Week 10 Modernisms FINAL Flashcards
Weed against sky, Detroit
Harry Callahan
1947
Highly abstracted wheat winter scene, nature seen as design and form. Influenced by Moholy. Visual gestalt. Developed expressive photography program at Chicago’s institute of Design. Saw photography as process through which one could see the self. Archtypal modernist, saw form as a path to the spirit. Simple minded “photography seems so simple to me that there doesn’t seem to be much to say.”
A highly influential artist and teacher, Harry Callahan produced photographs that combined elegant precision, sensuality, and restless experimentalism. He used the camera as a tool of personal expression, once proclaiming, “photography is an adventure just as life is an adventure.” He often turned his camera onto his own life, his wife serving as one of his most beloved and frequent subjects, her importance to his practice such that she was once called “an additional f-stop on his lens.” Constantly testing the limits of his medium, Callahan created photographs that surpassed factual representation, revealing the graphic beauty in the everyday. He taught alongside László Moholy-Nagy and earned the deep admiration of Edward Steichen, who included his work in several exhibitions.
Eleanor and Barbara
Harry Callahan
1953
His wife and child, emotional gestalt, seeing the self infused images with feeling and self hood.
Deeloped expressive photography program at Chicagos Institute of Deisgn, then headed RISD photography department. Saw phtography as process through which one could see the self. Archtypal modernist who saw form as a path to the spirit. Simple minded “photgraphy seems so simple to me that there doesn’t seem to be much to say.”
Savoy Dancers Harlem
Aaron Siskind
1937
Siskind embedded himself in Harlem Culture. Documentary project “Harlem Document” spent 3 years covering NY’s vital black community. Body language becomes graphic element, expressions, contrasts, human connection, beyond documentary, beyond Robert Frank. Connections between dancers and glove.
Gloucester
Aaron Siskind
1944
Intrigued with discarded objects on beach, feeling completely absorbed, exhausted, very quiet pictures. Strong connection between photography of dancers and glove. Symbolic human connection abotu movement of the hand. Sharp highly detailed, large format, reminiscent of body, figurative, inhabited. Marks departure from documentary into modernism. Jewish from New York
Terrors adn Pleasures of Levitation
Aaron Siskind
1954
Psychological photographs of boys diving amid empty background, cloudless sky, played with exposure to isolate form. “The interior drama is the meaning of the exterior event and each man is an essence and a symbol” boys diving in the lake, mid air, square format camera, sillouetted, strong contrast, white back ground playing iwth over exposure. Jewish from New York.
Martha’s Vineyard
Aaron Siskind
1954
Abstraced forms, psychological subject matterceased to be of primary importance, psycholocial in character. Sharp, highly detailed, large format camera abstracted images symbolize the disintegration of nuclear life and the search for a self centered spiritual core that does not compromise reality. Jewish from NY. Taught at Chicao Institute, Jewish new yokers, wanted to be a poet immersed in literature. Started to photograph in 1930s. Early Siskind inspired by FSA photographers Walker Evans, signage, decor advertising, focused on people.
New Mexico
Robert Frank
1955
No peoples, desolate landscape, lonliness. Inspired by Walker Evans, usage of signage, writing, out west, landscape. Traveling with Jack Kerouac. Freedom to self discovery, grainy, dramatic, mysterious, isolation. “The Americans” first published in France then in USA JK wrote forward. Guggenheim grant to see 48 states and document. Not always falttering, trying to get reality of life into pictures. Walker evans wrote recommendation letter to Guggenheim.
Originally Swiss Jewish photographer, undertook America’s most photograhically influential and mimicked cross country road trip.
\Ranch Market, Hollywood
Robert Frank
1955
Quick snapshot, small format camera, expressive, cafe, waitress alone in front of costomer, immersed in American Signage, moment of going into own thoughts. Published in “The Americans”
Traveling with Jack Kerouac. Freedom to self discovery, grainy, dramatic, mysterious, isolation. “The Americans” first published in France then in USA JK wrote forward. Guggenheim grant to see 48 states and document. Not always falttering, trying to get reality of life into pictures. Walker evans wrote recommendation letter to Guggenheim.
Originally Swiss Jewish photographer, undertook America’s most photograhically influential and mimicked cross country road trip.
Trolley, New Orleans
Robert Frank
1955
Race, poverty, corruption, bus, racial division, tension. Pasersby in trolley gazing at him, confronting. African Americans in rear seats.
Traveling with Jack Kerouac. Freedom to self discovery, grainy, dramatic, mysterious, isolation. “The Americans” first published in France then in USA JK wrote forward. Guggenheim grant to see 48 states and document. Not always falttering, trying to get reality of life into pictures. Walker evans wrote recommendation letter to Guggenheim.
Originally Swiss Jewish photographer, undertook America’s most photograhically influential and mimicked cross country road trip.
Family of Man
Edward Steichen for MoMA
1955
Show at MoMA 278 photographers, clear themes, wide range of esthetics, people on board watned to say universal value in humanity. About universal common value despite differences across world. Steichens way of discussing photography as a medium, a message instead of an art form. A message conveying an idea: celebration of humanism. The major American phtographic event of the 1950’s. A mirror of the essential oneness of mankind. Photography as universal language. Assembled 508 images from 68 countries and 278 photographers into giant 3D magazine layout. Pieces of larger tapestry. Did not name photographers under pictures. Photographers gave up rights of control just as in magazine.
Parade, Hoboken
Robert Frank
1955
“The Americans” cross coutnry book. Published frist in France because vision of USA not appealing to USA because it didn’t show white goodness.
Traveling with Jack Kerouac. Freedom to self discovery, grainy, dramatic, mysterious, isolation. “The Americans” first published in France then in USA JK wrote forward. Guggenheim grant to see 48 states and document. Not always falttering, trying to get reality of life into pictures. Walker evans wrote recommendation letter to Guggenheim.
Originally Swiss Jewish photographer, undertook America’s most photograhically influential and mimicked cross country road trip.
Sick of Goodbys
Robert Frank
1978
Writing on gelatin silver print, theatrically staging, hand with skeleton puppet, montage, two pcitures, epxpressionistic. Coposition between photography, diary, painting, printmaking. Quick observations about ones feelings, memory and mourning, plays with surface of image.
Traveling with Jack Kerouac. Freedom to self discovery, grainy, dramatic, mysterious, isolation. “The Americans” first published in France then in USA JK wrote forward. Guggenheim grant to see 48 states and document. Not always falttering, trying to get reality of life into pictures. Walker evans wrote recommendation letter to Guggenheim.
Originally Swiss Jewish photographer, undertook America’s most photograhically influential and mimicked cross country road trip.
