So, the 2nd term has come, my time is over again and I have to post what I’ve made so far in this blog.. (:
THE GENIUS OF PHOTOGRAPHY BY BBC (1-6ep.)
GENIUS 1
BBC DVD
1.What is photography’s “true genius”?
Ability to show people the secret strangeness that lies beneath the world of appearances.
2.Name a proto-photographer.
Henry Fox Talbort.
3.In the 19th century, what term was associated with the daguerreotype?
Mirror with a memory.
4.How do you “Fix the Shadows”?
Through a negative it was “sandwiched” with another sheet of photographic paper, to print up the correct way round. Daguerre fixed his images on a mirrored metal plate . The silver grains of the image sit up on the surface, in a way they don’t quite in a photograph.
5.What is the “carte de visite”?
It turned photography into a true industry. Patented by a Frenchman Disderi it was 8 photographs of you taken in a rapid sequence with eight lenses camera. They traveled through all the world by post.
6.Who was Nadar and why was he so successful?
Gaspard Felix Tournachon. He was photographing up and coming stars as equals, he didn’t put people in settings. Nadar was using his professional name every time as a copyright.
7.What is pictorialism?
Mean, moody photography at its most po-faced. Narrow elite group tried to establish photography as a branch of the fine arts. It was a very fictional thing.
GENIUS 2
1.What are Typologies?
Its a collection of photographs, which has one particular theme. The main functions and use of photographic typologies are to compare, see them as pure documents, the facts.
2.What was “The Face of the Times”?
It was a selection of August Sander portraits. Human typology. It was not typical to do that in interwar period. And all of the pictures, all people in them were saying something about their personalities, not like in commercial pictures.
3.Which magazine did Rodchenko design?
‘USSR In Construction’.
4.What is photo-montage?
It is a graphic technique that took its cue from cinema montage. Rodchenco did that job very well in “USSR In Construction” magazine. by cutting, pasting, retouching and photographing the raw material. Photo-montage served for propaganda mostly.
5.Why did Eugene Atget use albumen prints in the 1920’s?
He said he didn’t know how to do it. And the technique was not that important for him as a photograph and what that photograph was capturing.
6.What is solarisation and how was it discovered?
Man Ray discovers the solarisation process, inadvertently, in the 1920s just by sprinkling, scattering interesting objects an photographic paper. And then switching the light on very briefly, to allow these objects to imprint themselves on the paper, and then just developing it out, no camera involved.
7.What was the relationship between Bernice Abbott and Eugene Atget?
Brnice Abbott took his portraits in 1927. There are 3 portraits of him. After Atget’s death 5000 of his negatives had been brought over to America bu Bernice.
8.Why was Walker Evans fired from the FSA?
Evan moulded reality to fit his personal vision, he couldn’t make that vision conform to the propaganda requirements of the FSA. He was sacked in 1937.
GENIUS 3
1.What is described as “One of the most familiar concepts in photography”?
A photograph by Henri Cartier-Bresson, which came to be known as “a decisive moment”.
2.Should you trust a photograph? (1.38m G3)
Yes… probably.
3.What was revolutionary about the Leica in 1925?
It is a compact, quiet and with the latest lens technology camera. It gave a birth to a whole new style of instant photography. And the camera is special because it has the window on the side and doesn’t block off the vision.
4.What did George Bernard Shaw say about all the paintings of Christ?
“I would exchange every painting of Christ for one snapshot”.
5.Why were Tony Vaccaros’ negatives destroyed by the army censors?
They contained images of dead GIS, decisive moments the world wasn’t ready to accept.
6.Who was Henryk Ross and what was his job?
He was Jew incarcerated for 4years in Lodz ghetto (Poland). He was, first of all, one of the ghetto’s official photographers, he had to document the production of goods by inhabitants of Lodz, he was also a photojournalist.
7.Which show was a “sticking plaster for the wounds of the war”, how many people saw it and what “cliché” did it end on?
The Family of Man. It was made for masses. The exhibition still concludes with an otimistic cliché – W Eugene Smith’s photograph of his own children walking out into the light, the beginning of their sentimental journey through life.
8.Why did Joel Meyerowitz photograph ground zero in colour?
Because he didn’t want it to look like a tragedy. “It was just destruction” – he said.
GENIUS 4
1.Why did Garry Winogrand take photographs?
Once he said he wanted “to see the what the world would looked photographed”.
2.Why did “citizens evolve from blurs to solid flesh”?
Because the technology has changed, it has caught up.
3.What was/is the “much misunderstood theory”?
It is Cartier-Bressons theory of the decisive moment.
4.Who was the godfather of street photography in the USA?
Garry Winogrand
5.Who was Paul Martin and what did he do?
He was a british photographer. He took pictures in Great Yarmouth.
6.Who said “When I was growing up photographers were either nerds or pornographers”?
Ed Ruscha – an artist.
7.Why does William Eggleston photograph in colour?
Because of the structure of the picture and the colour being able to twist the whole content.
8.What is William Eggleston about?
“phoographing life today”.
GENIUS 5
1.Who said “ The camera gave me the license to strip away what you want people to know about you, to reveal what you can’t help people knowing about you”, and when was it said?
Photographer Diane Arbus in New York, early 60s.
2.Do photographers tend to prey on vulnerable people?
Yes.
3.Who is Colin Wood?
He was a boy captured by Diane Arbus in 1962 in New York central park. It is called “Child with a small grenade in Central Park”.
4.Why do you think Diane Arbus committed suicide?
5.Why and how did Larry Clark shoot “Tulsa”?
It was a reflection of his own life, Clark was inside, much more closer than Arbus or Avedon. “The only thing you can really photograph is your own tribe” (Nan Goldin) – that’s what he did.
6.Try to explain the concept of “confessional photography”, and what is the “impolite genre”?
It is when private becomes public. It is showing unwanted people’s personal life, secrets, what no one from outside usually can see. And it also the “impolite genre”
7.What will Araki not photograph, and why?
Nothing apart from things he doesn’t want to remember, because photography for him is thing which helps to make and keep memories.
8.What is the premise of Postmodernism?
That we now live in culture , so satured with media imagery and media models how people live, that our idea of how one lives one’s life, of who one is, is made up for that kind of media myth.
GENIUS 6
1.How many photographs are taken in a year?
80 billion
2.What is Gregory Crewdsons modus operandi?
He is kind of disconnected from photography and during the shooting he only manages everything, creates the view, but doesn’t take an actual picture. His work is very cinematic, requires a lot of preparation.
3.Which prints command the highest price & what are they called?
Vintage prints. They are usually the ones that were made by photographer himself, closest to the time the picture was actually taken.
4.What is a Fake photograph? Give an example and explain how & why it is fake.
The photograph which was printed not by author himself, but by other people and there are a lot of “not original” copies like that.
5.Who is Li Zhensheng and what is he famous for?
He was a Red Army news soldiers, a photojournalist, who in the 1960s and early 70s found himself covering the cultural revolution.
6.What is the photographers “holy of holies”?
The Magnum agency.
7.How does Ben Lewis see Jeff Walls photography?
As painting, because everything is created and set.
8.Which famous photograph was taken by “Frank Mustard”?
River Scene, France.
MOVING IMAGE
CINEMATOGRAPHY
(See “Visions Of Light, The Art Of Cinematography” Arnold Glassman)
1 What is the role of the cinematographer in film making?
Owe Roizman said: “I’m a cinematographer, I should be able to do anything you want me to do”. That person has a lot of responsibility and it depends very much on him how the final outcome will look like, he takes artistic and technical decisions related to the image.
2 Why did director Roman Polanski insist on using hand held camera in the film Chinatown?
He wanted to get a very intimate, spontaneous behaviour from actors, because the camera was very close to them and everything was shooted in actual place, not on a stage with fake walls and stuff…
3 Name two films which use colour in a very symbolic way, and describe what they suggest.
“Magic hour” In the movie colour has shown much more than black and white could have done that. It gives romanticism to the movie.
“The Last Emperor” – The life stages were represented by different stages of light and colour. Every colour had the different meaning.
4 In the film Raging Bull why was the fight scene filmed at different speeds?
They were trying to cheat it, make the actual fight time be in 24frames and save the overcrank.
5 Who is the cinematographer for the film Apocalypse Now, and what is his philosophy?
Vittorio Soraro, he states that cinema is an art form which couldn’t be made by one single person. A lot of people makes effort, but, however, there has to be one main director for everything to put it all together.
CHRIS CUNNINGHAM
(Portishead video – Only You. Bjork – All is full of love. Then Making All is full of love featuring interviews with Bjork and Chris Cunningham.)
1. How did Bjork and Chris collaborate on the All is full of love video?
Bjork shared her ideas with Chris and stayed as an actor in the video. Chris did very big work as a technician.
2. What techniques were used on the portishead video to create the unusual slow motion effects.? Research this.
It was shotted under the water, but Chris says that the water was just a device to make it feel like “other world”. Two people were digitally inserted into an alleyway of a street scene.
3. What other music video directors have gone on to direct feature films? Name two and the feature films they have made.
Spike Jonze – “Being John Malcovich”, “Adaptation”, “Where the wild things are”.
Michel Gondry – “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”, “Human Nature”
4. Which famous sci – fi film did Chris Cunningham’s work on before he became a director?
Artificial Intelligence ((aka A.I.) directed, produced and co-written by Steven Spielberg).
5. What makes his work different or original compared to other similar directors?
Chris Cunningham is often Called genius, all his work is very well done, most of the times – perfect. In my opinion, the shocking scenes and views makes it different. Sometimes you’re shocked by stunning beauty, sometimes by horror. And he all the time feels the moment and the spirit of things he’s making.
SAM TAYLOR WOOD
3 What other photographers use film as an
integral part of their work. List two with
examples?
4 Research three other Video artists and explain
their working philosophy.
5 Show an example of a specific gallery space or a
site specific location where
a video artist or film maker has created work
specifically for that
space and been influenced by it.
My Blog 