History of Photography Final - Multiple Choice

Snapshot Aesthetic

was one of the major influences on straight photography during the 1960’s which reflected the desire for naïve camera imagery depicting this decade’s vernacular and “pop” culture, showing the emblems of contemporary culture in a casual style that had a lack of artifice and a neutral emotional tone.

New Objectivity

describes Photographs that display an emphasis on “the thing itself” the essence of an object, often utilizing the technique of close-up, to concentrate on intrinsic material qualities with sharp focus, unusual perspectives, and isolated details, while eliminating extraneous matters, and intensifying the appreciation of forms and structures in ordinary things but de-personalizing the photographer’s approach, best describes this movement in the history of photography that had its origins in Germany in the 1920’s, with influential photographers Karl Blossfeldt and Albert Renger-Patzsch.

Subjective Realism

Photographs with themes that are social in nature, but are concerned mainly with expressing, “a personal vibration, an autobiographical sign”, describes “Humanized and Individualized photography” better known as _______________.

The Family of Man

was the name of the popular 1955 MOMA exhibition and publication consisting largely of journalistic images, (508 images from 68 countries) organized by Edward Steichen, and whose theme was to show how the “most important service photography can render is to record human relations and explain man to man, and man to himself” thus, celebrating the “essential oneness of mankind throughout the world and the universality of everyday experience.

New Topographics

describes the usually highly structured deadpan photographs from the 1960’s-1970’s that evolved out of the concept of “social landscape” images, such as those by photographers, Lewis Baltz, Robert Adams, Bernd & Hilla Becher, and Stephen Shore, that present the artifacts and landscapes of contemporary industrial culture without subjective emotional shading, or laden with strong feelings about the desecration of landscape.

Know this quote - Garry Winogrand

“Photography is not about the thing photographed. It is about how that thing looks photographed.”

EDWARD STEICHEN

In the late 1920’s the transformation of Vogue from a society journal into a magazine marked the real beginning of fashion photography as a genre. Photographer ______________ later went on in 1947, to become Director of Photography at the Museum of Modern Art in NYC, and was the catalyst behind this elegant sophisticated “new look” that displayed an instinctive flair for glamorous dramatic contrasts and for the decorative possibilities of geometric shapes that were stylistically consistent with other emblems of 1920’s modernism.

WEEGEE

This photographer created the book Naked City, a 1936 publication of photographs about New York City, and sought sensationalist news stories with a large press camera, and approached scenes of everyday life, as well as violence and death, with uncommon feeling and wit, credited with ushering in the age of tabloid culture, while at the same time being revered for elevating the sordid side of human life to that of high art.

BRASSAI

Photographed Paris by night in the 1930’s, at the suggestion of Kertesz, capturing life at bars, brothels, and in the streets.

MINOR WHITE

Photographer, __________, following in the direction of straight photography begun by Stieglitz and Weston, with an eye for equivalences between form and feeling, searched for allusive or metaphorical meanings in the appearance of reality, attracting a cult following in the 1960’s, and persuasively arguing that photos be made to embody a mystic essence, that the camera reveal “things for what they are”, and “for what else they are” believing the practice of photography be a spiritual act or tool for spiritual enlightenment, “Be still with yourself until the object of your attention affirms your presence”

DIANE ARBUS

Photographer __________’s influential images reflected the influence of Lisette Model, and the inspiration of Weegee and are powerful psychological portraits of the physically deformed and socially marginalized, and show compassion for individuals considered bizarre by conventional society, yet display mocking treatment of so-called normal individuals.

WILLIAM KLEIN

Photographer __________’s raw grating views of New York in the 1950’s ignored traditional ideas about sharpness, tonal range, and print quality, and were received as a rather unacceptable critical vision of American society, especially the middle class.

ROY DECARAVA

Photographer, _____________ depicted his neighborhood Harlem in the late 40’s through 60’s with a humanist outlook, a profound sense of intimacy, and an acute attention to the handling of light and structure of forms.

HELEN LEVITT

Photographer __________’s images depicted lyrical views of youngsters, begun in the 1940’s in b/w and continued intermittently up through the 1970’s in color that illuminated the toughness, grace, and humor of those growing up in New York’s inner city neighborhoods.

CINDY SHERMAN

Post -Modernist photographer best known for her “Untitled Film Stills”, a series of conceptual self-portraits that were not about “herself”, but instead utilized herself as a model in her performance art to portray female identities as a form of social performance or gender constructed positions dependent on circumstance--By addressing archetypal images of woman, in the guises of clichéd B-movie heroines, signifying social role-playing and sexual stereotypes, she encourages self reflection in the spectator, as well as serving to perpetuate the critical discourse concerning the construction of woman-as-image.

RICHARD AVEDON

Legendary fashion photographer made studio portraits, masterfully capturing gesture and expression against a white background, using 8x10 format that accentuated every detail (flattering and not) of the sitter, creating an anti-fashion statement, (often revealing the private persona of public figures) as well as producing commercial fashion work influenced by Martin Munkacsi, that emphasized movement and natural settings.

BERND & HILLA BECHER

Their influential photographs, often arranged in a grid, or groupings, represent a 40 year+ catalog of industrialized architectural structures or objects, (such as mine shafts, lime kilns, silos, cooling & winding towers, blast furnaces, coal bunkers) claimed as typologies, (documenting similarities rather than celebrating distinctiveness), souvenirs of the industrial age (portraying the decline and fall of the very industrial order photographer Renger-Patzsch glorified) that are photographed isolated, centered, and frontally framed, shot in an objective manner, with large-format and fine grain b/w film in an even, diffuse light with minimal shadows, and a subtly elevated vantage point, yielding not just an aesthetic but a vision.

SALLY MANN

Contemporary photographer working in B &W and using 8x10 format, is best known for intimate photographs of her family which explore childhood, adolescence, and puberty, some of which have sparked controversy regarding nude images of her children depicted without modesty and candor.

RALPH EUGENE MEATYARD

Described himself as a “primitive photographer”, working in a fairly isolated area of Kentucky, and influenced by his own interests, which included Zen Philosophy and poetry, who died prematurely at 47, creating groundbreaking disturbing photographs of surreal images of dolls, and family or friends in Halloween masks, arranged in bizarre poses in abandoned buildings or backyards, conveying metaphysical questions about individuality, mystery, and melancholy, as well as environmental abstractions exploring camera experimentations such as deliberate camera movement, and “no focus” techniques.

GREGORY CREWDSON

Photographer that creates surreal and beautiful fantasy/hyper realism Edward Hopper like “movie still” color photographs, elaborately staged, into carefully constructed large scale tableaux that explore the domestic landscape and its relationship to an artificially heightened natural world; depicting an underlying edge of anxiety, isolation, and fear that explores the mysterious moment of time between “before” and “after”.