History of Landscape photography helen.clarke@leeds-art.ac.uk
Fox Talbot and the camera lucida â—?
The camera lucida performs an optical superimposition of the subject being viewed upon the surface upon which the artist is drawing. The artist sees both scene and drawing surface simultaneously. This allows the artist to duplicate key points of the scene on the drawing surface, thus aiding in the accurate rendering of perspective. At times, the artist can even trace the
Latin for ‘light chamber’ ●
●
●
the artist looks down at the drawing surface through a halfsilvered mirror tilted at 45 degrees. This superimposes a direct view of the drawing surface beneath, and a reflected view of a scene horizontally in front of the artist. The instrument often includes a weak negative lens, creating a virtual image of the scene at about the same distance as the drawing surface, so that both can be viewed in good focus
Latticed Window at Lacock Abbey taken in 1835 by Fox Talbot â—?
http://www. metmuseum. org/toah/works-ofart/1997.382.1
Aesthetics ●
●
●
Aesthetics is a branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of beauty, art, and taste, and with the creation and appreciation of beauty. It is more scientifically defined as the study of sensory or sensori-emotional values, sometimes called judgments of sentiment and taste More broadly, scholars in the field define aesthetics as "critical reflection on art, culture and nature.”
Realism in Landscape ●
●
●
Barbizon School of Painters eg: Constable, Millet Dominant between 1830-1870 John Constable The Cornfield, 1826
‘The picturesque’ ●
● ● ●
A set of visual ideals which mark something as an appropriate subject for art Pastoral idyll Picture postcard Jean- Baptiste Corot
Pisarro/Roger Fenton (1859)
Fentons visual language ●
●
●
Often photographed areas which had already been shown in painting or literature- tourism Landscape ‘to look at’ (for a certain class of people) ‘Englishness’ of ‘the peaceful village, the unassuming church…the gnarled oak’ (Clarke:92: 56)
Arcadia ●
●
●
In renaissance art An unspoiled harmonious wilderness Nicholas Poussin
Leo Fitzmaurice at YSP
Colonialism and mapping territory
THE AMERICAN LANDSCAPE
Desert Sand Hills Near Sink of Carson, Nevada Timothy O’Sullivan, (1867)
(1883)William Henry Jackson/AB Durand (1849)
‘The sublime’ ●
●
●
●
fear is replaced by a sense of well-being and security when confronted with an object exhibiting superior might Nature as an expression of the sublime Late 19th century ‘the science of art’- a scientific approach to aesthetic experience ‘Romanticism’
Carelton Watkins, Yosemite (1861)
Transcendentalism ●
●
● ●
a philosophical movement that developed in the 1830s and 1840s in the New England region of the United States as a protest against the general state of culture and society A core belief was the inherent goodness of both man and nature. Transcendentalists believed that society and its institutions - particularly organized religion and political parties - ultimately corrupted the purity of the individual Eg: Ralph Waldo Emerson's 1836 essay Nature Walt Whitmans Leaves of Grass (1855 onwards)
LANDSCAPE IN MODERNISM
Ansel Adams Summer (1938)
Edward Weston Dunes Oceano (1936)
Jackson Pollock
LANDSCAPE IN POSTMODERNISM
Robert Adams North of Keota, Colorado, (1973)
Robert Adams
Faye Godwin Meall Mor, Glencoe from the series Our Forbidden Land (1988)
Kate Mellor Island (1997) Brighton TQ300041
● ● ●
● ●
Uses OS maps to plan a trip round the UK Photographs looking out to shore every 50km Uses a Widelux camera designed for survey work Displayed with map co=ordinates Opposite of the ‘English Romanticism’ we looked at earlier
Anthony Haughey (2006)
Jeff Wall A Sudden Gust of Wind (after Hokusai), 1993.
th
19 century woodblock print
Further Research on early photography ●
●
●
http://www.bbc.co. uk/iplayer/episode/b01qrn5x/The_Genius_of _Invention_Visual_Image/ Wells, Liz (2011) Land Matters: Landscape Photography, Culture and Identity, IB Tauris and Co Ltd. Clarke, G (1998) The Photograph, Chapter