Photography Merge Into Art Essay

Photography is traditionally regarded positioned at the lightweight end of photographic practice and on the fringe of a true art-form. â€Å"Its close relationship to the economic imperatives of turnover makes the art photograph the transitory image par excellence. † However photography has emerged as a ubiquitous representational form, â€Å"with us from sunrise to sunset, in the privacy of our homes and on public streets, in a format we can hold in our hands and one that towers over us on billboards the size of buildings. Early criticisms of Photography as an art form described the new technique as one that directly reproduced reality. â€Å"However, the disparity between the photographic record and perceptual experience reveals the artistic, political, and representational potential of Photography. The photographic image maintains a privileged place in the pantheon of visual consumption. † The argument is ever present that the entire history of photography has been the chronology of a medium at the secondary border of art. Nineteenth-century amateur photographic societies and photography journals were arenas for protracted debates between those committed to Photography’s status. As a scientific recording tool and those determined to establish Photography as a fine-art form, the opportunity existed for accomplishment and establishment. Certainly gender and sexuality have been implicated in art Photography since the early twentieth century. But during the 1970s there was a marked shift of emphasis in the way that the female body was represented as a fetishistic object of desire in the work of photographers like Helmut Newton, Guy Bourdin, Chris von Wangenheim and Deborah Turbeville. The long struggle to establish photography as a legitimate art form still continues today. There is a clear and obvious tendency of the art establishment to exclude and to narrowly restrict the boundaries of admissible photographic art. The established arts have all contributed to the formation of peripheral spheres of photo activity on the margins of art. † Many questions from the audience addressed the impact of digital technology on the art: of photography yet, the unstated. Understanding that they were, indeed, discussing photography as â€Å"art† spoke directly of the philosophy of Stieglitz, a philosophy that served as the driving force of his life’s work. The collection brought the symposium into perspective, confi rming the power and beauty of Stieglitz’s photography, as it reinvestigated his reputation. The exquisite print quality and the inclusion of various versions of well-known photographs expanded the viewer’s experience of the work. A beautiful photogravure print on tissue of The Steerage (1915) is unparalleled in its beauty and the extensive collection of the â€Å"Equivalens† (1923-31) series brings to mind the collected haystacks of Claude Monet. The collection spans Stieglitz’s career, offering the viewer an unprecedented opportunity to contemplate his development as an artist while recognizing the Modernist elements of his work. Art Venues and Exhibition Halls, Suitable? Photography is entering into the commercial galleries and, most recently, the art business is a growing source of economic aid for the arts. The burgeoning crossover between the worlds of art and art is increasingly apparent – contemporary work is instill with concerns about gender identity, Since the beginning of the â€Å"contemporary age,† there have been countless major photography exhibitions at New York City’s Guggenheim Museum alone, as well as other international events that interweave art and art. The work and philosophy of Alfred Stieglitz is experiencing a: resurgence of interest. The recent retrospective of Stieglitzs gallery exhibitions at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D. C. , â€Å"Modern Art and America: Alfred Stieglitz and his New York Galleries,† reinforces his pivotal position as the â€Å"champion† of American modern art. â€Å"But this view of Stieglitz, more myth than man, has always loomed above his personal work and consequently the work’s relevance to the development of a modern aesthetic. The question is– what does a century Told Modernist like Stieglitz have to say to a post postmodern America? † Researchers demonstrated that in contemporary Western contexts, allusions to other influences, i. e. Africa, through adornments and images such as those found in colonial-era postcards and photography still carry the weight of colonization and its aftermath. Hence some of the profound work in Hine and Sekula. The African body has for centuries been an object of much fascination to Western observers, who framed it to fuel many misconceptions about the continent’s peoples and cultures. The colonialist image of the â€Å"naked savage† long poisoned the relationship between African and Western peoples; the forced or coerced abandonment of indigenous attire in favor of Western dress was for much of the past two centuries a symbol of the â€Å"civilizing† process. Throughout Africa today, deliberate revivals of â€Å"traditional† forms serve as symbols of political and cultural movements, often coexisting with Western styles that have been modified to suit local tastes. † Alfred Stieglitz, his Own Vision. Turn-of-the-century reactions to photography as an art form were vehemently negative. Because the photograph so closely resembled reality, photography was considered by many people, especially establishment painters and critics, to be a reportorial medium exclusively. Even the early Photo-Secessionist–the group of photographers headed by Stieglitz Stieglitz, committed to having the artistic merit of his work recognized—deliberately used soft-focus lenses, or darkroom tricks (including brushing or penciling the negative) to make their photographs look like paintings. In 1890, Stieglitz brought America a message. Photography, he said, is capable of more than factual recording. It can become a personal expression of one’s emotional reactions to life, a potential art. But it is not painting; any more than painting is sculpture. â€Å"He began a life-long fight for the recognition, particularly within artistic circles, of photography as an independent medium. He organized the few workers sympathetic to his ideal, first in the Society of Amateur Photographers and then in the Camera Club, whose magazine Camera Notes he founded and edited, making it the first periodical to respect fine photography. † One enduring feature of photography is its identification with art. In a recent analysis of photography, artists contrasted ‘glamour’ with ‘sophistication’. This format found that in the art press photography was described as youthful, dynamic and pleasure-seeking, On the other hand sophistication is seen as: mature, poised, restrained and introvert. It is no accident that they have coincided with the revival of figurative painting and the rise of conceptual art, of what is called photography as a high art forms, of video, alternative film practices, performance art – all of which have worked to challenge both the humanist notion of the artist as romantic individual ‘genius’ (and therefore of art as the expression of universal meaning by a transcendent human subject) and the modernist domination of two particular art forms, painting and sculpture. The Steerage (1907) The exhibition juxtaposes such iconic images as Alfred Stieglitz, The Steerage (1907). The show surveys photography’s thematic and artistic riches from the mid-1880s to the present, from one great era of technical and social change to another. Monumental innovations in the late 19 th century, such as dry-plate technology, hand-held cameras and halftone reproductions, greatly increased the medium’s applications and made it increasingl y integral to American life. All the while he has been photographing, using the camera as a means of personal expression. His prints are simple and direct: they are lyrics that penetrate beneath the surface. The Terminal is more than a record of a vanished scene; it is the essence of Winter in New York. In The Steerage (below) a moment is transfixed which is vitally important to all those travelers to a new land.