Parallel to this development, the then largely separate interface between painting and photography was closed in the early 1970s with the works of photographic artists Pierre Cordier (Chimigram), Chemigram and Josef H. Neumann, Chemogram. In 1974, Josef H. Neumann`s chemograms completed the separation of the pictorial background and the photographic layer by showing the unprecedented pictorial elements in an unprecedented symbiosis, as an incomparable single piece, in a photographic perspective both pictorial and real, with lenses, in a photographic layer, united in colors and shapes. This Neumann chemogram from the seventies of the 20th century thus differs from the beginning of Pierre Cordier`s previously created cameraless chemigrams and the Man Ray or László Moholy-Nagy photogram of previous decades. These works of art were created almost simultaneously with the invention of photography by various important artists who characterized Hippolyte Bayard, Thomas Wedgwood, William Henry Fox Talbot in their early days and later Man Ray and László Moholy-Nagy in the twenties and by painters Edmund Kesting and Christian Schad in the thirties by draping objects directly on properly sensitized photo paper and using a light source without light. camera. [57] Film photography is the practice of taking photos by exposing a thin plastic material, which we call film, with light to create an image. The plastic material on a roll of film is covered with crystals of silver halides, which darken when exposed to light. Once the film is exposed to light, it is then treated in a dark room with various chemicals to develop the final image of a photo.
Ultraviolet and infrared films have been available for many decades and have been used in a variety of photographic fields since the 1960s. New technological trends in digital photography have opened a new direction in full-spectrum photography, where careful filtering decisions across ultraviolet, visible and infrared lead to new artistic visions. Back in France, however, there was some resistance to the new technology, especially from artists who feared that photographers would push them out of business! Some of them, such as satirical cartoonist Honoré Daumier, have not hesitated to ridicule the most successful photographers and their clients. The poet and art critic Baudelaire saw in photography the satisfaction of the innate materialistic and narcissistic tendencies of modern society (he would have hated the selfie!): “The evil society rushed like a single daffodil to look at its trivial image on the metal plate”. The photo is evident in almost every aspect of modern life. As a form of communication and documentation, photos are present in newspapers, magazines, advertisements, posters, television, Internet, passports, identity cards, archives, security and surveillance systems, forensic medicine and medicine. Photography also plays an important role in domestic and leisure activities. Most of the photographs produced today take the form of snapshots documenting activities such as holidays and celebrations. With the proliferation of digital cameras and mobile phone cameras, these activities are also documented to be displayed on photo-sharing websites and photo-based social networking sites.
Despite the predominance of photography in many aspects of modern life, only a small minority of photographs are considered art and are exhibited in museums and galleries in formats similar to painting. To understand the definition of photography, it is important to break down the word itself. The Greek meaning of “photo” translates to “light”, while “graphic” is translated as “drawing”. Therefore, the word photography can literally be translated as drawing light or drawing with light. Simply put, photography is the process of capturing light to create an image. This is done using a camera, film or digital. The practice of capturing light to create images is used for various purposes. Amateur photographers take photos for personal use, as a hobby or out of occasional interest and not as a business or job.
The quality of amateur work can be comparable to that of many professionals. Amateurs can fill a gap in subjects or themes that might otherwise not be photographed if they are not commercially useful or saleable. Amateur photography developed in the late 19th century due to the popularization of the portable camera. [53] Twenty-first century social media and near-ubiquitous camera phones have made photo and video recordings ubiquitous in everyday life. In the mid-2010s, smartphone cameras added many automatic support features such as color management, autofocus face detection, and image stabilization, greatly reducing the capabilities and efforts of capturing high-quality images. [54] Originally, the entire photograph was monochrome or black and white. Even after color film became readily available, black and white photography dominated for decades due to its lower cost, chemical stability, and “classic” photographic appearance. The tones and contrast between light and dark areas define black and white photography.
[39] Monochrome images do not necessarily consist of pure black, white, and inter-gray tones, but may include shades of a particular hue depending on the process. For example, the cyanotype process produces an image composed of shades of blue. The albumin printing process, which was publicly revealed in 1847, produces brownish tones. It was Gustave Le Gray who was the first official photographer of a French head of state – Prince-President Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte (nephew of Napoleon I), who became emperor in 1852. Like other monarchs, such as Queen Victoria, Louis-Napoleon soon realized that photography offered the opportunity to present himself and his family to his subjects as real people. Photographs could be reproduced in large numbers and in various formats (from pocket “business cards” to framed reprints that imitated traditional painted portraits). The golden age of photojournalism began in Europe in the 1930s and was associated with magazines such as Paris Match and Life in the aftermath of World War II. Photojournalists relied on photography to document and tell a story, sometimes as part of a written journalistic report and sometimes independently in a photo report. Promoters have adhered to strict standards of honesty and objectivity in recording events. Early well-known photojournalists included Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Capa, Margaret Bourke-White, Agustí Centelles, Tony Vaccaro and Erich Salomon. Digital photography is the process of photography with an electronic sensor to capture light instead of filming. These images are then stored digitally on a memory card and are easily transferable as a digital file.
Kodachrome, the first modern “Integral Tripack” (or “Monopack”) color film, was introduced by Kodak in 1935. He captured all three color components in a multilayer emulsion. One layer was sensitized to accommodate the red-dominated part of the spectrum, another layer absorbed only the green part, and a third absorbed only the blue part. Without special film processing, the result would simply be three superimposed black and white images, but complementary cyan, magenta, and yellow dye images were created in these layers by adding color couplers during a complex processing process. Photography is so ubiquitous today – whether in science, advertising, current media, propaganda or just our own snapshots – that it`s hard to imagine a world without it. And yet, they did not exist 200 years ago. In the period between the two Napoleons, experiments were underway in France and England, and when Napoleon`s nephew, Louis-Napoleon, became Emperor of France in 1852, photography created its own small revolution. A variety of photographic techniques and media are used when taking images for photography. This includes the camera; Double photography; Full spectrum, ultraviolet and infrared media; Light field photography; and other imaging techniques. We invited art historian and speaker Fiona Loughnane to write an essay on photography called Image of Reality / Image not Reality: What is Photography? which focuses on the artists and artworks in the IMMA collection to contextualize this area of contemporary art practice. We hope to draw attention to all the works in the collection of artists who exclusively use photography, such as Thomas Ruff, Paul Seawright and Candida Höfer, and those for whom photography is an important part of their practice, such as Les Levine, Willie Doherty and Carl Zimmerman.