Introduction
- This presentation will outline the brief aspects of photography and painting.
- It will talk about how the histories of photography and painting are intertwined since centuries.
- It will also provide a broader perspective on the modern methodologies of both arts – the way painting influences art and vice versa.
- According to Bazin (Bazin & Gray, 1960), the modern painter is freed from the resemblance complex.
- It is up to the viewers and the public who will decide the resemblance between photography and a painting that is related to photography.
- In his writings (Benjamin, 1992), Walter Benjamin talks about the benefits of lithography that gives an illustration of everyday life, which was at some point surpassed by photography.
- He also talks about the uniqueness of art that cannot be separated from its tradition, be it photography or traditional art – it still captures the incomparable beauty and melancholy of the nature.
- The uprising and popularity of Photography started with the printing press
- Camera obscura defines the early beginnings of the photographic camera. It is “a darkened enclosure or box with a small opening or lens on one wall through which light enters to form an inverted image on the opposite wall” (Janson and Janson, 2006)
- It marks the first step of the relationship between painting and photography, where artists used this concept to trace images onto the canvas.
- L’Atelier de l'artiste is the first permanent photograph captured by Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre in 1837.
L’Atelier de l'artiste
Impressionism and Photography
- Both photography and impressionism can also be categorized under the branch, contemporary art, though photography is considered less so.
- Impressionists were a group of people who did not follow the conventional method of art, representing the process of change in the art industry. The name is derived from Claude Monet’s Impression, Sunrise (1872).
- The first exhibition of Impressionist group was held in the studio of Felix Nadar, who was a photographer and a supporter of the group.
Impression, Sunrise by Claude Monet
Artists and Photographers
- Even renowned painter Pablo Picasso is known to have experimented with Photography in 1916, with figurine and realist paintings taken from photographs.
- Edward Steichen was an American photographer who bridged the gap between paintings and photography by simultaneously doing both, though by 1922, he devoted his time completely to photography.
- His works - Moonlit Landscape – 1907, a painting complemented by The Pond-Moonlight – 1904, a photograph.
- Gerhard
Richter collected photographs from news magazines and painted them.
The Moonlit Landscape
The Pond-Moonlight
- In the early 1960s, Gerhard Richter experimented by painting the photos of everyday objects like chairs by capturing its shadows and angles.
- He first experimented with press photographs and personal photographs during the mid-1960s, with works like Woman with Umbrella and Uncle Rudi
- He started out with the violent painting series by painting an image from a newspaper photo that consisted of man crushed by a large chunk of ice. It was a style that Richter referred to as “capitalist realism”.
- Among his many paintings, Tote (Dead), was perhaps the most eerie one, consisting of the dead, inert body of
Urlike
Meinhof.
- This painting was one in a series of many paintings that dealt with a German terrorist gang, Baader‐Meinhof during the late 1970s and 1980s.
- When he finished his range of paintings in 1988, he referred them as his political opinion representing the grief, the “Deadly and inhuman reality”. (Geha, 2009)
- He created a style of paintings wherein the paintings looked like blurry photographs.
Objectivity and Criticism as a Study of Progress
- Photography represented the fusion between Science and creative fine arts.
- It quickly became popular because of its accuracy and many scientific applications. It was the opinion of many that photographs offered the automaticity and realism of a depiction in a way that could not be brought out by traditional art like painting and sculptures. Film critic André Bazin believed in using photographs to preserve photos of the deceased as a remembrance.
- However, critic Charles Baudelair was highly against this development. He argued that it could not be comparable to the human genius mind and lacked imagination or input, thus not making it a ‘true art’.
- Photography was subsequently categorized as a different kind of art (Gelder & Westgeest, 2011),due to its numerous differences.
Manhatta (1921)
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSLCTI1BTdw
- The link above points to a YouTube video of a movie called Manhatta, a 10-minute documentary. It is the result of a collaborative effort of photographer Paul Strand and painter Charles Sheeler. The movie represented the city of New York in different lines, shapes and tones, with a tinge of modernism. The scenes in the film had various shades and spaces, resembling cubist paintings, enhancing the sense of drama.
References
- Bazin, A. & Gray, H., 1960. The Ontology of the Photographic Image. Film Quaterly, 13(4), pp. 4-9.
- Benjamin, W., 1992. The Work of Art in the Mechanical Age of Reproduction. Hammersmith: Fontana Press.
- Benjamin, W., 1927-1934. Little History of Photography. s.l.:The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
- Geha, K., 2009. Still Life: Detailing the German Autumn through Gerhard Richter's Tote (Dead). s.l.:Montage.
- Gelder, H. V. & Westgeest, H., 2011. Photography Theory in Historical Perspective. s.l.:John Wiley & Sons.
- Janson, A. F. & Janson, H. W., 2006. A Basic History of Western Art. New Jersey: Pearson Education.
- Lari, D. M. & Yazdi, Y., 2011. Photography and Painting Relationship in 19th century in Iran. Singapore, IACSIT Press, pp. 179-183.
