W. Fox Talbot - The Open Door

W. Fox Talbot The Open Door

Salt print from a calotype negative, April 1844. 18.8 x 23.1 cm.
source: http://foxtalbot.dmu.ac.uk/resources/opendoor.html

"The Open Door reveals a telling interest in the artistic treatment of the mundane." The image's "picturesque dimension suggests the inventor's familiarity with examples of Dutch genre painting of the 17th century"
Rosenblum, Naomi - World History of Photography, 1997 ( page 31)

It is interesting to note that, as Rosenblum herself explains, "soft definition", that is the "blurry" or "fuzzy" characteristics of the calotype image, contrasted the calotype print to the finesse of detail and sharpness of the daguerreotype. Talbot in fact referred to the effects of his early "photogenic drawings" as "Rembrandtish" (Rosenblum, page 29)

Although the negative-positive method of Talbot would point the way to future developments of photography, the quality of the early calotype images made it difficult to supplant public attachment to the daguerreotype both in Europe and in America.

Comments

Group f/64 Manifesto (1932)

Ansel Adams by Dorothea Lange

Group f/64 Manifesto
The name of this Group is derived from a diaphragm number of the photographic lens. It signifies to a large extent the qualities of clearness and definition of the photographic image which is an important element in the work of members of this Group.
The chief object of the Group is to present in frequent shows what it considers the best contemporary photography of the West; in addition to the showing of the work of its members, it will include prints from other photographers who evidence tendencies in their work similar to that of the Group.
Group f/64 is not pretending to cover the entire of photography or to indicate through its selection of members any deprecating opinion of the photographers who are not included in its shows. There are great number of serious workers in photography whose style and technique does not relate to the metier of the Group.
Group f/64 limits its members and invitational names to those workers who are strivin…

Paul Strand: method and vision

Portrait, Washington Square Park, 1917

Pears and Bowls, 1916

Wild Iris, Maine, 1927

Wall Street, 1915

Portrait of Georges Braque, 1957

The “full acceptance” of reality is the method and goal of the photographer, observed Paul Strand. However, full objectivity has to be something different from a passive receptivity but must emerge from an active and vigilant attitude that requires the photographer’s control of his subject. Or rather, it requires the coming together of subject and object in the intervening space of the photograph, synthesizing and perhaps transcending both, a mediating space, both familiar and unusual, made of masses and voids, light and shadows, made of the equivalence of presence and absence, of correspondences of vision and forms in the world, of the coalescence of equivalent forms in a frame, of a spatialized time and a space of gradually superposed temporalities.

Marcelo Guimarães Lima

links:
http://lumieregallery.net/wp/197/paul-strand/
http://www.getty.edu/art/gettygu…

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John Thomson - Street Life in London, 1877

February 23, 2012

John Thomson (1837-1921)
'Street Life in London England, 1877-8 Carbon print (woodburytype) Victoria and Albert Museum

The Photographs
In the late 1870s Thomson embarked on his most well known project, photographing the lives the people living on the streets of London.

'Street Life in London' was published in twelve instalments throughout 1877 and the beginning of 1878. Three of Thomson's photographs appeared in each edition with three stories mainly written by the journalist Adolphe Smith, who held reformist views and worked as the official interpreter for the TUC from 1886 to 1905.

With social problems gaining increased attention in the 1870s through the work of such men as Charles Dickens and the founder of homes for destitute children, Dr Barnado, these vignettes of survival among the poor proved popular with the public. The hopes and aspirations, values and needs of those portrayed were recognisable to the readers of other classes. The photographs added a gr…

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Introduction to the History of Photography

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