In part one of this two-part series , we discussed how photography came to be recognized as a valid form of art within the art historical canon. As promised last time, I will still be discussing how photography is used in contemporary art and giving my personal take on photography as art, but I felt that I also needed to cover photography in modern art as well, since it did shape the way we use photography in today’s world. So, instead of including my personal opinion on photography as art in today’s post, I will instead be discussing it in a wrap-up post on Friday (yes, you get two posts this week — get excited). Once again, I will be including links to all of the sources I used in researching this post, and you can click on them for more information on the topic. For the sake of brevity, let’s get on with today’s talk.
Modernism as a movement took place from roughly the 1860’s to the mid 1960’s (this can vary slightly depending on who you are talking to, but this is the time span that is generally accepted). Modern artists embraced change and brought about the idea that art could talk about the self and reflect one’s own interests and experiences, whereas art prior to this period was largely commissioned by either wealthy individuals or by institutions such as the church. Artists began to use new materials, techniques, and mediums to express themselves, and they challenged the idea that art had to be purely representational and realistic (to read more about modern art, click here). Modern movements that embraced photography as a medium include Italian Futurism, Constructivism and Bauhaus, and Dada, and Surrealism (for more information, click here).
Within the Modernist movement, there is the Modern Photography movement, which took on the idea that a photograph was allowed to look like a photograph and, thus, Straight Photography was born in the early 1900’s. Straight Photography, as opposed to Pictorialism, abandoned the imitation of other art forms and sought to use photography in a way that was free of manipulation. An important figure in this movement was a critic named Sadakichi Hartmann, whose 1904 “Plea for Straight Photography” praised straightforward photography and the photographers who took this approach, such as Stiegletz, who by this time had moved away from Pictorialism in favor of the Straight approach (x). Other influential figures of this movement include Ansel Adams and Edward Wesson, who were part of Group f/64, a group founded by Adams that advocated for sharp-focus and clarity within photographs so as not to obscure reality. Modern Photography was (and still is) the block upon which many types of photography were built, such as Photojournalists, Street Photography, Documentary Photography, and Snapshot Photography (for more about Straight Photography, click here). As you can see, Modern Photography and Modern Art stand in opposition to one another’s ideals; one values moving toward realism, and one values moving away from realism. The argument can be made that photography is a large part of the shifting attitudes within the art world that brought about the Modernist movement. Photographers could make the same portraits mechanically and with relative speed that painters spent hours, days, and months making; painters were no longer needed in the art of realistic portraiture or landscapes, so they adapted to this change by embracing new techniques and styles within their work. Other artists, such as Man Ray and Andy Warhol, chose to include photography and photographic techniques within their work. Man Ray famously created “rayographs” (also known as photograms — but very punny, Man Ray) by placing random objects on photosensitive paper and exposing them to light, and Andy Warhol (who I will likely dedicate an entire blog post to one day) not only turned famous images of celebrities into Pop-Art paintings and prints, but spent a lot of time taking photographs, and he apparently wrote in one of his journals that he told a friend of his, "“I didn’t believe in art; I believed in photography.” (x) It would take a whole textbook to discuss photography in Modern Art, but I think you get the idea of its impact.
Let’s move on to Contemporary Art.
In the mid-1960’s through the early 1970’s, the art world shifted toward new ideas that fall under the umbrella term “Contemporary Art.” Contemporary Art as a movement has proven difficult to define, partly because it is so new and is still happening today (I myself wonder what people who look back on the Contemporary era will come to define it as and what it will come to be named in the future, since any current art is technically “contemporary,” but I digress). One thing that can generally be agreed upon is that Contemporary Art places great importance on the concepts and methods behind each artists’s work, and one thing that I found to be true to me about Contemporary Art throughout my time as a B.F.A. student is that Contemporary Art is open to the idea that anything can be art as long as there is a concept to back it up. Photography has certainly taken on a huge role in Contemporary Art, especially with the advent of the digital camera and cell phone cameras. We continue to practice Photojournalism, Street, Documentary, and Fashion Photography, just as the Straight Photographers did, and elements of Pictorialism continue to play a part in the work of contemporary photographers, and the added element of digital processes has allowed for further artistic expression and exploration within the medium. And, as ever, artists are constantly finding new ways to use photographs in combination with other artistic mediums, especially painting and printmaking.
One of the earliest movement in Contemporary Art is, in fact, Photorealism, a movement that came about around 1968 in which artists took photographs and tried to replicate them as realistically as humanly possible (this movement had a revival in the 1990’s with the advent of digital cameras and digital technology). (x) Photography has also been used in Performance Art, both to document it as it happened live and to capture performances that were specifically meant for the camera’s eye (x). Photography has been used within contemporary art to create new worlds (such as in the work of Andreas Gursky), to explore new identities within the self (such as in the work of Cindy Sherman), to create scenes that could have been pulled from the movies (such as in the work of Gregory Crewdson), to document the people and issues around them (such as in the work on Nan Goldin), and to explore the ideas of home, family, time, love, loss, and so much more. Currently, there is a rise in popularity of older photographic processes (now known as “alternative processes) being used in rebellion against the evasive digital processes that have taken over the contemporary world. Companies such as Lomography and Polaroid Originals are catering to this trend by selling cameras and film that hearken back to what are now the “old days” before the world went digital, and even digital applications have photographic filters that are meant to make the photographs you take on your cell phone look like vintage film photographs.
Photography, though it is new in comparison to other forms of art, has a history that is continuing to evolve at a rapid pace. It plays an important part in our everyday lives, and it is for this reason that it is such a popular medium among artists today.
I hope you got something out of this reading, and I hope to see you in my wrap-up post on Friday.