Photography

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Photography

• Ansel Adams
• David Hockney

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Ansel Adams

• Started off as a musician photography was just a
  hobby at first.
• In 1932 Adams jointed a group of West Coast
  photographers, known as f-64, who formed in
  reaction to Pictorialism.

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Pictorialism

• It was seen as artistic photography so current
  styles of art were reflected .
• Impressionism was in vogue so many of these
  photographs resemble paintings in this style.
• The photos were often shot in soft focus.

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Strait Photography

• Adams and the group made sharp focus photographs,
  usually from nature, with very small aperture
  openings (f-64).
• The group was devoted to making strait
  photography acceptable as an art form.

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The Field Camera

• To achieve the results he wanted Adams used a
  field camera.
• This type of camera uses a very large negative.
• A larger negative allows more detail to be
  recorded.

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The Zone System

• Adams is credited with establishing the Zone
  System
• Procedure for predicting controlling the
  translation of subject tones into print values.
  Each zone represents a value (i.e. dark grey,)
  and the difference between each zone is one f-
  stop.

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Rose Driftwood 1932

• This is a close-up "macro" photograph.
• The piece of wave-worn driftwood creates a
  rhythmic setting for to the soft shapes of the
  rose petals.
• Adams was yet to develop the zone system so he
  "bracketed.
• The photograph is taken six times each is a
  slightly different exposure in order to get at
  least one of them just right.

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Yosemite Falls 1940

• photo displays a combination of visual
  sensitivity and technical excellence
• the print contains dramatic effects of light,
  rich texture, brilliant tonality.
• He achieves sharpness brilliance through
  careful selection of composition, light
  conditions, focus.

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• The subject comes from Yosemite National Park.
• The balanced composition is unified through the
  repetition of interlocking V-shapes.

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• There is a staggering amount of detail in the
  texture of the rocks as well as the foliage.
• The shortened ground plain exaggerates the height
  of the sublime cliffs.

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Mt. Williamson, Manzanar, California, 1943
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• Manzanar Relocation Center was the site where ten
  thousand Japanese Americans were detained after
  Pearl Harbour.
• Adams came to photograph images that express the
  perseverance of the inhabitants.
• He wanted a record of their ability to overcome
  the hardship of the harsh/beautiful surroundings.

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• Strove to improve moral during time of crisis by
  showing something timeless and life enhancing.
• He believed the Japanese-Americans, a
  nature-loving people, must have been inspired and
  strengthened by the setting.

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• Shows subject in a divine light (Gods rays) and
  backlit clouds.
• Shows timeless qualities of nature.
• The triangular/pyramid shapes of mountains are
  mirrored by those of three boulders in the
  foreground
• The front boulder is focal point and the viewers
  eye is led to mountains by the perspective of
  boulders.

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David Hockney

• Considered single viewpoint photos too instant,
  still, and momentary.
• He believed that traditional fixed perspective
  photo took away the viewers body.
• He decided to shoot a series of details (multiple
  views of a subject), and then reassemble/overlap
  the photos .

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Joiners

• a collage of photo's that show multiple points of
  view of a subject. These photographic images
  incorporate the 4th dimension into the photo
  process, resulting in a fuller document of the
  visual experience.

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The 4th Dimension

• The 4th dimension involves movement through time
  space.
• Picasso first incorporated this aspect of
  perception in Cubism.

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Walking Through the Zen Garden at Ryoanji 1983
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• As a viewer one must journey through dozens of
  visual frames that result in a single
  reconstituted image.
• Often parts of the subject will be shown more
  than once.
• What really excited me was when I pieced
  together the Zen Garden in Kyoto. I began to
  realize that one of the areas I was really
  examining was perspective, that this was what you
  could alter in photography To do it in
  photography was, in a sense, quite an achievement
  because photography is the picture-making process
  totally dominated by perspective.  

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• The subject is a Zen Buddhist garden.
• Hockney photographs it as he walks along the
  edge.
• As he does he photographs his eccentric
  mix-matched socks.

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• The recombined individual photos contain a
  reversal in perspective.
• The resulting image shows the feeling of looking
  while moving the visual experience in motion.

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• People complain that when they see a portrait
  by Picasso where somebody has three eyes, they
  say But people dont have three eyes! Its much
  simpler than that. Its not that the person had
  three eyes its that one of the eyes was seen
  twice.
• Hockney

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Pearblossom Hwy. 1986
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• This represents the fullest development of the
  medium.
• It contains a seeming single point perspective as
  well as countless perspectives.

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• The viewer is able to focus in on all of the
  details that would be of visual interest at the
  site.
• Roadside debris, cacti, road signs, etc. are all
  photographed separately.

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• To make the work the artist moved closer then
  further, crouched, and climbed a step ladder.
• He spent hours at the sight so the passage of
  time is documented.
• The work becomes a fully synthesized experience
  of reality.
• Hockney wanted to convey the idea in modern
  physics that the viewer affects what he is
  observing, that our ideas about reality must take
  our own consciousness into account.

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