Looking at Painting The eye observing a given

Looking at Painting

The eye, observing a given object forces the artist to accommodate different schemas given to him/her by previous tradition. The observing subject who now experiences the artwork within this conception of image-making, reconstructs and reexperiences the original vision that the artist is assumed to have gone through.

‘Semiology and Visual Interpretation’ Erwin Panofsky’s Theory of Pictorial Meaning First we recognize factual meaning Then we discover conventional meaning Thirdly we can identify symbolic meanings What Gombrich’s perceptualism cannot account for are the connections between the image and power because it describes the making of the image in terms of perceptions and sensations in the mind of the painter and the viewer.

Looking at a Photograph “Originality in photography as distinct from originality in painting lies in the essentially objective character of photography. For the first time, between originating object and its reproduction there intervenes only the instrumentality of a non-living agent. For the first time an image of the world is formed automatically without the creative invention of man. The personality of the photographer enters into the proceedings only in his selection of object to be photographed and the way of purpose he has in mind. Although the final result may reflect something of his personality this does not play the same role as is that played by the painter. All the arts are based on the presence of man, only photography derives an advantage from his absence. Photography affects us like a phenomenon in nature, like a flower or a snowflake whose vegetable or earthly origins are an inseparable part of their beauty. ” André Bazin, ‘The Ontology of the Photographic Image, ’ 1967, p. 13)

History of Photography • 4 th and 5 th BCE Greece (Plato) and China (Shen Kuo) discovery of camera obscura • 1694 Wilhelm Homberg discovers photosensitive chemicals silver nitrate • 1826 Joseph Nièpce produces the first photograph, the first permanent image, silver nitrate on pewter and it took 8 hours to develop • 1833 Nièpce dies and passes his research and papers to Louis Daguerre • 1839 Daguerre produces the first Daguerrotype that took a few minutes not 8 hours to develop • 1839 William Fox Talbot together with John Herschel produced the glass negative and then in 1840 Talbot produced multiple copies using a paper negative he called the Calotype • 1843 The first advertisement is produced using a photograph • 1850 -60 s Roving photographers producing photographs in mobile studios. Studio portraits require poses lasting 2 -3 minutes. • 1870 s Richard Maddox gelatin dry plate • 1884 George Eastman flexible paper-based photographic film • 1888 Kodak roll film camera introduced. “You press the button - we do the rest” – a camera with 100 photo capacity • 1925 First 35 mm camera. Leica, lightweight small, no tripod necessary • 1927 Modern flashbulb invented by General Electric • 1935 Introduction of colour film • 1947 The first Polaroid instant camera • 1960 First underwater camera • 1994 Nikon first digital camera for the public • 1996 Mass marketing of digital cameras.

Digital Photography “After a century and a half of recording and memorialising death, photography met its own death sometime in the 1980 s at the hands of computer imaging. The ability to alter a photograph digitally has undone the fundamental condition of photography — that something must have been in front of the lens when the shutter was opened, even if questions remained as to the authenticity of what was recorded. It is now possible to create ‘photographs’ of scenes without the fakery being directly observable. ” (Nicholas Mirzoeff, An Introduction to Visual Culture, 1999, 88)

Photographic Realism Photographic truth can be connected to three things: the photograph itself; the practices of photography; and the nature of the camera

Hippolyte Bayard, Self -portrait as a Drowned Man, 1840

1 4 Cottingley Fairies 3 2 5

Robert Capa, The Falling Soldier 1936

Theories of Photography

Jacques Derrida on Photography

Dorothea Lange, Migrant Mother, 1936