HISTORY OF CAMERA AND PHOTOGRAPHY

 

                              HISTORY OF CAMERA AND PHOTOGRAPHY

CAMERA OBSCURA

This object is quite magical. Its called a camera obscura, the name being derived from the Latin for darkened obscura chamber. This camera is about 200 year old, its  just like wooden carry case. It have been use for making sketches of scenes, such as landscapes or architecture, especially for capturing perspective. This camera captures light from the scene, projecting it onto a mirror which is held at a 45-degree angle behind it. The mirror reflects the rays of light inside the wooden box. The observer shrouded by a piece of black cloth to exclude any other surrounded light from the image would appear the right way up because of the reflex effect of the mirror, but the wrong way round because of the inversion cause by the lens, So the artist would have to trace the final image in reverse. Camera obscura have been around several hundred years, its also called pinhole camera. It was only from the early 17^th century that lenses of sufficient quality were available to create the more lens- mediate cameras with large apertures allowing much more light in to create brighter images.

PICTORIALISM

In the second half of 19 century, in early stages of its establishment, Photographers had a dominant image trend, with the help of photography photographers try to make their images artistic by using “ Painterly” techniques such as soft images, staged or stylized scenes, or negative or manipulation of prints. Encouraged by Henry Peach Robinson`s pictorial effects in photography, first published in 1869, this artistic style was adopted by photographers such as Julia Margret Cameron, Robinson himself, and other groups in the United States, Europe, and Latin America, found a photo session in New York in 1902. This style proves the way for large scale modernist photography.

AVANT-GARDE

The term is avant-garde is used where the artist is being innovative and experimental in an aspect of their art. The avant-garde in photography are critical of existing aesthetic views. They reject conventional and established norms in photo-art or photo-method. An example on avant-garde photography in the 1970s feminist movement. They followed feminism and the emancipation movement. These included contemporary views on civil rights, human rights and gender equality. At that time exploring these themes reflects many of the political issues. They also addressed personal ideas and social placements. The feminists often used their own bodies as a subject. As artists they confronted public opinion and convention.

DADAISM

After World War 1 the term or the artistic movement Dadaism started. It was similar to an Avant-garde movement. Dadaism was started in 1915 in New York, and in 1916 in Switzerland, and in 1920 in Paris. It was an artistic movement formed after Brutality and Barbarism of World War 1. This Dada movement consist of artists who rejected the logic reason and aestheticism of modern society. They were expressing nonsense and irrational things in their protests. Dada was considered at the time to be a “moral revolution”. The term was coined by Marcel Duchamp. This movement started in New York but quickly spread to other world at a time of mutual disapproval of the war. Duchamp challenged the motion of art. Dadaists everywhere with the painting of a moustache and beard on a reproduction of the infamous “Mona Lisa”.

Although Dada is regarded as having been born in New York but it grew equally quickly and organically throughout much of the rest of Europe and other parts of the world before its demise in 1922. The following cities are.

ZURICH SWITZERLAND

From 1917 to 1921, they produced 8 issues od Dada magazine which appeared in Germany and French. However with the war`s end Switzerland`s importance as a neutral haven declined. Richard Huelsenbeck (1892-1972) a funding member of Dada left for Berlin, Picabia went to Paris and when Tzara followed him in 1920, the Zurich phase of Dada was over. Tzara produce the Dada Manifesto in 1918, turning the two year old movement into a fast growing revolution in the artistic world.

BERLIN GERMANY

After world war 1, Huelsenbeck founded the club Dada in Berlin. Berlin Dada was satirical and highly political its target more narrowly and precisely defined than elsewhere, and its main weapons were periodical, including club dada and Der Dada, It was in fact its last artform that German Dadaists are credited with leaving to the world. Dadaists were the natural enemy of the movement currently in the play at the time.

COLOGNE AND HANOVER GERMANY

In Germany there were other centres, The Cologne branch was less political and more biased towards aesthetics and the Hanover branch. Jean Arp and Max Ernst belonged to the former and Kurt Schwitters to the latter.

U.S.A

(Museum of Modern Art) Picabia raised mechanical drawing to the fore front, Man Ray used airbrushing and Duchamp presented the world with the Mona Lisa with facial hair and the infamous Fountain (urinal postulated as art).

PARIS, FRANCE

With the end of the war, many leading minds in Dada moved over to Paris, France, including Marcel Duchamp and others, where they mingled with like minded French artists including French poets, Given the mixed artistic influences gathered in one place, Paris quickly accept the Dada movement as being a centre for performing art, literature and exhibitions.

NETHERLANDS

In Netherlands, Van Doesburg established the De stijl movement and in this he`s mainly focused on poetry and including poems form many well-known Dada writers. There Van Doesburg and Schwitters together organized the so-called Dutch dada campaign in 1923, where Van promote a leaflet about Dada, (Like What is Dada?).

By far the largest contribution of the Dada movement and its artists was the recognition of everyday products and things as art, and the move to understand, embrace and celebrate the use of machines in art. Dadaism born out of Berlin brought with it photo-mantages, which until then were generally not accepted by the mainstream ( same mainstream that later killed Dadaism).

Dada artisan were among the earliest artistic types to use and to attempt to influence mass media, with the Berlin Dadaists even presenting themselves as an advertising agency.

And after Dadaism, Now Surrealism that has had a strong impact on graphic design today.