Photography

Ansel Adams

&

David Hockney

Ansel Adams

• Started off as a musician; photography was just a hobby at first.

• In 1932 Adams jointed a group of West Coast photographers, known as f-64, who formed in reaction to Pictorialism.

Pictorialism

• It was seen as artistic photography so current styles of art were reflected .

• Impressionism was in vogue so many of these photographs resemble paintings in this style.

• The photos were often shot in soft focus.

Strait Photography

• Adams and the group made sharp focus photographs, usually from nature, with very small aperture openings (f-64).

• The group was devoted to making strait photography acceptable as an art form.

The Field Camera

• To achieve the results he wanted Adams used a field camera.

• This type of camera uses a very large negative.

• A larger negative allows more detail to be recorded.

The Zone System

• Adams is credited with establishing the Zone System:

Procedure for predicting & controlling the translation of subject tones into print values. Each zone represents a value (i.e. dark grey,) and the difference between each zone is one f- stop.

Rose & Driftwood 1932

• This is a close-up "macro" photograph.

• The piece of wave-worn driftwood creates a rhythmic setting for to the soft shapes of the rose petals.

• Adams was yet to develop the zone system so he "bracketed.“

• The photograph is taken six times; each is a slightly different exposure in order to get at least one of them just right.

Yosemite Falls 1940

• photo displays a combination of visual sensitivity and technical excellence

• the print contains dramatic effects of light, rich texture, & brilliant tonality.

• He achieves sharpness & brilliance through careful selection of composition, light conditions, & focus.

• The subject comes from Yosemite National Park.• The balanced composition is unified through the

repetition of interlocking V-shapes.

• There is a staggering amount of detail in the texture of the rocks as well as the foliage.

• The shortened ground plain exaggerates the height of the sublime cliffs.

Mt. Williamson, Manzanar, California, 1943

• Manzanar Relocation Center was the site where ten thousand Japanese Americans were detained after Pearl Harbour.

• Adams came to photograph images that express the perseverance of the inhabitants.

• He wanted a record of their ability to overcome the hardship of the harsh/beautiful surroundings.

• Strove to improve moral during time of crisis by showing something timeless and life enhancing.

• He believed the Japanese-Americans, a nature-loving people, must have been inspired and strengthened by the setting.

• Shows subject in a divine light (God’s rays) and backlit clouds.• Shows timeless qualities of nature.• The triangular/pyramid shapes of mountains are mirrored by those of three

boulders in the foreground• The front boulder is focal point and the viewer’s eye is led to mountains by

the perspective of boulders.

David Hockney

• Considered single viewpoint photos too instant, still, and momentary.

• He believed that traditional fixed perspective photo took away the viewers body.

• He decided to shoot a series of details (multiple views of a subject), and then reassemble/overlap the photos .

Joiners

• a collage of photo's that show multiple points of view of a subject. These photographic images incorporate the 4th dimension into the photo process, resulting in a fuller document of the visual experience.

The 4th Dimension

• The 4th dimension involves movement through time & space.

• Picasso first incorporated this aspect of perception in Cubism.

Walking Through the Zen Garden at Ryoanji 1983

• As a viewer one must journey through dozens of visual frames that result in a single reconstituted image.

• Often parts of the subject will be shown more than once.

“What really excited me was when I pieced together the Zen Garden in Kyoto. I began to realize that one of the areas I was really examining was perspective, that this was what you could alter in photography… To do it in photography was, in a sense, quite an achievement because photography is the picture-making process totally dominated by perspective.”  

• The subject is a Zen Buddhist garden. • Hockney photographs it as he walks along the edge.• As he does he photographs his eccentric mix-matched

socks.

• The recombined individual photos contain a reversal in perspective.• The resulting image shows the feeling of looking while moving – the

visual experience in motion.

“People complain that when they see a portrait by Picasso where… somebody has three eyes, they say: But people don’t have three eyes! It’s much simpler than that. It’s not that the person had three eyes; it’s that one of the eyes was seen twice.”

Hockney

Pearblossom Hwy. 1986

• This represents the fullest development of the medium.

• It contains a seeming single point perspective as well as countless perspectives.

• The viewer is able to focus in on all of the details that would be of visual interest at the site.

• Roadside debris, cacti, road signs, etc. are all photographed separately.

• To make the work the artist moved closer then further, crouched, and climbed a step ladder.

• He spent hours at the sight so the passage of time is documented.

• The work becomes a fully synthesized experience of reality.

• Hockney wanted to convey the idea in modern physics that the viewer affects what he is observing, that our ideas about reality must take our own consciousness into account.