street Photography

 

HELEN LEVITT

Great audio interview with Helen Levitt (images too)

Helen Levitt at MOMA
Helen Levitt: The New York Streets 1938-1990s

7 lessons Helen Levitt can teach you about street photography

MARTIN PARR

Martin Parr | The problem with The selfie stick

Too Much Photography?

The Facebook Problem!

These images are from the Behold :The Photog blog at SLATE magazine. The first two images are portraits by Maja Daniels who was commissioned by New York magazine to photograph french identical twins, Monette and Mady. The project won the Contour by Getty Images Portrait Prize.
More images + Article

RINEKE DIJKSTRA
Rineke Dijkstra | Tate Modern | Cruel and Tender | Guggenheim | MORE Guggenheim

ALEC SOTH
Sleeping By The Mississippi | A conversation with Alec Soth

AUGUST SANDER
MOMA | Amber Online | August Sander. com

LAUREN GREENFIELD
Girl Culture | THIN

SHIZUKA YOKOMIZO
Museum of Contemporary Photography | Google

HELEN VAN MEENE
A Conversation

TIMOTHY ARCHIBALD
A conversation | portraits

ARNOLD NEWMAN
The portraits | PDN gallery

JOEL STERNFELD

 

LARRY SULTAN | Pictures From Home

TINA BARNEY
(an interview)

Mary Ellen Mark
Streetwise

BILL OWENS | Suburbia

STUDENT WORK | Andy Huckle

MISC

24 hours; 90 years (good environmental portrait example)

 

 

NIKI S. LEE
Museum of Contemporary Photography | The Creator’s Project, overview


Museum of Contemporary Photography | The Creator’s Project, overview

 

Anyone doing environmental portraiture for their final? Mostly Lauren, because you’re working with people and their possessions! This artist traveled around the world and photographed children with their most prized possessions over the course of 18 months. These might be nice images to look at in terms of arrangement people with objects.
(click the image to see the rest of the project)

 

A FEW BLOGS
This list is by no means exhaustive, but it’s a start. Please add your contributions in the comments.

Fans in a Flashbulb
A blog from the folks at the International Center of Photography (ICP) in NY

APERTURE magazine | Aperture Magazine | blog | The library has the print version. Go there, you can check out books for free, it’s like a torrent but psst, it’s legal.

FOAM magazine

British Journal of Photography

Daylight

Prefix The latest copy is usually in the lab. Headquartered in Toronto.

Conscientious (daily content)  and Conscientious Extended (longer articles/interviews)

LensCulture

Behold: The photo blog of SLATE magazine The photo blog at SLATE magazine

Photo Booth: The view from the photo department at the New Yorker magazine

PHOTO at the Atlantic Magazine at The Atlantic

St. Lucy

Ain’t Bad: started by the students at SCAD

 

 

 

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SATURN!

In Photo I we often discuss how photographic seeing is fundamentally different from biological seeing. This is a great example of how photography extends our figurative and literal/scientific vision. 
Image of Saturn from The New York Times article, 100 Images From Cassini’s Mission To Saturn

More about Cassini and the end of it’s mission on Friday, September 14, 2017 when it vaporized into space. The Internet’s boyfriend Neil deGrasse Tyson (Astrophysicist and Director of the Hayden Planetarium) tweeted:

Farewell Cassini, how far you’ve come. On this eve, in fiery death, Saturn & you are one. VIP (Vaporize In Peace): 2004-2017 pic.twitter.com/O0yff5bo7z

— Neil deGrasse Tyson (@neiltyson) September 15, 2017

 

Photo I : Pinhole Cameras and Photograms

GENERAL HISTORY OF PHOTOGRAMS
From Man Ray to Thomas Ruff—article
Good description with images

WILLIAM HENRY FOX TALBOT
| Photogenic Drawings | Arts Connected

ANNA ATKINS

Festuca grasses from ‘British and Foreign Flowering Plants and Ferns’, c.1854
Brief Bio | The Getty | University of Texas, Austin

 

MAN RAY-Rayograms

Metropolitan Museum of Art
At Aqua Velvet
General description of photography and surrealism

 

 

LASZLO MOHOLY NAGY
At MOMA | At the Getty Musuem

 

*CONTEMPORARY ARTISTS

ADAM FUSS

• At Cheim & Reid
• At Fraenkel Gallery
• At Artists and Alchemists
• Good article with terrible formatting
• Interview in BOMB magazine.

 

ALISON ROSSITER

• Represented by Stephen Bulger (Toronto)
• Yossi Milo (NY)
• Canadian Art profile
• Article in Le Rencontres d’Arles
• Video at Gallery Intell

 

GARY FABIAN MILLER

• Artist Website
• Video and images at Victoria and Albert Museum
• At Ingleby Gallery

SHADOW CATCHERS at The Victoria and Albert Museum
• Camera-less photo techniques at Victoria and Albert Museum
• A History of Camera-less Photography at the Victoria and Albert Museum.
• A listing of all of the artists plus video interviews in the Camera-less Photography exhibit.

 

SUSAN DERGES

• Susan Derges
• Prix Pictet
• Paul Kasmin Gallery
• Video, commissioned by the Victoria and Albert Museum.
• At Oxford University
• At Danziger Gallery

 

ABELARDO MORELL

Flashlight and Salt, photogram on 8×10 film
More of his photograms

 

 

THOMAS RUFF

Photograms for the new age (interview in Aperture magazine)
See more work at David Zwirner gallery

 

 

Brief History of Photography: Photo I

But first, this. A different way of thinking about why we take photographs

This post supplements the Brief History of Photography lecture in Photo 1.

Abelardo Morrell: The Making of a Camera Obscura

Abelardo Morell’s website.

David Hockney’s, A Secret Knowledge, (part 1), (part 2), (part 3).

The book. The DVD. An article about the book.

Not everyone agrees with Hockney’s thesis. Some counter arguments, here and here. The later one is perhaps the most valid because its author is a scholar. Hockney’s project has inspired further exploration and scholarship.

Jerry Spagnoli: contemporary daguerreotypist. A video presentation. His website.

BBC program: The Genius of Photography

Sally Mann, contemporary collodion.

George Eastman House on Flickr

“Tim’s Vermeer“a documentary by Penn and Teller (yes, THAT Penn and Teller) about one man’s obsession with discovering Vermeer’s secrets. Hint: camera obscura! Trailer | NY Times article | TIFF summary

Experiment #1 Understanding vision and color

 

TEST YOUR COLOUR SENSITIVITY (thanks Alison!)
Test from Pantone

 

THE SCIENCE OF COLOUR AND LIGHT
Optical illusions show how we see.

Color and Physics

Colour and light, explained by Bill Nye (the science guy).

Light Fantastic 4: Light, The Universe, and Everything.

A BBC video that explores, “the research on the strange relationship between light, the eye and mind, and the development of new technologies such as photography and film”

This is an interesting TED talk about Colour Theory.

FOUNDATIONS of VISION: COLOR
Fantastic resource via Stanford University

 

ALTERED PERCEPTION and VISION
Dr. George Stratton

Dr. George Stratton’s original article,
SOME PRELIMINARY EXPERIMENTS ON VISION WITHOUT INVERSION OF THE RETINAL IMAGE.

Summary and explanation of Stratton’s work, courtesy of the staff of San Francisco’s Museum of Science, Art, and Human Perception.

Newer article, based on Stratton’s research.

Great WIRED article about neuroplasticity, vision, and perception.

Video showing inverted vision experiments: Living in a Reversed World.

THE ILLUSION OF COLOUR CONSTANCY | Color Subjectivity | Living in the past
Video.
Is your red my red? No. It isn’t.

The neurological lag between seeing light and understanding/processing light.

What is video, anyway?

“It’s all to do with our cone cells, one of the two types of photoreceptors within our eye’s retina, which are responsible for color vision. We have three types of cones, which are sensitive to blue, green or red wavelengths of light. When we’re exposed to a lot of one color, that particular type of cone gets overstimulated and becomes “tired” and unresponsive. This leaves you temporarily with the use of only your other two types of cone, which show the opposing “complementary” color (i.e red versus green and blue versus yellow). After a few seconds, the cones “recharge” and you’re able to perceive that color again.” – IFLS

 

THE ILLUSION OF COLOUR CONSTANCY | Color Subjectivity | Living in the past
Video.
Is your red my red? No. It isn’t.

The neurological lag between seeing light and understanding/processing light.

What is video, anyway?

 

COLOUR AND LANGUAGE
This video explores the relationship between the development of language and the processing and understanding of colour.

 

 

 

 

Experiment #1 The History of Color

George Eastman House’s photostream on Flickr. Excellent historic images.

Short video about the Autochrome process, from The ImageWorks in Rochester, NY.

Concise History of Color Photography with excellent images and text.

The George Eastman House: Notes on Photographs: An international forum for gathering information that enhances the communal understanding of the photographic print.

A short video about the history of color photography from the Smithsonian Institution (Washington, DC)

History and manufacture of Lantern Slides.

The scandal and possible truth surrounding Levi Hill who claimed to have invented color photography.

 

THE FIRST DIGITAL CAMERA

(Image from the New York Times Magazine)

This is the first DIGITAL (filmless) camera. 1975!
Wonder why it took so long to be on the consumer market? Read this.

 

A list of links about the origins of the digital camera, as well as other connections between photography and technology.

PICTURES OF CATS! (before the Internet)

Just in case you think cats + social media is new, (mew?) it’s not.

Maker: S.L. Upham & Fowler
Title: Cat / opaque background
Date: ca. 1875
Medium: albumen print
Dimensions: Image: 9.5 x 5.5 cm Mount: 10.1 x 6.2 cm
This image is from the George Eastman House Flickr Feed.

 

MORE ABOUT THE HISTORY OF PHOTOGRAPHY
If you’re interested in more information about the History of Photography, check out this and this.

 

THE ORIGINS OF PHOTOGRAPHY–the CAMERA OBSCURA

In the above posts, you’ll find a brief history of the camera obscura, how many painters such as Vermeer used a camera obscura to aid in his painting, as well as contemporary artists who use the camera obscura.

If you’re interested in the connection between Vermeer and the camera obscura, this is a compelling documentary:

“Tim’s Vermeer” a documentary by Penn and Teller (yes, THAT Penn and Teller) about one man’s obsession with discovering Vermeer’s secrets. Hint: camera obscura! Trailer | NY Times article | TIFF summary

 

Dr. Edwin H. Land.
Photo copyright J.J.Scarpetti.
Image from: The Rowland Institute at Harvard

EDWIN LAND
Video about Edwin Land (the inventor of Polaroid) and his two color process. An article describing the relationship between Edwin Land’s experiments and James Clark Maxwell’s discoveries.

POLAROID NOW: The Impossible Project

CMYK
Short film, creative interpretation of cymk in everyday printing (cereal boxes, etc)

THE HISTORY OF COLOUR MODELS
To augment our class discussion about colour, learn about the history of the colour wheel.

History of Color Models
Color Models
Color: Standford University Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Jason Salavon, pushes boundaries between photography/computer science/video etc.  Here is his interpretation of the Colour Wheel.

 

 

Experiment #1 Artists

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RESOURCES ABOUT COLOUR and ARTISTS

 

• Go here. It’s an amazing resource of artists.

• OR, HERE TO THIS GREAT web-based component to a larger MOMA exhibition about reinventing color

Yves Klein | TATE Modern | MOMA

• Go here. It’s an amazing resource of artists.

• OR, HERE TO THIS GREAT web-based component to a larger MOMA exhibition about reinventing color

Yves Klein | TATE Modern | MOMA

 

Sophie Calle | Chromatic Diet | Explanation about the project

 

 

 

JESSICA EATON

Jessica Eaton | Interview in The Believer | Her personal blog | Her professional site (click on galleries to access images) | Interview in Canadian Art | Good list of interviews
Lenscraft:Jessica Eaton Asks Us to Think About What We See

This following text is from various interviews with Eaton, published or referenced from her blog.

“She was aware of the science of light at work even in what she calls “normal” photographs, aware that subject and content buried those phenomena, preventing viewers from seeing what was there. In 2006, her work shifted and she began to bring those hidden elements to the forefront. She isolated light and color and time, even though to do so was to challenge the classical definition of photography as a way to capture a single moment.”

“Using a wide array of experimental, analogue-based photographic techniques such as colour separation filters, multiple exposures, dark slides and in-camera masking Jessica Eaton builds images on sheets of 4×5 film that address fundamental properties of photography such as light, chance, duration, illusion and spatial relations.  Eaton has written: “I often set up parameters for phenomena to express itself. In the best of cases I push things so that the response comes in ways that I could not have thought up until I was shown it on film. Once you get to see or experience something you can use it. Then you can use it to see something else.”

A quote from a TIME magazine article:

“Canadian photographer Jessica Eaton uses her camera to create color invisible to the naked eye. She gives bright hues to gray forms in her series Cubes for Albers and LeWitt, and that work was recently awarded the photography prize at the 2012 Hyères International Festival of Fashion and Photography—a prize for which TIME’s director of photography Kira Pollack sat on the jury.

Jessica Eaton

“We’ve all mixed two colors of paint together, and either it makes another color or, if you keep going, it gets muddy and progressively gets darker,” she explains. “In light, things work really differently.” Eaton explains that she exploits the properties of light through additive color separation: whereas the primary pigment colors (red, blue, yellow) get darker as they blend, the primary colors of light (red, blue, green) move toward white. Eaton applies filters in those three colors to her camera and takes multiple exposures, a process that turns the gray form seen here into the vibrant ones seen above. “The color itself is mixed inside the camera,” she says.

One of the byproducts of Eaton’s process is an element of surprise: because her images are created within the camera, she doesn’t know what she’ll get until the photos are developed. “It’s a bit of a conversation with the world,” she says. “With the forces of time and space and contingency and errors that happen, because often there’s so many steps going into one of these, I get back something that’s also new to me, and those are the pictures that tend to end up in exhibits.”

But the photographer likes challenging definitions, and not just photographic ones. Although she dislikes the term “abstract” as a description of her work—it implies that the light she captures doesn’t exist in reality—Eaton says that her photographs acknowledge “how incredibly limited our ability to perceive the world is.” We lack the sensory mechanisms to see her colors with our naked eyes, and Eaton sees that as a metaphor for our inability to see the extent of the physical universe, whether it includes multiple dimensions or parallel universes. And, in that metaphor, she sees hope. “I love the idea that no matter how bad it gets,” she says, “there’s this wild so-called reality way beyond what we have decided it is.”

Read more: http://lightbox.time.com/2012/05/16/jessica-eaton/#ixzz2eMOD5TCR

Experiment #1: The Podcasts

JUST CHECKING: CAN YOU SEE COLOUR?

You should be able to see a brown boat in the above image. If you can’t, you might have colour blindness.

REQUIRED LISTENING!

1. RADIOLAB
Listen to THIS episode of RADIOLAB. Click the LISTEN link at the top and you’ll hear the entire podcast. It is about one hour and eight minutes, but it’s broken into segments. Please listen to the ENTIRE podcast. It’s great!

After you listen to Radiolab podcast, watch this. Behold! Watch this Mantis Shrimp!

WHAT COLOUR IS THE SKY?
After listening to the RadioLab podcast, you might be thinking What colour is the sky?

2. THE FOSBURY FLOP!
CBC podcast, The Current | Mechanics of the Game Changers

Here is what high-jump looked like before Dick Fosbury. And here, is what the high-jump look like after Dick Fosbury. Further info about the Fosbury Flop technique.

 

More about Erik Kessels

Erik Kessels, 24 Hours of Photos One day of  upload to photo sharing sites, printed.

We’ve talked about Erik Kessels work in various photo classes. Aperture magazine started an Instagram account in conjunction with Kessel’s upcoming exhibition and book. So, that’s right, it’s a social media account displaying photographs from an artist who selected the images from photo uploading sites. It’s great!

Instagram: the.many.lives.of.erik.kessels

 

 

Where Can I Buy Film?

ONLINE
I buy all my film-related things at B+H Photo. It’s in NYC so shipping can be an issue, but it’s free over $99 USD.  They have a huge selection new and used equipment.

B+H Photo Video

MORE ONLINE
This is a link to other online resources.

TORONTO
Downtown Camera

Toronto Image Works