Modern trends in photography are the logical development of ideas and aspirations that we see in the works of artists of the IX – XX centuries.
Thus we can clearly see the similarity in the closely cropped low-key lighting portraits, that are so popular today and the ones, created almost century and a half ago by Julia Margaret Cameron. The way she used to shoot expressive portraits of celebrities, not widely appreciated in her own day, became widespread among world-class photographers nowadays.
Adam Clark Vroman with his landscape, cloudscape and architectural views, had a great impact on ethnographic/documentary photography. He was fascinated by the scenic drama of endless desert spaces. He experimented with filters, negatives and exposures until he attained the dramatic contrast he desired. His documentary shoots of Native Americans of the Southwest between 1895 and 1904 are still an endless source of inspiration. The wide range of gray tones in Vroman's shots evoke the depth and majesty of the subject, and differ his work from that of other photographers of his period.
Long before Anne Brigman, other artists had photographed subjects in natural settings. What made her work different is her ability to see her subjects in the environment as an integral part of the setting. She mastered a style uniquely her own, making the people she photographed to look like elements of the nature, working with human figure to embody it in rocks and trees and using pencil and paint to alter and enhance the image after development. You can clearly trace Brigman’s influence on the work of many contemporary photographers, who make their models to look like a part of interior or the nature elements, with the help of body art or in post-processing.
Dorothea Lange is one of the greatest historical examples of a photographer who used a camera as a socially useful instrument. Lange's photographs humanized the consequences of the Great Depression. She became a person, who captured on film tons of historically important events, always working without attracting attention, preferring to not make shots, if people notice her and begin to pose. Like many of contemporary documentation photographers, she always sought to provoke society to correct the injustices she documented.
Margaret Bourke-White covered World War II, being the first female war correspondent attached to the U.S. armed forces. With her courage and the desire to capture the military events, she initiated such a dangerous military photography. She also captured dozens of historically important events all over the world and her works always had a stunning effect. Dead victims on the streets of India and Pakistan, concentration camps, battlefields in USSR and a lot more on her photographs make Margaret Bourke-White such a great example of historical photographer.
Works Cited
"Mrs. Cameron's Photographs from the Life." Mozley, Anita Ventura. Stanford University Museum of Art, 1974 Web. 01 July 2014.
“The Golden Age of Western Photography. Adam Clark Vroman - 1856-1914” Andrew Smith Gallery inc., n.d. Web. 01 July 2014.
“Adam Clark Vroman (1856-1916) Collection, 1895-1912” The Online Archive of California, n.d. Web. 01 July 2014.
“Anne Brigman”, Utata Tribal Photography, n.d. Web. 01 July 2014.
“Dorothea Lange”, The History Place, n.d. Web. 01 July 2014.
“Margaret Bourke-White”, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., n.d. Web. 01 July 2014.
