Artistic photography

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article or section needs to be revised. Details should be given on the talk page. Please help to improve it , and then remove this flag.

'Noire et Blanche' by Man Ray (1926)
Josef H. Neumann : Gustav I (1976)
Reichstag building by Christo and Jeanne-Claude (1995)
High-speed photography: an incandescent lamp switched on, was shot at with an airsoft pistol

As artistic photography , photographic art or arts photography applications photographic means referred to in which a substantive or formal concern is to be expressed (and their purpose generally is not directly commercial exploitation or by order art is initiated). One also speaks of “conceptual photography”, that is, an intentional approach to z. B. changed the relationship to reality and conveyed a message, a statement by the photographer. Sub-areas include experimental photography , impressionist photography and surreal photography.

assignment

Impressionist photography

In artistic photography, the medium of photography can be used as a means of artistic expression or to achieve educational, socially critical or other ideological or political effects. In general, in artistic photography, the photo can also be referred to as a work and is to be understood as visual art . According to this definition, photos do not reflect reality, but are the interpretation of a moment. Such artistic photos are mostly parts of so-called series. Viewing the entire series, rather than a single work, can make it easier to grasp the intended message. In art photography, corrections can also be made to the image in the laboratory or on the computer, there are no limits to the artist's creativity. Pontus Hultén provided the justification for photography as an art form :

“Taking pictures is easy. But photography is a very difficult art. "

- Pontus Hulten

A key theme in contemporary photography is the self-reflection of the medium, its history and its perception. The belief in the objectivity of a photograph was shaken for a long time and modern digital photography nourishes this impression. Since our viewing habits are often formal criteria for classification as e.g. B. typical for a fashion picture, a news picture, a portrait or an advertising picture, artistic photography has an expansion of the possibilities: Playing with border crossings or breaking with viewing habits becomes an essential stylistic device of contemporary photography.

Emergence

The first art photography was made in the middle of the 19th century with an effort to imitate painting with the camera, although the technical possibilities were very limited. On the one hand, images were z. B. blurred, on the other hand, people were depicted in studios in picturesque surroundings, next to a Greek column on the carpet, for example. The first steps in the direction of artistic photography were made with thoughts on a conceptual photography, i.e. a photography that, in addition to the real capture of a moment, sets image statements, visual language and a structured order of the image elements in the sense of a composition .

The early pioneers included the photographers of the Brotherhood of the Linked Ring (1892–1909) who wanted to convey an artistic claim to photography.

The more recent differentiation between artistic and applied photography emerged around 1945 .

The beginnings of artistic photography start stylistically in the art of the late Biedermeier period , the aim of which was the most authentic representation of reality. Above all, the sharp demarcation of the picture edge by the picture format, which is mandatory for the camera, had already been painted in the Biedermeier period to show the sequence of the motifs as parts of their world: petty bourgeoisie versus the egocentric view of the nobility on the world. On the other hand, photography set the style for Impressionism ( moment photography ), the first exhibition of which took place in a photo studio, at Nadar's .

Conversely, photography had a fruitful effect on Impressionist painting. Random-looking compositions with cut people, wagons and animals made their entrance. Robert Demachy had modeled the ballet scenes by Edgar Degas . Edgar Degas, for his part, used the snapshot effect , the deliberate randomness of image detail and composition, as a stylistic device in his paintings. Gustave Caillebotte , who showed his paintings for the first time at an Impressionist exhibition in 1876, accused his critics of reproducing reality “photographically” too realistically. He anticipated techniques and topics that only established themselves in photography in the 1920s as “ New Seeing ”. Photographers like André Kertész , Wols and László Moholy-Nagy are particularly close to Caillebotte's work. Some of your pictures take up the same motifs or show a section from the same perspective. There are, for example, shots of streets and squares in a steep top view, as can already be found in Caillebotte's paintings.

Even the pictorialism , an art photographic style , provided contributions to photography as an art form. The aim of the style was not just to create a mere image of the motif that captured a moment in reality, but to achieve a symbolic representation of states of mind or fundamental values. Pictorialism found its heyday between the end of the 19th century and the First World War , and in Japan until around 1925; However, some pictorialist photographs were still being made until the end of the 1950s.

August Sander's famous project “People of the 20th Century”, in its encyclopedic structure, is also a forerunner of conceptual photography.

Artistic photography, however, quickly broke away from dogmas and was divided into numerous styles and genres, mainly because it makes little sense to subdivide into "schools" like painting. Susan Sontag therefore speaks more of movements, like Alfred Stieglitz and the Photo-Secession , Edward Weston and F / 64 , Albert Renger-Patzsch and the Neue Sachlichkeit , Walker Evans and the Farm Security Administration project or to Henri Cartier-Bresson and Magnum Photos . The Düsseldorf Photo School is one of these movements .

The reception of artistic photography in museums and exhibitions, the numerous competitions clearly show that photography can be an art form. Susan Sontag aptly commented: “The true extent of the thriumph of photography as art and over art” is only gradually being grasped.

Styles and genres

Black and white image created with an infrared film

Artistic photography includes, at least in part, the styles of documentary , reportage , portrait , industrial , architecture , advertising , fashion , nude , nature and landscape , genre and experimental photography . The documentation and photographic interpretation of artistic work, such as the actions and works of the artist couple Christo and Jeanne-Claude, can also be counted as artistic photography. This photography genre becomes part of object art .

A special case of artistic photography is black and white photography , in which the real color brightness nuances of objects are fixed in an imaging process in achromatic gray value gradations , including the extreme values black and white , on an image memory. With its special ability for minimalist motif abstraction, the black and white process is particularly suitable for the artistic intensification of a picture message. Especially in times of ubiquitous “colorful images”, which became massively established from the 1970s, this sub-discipline is the medium of expression for many photographers of choice, whereby the basic photographic problems hardly differ from those of color photography. The focus of black and white photography is the reduction to structures, light and shadow and abstraction.

Importance for the art market

The collection of art photography began after the medium had assumed a more important position as a tool of the avant-garde. Photography, which is now recognized as an artistic medium all over the world, became a field for the art market and for the creation of collections. There are many reasons for this: acceptance of the medium as an art form, high-quality photographs thanks to digital photography and image processing programs, an alternative to the painting market, and speculation on an increase in value.

Historical criticism

The art character of photography was controversial for a long time: Charles Baudelaire already mentioned this in his work Photography and the Modern Audience in 1859. Baudelaire dealt with the influence of photography on art and also with the profound changes in the perception of art: aesthetic education and taste formation were now determined by photography in addition to the classical arts. Baudelaire saw the unity of the arts here expanded by a new medium. Baudelaire also recognized the competition within art: the portrait painter was now facing the portrait photographer. Baudelaire criticized the efforts to copy nature without knowing its essence as a doctrine that was hostile to true art. This criticism is still evident today: The realistic or idealized representation is often criticized. To this day, artistic photography means perception, dialogue and creation. The art theorist Karl Pawek put it pointedly in his book The Optical Age (1963): "The artist creates reality, the photographer sees it."

This view, represented by Walter Benjamin , among others , regards photography only as a technical, standardized, mechanically reproduced process with which a reality is depicted in an objective, quasi “natural” way, without any creative and thus artistic aspects coming into play : “The invention of an apparatus for the purpose of production ... (perspective) images ironically reinforced the conviction ... that this is a natural form of representation. Obviously something is natural if we can build a machine that does it for us. ”Nonetheless, photographs soon served as a teaching aid or model in the training of visual artists ( Études d'après nature ).

Even in texts of the 19th century, however, the artistic character of photography was already pointed out, which is justified with a similar use of technology as in other recognized contemporary graphic processes ( aquatint , etching , lithography , ...). This also turns photography into an artistic process with which a photographer creates his own image realities. William Henry Fox Talbot was of the opinion 160 years ago that photography was "clearly a tool (...) that belongs in the hands of the resourceful mind and art".

Numerous painters of the 19th century, such as Eugène Delacroix , recognized this and used photographs as a means of finding images and designing them, as an artistic drafting tool for painterly works, but still without assigning them any artistic value of their own. However, there was also the camera obscura before, which Filippo Brunelleschi (1377–1446) probably used as an aid in his application of the central perspective. The method of painters of photography as a sketch element was also used in the 20th and 21st centuries. David Hockney uses photographic templates (as Polaroid or on film) for portraits or in landscape painting, but also uses them for photo collages in the sense of panography .

Photographers also criticized the lack of artistic standards. The photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson , himself trained as a painter , did not want photography to be seen as an art form either, but as a craft : “Photography is a craft. Many want to make an art out of it, but we are simply craftsmen who have to do their job well. ”At the same time, however, he also made use of the pictorial concept of the“ decisive moment ”, which was originally developed by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing in terms of drama and poetry. He thus directly relates to an artistic process for the production of works of art. Cartier-Bresson's arguments thus served on the one hand to poetological ennoblement and on the other hand to immunize the craftsman against criticism that could question the artistic quality of his works. Cartier-Bresson's photographs were shown very early in museums and art exhibitions, for example in the MoMa retrospective (1947) and the Louvre exhibition (1955). Cartier-Bresson even criticized colleagues: "The world is falling to pieces and people like Adams and Weston are photographing rocks!"

Photography was practiced as art from an early age ( Julia Margaret Cameron , Lewis Carroll and Oscar Gustave Rejlander in the 1860s). The decisive step towards the recognition of photography as an art form is thanks to the efforts of Alfred Stieglitz (1864–1946), who prepared the breakthrough with his magazine Camera Work . The object artist and photographer Man Ray also tried to create art with photographic methods, but also with methods of abstraction , visual language or symbolism , with which he tried to stand out from a realistic depiction.

Photography appeared for the first time in Germany in the Werkbund exhibition in Stuttgart in 1929 to a remarkable extent with international artists such as Edward Weston , Imogen Cunningham and Man Ray. Since the MoMA exhibitions by Edward Steichen ( The Family of Man , 1955) and John Szarkowski (1960s), photography has been recognized as art by a wide audience, and the trend towards practical art began at the same time. An important milestone was the founding of Magnum Photos , an independent photo agency and photographer agency, in 1947 . The numerous well-known Magnum photographers brought pictures of high quality and message into the mass media and thus also changed the perception of photography by the public. Current events were often commented on with artistic statements from the Magnum photographers - iconographic images were created .

Another aspect is the use of photography in fashion or architecture. These “works of art” became objects of artistic photography by the 1920s at the latest. Fashion photography and architectural photography now also created iconographic images.

The academic insecurity in dealing with photography long prevented it from entering major museums. Even in the USA, where photography was an essential factor in emancipation from the European art tradition, an increasing number of photographic departments were not established until the 1950s. The Museum of Modern Art in New York has had its own photography department since it opened in 1929. Most European museums did not start building photographic collections until the 1960s and 1970s.

Susan Sontag sees the criterion of the new as a possible criterion for photography as an art form . New here means showing new formal possibilities or deviations from the traditional visual language, so today we would speak of visual language or photographic vision . As with any art form, the new is an essential requirement for artistic photography. Sontag counters the flaw in photography pointed out by Walter Benjamin , that of a mechanically reproduced object that lacks the craftsmanship of painting and its ability to create an original, that photographs can show a certain authenticity . Photographs that can produce their own visual language and enter into a dialogue with the viewer can very well be art. Last but not least, the reception in museums and exhibitions since the middle of the 20th century has been a possible indicator for the increasing development of an aesthetic judgment about photography as art.

Josef H. Neumann : Dream Work (1976)

In 1974, within the chemogram , the interface between the artistic media of painting and photography that had existed up to that point in time was closed in a manner relevant to art history. The chemogram by the photo designer Josef H. Neumann , invented and precisely specified in the early 1970s, combines photography and painting for the first time worldwide within the black and white photographic layer.

In 1977 the documenta 6 in Kassel , as an internationally important exhibition in the famous photography department, placed the works of historical and contemporary photographers from the entire history of photography in a comparative context to contemporary art in connection with the exhibition "150 Years of Photography".

Today photography is accepted as a fully fledged art form. Indicators for this are the growing number of museums, collections and research institutions for photography, exhibitions, the increase in the number of professorships for photography and, last but not least, the increased value of photographs in art auctions and collectors' circles. Numerous often indistinct genres have developed, including landscape , nude , industrial , architectural photography and many more, which have developed their own fields of activity within photography. In addition, the artistic photomontage is developing into an art object of equal value to painting.

More recent discussions within the photography and art sciences point to an increasing arbitrariness in the categorization of photography. Accordingly, art and its institutions are increasingly absorbing what once belonged exclusively to the applied areas of photography.

Digital photography and the massive spread of cameras led to new discussions about the art content of photography. Today, the usual and constantly increasing aesthetics are often a point of criticism and the skillful marketing of well-known photographers, which is reflected in ever new records at auctions. Technically perfect pictures can be kitsch and only reproduce familiar patterns without showing what is new. Critics of beautiful or perfect pictures return to Baudelaire: It depends on recognizing a statement, on criticism, on the new. Photography as an art form has to ask questions and trigger a dialogue.

Art photography

Associations of artistic photographers

Magazines

Galleries

  • Gallery 291
  • Photographers' Gallery London
  • Behance Gallery.

Photography collections in museums

Notable photographers (selection)

Experimental photography

Art styles in which experimental photography is used

techniques

Eminent photographers

Panography, photo collage and photo montage

The panography , the photo collage and the photo montage are possibilities to create a closed photograph from several photos or image elements.

Significant representatives:

Development, deductions

Competitions and Prizes

  • The Dr. Berthold Roland Photo Art Prize was donated by the Rheinland-Pfalz Bank on the occasion of his 80th birthday on February 24, 2008 and is dated 2000 euros. It is awarded to young photo artists every two years
  • IPA International Photography Awards
  • German Photo Book Prize from the Media University, Stuttgart
  • Vonovia Award for Photography
  • Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize
  • ZEISS Photography Award
  • Sony World Photography Awards
  • Fine Art Photography Award
  • Black & White Spider Awards
  • International Minimalist Award
  • IPA - The International Photo Awards.

Exhibitions

courses

See also

literature

  • U. Berns: Photography and photo laboratory technology . Itzehoe 1990
  • Otto Croy: Step by step to photo graphics . Heering, Seebruck 1964/1972
  • Michael Fried: Why Photography Matters as Art as Never Before . Yale University Press, Yale 2008
  • Stefan Gronert: The Düsseldorf Photo School. Photographs 1961–2008 . Ed. by Lothar Schirmer . Schirmer / Mosel, Munich 2009.
  • Walter Koschatzky : The art of photography - technology, history, masterpieces . Cologne 1993
  • Harald Mante , Josef H. Neumann: Using films creatively . PHOTOGRAPHIE publishing house, Schaffhausen 1987, ISBN 3-7231-7600-3
  • Fritz Matthies-Masuren : The artistic photography . Velhagen & Klasing, Bielefeld / Leipzig 1922
  • Andreas Schalhorn (ed.): New Realities. Photo graphics from Warhol to Havekost . Wienand. Cologne 2011. ISBN 978-3-86832-061-9 .
  • H. Schulz: Photo school . Munich 1989.
  • Gabriele Richter, Josef H. Neumann . Chemograms: Color Photo. Issue 12, 1976.
  • Susan Sontag , On Photography , 17th edition, English original edition 1977, S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt a. M., 2006, ISBN 978-3-596-23022-8 . (Standard work of the late 20th century)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Pontus Hulten, Pantheon of Photography (1992)
  2. ↑ a b c d e Andrea Gern: Art Lexicon Photography. Hatje Cantz Verlag, May 14, 2002, accessed on January 21, 2020 .
  3. ↑ a b Karin Sagner, Ulrich Pohlmann, Claude Ghez, Gilles Chardeau, Milan Chlumsky and Kristin Schrader: Gustave Caillebotte - An Impressionist and Photography . Ed .: Karin Sagner, Max Hollein. Hirmer Verlag, Munich 2012, ISBN 978-3-7774-5411-5 , p. Publishing information .
  4. ↑ PC Bunnell: For a Modern Photography - The Renewal of Pictorialism. From: Michel Frizot: New History of Photography . Könneman, Cologne 1998, ISBN 3-8290-1327-2 , p. 311 f.
  5. ^ Susan Sontag: About Photography . 17th edition. S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt a. M. 2006, ISBN 978-3-596-23022-8 , pp. 139 f .
  6. ^ Susan Sontag: About Photography . 17th edition. S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt a. M. 2006, ISBN 978-3-596-23022-8 , pp. 140 .
  7. ↑ Ana Bambic Kostov: Buy Art Photography and collect. Accessed on January 21, 2020 (German).
  8. ^ Karl Pawek: The optical age. Olten / Freiburg i. Br., 1963, p. 58.
  9. ^ WYD Mitchell: Image Theory. Frankfurt am Main 2008, p. 63.
  10. ↑ cf. Wolfgang Kemp : Theory of Photography. Munich 2006.
  11. ^ A b c Susan Sontag: About photography . 17th edition. Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2006, ISBN 978-3-596-23022-8 , pp. 135 f .
  12. ↑ Hannes Schmidt: Comments on the chemograms by Josef Neumann. Exhibition in the photography studio gallery of Prof. Pan Walther. in: Photo press. Issue 22, 1976, p. 6
  13. ↑ Harald Mante , Josef H. Neumann  : Films creatively using Verlag PHOTOGRAPHIE, Schaffhausen, 1987, ISBN 3-7231-7600-3 , pp. 94, 95
  14. ↑ Topic 3 - The glossy world of Josef H. Neumann in the city journal of the WDR. Retrieved March 16, 2016 .
  15. ^ Gabriele Richter: Josef H. Neumann. Chemograms. in: COLOR PHOTO. Issue 12, 1976, p. 24