April 7
WWII and Life Magazine
Walker Evans
1903 -1975
Walker Evans wrote that his goal as a photographer was to make pictures that are "literate, authoratative and transcendent." |
Walker Evans. Untitled from Land of the Free by Archibald MacLeish. 1937.
Marien, Mary Warner. Photography: A Cultural History. Second edition. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2006.
Walker Evans. Shoeshine Stand. 1936.
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/h?pp/PPALL:@field(NUMBER+@band(fsa+8c52458))
Walker Evans. Louisiana.
1936.
20th Century Photography Museum Ludwig Cologne.
Taschen, Koln, 2005.
Walker Evans. Floyd Burroughs, a cotton sharecropper Hale County, AL. 1936.
Walker Evans. Allie Mae Burroughs. 1936.
Walker Evans. Kitchen Corner in Floyd Burroughs's Home. 1936.
1938 Walker Evans's work exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art's first show devoted to a photographer |
Golden period
of American news photography 1930s to 1950s |
|
Development of halftone printing methods in the 1930s |
http://www.thetonesystem.com/images/halftone_cat_eye.gif |
halftone = reprographic technique that simulates continuous tone imagery through the use of equally spaced dots of varying size. |
|
Allows for the printing of photographic image and text on the same surface with the same printing plate |
|
Telephotography
= transmission of images via telephone |
|
Henry Robinson Luce
1898 -1967
Life Magazine 1936 - 2007 |
Margaret Bourke-White. Fort
Peck Dam, Montana. First issue of Life magazine, November 23, 1936. |
Wanted to
publish new magazine that would: |
|
Tell newsworthy
stories |
|
Promote
mainstream American values |
|
Was a pleasure
to look at |
|
Eloquently
combined pictures and text to convey its messages |
|
Luce's concept:
"Pictures and words would be partners… The camera would act
as interpreter, recording what modern industrial civilization is, how
it looks, how it meshes." - Margaret Bourke White |
Life magazine layout for the photo essay, Nurse Midwife, 1951. |
 http://www.yale.edu/terc/democracy/may1text/images/Churchill%20Life.jpg |
Life Magazine
aimed to humanize politics through photography |
Vivid images
that spontaneously captured poignant moments |
|
Large-size
format |
|
Printed
on coated stock for a glossy sheen |
|
Margaret Bourke-White
1904 - 1971
Margaret Bourke-White on top of
Chrysler Building.
Preble, Duane, Sarah Preble and Patrick Frank. Artforms. Seventh ed. Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ, 2002.
Photojournalism=
particular form of journalism that creates images in order to tell a
news story |
Margaret Bourke-White. Chrysler Building. 1931.
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/78/181073098_01801cd11f.jpg?v=0
Margaret Bourke-White. Louisville Flood Victims. 1937.
http://www.k-state.edu/english/nelp/childlit/1930s/bourke-white.jpg
Margaret Bourke-White. Self-porait. 1943.
http://www.hq.usace.army.mil/history/Marg_bourke_white_selfportrait.jpg
Margaret Bourke-White. Buchenwald. 1945.
http://www-english.tamu.edu/pers/fac/myers/buchenwald.jpg
Margaret Bourke-White. Mahatma
Gandhi. 1946.
20th Century Photography Museum Ludwig Cologne.
Taschen, Koln, 2005.
Margaret Bourke-White. Miners,
Johannesburg. 1950.
20th Century Photography Museum Ludwig Cologne.
Taschen, Koln, 2005.
Henri Cartier-Bresson
1908 - 2004
Henri Cartier-Bresson. Behind
the Gare St. Lazare, Paris. 1932. |
Decisive moment = that instant
when the formal spatial relationships of the subjects reveal their essential
meaning |
| The moment that expresses the essence |
|
The instant that real life becomes artful |
|
Henri Cartier-Bresson. Untitled, Madrid, Spain. 1933.
"Actually,
I am not at all interested in the photograph itself. The only thing
I want is to capture a fraction of a second of realtiy." - Henri
Cartier-Bresson |
Henri Cartier-Bresson. Prisoner
of War Camp, Dessau, Germany. 1945.
20th Century Photography Museum Ludwig Cologne.
Taschen, Koln, 2005.
Henri Cartier-Bresson. Rue Mouffetard,
Paris. 1958.
20th Century Photography Museum Ludwig Cologne.
Taschen, Koln, 2005.
Gordon Parks
1912 -
Gordon Parks. Ella Watson (American Gothic). 1942.
Marien, Mary Warner. Photography: A Cultural History. Second edition. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2006.
Grant Wood. American
Gothic. 1930.
Stokstad, Marilyn. Art History.
Revised Second ed. Vol. 2. New York: Prentice Hall Inc., and Harry
N. Abrams, 2005.
Gordon Parks. Ella Watson and her Grandchildren. 1942.
http://www.masters-of-photography.com/P/parks/parks_watson.html
Gordon Parks. Red Jackson.
1948.
20th Century Photography Museum Ludwig Cologne.
Taschen, Koln, 2005.
Gordon Parks. Malcolm X. 1963.
http://www.masters-of-photography.com/P/parks/parks_x_full.html
Gordon Parks. Drugstore Cowboys. 1955.
http://www.masters-of-photography.com/P/parks/parks_cowboys_full.html
Harold E. Edgerton. Milk Drop.
1936.
20th Century Photography Museum Ludwig Cologne.
Taschen, Koln, 2005.
1/1,000,000
of a second |
Harold E. Edgerton. Tennis Player.
1938.
20th Century Photography Museum Ludwig Cologne.
Taschen, Koln, 2005.
Stroboscopic
Photography |
Harold Edgerton. Card being shot. |
Replaced
shutters of ordinary cameras with electrical illumination: |
|
Camera
shutter always open in completely dark room |
|
Exposure
made when quick flash exposed negative |
|
Harold Edgerton. Apple being shot with bullet.
http://www.arco-iris.com/George/images/docs_apple.jpg
Harold Edgerton. Atomic bomb detonation near Joshua tree, 7 miles from ground zero.
http://neatorama.cachefly.net/images/2006-02/edgerton-atomic-bomb.jpg
Weegee
1899 - 1968
Weegee. Onlookers. 1936.
20th Century Photography Museum Ludwig Cologne.
Taschen, Koln, 2005.
Weegee. Coney Island Crowd. 1940.
20th Century Photography Museum Ludwig Cologne.
Taschen, Koln, 2005.
Weegee. Drunks. c. 1940.
Weegee. The Critic (Opening
Night at the Opera). 1943.
Rosenblum,
Naomi. A World History of Photography. Abbeville Press, New York. 1989.
