Short lectures in Media History

Media History from Gutenberg to the Digital Age

Slides based on the Bloomsbury book by Bill Kovarik Revolutions in CommunicationChapter 4 Photography

1

Web site & textbook Textbook:

1st edition 2011 2nd edition 2016 http://www.revolutionsincommunication.com

2

Joseph Niepce - first photo 1826

Only a few decades after lithography made images accessible to the public, Joseph Nicephore Niepce, a French lithographer, started experimenting with photography. Around 1826, Niepce found a partial solution to the problem of fixing an image made by light. He coated a tin plate with asphalt, loaded it into a camera obscura and left it pointed out of the window for eight hours. Areas of asphalt that had not been hardened by sunlight washed off in oil. It is the first surviving photograph in history, but it was not a practical process, since the image was grainy and only buildings or fixed objects could be photographed. 3

1838 Boulevard du Temple by Daguerre -- Believed to be the earliest photograph showing a living person. It is a view of a busy street, but because the exposure time was at least ten minutes the moving traffic left no trace. Only the two men near the bottom left corner, one apparently having his boots polished by the other, stayed in one place long enough to be visible

4

Louis Daguerre

A Daguerrotype ofEdgar Allen Poe

Louis Daguerre was a Parisian artist whose work initially involved painting elaborate theatrical scenes, called dioramas, that depicted history and fantasy with painted backdrops, props and wax figures. Like Niepce, Daguerre was obsessed with finding a quicker way to get his work done and accurately depict his subjects. He began to study photography, and found the chemical key to fixing the image. In August 1839, Daguerre revealed the secrets of photography to an audience at the French Academy of Sciences. He could have patented his invention, but instead chose to give it away.

After 1839, famous people (such as Edgar Allen Poe, depicted here) had Daguerreotypes made so that their looks would be remembered.

At first we did not dare look long on at the images he (Daguerre) produced. We were frightened by the clarity of these men, imagining that these small, indeed, tiny, faces, fixed on a plate, could turn back and look at us.Charles Dauthendey, 1850. 5

Elevating photography to art

Honor Daumier lithograph c. 1862.

Note the many photo studios on the streets of Paris below.

Nadar (Gaspard-Flix Tournachon) was a photographer and ballonist.

The reason he is elevating photography to art is because at the time only art could be copyrighted.

Photographer in a balloon by Honor Daumier, NADAR elevating Photography to Art. Lithograph published in Le Boulevard, 1862. Nadar was the commercial name of Gaspard-Flix Tournachon, a photographer and balloonist.

By 1862, the legal question of whether photography was fine art or merely mechanical reproduction had to be settled, and a series of French and British cases were vehemently argued in the courts and salons. In one case a lower court judge ruled that Daguerres invention of photography was in the public domain, and so too were any products of the invention. When the case was appealed to the French high court, attorneys arguing for artists said Photography lacks the qualities which are necessary to constitute a work of art: it is not a creation, does not have originality. The high court decided that while photographs are not . . . creations of the mind or genius, some images could be considered artistic and therefore could have copyright protection.

6

Making fun of photograpy

Artists like Honor Daumier were worried about photography, and poked gentle fun at it in this print: New procedure to get gracious poses.

In fact, head braces were widely used for the often 20 second or more exposures required in early studios.

By 1864 twenty-five periodicals featuring photography as the exclusive subject were issued in six different countries. Gisle Freund, Photography and Society (Boston: David R. Godine, 1980) p. 83 7

Artists & writers worried about images

Honor Daumier saw photography as a lazy way to produce art.

People have not only ceased to purchase those old-fashioned things called books, but even to read them! . . . The beauties of Shakespeare are imprinted on the minds of the rising generation in woodcuts; and the poetry of Byron (is) engraved in their hearts, by means of the graver . . . (In the future) Books, the small as well as the great, will have been voted a great evil. There will be no gentlemen of the press. The press itself will have ceased to exist. -- William Blackwood, 1844

8

Bisson brothers,1850s

Beginnings of outdoor & environmental photography

Photography inspired by the beauty of natural landscapes or remote corners of the world is a recurrent theme. Among the first to take advantage of the camera for this point of view were the Bisson brothers of Pris, who adored alpine hiking in the 1850s and took stunning shots of mountaineers on glaciers.

9

Roger Fentons Crimean War outfit

This is how much equipment was involved in the effort to take photographs in 1855. Roger Fenton, a British photographer, who traveled to the Russian Crimean region with British troops in 1855. Some believe that Fentons photographs were meant to offset anger from the British public over the disastrous Crimean War (Sontag, 2003, p. 126). Marcus Sparling, Fentons assistant depicted here, wanted to have his picture taken just before going with Fenton to Valley of the Shadow of Death. Sparling . . . Suggested as there were a possibility of a stop being put in that valley to the further travels of both vehicle and driver, it would be showing a proper consideration for both to take a likeness of them before starting, Fenton wrote. (Library of Congress) 10

On or off? Which came first?

On April 24, 1855, Roger Fenton, a British photographer, approaches a ridge overlooking the besieged town of Sevastopol, Ukraine. The artillery from the town has been so intense that he didnt peek over the ridge. Instead he spent an hour taking two photos of a road in the Valley of the Shadow of Death leading to the ridge. Hundreds of cannonballs have landed in the valley. He took two photos and left, but later, historians will wonder which of the two photos came firstthe one with the cannonballs ON the road, or the one where the cannonballs are OFF the road? If the OFF photo came first, then the ON photo is deceptive, possibly intended to dramatize the intense artillery. But the alternative explanation is that the cannonballs could have been cleared from the road, and the ON photo could be the first. Errol Morris investigated the problem of the Fenton photos in Which Came First, the Chicken or the Egg? The New York Times, September 25, 2007 and, comparing the way the rocks fell down the hill in the ON photo, concluded that Fenton did, indeed, attempt to dramatize the shot. 11

On or off? Which came first?

12

Brady studio, Broadway NYC

In 1844, Brady opened his portrait studio over a saloon on New Yorks busiest street Broadway. Not only did he offer daguerreotypes at a reasonable price, but he also sought advice from the best chemists to help refine his techniques.

His portraits soon began taking first place in competitions, and by the late 1840s he was a household name: Brady of Broadway.

13

This Brady photo was widely distributed during Lincolns 1860 presidential campaign

Brady also made a point of documenting the likenesses of the most famous people of the day for The Gallery of Illustrious Americans. His subjects were everyone still living who was important, including presidents Andrew Jackson, James Polk, and many other actors and politicians famous in their day.

In 1860, when an Illinois politician gave an important speech in New Yorks Cooper Union lecture hall, he also stopped into the Brady studio for a photo. It was reproduced by the thousands and became the best known image of the 1860 presidential campaign. Brady and the Cooper Institute made me president of the United States, Abraham Lincoln said. 14

Brady with Burnside, portrait

Brady is most often remembered as the man who photographed the US Civil War. 15

Brady Antietam 1862

When Brady exhibited photos of the Antietam battlefield in 1862 at his New York studio, the effect was sensational. The New York Times said that Mr. Brady has rendered us a real service . . . By this work of his, undertaken so courageously and carried forth so resolutely (NYTimes, Sept. 26, 1862). If he has not actually brought bodies back and laid them on our dooryards and along the streets, he has done something very like it . . . There is a terrible fascination about it that draws one near these pictures . . . You will see the hushed, reverent groups standing around these weird copies of carnage . . . (NYTimes, Oct. 20, 1862).

16

Three prisoners after Gettysburg

By Brady. Note they have no weapons 17

Oscar Wilde copyright controversy

This photo was widely reproduced without permission, giving rise to the Burrow-Giles case that put photography under copyright protection in 1884.

Is photography art?the question was not just an argument over aesthetics. This portrait of playwright Oscar Wilde, taken in 1884, was copied without permission by a New York lithography company. When the photographer sued, Burrow-Giles lithographers said that only the arts were covered by copyright law, and photography was not an art. But photographers argued that they brought a sense of art into the photographic process, and won the precedent-setting case in the US, following a pattern set in France 22 years beforehand.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burrow-Giles_Lithographic_Co._v._Sarony

18

George Eastman

Kodak Co.

Celluloid film camera, 1880s

One reason photography is portable is due to the use of flexible celluloid film instead of glass plates. 19

Eugene Atget 1898 Paris

Photography is starting to get out of the studio and into the streets around this time. 20

Edward Curtis1908

Stereotyped photos of Native Americans were very popular but not very accurate. 21

Pictorialism

EdwardSteichen

Flatiron1905

Pictorialism is an extension of photography into art, partly to continue pointing out that photography is worthy of copyright protection, but also to explore the boundaries of the medium. 22

Joseph Stieglitz Steerage

The snobbery of Parisian portrait painters over what was legitimately artistic spurred the pictorialist photographic movement. In defense of their art, pictorialists depicted subjects with soft visual effects and artistic poses. One part of the movement was the The Brotherhood of the Linked Ring founded in Britain in May, 1892. Similar clubs were formed in Vienna and Paris to promote the artistic side of photography.

American pictorialists included Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Steichen, who opened the 291 Gallery in New York. They were determined that photography would find its place as a medium of individual expression, as Steiglitz said. The gallery was an enormous success, taking the forefront of the modern art movement in the pre-World War I period. Among the best known photos of the period is the Flat Iron Building, taken by Steichen and Steerage taken by Stieglitz. Later, Stieglitz became known as the husband of painter Georgia OKeefe. 23

Straight photography Paul Strand Wall Street 1915

The success of the 291 Gallery inspired another reaction in the Straight Photography movement. Strands Wall Street was a perfect contrast with pictorialist atmospheric photos. Here people are dwarfed by the buildings and institutions of modern society. (Library of Congress)

24

Social reform

Jacob Riis 1890s

Among the first to use flash photography in the United States was photojournalist Jacob Riis (18491914), who used it to take photos of squalid conditions, dangerous alleys and suffering children. Riis was also able to take advantage of another new media technologythe halftone process that screened a photograph into small dots that could be printed on paper.

In his 1890 book, How the Other Half Lives, Riis published a mix of photos and drawings about what he found roaming the streets of New York with his friend Theodore Roosevelt, who was then commissioner of police.

25

Lewis Hine

Another example of photography for social reform involved Lewis Hine (1874 1940), a photographer who joined the National Child Labor Committee in 1907.Hines stunning portraits of children working with dangerous machinery proved to be more powerful arguments than anything that could be said or written. By 1916, child labor reform laws had been enacted27

Lewis Hine

Powerhousemechanic

1920

Power House Lewis Hine also made work portraits that emphasized the human contribution to modern industry. This iconic photo was also an inspiration for Charlie Chaplins 1936 comic film Modern Times. (Library of Congress)28

Sebastiao Salgado

Hines work has been carried on by many photographers, in recent years notably by Sebastio Salgado, a photographer who works in the UN Global Movement for Children. More than ever, I feel that the human race is one, Salgado said. There are differences of color, language, culture and opportunities, but peoples feelings and reactions are alike. 29

Sebastiao Salgado

30

Walker Evans

The economic depression of the 1930s was another great social problem, involving a lack of confidence in the economic system and, for some people, the very concept of democracy. One response from Franklin Delano Roosevelts New Deal administration involved the rural rehabilitation efforts of the Farm Security Administration.

Among its other jobs, the FSA was supposed to boost national morale by sending photographers and writers out into the country to document the national spirit. FSA photographers took over 200,000 photos documenting the condition of the country.

The result was not always a morale boosting portrait, but rather, one of a people struggling to cope and not always managing. While the intent was to introduceAmericans to Americans, the underlying argument of the photos was for social reform.31

Dorothea Lange

One of the signature photos of the FSA project, and indeed, the 20th century was Dorothea Langes 1936 portrait of a migrant farm worker and her children. (Top right). The photos were taken while Lange (top left) traveled on assignment in her car for the Farm Services Administration. As she took the series of photos (bottom), Lange learned that the mother, Florence Owens Thompson, had just sold the tires from her car to buy food for the children. Lange passed the word to relief authorities the next day, and they brought food to the camp. ( FSA Collection, Library of Congress)32

GordonParks

Hired by the FSA in 1942, took this picture on his first day on the job of Ella Watson.

Another FSA photographer, Gordon Parks, made a similarly iconic photo in 1942. Parks, a northern-born African American, was unaccustomed to the racism ofthe American South, so when he was hired in 1942 in Washington DC, his first assignment was to leave his camera behind and go to a lunch counter and the movies. He was turned away from both establishments, which was the reason he was given the assignment. Later that afternoon, as the angry Parks was settling into his new job, he noticed Ella Watson cleaning the building. He asked her to pose in front of a flag, broom in one hand and mop by her side, in the style of a famous Grant Wood painting American Gothic. 33

War photography: Capa

One of Robert Capas famous photos is that of the Spanish Civil War soldier at the exact moment of death in 1936. Although some have alleged that the photo was faked, others insist that clues in the photo, along with corroborating evidence, demonstrate its veracity. 34

RobertCapa

Another Capa photo. If you stare at the face a few seconds, it changes from a simple portrait of a hero to an unsettling insight into the incredible personal sacrifices people made during WWII. 35

D-Day Capa

Most of Capas film from that Normandy, June 7, 1944 was lost, but a few pictures captured the agony and confusion of the initial landings. 36

Robert Capa

The photos from the Normandy landings of June 7, 1944 were crucial to the authenticity of the film Saving Private Ryan. 37

Margaret Bourke White

Another great American war photographer was Margaret Bourke-White who took a deceptively simple portrait of Mahatma Gandhi in 1946. Gandhi is shown witha spinning wheel in the foreground of the photo, which implied that a person can, with modesty, be a symbol of change and put the symbol forward, rather than themselves The composition shows insight into Gandhis personality. 38

W. Eugene Smith

W. Eugene Smith (1918-1978) was known for vivid photos and a refusal to compromise. His biography is called Photography Made Difficult. 39

Joe Rosenthal

Joe Rosenthal was yet another great photographer of the war era, and his Associated Press shot of US Marines planting the flag on Iwo Jima, Feb. 23, 1945, is among the best known photos of the era. Like Lange when she shot Migrant Mother, Rosenthal had a feeling that he should keep going up Mount Suribachi even when he met other photographers and reporters coming down the mountain who said the flag had already gone up, but the views from the top were outstanding. As it turned out, Marines were preparing to raise a second, larger flag, and Rosenthal captured a well-remembered moment. 40

WEEGEE

Arthur Fellig (1898 1968) was a tough New York news photographer

41

This Weegee photo is called First Murder. 42

Peter Liebing, 1961, Berlin

On 15 August 1961 Peter Leibing, working for the Hamburg picture agency Contiepress, had been tipped by police that an East German border guard might escape the Berlin Wall, then in its third day of construction. At that stage of construction, the Berlin Wall was only a low barbed-wire fence. As people on the Western side shouted Komm ber! ("come over"), Leibing captured a photograph of Conrad Schumann jumping a barbed wire fence and making his escape. The photo became a well-known image of the Cold War. Liebing had a successful career in photojournalism. But Schumann never quite came to grips with his place in the cold war, and in 1998, suffering from depression, he committed suicide. 43

Malcolm Browne, 1963, photo of Thich Quang Duc

Malcolm Browne was an Associated Press reporter who took this photo when a Buddhist monk, Thich Quang Duc, set himself on fire in Saigon 11 June 1963 The Buddhists of Vietnam were outraged at the way the Catholic minority, allied with the US, was running the country. The impact of the protest was enormous. 44

45

Eddie Adams, Vietnam, 1968

Eddie Adams (1933-2004), AP photographer, snapped a quick image of police chief General Nguyn Ngc Loan executing a Vietcong prisoner, Nguyn Vn Lm, on a Saigon street, on February 1, 1968. The photo won the Pulitzer in 1969 and ignited a storm of controversy over the brutal nature of the war.

Adams was filled with regrets over the way the photo helped the anti-war movement and hurt General Loan. "I would have rather been known more for the series of photographs I shot of 48 Vietnamese refugees who managed to sail to Thailand in a 30-foot boat, only to be towed back to the open seas by Thai marines."

46

John Filo, Kent State, 1970

May 4, 1970, Mary Vecchio kneels over one of four students killed without provocation by Ohio National Guardsmen, who had been called onto campus to put down a non-violent protest. Photo by photojournalist John Filo. 47

Nick Ut, Vietnam, 1972

Nick Ut, an AP photographer, shot this photo at Trng Bng village after a napalm attack by the US. 48

Tiananmen Square, 1989

An unknown protester stops a column of tanks during the Tiananmen Square protests49

Earthrise - NASA

Photo by astronaut William Anders of Apollo 8 on Christmas Eve, 1968.

Christmas Eve, 1968; Sometimes called "the most influential environmental photograph ever taken. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthrise If photography has the power to change the way we look at ourselves, it also has the power to change the way we look at our environment. 50

Ansel Adams

Relocation camp 1942. While it has the characteristic Ansel Adams mountain scene in the background, the photo is a protest over the treatment of Japanese Americans in World War II.

51

The Tetons and the Snake River (1942) by Ansel Adams for the FSA. Adams was photographing light and weather, not just landscapes. 52

W. Eugene Smith, Minamata, 1972

W. Eugene Smiths famed photo of a victim of mercury poisoning in the Japanese town of Minamata, in 1972. The photo galvanized world opinion regarding environmental contamination. It also earned Smith a beating from thugs associated with the chemical company from which he never recovered. He died six years later. 53

W. Eugene Smith

"The Walk to Paradise Garden

1942

"The Walk to Paradise Garden (1946) single photo of his two children walking hand in hand towards a clearing in woods. It was the closing image in the groundbreaking 1955 MOMA exhibition, "The Family of Man, organized by Edward Steichen with 503 photographs, by 273 photographers from 68 countries, that he recognized as picturing "the essential oneness of mankind throughout the world [showing] the gamut of life from birth to death.

54

Robert Mapplethorpe (1946 1989)

Known for highly stylized black and white photography and homoeroticism, Robert Mapplethorpe fuelled a national debate over the public funding of controversial artwork. 55

Annie Liebowitz

This December 8, 1980 photo of John Lennon and Yoko Ono is still her most famous. The photo was taken hours before Lennon was killed. 56

Kevin Carter, 1993, Sudan

A starving toddler was trying to reach a feeding center when a hooded vulture landed nearby. Kevin Carter reported taking the picture, because it was his "job title", and leaving. He was told not to touch the children due to transmitting disease. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1994, but was so disturbed that he killed himself the next year. 57

Digital photography

Kodaks prototypes developed in 1970s Professionals began using digital processing and imaging in the 1980s Late 1990s, early 2000s new consumer digital cameras arrive, and some are Kodak But the market did not generate the same level of profits, and Kodak went bankrupt in 2012

Kodak experimental digital camera 1975: 0.01 megapixels

By the mid-20th century, George Eastmans Kodak company had become an enormous empire, with 150,000 employees and hundreds of thousands of outlets in every grocery and chain store in the world by the year 2000. But the company did not weather the digital revolution and went into bankruptcy in 2012.

Interestingly, the company did not simply miss the curve in the road. Kodak management knew perfectly well how the digital revolution would play out. In a 1979 report to the Kodak board, a Kodak manager of advanced consumer equipment development, Larry Matteson predicted that film, cameras and other products would shift in stages from analog to digital. Despite efforts to create new markets for digital cameras, the nature of digital technology was such that the market would not generate the same kinds of profits. "The mistake, if it was a mistake, Kodak executive Matteson told Der Speigel, "was that Kodak could never separate itself from the notion of being a company about images."

58

Review: People Louis Daguerre, Joseph Niepce, Matthew Brady, Roger Fenton, Edward Steichen, Joseph Steiglitz, Paul Strand, George Eastman, Jacob Riis, Lewis Hine, Dorothea Lange, Sebastio Salgado, Henry Luce, Gordon Parks, Robert Capa, Joe Rosenthal, Ansel Adams, Jacques Cousteau

59

Review: Issues Invention by Daguerre, copyright and photography, celluloid film, flash photography for indoors, Pictorialist movement, Straight photography movement, Farm Services Administration, photo magazines, war photography, digital photos, ethical issues, future of photography.

60

Next: Chapter 5 Cinema

61