History Of Photography:Early 20th Century

Lewis Hine

• Lewis Hine was an American sociologist who took up photography in 1905.

• He used it as a documentary tool, to show the working class conditions of the poor immigrants (especially children) from Europe.

• By the 1930’s, with the help of his photographs, child labor was controlled.

Jacques Henri Lartigue

• He started taking photos when he was 6, his subject matter being primarily his own (privileged) life and the people and activities in it.

• Born outside of Paris, he is most famous for his stunning photos of automobile races, planes and fashionable Parisian women from the turn of the century.

Alfred Stieglitz• Owned Gallery 291 which

helped bring art photography to the same level of appreciation in America as painting and sculpture.

• Published the magazine Camera Work

• Later used this space to introduce to the United States the early modernist art works from European artists such as Matisse, Rodin, Rousseau, Cezanne, and Picasso.

• Also known for his marriage to painter Georgia O'Keeffe.

Edward Weston

• Co-founder of F-64.• Began as a Pictorialist,

but later renounced it in favor of “straight photography”.

• Known for his nudes and inanimate objects reminiscent of the human form.

Minor White• He became involved with a circle

of influential photographers including Stieglitz, Weston, and Ansel Adams; hearing Stieglitz's idea of "equivalents" from Stieglitz was crucial to the direction of White's work.

• The "equivalents" of White were often photographs of barns, doorways, water, the sky, or simple paint peeling on a wall: things usually considered mundane, but often made special by the quality of the light in which they were photographed.

James Van Der Zee

• James Van Der Zee (born in 1886) was an African American photographer best known for his portraits of Black New Yorkers.

• He was a leading figure in the Harlem Renaissance.

• Harlem Renaissance was a flowering of African American art, literature, music and culture in the United States during the 1920’s & 30’s led primarily by the African American community based in Harlem, New York City.

Henri Cartier-Bresson

• Henri Cartier-Bresson French photographer known for capturing the “decisive moment”.

• Cartier-Bresson is considered to be the father of modern photojournalism.

• He was one of the first serious photographers to shoot in the smaller 35mm format.

• He helped to develop the "street photography" style that influenced generations of photographers that followed.

Man Ray

• American artist who spent most of his career in Paris, France.

• Perhaps best described simply as a modernist, he was a significant contributor to both the Dada and Surrealist movement.

• Best known in the art world for his avant-garde photography, Man Ray produced major works in a variety of media and considered himself a painter above all.

André Kertész

• André Kertész, born in 1894, was a Hungarian-born photographer distinguished by unusual compositions and by his early efforts in developing the photo essay.

• Used unorthodox camera angles and symbolism.

• Kertész is now recognized as one of the seminal figures of photojournalism.

The W.P.A. Works Progress Admininstration

• During the Great Depression of the 1930’s, the US government (under FDR) hired photographers to document the struggle of its citizens.

• Best known were Dorothea Lange and Walker Evans.

• The image on the right, “Migrant Mother” may be the best known of all images made during this time.

The photograph that has become known as "Migrant Mother" is one of a series of

photographs that Dorothea Lange made in February or March of 1936 in Nipomo,

California. Lange was concluding a month's trip photographing migratory farm labor

around the state for what was then the Resettlement Administration. In 1960, Lange gave

this account of the experience:

I saw and approached the hungry and desperate mother, as if drawn by a magnet. I do

not remember how I explained my presence or my camera to her, but I do remember she

asked me no questions. I made five exposures, working closer and closer from the same

direction. I did not ask her name or her history. She told me her age, that she was thirty-

two. She said that they had been living on frozen vegetables from the surrounding fields,

and birds that the children killed. She had just sold the tires from her car to buy food.

There she sat in that lean- to tent with her children huddled around her, and seemed to

know that my pictures might help her, and so she helped me. There was a sort of equality

about it. (From: Popular Photography, Feb. 1960).

Dorothea Lange: About Migrant Mother

Life Magazine

• Life was the first all-photography U.S. news magazine and dominated the market for more than forty years.

• The magazine’s place in the history of photojournalism is considered its most important contribution to publishing.

• The image depicted on the cover is by Eugene Smith.

W. Eugene Smith

• William Eugene Smith (1918-1978) was an American photojournalist known for his refusal to compromise professional standards and his brutally vivid World War II photographs.

• On Okinawa, Smith was hit by mortar fire. After recovering, Smith continued at Life and perfected the photo essay from 1947 to 1954.

Robert Frank

• Swiss photographer• His most notable work, the 1958 photographic book titled simply The Americans, was

heavily influential in the post-war period• Skeptical outsider's view of American society. • Frank later expanded into film and video and experimented with compositing and

manipulating photographs.

Irving Penn

• American photographer born in 1917.

• Known as “The aristocrat of fashion photography”.

• Penn is known for his fashion, portrait and still life photography that blurs the line between commercial and fine art photography.

Arnold Newman

• Arnold Newman is famous for portraying artists, writers, actors, composers, politicians in his unique style.

• places the subject in a carefully composed (rule of thirds) setting to capture the essence of their work and personality.

• Has become one of the world's most renowned portrait photographers.

• *End of Section 2