DB Week 4

What was Stieglitz’s main interest? What’s Pictorialism and what is Naturalism? Did he stayed devoted to this movements? What do you see on his photographs?

Stieglitz’s main interest was to get photography recognized as a form of art, just as painting or drawing was. Pictorialism was a movement that Stieglitz was very devoted to at one point. Pictorialism supported the idea that photography used as art needed to challenge other forms of art such as paintings and drawings. Pictorialists understood that a camera was a tool to them, just as a paintbrush was a tool to a painter, and they manipulated their photos in the darkroom. Naturalism is a style of photography. It focuses on two things – human and nature. In this style, humans are generally used as the main subject and nature is the supporting subject. In these photographs, the supporting subject(s) were often blurred so the focus was on the main subject. Alfred Stieglitz didn’t stay devoted to this movement after realizing he felt as though his photographs didn’t look like art. In 1923 he said “My photographs look like photographs and they therefore can’t be considered art.”

What was White’s impact on photography as a medium? What do you see on his photographs?

Minor White came up with the idea of “Equivalence.” He was a very spiritual man and he believed that the act of taking and viewing photos was spiritual. He was a textural photographer (bushes, trees, cracks in a road etc.) Equivalence was mainly the idea that each photograph was open to interpretation by whoever was viewing it. Their interpretation was based on their experiences, what memories the photo brought up and how they felt when they looked at it.

What do you see on Man Ray’s photos? Are they similar or absolutely different than Stieglitz’s photos?

When I look at Man Rays photos, I think of how abstract they are. They portray real feelings (such as the photograph he took after losing someone he loved, the feeling of sadness was real, but the tears were not.) His photos are very different from Alfred Stieglitz’s. Whereas Stieglitz’s tend to be more realistic, his are more abstract expressions.

What do you see on Moholo-Nagy’s photographs?

Moholo-Nagy’s photographs are even more abstract then Man Ray’s. His, like Man Rays, take on a very different tone from Stieglitz’s and White’s. They have little reality in them and are for sure photographs used as a form of art.

Are these photographers painters? Do they all paint with their cameras or maybe only some of them?

These photographers are ‘painters’ in the way that they use a tool (camera) to create art. I believe they all paint with their camera’s, although not in the same way. A painter paints with a brush, and a photographer paints with a camera. That is the only similarity these photographers have. Whether it is a stage, manipulated or completely real photograph, they’ve all been ‘painted’ by a man (or woman) and their camera.