Quiz 4

Question 1

Elliott Erwitt

Answer 1

• Studied film-making at New School, worked on Stryker’s Standard Oil projects.
• Magnum since 1953, President c.1966.
• Covered Nixon campaign, then Kennedy White House, commercial advertising work, personal work often centering on dogs.
• Known for his witty & humorous decisive moment style.

Question 2

Danny Lyon

Answer 2

• Magnum since 1967, Guggenheim Fellowship 1969.

• Joined Civil Rights era Student Non-Violent Coordinating
Committee (SNCC) 1963, resulting in
publication of The Movement 1964. Later: The
Bikeriders 1968; Conversations With the Dead 1971.

• Dropped out of the mainstream to an extent for many years, although he continued to work.

• Recent work dealing with Native American social
issues in U.S. & Mexico and other subjects.

Question 3

Bruce Davidson

Answer 3

• Studied at RIT during the 1950s, Magnum member since 1958, influenced by Robert Frank.
• Late 1950s-1960s: Widow of Montmartre, Circus Dwarf, Teenage Gang, Civil Rights. East 100th St. 1970. Subway 1986 (color), Central Park 1996.
• Also worked in commercial/fashion fields.
• Recently published a large, comprehensive three volume retrospective.

Question 4

Mary Ellen Mark

Answer 4

• Fulbright Scholar in Turkey 1965-66, Magnum
1977-81, then founder of Archive Agency 1981-88, now freelance.

• Civil rights 1960s, mental patients (Ward 81 1979) Mother Teresa, Bombay prostitutes (Falkland Road 1981), U.S. teenage runaways (Streetwise 1984).

Question 5

Eugene Richards

Answer 5

• Magnum since 1978, joined James Nachtwey’s Agency VII in 2006.
• U.S. poverty, drugs, violence, illness, & other grim realities and social issues.
• Dorchester Days 1978, Exploding Into Life late 1970s were his first self-published books.
• Others include Living Below the Line: Poverty in America; The Knife & Gun Club (Denver trauma center), Cocaine True, Cocaine Blue, etc.

Question 6

Sebastião Salgado

Answer 6

• Member Sygma, Gamma, then Magnum 1979-94, then created his own agency Amazonas Images.
• Studied economics of developing countries but around 1973 decided the camera was a better tool for his ideas and contributions.
• Since 1970s: major projects/books on workers, children, refugees of war & famine, and other socioeconomic and human rights themes affecting people in developing countries.
• Other Americas 1986; Workers: An Archaeology of the Industrial Age 1993; An Uncertain Grace 1995; Terra: Struggle of the Landless; and others.

Question 7

Josef Koudelka

Answer 7

• Former aeronautical engineer, self-taught in
photography, Magnum since 1974.

• Soviet invasion of Prague 1968 (winner of Robert Capa Gold Medal 1969). Gypsies 1975; Exiles 1988; other work dealing with panoramic landscapes and culture of Wales.

• Lives a vagabond lifestyle with no permanent
address and very few possessions, and his work often deals with equally nomadic and marginalized cultures.

Question 8

Susan Meiselas

Answer 8

• Magnum since 1976.

• Known for powerful, expressive use of color &
intense war images.

• Carnival Strippers 1976 (b/w, recently reissued); Sandinista Revolution in Nicaragua 1981; Philippines people’s revolution 1980s; In Kurdistan: In the Shadow of History 1997.

• Robert Capa Gold medal 1979; MacArthur
Foundation “Genius” Grant 1992.

Question 9

Alex Webb

Answer 9

• Magnum since 1979.
• Known for bold, graphic use of light and color in his war and social documentary images from Caribbean (Haiti especially), Latin America, Africa, Florida, etc.
• Hot Light/Half-Made Worlds 1986; Under a Grudging Sun 1989; From the Sunshine State 1996.

Question 10

Pop Art movement

Answer 10

• Rejected “high” art values of abstraction,
  emotion, traditional beauty, personal vision,
  uniqueness or preciousness of the art object.
• Embraced figurative depictions of “low” pop
  culture mass-produced subjects: soup cans, comic books, ads, billboards, celebrities, mass media references, etc.
• Emotionally cool, ironic, detached, impersonal
  style, often with a mechanical or mass-produced look or technique.
• Often incorporated mixed media, assemblage,
  and/or techniques usually associated with
  commercial photo reproduction rather than high art: silk-screen printing, offset printing, etc.

Question 11

A.D. Coleman

Answer 11

writes The Directorial Mode: Notes Toward a Definition, an influential essay recognizing the increasing tendency toward fabrication, staging, and other forms of overtly fictional/invented (vs. found) photography.

Question 12

Robert Rauschenberg

Answer 12

• Highly influential in his use of mixed media
combines (his term), appropriated & original
photographs, photomechanical processes, etc.

• Kaleidoscopic style incorporating chance,
expressionistic techniques with paint, appropriated photos from the press, ads, art history, etc.

• His philosophy, along with John Cage, Merce
Cunningham & others was that art should mimic the organic processes of life, not be aloof from them or try to force an unnatural order or structure.

Question 13

Robert Heinecken

Answer 13

• Founded UCLA photo program, 1963.
• Not a traditional photographer, but a conceptual artist and photographist (his term). Influenced by Dada/Duchamp, he usually worked with appropriated rather than original images, and aggressively experimental and mixed media processes.
• His post-modern work was deliberately provocative and was meant to question and comment on art, photography, culture, and mass media.
• Self-described guerrilla photographer attacking convention & tradition with humor, irreverence, and confrontation, challenging taboos of both subject matter (such as pornography, feminism) and process.
• Founding member of SPE, Chair 1970-71.

Question 14

Robert Fichter

Answer 14

• Work often has whimsical, surreal, cartoonish
narrative quality and incorporates many mixed mediatechniques & approaches.

• Early student of Henry Holmes Smith at Indiana University graduate program.
• Active in Rochester and Los Angeles, taught photo, painting, mixed media at UCLA w/ Heinecken, University of Florida w/ Jerry Uelsmann, Yvonne Streetman.

Question 15

Todd Walker

Answer 15

• Used silk-screening, color, historical & digital processes, painterly techniques, offset lithography, etc., to question & stretch the definitions and boundaries of the photograph.
• Photographer, printmaker, book artist.
• Color commercial work in Los Angeles, 1950s.

Question 16

Arnulf Rainer

Answer 16

• Primarily a Surrealist influenced painter.

• 1970s: Distorted, expressionistic self-portraits
depicting post-WWII inner psychic pain and violence.

• Used hand-painted b/w photos, reminiscent of early modernist German expressionistic distortion and extremes, but updated with contemporary techniques.
• Part of a Vienna movement featuring body art and painting while under the influence of drugs.

Question 17

Betty Hahn

Answer 17

• First female full time college level photo instructor RIT, 1970s, then University of New Mexico, now retired.
• Non-silver, stitching, photos on cloth, etc.
• Domestic-themed images influenced by snapshot aesthetic.

Question 18

Bea Nettles

Answer 18

• Primarily a book artist: Flamingo In the Dark, 1979 artist book using Kwik-Print process and multiple images (family snaps & originals) to depict autobiographical dreamscape of female/maternal life cycle.
• Has also produced instructional books, e.g.: Breaking the Rules: A Photo Media Cookbook.

Question 19

Judith Golden

Answer 19

• 1970s work explores female identity/persona from feminist perspective using hand-colored &
embellished b/w original & appropriated photos.

• Foreshadows post-modernist work of Cindy
Sherman & others who deal with cultural and
gender stereotypes, inner identity vs. outward
appearance, influence of mass media on female identity, etc.

Question 20

Holly Roberts

Answer 20

• B&W photos expressionistically painted w/ oils, often dealing with animistic themes of human/animal transformation.
• Reminiscent of cave paintings, Native American art, using a “southwestern” color palette.
• Recent work is similar but with more extensive use of photo-collage elements.

Question 21

Doug & Mike Starn

Answer 21

• Identical twin collaborators, studied at School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and Parsons, NYC.
• Became hugely successful in NYC 1980s neoexpressionist art scene.
• Large scale mixed media photo-sculptural objects intended to reassert the importance of the physical object. Often site-specific installations using appropriated photos and unusual materials and treatments.
• Themes often deal with doubles, science, light, Buddhist spirituality & mysticism.

Question 22

Adam Fuss

Answer 22

• British born, studied in Australia, now based in NY.
• Known for large scale pinhole & color photograms of objects taken directly from nature.
• Feels we have been too much influenced by camera vision & is interested in moving away from lens based images & working with the moment and life itself as subject & process.

Question 23

Matthew Brandt

Answer 23

• His work uses a wide variety of materials in
innovative ways to connect his artistic concepts with his subjects.

• These are Type-C color photographs that are then soaked in the lake waters that they represent.

Question 24

Bill Brandt

Answer 24

• Influenced by surrealism, Brassaï, the visual
innovations of Orson Welles’ film Citizen Kane.

• Pre-WWII documentary work: The English At Home 1936, A Night In London 1938, magazine work.
• Later, Camera in London 1948, Literary Britain 1951.
• Post-WWII expressionism: Perspective of Nudes 1961: pinhole, extreme wide-angle, print distortions using grain, high contrast, etc.
• Retrospective monograph Shadow of Light 1966, MoMA show 1969.

Question 25

Mario Giacomelli

Answer 25

• Painter, poet, typographer until 1954, then self-taught photographer using fairly primitive equipment. Under-appreciated in Italy during his lifetime.
• Photographed people & landscape of his small agricultural village of Senigallia using various distortions & a style similar to magic realism addressing themes of closeness to the earth, life, death, suffering, decay, fertility, celebration.

Question 26

Clarence John Laughlin

Answer 26

• New Orleans based, self-taught c.1934 but worked for U.S. Corps of Engineers & Vogue 1940s, mostly architectural photography.

• Some composites, often straight but surreal
dreamlike b&w images of ante-bellum architecture & staged tableau using draped figures and decaying buildings: Ghosts Along the Mississippi 1948, Poems of the Inner World 1950s.

Question 27

Ralph Gibson

Answer 27

• Studied briefly at San Francisco Art Institute, joined Beat scene, worked as assistant to Dorothea Lange & Robert Frank.

• Founder/Director of photo book publishing
company Lustrum Press, 1969 (Larry Clark’s Tulsa, his own books, & others).

• Early influential trilogy of books: The Somnambulist, Déjà-Vu, & Days At Sea, 1970s.
• Poetically organized, non-linear sequences evoking an erotically charged interior dreamscape.

• Clear, grainy, high contrast stylized technique
utilizing strong shadows & other simple, powerful graphic forms, creating an interesting tension between reality and dreams, clarity and mystery.

• His commercial fashion and fine art work often blend with and influence each other.

Question 28

Duane Michals

Answer 28

• Used narrative sequences, storyboard/comic striplike format, multiple exposures, blur, text, directorial staging, etc., to explore his inner world and metaphysical themes of spirituality, sex, death, love, desire, perception, etc.
• Self-taught, but studied art at University of Denver & Parsons, became art director & has done commercial magazine work.

Question 29

Les Krims

Answer 29

• Mocking, condescending, sexist, politically incorrect imagery intended to offend leftists everywhere.
• Intentionally provocative & confrontational, but also questions the relationship between photography & reality.

• Directorial approach, stylized printing using a
variety of materials & processes.

• Small artist book projects include: The Little People of America, The Deerslayers, The Incredible Stack O’ Wheats Murders all 1972, and Fictcryptokrimsographs, 1975 (an early example of manipulated Polaroid SX-70
images).

• Recently fired from longtime position at Buffalo State College for using school funds to purchase personal equipment.

Question 30

Ray K. Metzker

Answer 30

• Interested in experimental but technically refined use of repetition, pattern, extended frame, multiple exposure, high contrast, composite images, etc.
• Interested in literally going beyond the frame and investigating ideas about ‘synthesis rather than selection.’

Question 31

Eikoh Hosoe

Answer 31

• Leading figure in post-WWII Japanese photography & photo education: trained, then taught at Tokyo Polytechnic, founded experimental photo group VIVO with Shomei Tomatsu & others 1959-62, encouraged formation of museum photo departments, taught at Ansel Adams Workshops & others in U.S.
• Work is psychologically charged and often uses extreme/stylized printing and collaborations with like-minded artists and performers as models.
• Major projects include: Man & Woman 1960, Barakei (Ordeal By Roses) 1962: an extended portrait of controversial author Yukio Mishima, Kamaitachi (Sickle-Toothed Weasel) 1969 & Embrace 1971, both collaborations with Tatsumi Hijikata & Kazuo Ohno, founders of innovative and subversive butoh dance style.

Question 32

Jerry Uelsmann

Answer 32

• Known for meticulously crafted b&w composite/ multiple prints influenced by surrealism, Jungian psychology, & open-ended symbolism.

• Working approach uses post visualization and inprocess-discovery (his terms) to skillfully but intuitively combine disparate images in the
darkroom.

Question 33

Joel-Peter Witkin

Answer 33

• Worked as Vietnam war photographer 1961-64.
• Highly stylized directorial tableaux, often inspired by art history, and featuring corpses, fetuses dwarfs, hermaphrodites, transsexuals, etc., presented in rich, exquisite prints.
• Influenced by surrealism, Baroque art, E.J. Bellocq.

• Hi work emphasizes the contrast/dichotomy of
attraction and repulsion between the physical
beauty of the print and the horrific/provocative
nature of the subject matter.

• Prints/negatives are heavily manipulated with
bleach, toners, scratching, etc.

Question 34

Conceptual Art (aka Idea Art, or Information Art)

Answer 34

• Marked by shift in art criticism from Modernist
  concerns (formal) to Post-modernist issues that
  were often critical of photography (cultural/
  social/political/ethical, etc.) See works by Roland Barthes, John Berger, Allan Sekula, Susan Sontag, etc. Many were influenced by Walter Benjamin’s seminal essay Art In the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, 1937.
• Philosophically, an attempt to assert the
  importance of the art idea or thought process over the physical art object (Duchamp-Dada,
  readymades); the ‘dematerialization’ of art.
• Politically, an attempt to subvert & undermine the commodification and business of art by making objects that seemed to possess no traditional qualities of craft, beauty, uniqueness,
  individuality, creativity, etc.: the object was
  simply a form of evidence, or documentary
  record, or residue of an art idea or activity.
• Typically documented with language, photos,
  film, video, sound, etc., rather than oil painting,
  sculpture, or other more traditional means.

Question 35

Happenings/Performance Art

Answer 35

• Emphasized ephemeral, transitory nature of timebased events vs. physical objects.
• Typically documented with photos, film, video, sound, etc.

Question 36

Earthworks (Land Art, or Environmental Art)

Answer 36

• Sculpture oriented works created at a specific site. Often a deliberate return to the physical object & beauty, but on terms that defied traditional objects & art world politics.
• Objects were often remote, temporary and/or
  impractical to be bought & sold.
• Typically documented with photos, film, video, sound, etc.

Question 37

Joseph Kosuth

Answer 37

• Conceptual purist, language oriented work, art as philosophical inquiry.

• One and Three Chairs, 1965, a conceptual work whose essence was the instructions for its making, thus the work could be made repeatedly in different places, times, by different people, and with different objects
and materials, as long as the instructions were
meticulously followed. In each case the final work would be the same, yet different.

Question 38

Sol LeWitt

Answer 38

• One of the first and most dedicated conceptual artists.
• Used a quasi-scientific approach to create serial/modular sculptures, drawings, etc., based on strict instructions and/or mathematical/geometric relationships.
• His ideas can be summed up by his quotes: “The idea is the machine that makes the art,” and “What the work of art looks like isn’t too important.”

Question 39

Vito Acconci

Answer 39

• Turned to performance/body art, using
his own body as subject/medium in a series of
highly confrontational pieces documented with
photography, film, sound, etc.

Question 40

Chris Burden

Answer 40

• Confrontational performance/body artist known for 1970s extremes of danger, pain, endurance, etc.

Question 41

Robert Smithson

Answer 41

• Earthworks pioneer known particularly for his

Spiral Jetty, 1970, in the Great Salt Lake, Utah.

Question 42

Dennis Oppenheim

Answer 42

• Late 1960s-70s pioneer of earthworks: site-specific works that take art out of the normal museum/gallery context and force the viewer to re-evaluate their ideas about art, objects, place, context, etc. (Annual Rings 1973).
• Also did performance/body art (Reading Position for a Second Degree Burn 1970).

Question 43

Walter De Maria

Answer 43

• Late 1960s-70s: Involved in various conceptual, minimal, performance, & earthworks activities.
• Lightning Field, 1977, New Mexico.

• Rock trivia: briefly the drummer for Andy Warhol’s
Factory band the Velvet Underground.

Question 44

Christo and Jeanne-Claude

Answer 44

• Known for large scale, temporary public works: wrapped buildings & bridges, multiple objects (umbrellas, curtains) placed in a large space.
• Their only concern is for the transitory beauty and aesthetic impact of the work.
• They finance their projects by producing more conventional, but related, gallery works.

Question 45

Andy Goldsworthy

Answer 45

• Known for both large and small scale temporary and permanent earthworks.
• Small works generally involve the use of found/natural objects, patiently and meticulously made by hand without the use of conventional tools.
• His intent is to understand & commune with nature by working with it on its own terms and usually onsite, while acknowledging and incorporating the natural processes of change and decay over time.

Question 46

Ed Ruscha

Answer 46

• West coast Pop art painter, photographer, filmmaker known for his dry, deadpan wit and use of words and unusual materials in his paintings.
• One of the first to use photos in a seemingly neutral, non-aesthetic fashion to catalog mundane and taken-for-granted aspects of contemporary life, such as gas stations, parking lots, real estate.

• His style-less style was a major influence on
post-1960s landscape photography.

Question 47

John Baldessari

Answer 47

• Influential California conceptual artist & teacher (CalArts), he uses painting, photography (often appropriated), video, language, etc., in witty & whimsical ways to ask sophisticated questions about theories of art, language, communication, how we construct meaning, etc.

• In one way or another, most of his work is
essentially art about art.

Question 48

Bernd and Hilla Becher

Answer 48

• Husband/wife team, working since 1959, known for their typologies: groups of clean, objective, meticulous & uniformly made photos of industrial structures arranged in grids.
• Influenced by German New Objectivity movement.

Question 49

Ken Josephson

Answer 49

• Known for witty use of pictures within pictures, intrusions into the frame, pseudo-measuring devices, etc., to call attention to the artificial nature of the photograph & the potential confusion between 3-D reality & its 2-D representation.

Question 50

John Pfahl

Answer 50

• Innovative, influential landscape photographer, and one of the pioneers in the 1970s use of color.
• Early work (Altered Landscapes, c.1976) had strong conceptual framework, containing multi-layer references to mixed media, earthworks, performance art, photo historical references, etc., combined with traditional craft & beauty.
• Other projects include: Picture Windows, Power Places, Arcadia Revisited, others.
• His work is essentially meta-landscape photography: it is simultaneously about the landscape itself as well as commentary on our art historical visual strategies & traditions of seeing and representing the landscape as a picture.