Modernism / Postmodernism

The invention of photography was part of the process of modernization of the means of production that took place during the Industrial Revolution. Photography is a modern form of image making, contributing to the development of modernism.

MODERNISM

Modernism is in its broadest definition is modern thought, character, or practice. More specially, the terms describes both a set of cultural tendencies and an array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The term surrounds the activities and output of those who felt the traditional forms of art, architecture, literature, religious faith, social organization and daily life.

E.G

Lola Álvarez Bravo is a photographer, photojournalist, portraitist and street photographer, a widely recognized as Mexico’s first major female photographer and a pioneering figure in the rise of modernist photography. She was a profound humanist who used the camera to chronicle the people and places of her beloved country over a remarkable six-decade career. Diverse in subject and technique, Álvarez Bravo was a photojournalist, portraitist and street photographer. Her best-known portraits, and ultimately the work for which she gained international recognition are those of her colleague and friend Frida Kahlo.

POSTMODERNISM

Postmodernism is a tendency in contemporary culture characterized by the rejection of objective truth and global cultural narrative, comes from its rejection of the Modern scientific mentality of objectivity and progress associated with the enlightenment. It emphasizes the role of language, power relations, and motivations in particular it attacks the use of sharp classifications such as male versus female, straight versus gay, white versus black, and imperial versus colonial. Postmodernism has influenced many cultural fields including literary criticism, linguistics, architecture, visual arts and music.

E.G

Cindy Sherman is an American photographer and film director of ‘Office Killer’ who is best known for her conceptual portraits. Many art critics have seen Sherman's work as an indicator of a postmodern approach, an image that stands alone with no reference to anything "real" outside the image that validates it as an image (the indexical function), photographing herself in a ranges of costumes. Sherman’s work can generally tell us that the subject has become simply an image or simulacrum that lacks any depth, and yet can mediate between interior and exterior spaces breaking down the subject- object boundary, also the subject is fragmented and has become hybrid in its gender and material makeup, being in transition between man and woman and between ‘fake’ plastic mannequins, ‘real’ bodies and mutated cyborg flesh which are the main things about the mediation of subjectivity in postmodern culture.

From this comparison between modernism and postmodernism, the distinction between modes thought is clear, the two creates a modern-postmodern dichotomy that undermines the very principles. The overview clearly exposes shortfalls in the postmodernism critique of modernism. These movements, Modernism and Postmodernism are understood as cultural projects or as a set of perspective.

REFERENCE:

• Books: 'Modern Art' by David Cottington'; 'Modernism/Postmodernism' by Peter Brooken; 'Practising postmodernism, reading modernism' by Roy Boyne and Ali Rattans; 'The Museum of Modern Art', 'Retrospective' and 'The incomplete Untitled Film Still' by Cindy Sherman

Feminism

Feminism refers to political, cultural and economic movements aimed at establishing greater rights and legal protections for women, includes some of the sociological theories and philosophies concerned with issues of gender difference, it is also a movement that campaigns for women’s rights and interests.

Feminism has changed traditional perspectives on a wide range of areas in human life, from culture to law; feminist activists have campaigned for women’s legal rights such as rights of contract, property rights and voting rights. They have struggled to protect women and girls from domestic violence, sexual harassment and rape, on economic matters feminists have advocated for workplace rights including maternity leave and equal pay, against others forms of gender specific discrimination against women.

NANCY COTT

Nancy Cott defines feminism as the belief in the importance of gender equality, invalidating the idea of gender hierarchy as a socially constructed concept.

GLORIA STEINEM

Gloria Steinem an American feminist, writer, journalist, social and political activist who became nationally recognized as a leader and media spokeswoman for the Women’s Liberation Movement in the late 1960s and 1970s.

PABLO PICASSO

Pablo Picasso is a Spanish painter, draughtsman and sculptor. He is well known for his promiscuity and erotic paintings of women, his image as a womaniser is as famous as his work. During his life, Pablo had donated works and money to a host of women's campaign groups, his new exhibition title 'Peace and Freedom' will portray the artists as a staunch supporter of the woman's movement.

REFERENCE:

• Books: 'Heritage of Herown' and 'Public Vows' by Nancy Cott; 'Los Grandes' by Pablo Picasso
• http://www.biography.com/articles/Gloria-Steinem-9493491
• http://video.answers.com/Q/gloria_steinem_-_profile_171003465

Semiotics

Semiotics is the study of sign processes or signification and communication like signs and symbols. The study of the social, cultural and historical processes through which sign such as photographs acquire and circulate meaning, it is a useful critical approach with which to challenge simplistic beliefs in the realism of the photographic image and as a critique of humanist and modernist concepts of artistic expression which place the photographer in a central position, where the work’s success is measured against the author’s intentions, and understanding these intentions means understanding meaning the work. In this view, meaning is created by individuals and communicated using a transparent language.

In semiotics a sign is something that stands for something, to someone in some capacity. It may be understood as a discrete unit that includes words, images, gestures, scents, tastes, textures, sounds. Essentially all of the ways in which information can be communicated as a message by any sentient, reasoning mind to another.

The image on the top shows an example of the use of semiotics, a perfume’s advertising of the celebrity Beyonce Knowledges which is her first launched signature perfume named ‘HEAT’. The name of the perfume matches the singer because connotes sensuality, a word often associated with Beyonce; the colours shown on the perfume contrasts with Beyonce’s dress, background and title that is red, red a colour that symbolizes love and passion also danger but in this situation the semiotics refers the danger in a seductive way, e.g. ‘Catch the fever’. Tones of red and gold were used for the over all look of the design, selected to reflect the title ‘HEAT’ that sign fire and heat, but as well as for the Singer’s personality, style and look, like sexy, lovely, passionate, sultry, glamorous and hot.

REFERENCE:

• Book: 'Semiotics' and 'Photography Adverting'
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEgxTKUP_WI
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLaQJ_Kr0UM
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76lPciEip3A

Nick Brandt

Nick Brandt was born and raised in London a british contemporary photographer who studied film and painting at St Martins School of Art but he now lives in Topanga, California.

Brandt started photographing in December 2000 in East Africa, beginning the body of work that is his signature matter and style. His first book is titled ‘On this Earth’ which were published in October 2005, he has had numerous of exhibition between 2004 and 2006 including London, Berlin, New York, Los Angeles, Hamburg, Santa Fe, Sydney, Melbourne and San Francisco; and his second new book was exhibited in September 2009 at Atlas Gallery.

His passion is taking black and white photographs of wild animals surrounded in their natural habitat in Eastern Africa and capturing their dramatic single moment in action, using a telephoto lens and printed in an Archival Pigment Ink. He studied step by step with the view of the camera by taken pictures and froze each moment it could that the conclusion is to attract viewer’s eyes and make them believe that the animals does have feelings. Its is very interesting and incredible how powerful these photographs are both landscape, also printed in black and white, no color but have tone and has the same content which is relationship, unit and love.

Brandt photographs inspired me for the fact that the photographs is the lovely emotion that the animals transmits into the image, a feeling candidness that demonstrates the good side of nature being which creates a story within the image.

REFERENCE:

• Exhibition: 'Keep The World Wild' at Hoopers Gallery
• Book: 'On this Earth' and 'A Shadows Falls'
• http://www.nickbrandt.com

Francesca Woodman

Francesca Woodman was born on Denver, Colorado, April 3rd in 1958. She is an American Photographer, best known for taking black and white film nude pictures of herself portrait and friends which studied and influential of late 20th Century photographers. Who suicide in New York, 19 January on her’s 22 years old.

Woodman started taking pictures when she was barely thirteen and in less than a decade created a body of work that has now secured her reputation as one of the most original American Artists of 1970s. Spent the most of her childhood in Italy in the Florentine countryside, where she lived in an old farm with her parents who were also artists and her older brother as well later became an associate professor of electronic art.

She created a number or of artis’ books, such as ‘Portrait of a Reputation’, ‘Quaderno dei Dettati e dei Temi’, ‘Angels’ Calendar Notebook and ‘Some Disordered Interior Geometries’, however the only book that was published during her life time was ‘Some Disordered Interior Geometries’ released in January 1981 shortly before she committed her own death, the book contains 24 pages in length and is based upon selected pages from an Italian geometry exercise book were had attached 16 photographs with handwriting and white correction fluid on the pages. Woodman used of a black and white 21’4 inch square format, were she produced blurred images by camera movement and long exposure times, merging with their surroundings.

Francesca Woodman was very passionate for her work, creative, imaginative also very ambitious. She influenced me with the beauty and intelligence clearly visible in her photographs, the female body as a central theme which is a landscape for her reflections on materiality and presence.

REFERENCE:

• Book: Francesca Woodman

Robert Frank

Robert Frank was born in November 9, in 1924 in Zurich Switzerland. He is ones of the world’s most influential and prominent photographer in America photography and film, for more then fifty years he has broken the rules of photography and film making, challenging boundaries between the still life and the moving image.

Frank emigrated to United States in 1947 and secured a job in New York City as a Fashion Photographer for Harper’s Bazar; married to the Artist Mary Lockspeipeiser and had two children, Andrea and Paolo, thereafter they separated and he married to Sculptor June and moved to the Community of Mabou in Canada. Frank’s

subsequent work has dealt with the impact of the loss of both his daughter Andrea that was killed in a plane crash and his son Paolo who was first hospitalized and diagnosed with Schizophrenia.

Frank’s latest work from the book ‘ The Americans’ he divided the book into four chapters or parts, each one beginning with a photograph of flag and each one which addresses for the difference aspects of American Culture. He created narratives out of constructed images and of images incorporating words and multiple frames distorted on the negative, some blurred autofocus form and mostly dark images with bright lights which makes a strong contrast that is very magnificent and masterpiece work.

REFERENCE

• Book: The Americans
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHtRZBDOgag&feature=related
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAMrrrFmayY&feature=related
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DwjvOR4YL4&feature=related
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uARK9oesck&feature=related

Stephen Shore

Stephen Shore was born on October 8, 1947 in New York City, who is an American photographer known for his deadpan images of banal scenes and objects in the United States and for his pioneering use of colour in art photography.

He was interested in photography from an early age, self-taught. At age six his uncle gave him a photographic kit, thereafter in 1973 he began use a 35mm camera and started his colour photographs; at fourteen sold three prints to Edward Eteichen the director of the Museum of Modern Art; left a Manhattan prep School during twelfth grade and spent 1965 through 1969 documentary Andy Warhol’s factory; and in 1971 he became the second living photographer to have a solo exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The book titled ‘Uncommon Places’ is very useful with a astonish images. Shore used a 8x10 film large format a way that gives the ability for viewers to see how much details as the camera can record which is superb, and the purpose he used it is that he discovered that was a technical means in photography of communicating what the world looks like in the state of awareness, in that awareness of really looking at of the everyday world; and he goes as far in the space as he can paying attention and choosing advantage point that it stands and articulates the space.

Shore is fascinated of how people live, the architecture and interested in how those different houses look like. The images are very clear and have very long tonal range also great image dynamic but he never crops it because he challenges himself playing game in certain rules and in certain boundaries that for him makes more interesting to know that the decision that he makes when he takes a picture are the decisions that he has to live with.

REFERENCE

• Book: Uncommon Places
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6m5flmLiEDA
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAQkrUB1sLM&feature=related
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8kuBc27VO8&feature=related

Sarah Jones

Sarah Jones is a visual artist and photographer. She was born in London in 1959, gained international recognition in the mid 1990s coinciding with the completion of an MA in Fine Art at Goldsmith’s College in London in 1996.

Jones’s work has been included in numerous exhibitions nationally and internationally, also has received a number of awards including ACE and recent residency at Yaddo Artists Colony, Saratoya New York.

She has distanced herself from traditional portrait photography. Her photographic technique highlights the relationship between her life - size subjects - domestic spaces and people, often adolescent girls and the spectator. She memorialize passive adolescents in their own homes, a generation and specially an age which is disillusioned, calm and sometimes dramatic. Penetrating their intimacy in order to produce series of artificial images of a voluntarily inexpressive nature, she captured these young girls in the gardens of their homes 1998 secret spaces, applying the same strict rules of composition.

On these series Jones seems to have used studio lighting, a strong and diffused light source, in some images she uses more than one individual subject in her work, focusing on the tension and relationship between the adolescents. Her work are very powerful for the certain that she photographed adolescents in such a ordinary and dramatic way.

REFERENCE

• http://www.antonkerngallery.com/artist.php?aid=15
• http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0268/is_2_38/ai_57475813/

Taryn Simon

Taryn Simon was born in New York in 1975. She is an American Fine Art photographer, who graduated of Brown University and Guggenheim Fellow in 1993-1997.

Taryn is currently working on a new project along with taking on new assignment and exhibiting her work around the world, her photography and writing have been featured in numerous publication and broadcasts including the New York Time Magazine. She examines a culture through careful documentation of diverse subjects from the realms of science, government, medicine, entertainment, nature, security and religion which through text and image the work covert the complicated relationship between a photograph and its context.

In ‘An American Index of the Hiden and Unfamiliar’ Simon photographed with a large format view camera of 70 colour plates form a seductive collection that reflects and reveals a national identity were she documents spaces that are integral to America’s foundation, mythology and daily functioning but remain inaccessible or unknown to a public audience. This index examines subjects that while provocative or controversial that are currently legal, the work responds to a desire to discover unknown territories to see everything.

Simon use of the comment on photograph’s capacity to engage and inform the public. Her work is splendid of how they are all different from different places and situation but the good part is that it works together because it contrasts by the way is well planned.

REFERENCE

• http://www.tarynsimon.com
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKl0tb3VmfQ

Dryden Goodwin

Dryden Goodwin was born in Bournemouth, in 1971. He is an established artist who studied at the Slade School of Fine Art in London, his work has appeared in dozens of international solo and group exhibitions also awarded a Nesta Fellowship in 2000.

Goodwin lives and works in London, fascinated by the urban spaces and its effect on the individual, using a variety of media including photography, video, film, sound, drawing and painting. His work has focused in the use of a zoom lens further confounds the distance between the camera and its subject, a relationship between the viewer and the viewed that creates an atmosphere which embraces hostility and intimacy.

Attending to Dryden Goodwin’s exhibition at Photographer’s Gallery I had the opportunity to observe his latest work which he had drawn 60 pencil portraits and 60 films recordings of the drawings being made from a diverse range of people which is very impressive the fact that the people he had taken photographs are not celebrities and not even people who looks amazing but completely strangers on Oxford Street or on a bus looking normal. The subject are in sharp focus and everything around them is blurred; the black and white pictures had strange drawn patterns and structure onto the people’s faces and the colour pictures had rivers of red brighten average patterns.

Goodwin’s works are incredibly amazing because he achieves something very simple but extremely original and unique.

REFERENCE

• Dryden Goodwin's Exhibition at Photographers Gallery
• http://www.drydengoodwin.com/drawing.htm
• http://www.metacafe.com/watch/2671586/dryden_goodwin/
• http://www.photonet.org.uk/index.php?pxid=943
• http://londonist.com/2008/10/review_cast_photographers_gallery.php

Sam Taylor-Wood

Sam Taylor-Wood was born in Croydon, London in 1967. She is a Photographer, Filmmaker and a Conceptual Artist.

At the age nine Wood’s father, a Biker left and that induce her mother, a Yoga Teacher and a Astrologist to enroll the family in a commune in Sussex, where they wore orange robes and took sanskrit names, all of which Wood hated. When Wood was 30 years old she suffered from late diagnosed colon cancer and three years later she was diagnosed with breast cancer; she asserts that chemotherapy saved her life together with her own will to live.

Wood worked as a bartender and dresser at the Royal Opera House and managed the Camden Palace Nightclub. Went to a Art School in Hastings and Graduated from Goldsmiths College, also began exhibiting Fine - Art Photography in the early 90‘s; in 1994 she exhibited a multi-screen video work titled “Killing Time” in which four people act out to an opera score, from

that point multi-screen video works became the main focus of her work; in 1997 She was nominated for the Turner Prize and won the Illy Café Prize for Most Promising Young Artist at the 47th Venice Biennale.

Sam Taylor Wood photographs are creative and very different to others photographers that I have seen by the way she planned and manage to put it together, but I dislike her films because they all have repetition and the same significance; mostly I did not quite understand like Pieta (2001) a woman sited on a stairs holding a man that seems to be unconscious also Breach(2001) a young woman crying sited on the floor.

REFERENCE

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4PjMuIhwdA
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21rNYKQg6v8&feature=related

Nan Goldin

Nan Goldin is an American Fine Art and

Documentary Photographer. She was born on September 12 in 1953, in Washington, D.C and grew up in a upper - middle class Jewish family in Boston.

Goldin’s photos explores love and compassion that are based in a very harsh genre, mostly includes herself - portrait and her family and friends. At the first she started taking photos in black and white film then she moved on to colour film; the best known works are sexual and violent like sexual problems and drug addicts and drag

queens which together reflects her life, with that it contains a very severe images that I founded very impressive.

At the age 14, in 1965 Nan Goldin’s older sister Barbara Goldin committed a suicide that had effected Nan for the rest of her life. Thereafter she frequented a school called Satya Community School, where she met David Armstrong and Suzanne Fletcher, who comforted her and became the focal subject of her life by photographing them, which the idea was to record the present a way to perserve the present as the memories of her sister was fading away. Also through them, she manage to reside and photographed a drag subculture in a nightclub called ‘The Other Side’, where her obsesses to genres start to meet because she founded drag queens the most beautiful people she ever seen.

The second photo is a Goldin’s self-portrait printed in Cibachrome, taken in 1984 one month after she being violated abused, she was battered by her ex - partner Brian so badly that she almost lost her eyesight; and she had frozen that moment to show aspects of her life just as realistic and natural as the immaculate scenes of nature.

What cough my eyes in Goldin’s work-life is the fact that she had a rough life and she expresses that by taking photographs creating a documentary about what she has gone through and around her surroundings which has influenced generations because she sees things from inside and uses the camera as a visual diary, a point to communicate with the viewers.

A comment that Nan Goldin made in her photographic style that I founded very interesting because it truly interprets and clarifies to her work - life: “ A lot of people seem to think that art or photography is about the way things look or the surface of things. That’s not what it’s about for me. It’s really about relationship and feelings.”

REFERENCE

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Z3sihEuiEk
• Books: Ballad of Sexual Dependency, I'll Be Your Mirror, The Other Side and The Devil's Playground.