Bowls, also known as Abstraction, Bowls, is a black and white photograph taken by Paul Strand in 1916. The photograph has elements of cubism and abstractionism, and exemplifies his style at the time. [1]
Bowls, also known as Abstraction, Bowls, is a black and white photograph taken by Paul Strand in 1916. The photograph has elements of cubism and abstractionism, and exemplifies his style at the time. [1]
Strand became motivated by the work of Cubist painters and sculptors like Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque and Constantin Brâncuși, to create photographs of objects inspired by their geometrical forms. In this picture, one of several taken during a stay in Twin Lakes, Connecticut, he took a close-up of four regular kitchen bowls. The photograph highlights their circular shapes, and the effect of light and shadows on these objects. The overlapping composition becomes almost abstract and not easily recognizable at first glance. [2] Michael North stated that in this picture "soft focus and composition clearly collude to dilute the referential just enough to make four bowls into a work of art". [3]
Strand geometrical photographs were published at the magazine Camera Work , in 1917, and where praised by Alfred Stieglitz himself, who stated that "The work is brutally direct; devoid of all flim-flam; devoid of trickery and of any 'ism'; devoid of any attempt to mystify an ignorant public, including the photographers themselves." [4]
There are prints of this photograph in several public collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York, the National Gallery of Art, in Washington, D.C., the Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Cleveland Museum of Art, and the J. Paul Getty Museum, in Los Angeles. [5] [6] [7] [8] [9]
Alfred Stieglitz was an American photographer and modern art promoter who was instrumental over his 50-year career in making photography an accepted art form. In addition to his photography, Stieglitz was known for the New York art galleries that he ran in the early part of the 20th century, where he introduced many avant-garde European artists to the U.S. He was married to painter Georgia O'Keeffe.
Pure photography or straight photography refers to photography that attempts to depict a scene or subject in sharp focus and detail, in accordance with the qualities that distinguish photography from other visual media, particularly painting. Originating as early as 1904, the term was used by critic Sadakichi Hartmann in the magazine Camera Work, and later promoted by its editor, Alfred Stieglitz, as a more pure form of photography than Pictorialism. Once popularized by Stieglitz and other notable photographers, such as Paul Strand, it later became a hallmark of Western photographers, such as Edward Weston, Ansel Adams and others.
Paul Strand was an American photographer and filmmaker who, along with fellow modernist photographers like Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Weston, helped establish photography as an art form in the 20th century. In 1936, he helped found the Photo League, a cooperative of photographers who banded together around a range of common social and creative causes. His diverse body of work, spanning six decades, covers numerous genres and subjects throughout the Americas, Europe, and Africa.
Charles Sheeler was an American artist known for his Precisionist paintings, commercial photography, and the avant-garde film, Manhatta, which he made in collaboration with Paul Strand. Sheeler is recognized as one of the early adopters of modernism in American art.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to photography:
The Steerage is a black and white photograph taken by Alfred Stieglitz in 1907. It has been hailed as one of the greatest photographs of all time because it captures in a single image both a formative document of its time and one of the first works of artistic modernism.
There were men and women and children on the lower deck of the steerage. There was a narrow stairway leading to the upper deck of the steerage, a small deck right on the bow with the steamer.
To the left was an inclining funnel and from the upper steerage deck there was fastened a gangway bridge that was glistening in its freshly painted state. It was rather long, white, and during the trip remained untouched by anyone.
On the upper deck, looking over the railing, there was a young man with a straw hat. The shape of the hat was round. He was watching the men and women and children on the lower steerage deck...A round straw hat, the funnel leaning left, the stairway leaning right, the white drawbridge with its railing made of circular chains – white suspenders crossing on the back of a man in the steerage below, round shapes of iron machinery, a mast cutting into the sky, making a triangular shape...I saw shapes related to each other. I was inspired by a picture of shapes and underlying that the feeling I had about life."
Hill & Adamson was the first photography studio in Scotland, set up by painter David Octavius Hill and engineer Robert Adamson in 1843. During their brief partnership that ended with Adamson's untimely death, Hill & Adamson produced "the first substantial body of self-consciously artistic work using the newly invented medium of photography." Watercolorist John Harden, on first seeing Hill & Adamson's calotypes in November 1843, wrote, "The pictures produced are as Rembrandt's but improved, so like his style & the oldest & finest masters that doubtless a great progress in Portrait painting & effect must be the consequence."
Anthony Hernandez is an American photographer who divides his time between Los Angeles, his birthplace, and Idaho. His photography has ranged from street photography to images of the built environment and other remains of civilization, particularly those discarded or abandoned elements that serve as evidence of human presence. He has spent most of his career photographing in Los Angeles and environs. "It is L.A.'s combination of beauty and brutality that has always intrigued Hernandez." La Biennale di Venezia said of Hernandez, "For the past three decades a prevalent question has troubled the photographer: how to picture the contemporary ruins of the city and the harsh impact of urban life on its less advantaged citizens?" His wife is the novelist Judith Freeman.
David Martin Heath was an American documentary, humanist and street photographer.
Ruth Thorne-Thomsen is an American photographer who resides in Philadelphia. Important collections of her work are held by the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Nelson-Atkins Museum, and the Art Institute of Chicago. She was married to the photographer Ray K. Metzker until his death in 2014.
The Terminal is a black and white photograph taken by Alfred Stieglitz in 1893. The photograph was taken in New York using the small 4 x 5 camera, which was a more practical instrument to document the city life than the 8 x 10 view camera, who could only work with a tripod.
From the Back Window - 291 is a black and white photograph taken by Alfred Stieglitz in 1915. The picture was taken at night from a back window of his 291 gallery in New York. Its one of the several that he took that year from that window, including at a snowy Winter.
The Hand of Man is a black and white photograph taken by Alfred Stieglitz in 1902. This is one of the pictures he took concerning urban life and would be published in the first issue of his magazine Camera Work, in January 1903. A note on this issue stated that “The Hand of Man.. is an attempt to treat pictorially a subject which enters so much into our daily lives that we are apt to lose sight of the pictorial possibilities of the commonplace.”
Akeley Motion Picture Camera is a black and white photograph taken by Paul Strand in 1922. It depicts the innovative motion picture camera that the American photographer bought for $2500 and that allowed him to work in the film industry as a cinematographer until 1931, when the camera became obsolete. Strand took several pictures of the camera and this became one of the most famous.
Abstraction, Porch Shadows, also known as Abstraction, Porch Shadows, Twin Lakes, Connecticut, is a black and white photograph taken by Paul Strand in 1916. It is one of the best known photographs of his early phase, and shows the influence of cubism and abstractionism. It is considered one of the first abstract photographs ever made.
The White Fence, also known as The White Fence, Port Kent, New York, is a black and white photograph taken by American photographer Paul Strand, in 1916. The picture was published in the magazine Camera Work, in June 1917, whose editor was Alfred Stieglitz, where it was highly praised by him, specially for its "abstract qualities". It would be later published as part of Paul Strand: Portfolio Three (1976-1977).
The Flatiron is a coloured photograph made by American photographer Edward Steichen in 1904. Its one of the best known photographs of his pictorialist phase. The photograph was part of the "International Exhibition of Pictorial Photography", held in the Albright Art Gallery, in Buffalo, in 1910.
Rodin — The Thinker is a pictorialist photograph made by American photographer Edward Steichen in 1902. It depicts renowned French sculptor Auguste Rodin, in his studio, facing his famous The Thinker sculpture, with his other creation, the Monument to Victor Hugo, as a background.
Balzac, the Open Sky is a black and white photograph taken by American photographer Edward Steichen in 1908. The photograph is part of a series created by Steichen that depict the statue of Honoré de Balzac by Auguste Rodin, executed in plaster, in 1898. The statue would eventually be cast in bronze and inaugurated in Paris, in 1939.
Two Shells, also known as Shells, is a black and white photograph taken by American photographer Edward Weston, in 1927. It was part of a series containing 26 photographs of sea shells from the same year, including Weston's famous Nautilus.