John Hilliard (artist)

Last updated

John Hilliard, (born 1945) is an English conceptual artist. [1] Hilliard's ongoing body of work addresses the specificity of photography as a medium: its uncertainty as a representational device and its status within the visual arts, especially in relation to painting, cinema and commercial photography. [2]

Contents

Education

Born in Lancaster, Hilliard studied at Lancaster College of Art from 1962 to 1964, and then at Saint Martin's School of Art, London, until 1967. [1] [3] He began his interest in photography as an art student in the 1960s, first using the camera simply to capture images of his site-specific art installations. Soon, he recognised there was bias inherent in photography—the camera could not be completely neutral—and he explored the manipulation of the photographic process and its results. [4] [5]

Art

In the 1970s, Hilliard examined how changes to the process of black and white photography could affect the outcome. His art showed how the camera's notional objectivity was vulnerable to decisions made by the photographer leading up to the instant of the exposure, as well as subsequent decisions made in the darkroom concerning paper selection and development techniques. [4]

Hilliard's 1971 work, Camera Recording Its Own Condition consisted of a display of 70 snapshots taken by a camera aimed at a mirror, showing itself at the moment of exposure, the snapshots differing by film speed, exposure time, and aperture size. The 70 images were laid out in a rigid grid with one optimal "correct" image in the center. This changing of the mechanics of each shot revealed the intention of the unseen photographer. [4] In 1974, Hilliard showed in Cause of Death four images of the same human body covered in a sheet. The images were taken from the same photographic negative but each one suggested a different cause of death, accomplished by cropping the print to modify context. [6] Each image was given its own one-word title to indicate a narrative: "Crushed", "Drowned", "Burned", and "Fell". [6] Photographer Chris Steele-Perkins wrote that, in Cause of Death, "framing affects the way a photograph is read", and that Hilliard provides the viewer with "elegant forensic evidence that, although the camera cannot lie, photographs tell different truths." [7] University of Ulster photography professor Terence Wright noted that Cause of Death is a formalist piece in which the process is revealed, and that many of Hilliard's works fall into this classification. [6]

In the 1980s colour photography in popular culture became the subject of Hilliard's semiotic scrutiny. He was especially interested in how photography targeted a desired result in advertising and media. He challenged the viewer to re-examine an Asian woman's portrait in East/West, 1986, showing how the stylised profile can be manipulated to represent different cultural attitudes. [4] In response to a 1989 show, Chicago Tribune art critic Alan G. Artner wrote that Hilliard purposely clouds the difference between painting and photography, and that he "dramatize[s] issues specific to the photographic medium." [8]

In the 1990s Hilliard's work evolved a stronger chroma, push processing, saturation, and seductive gloss, the subjects arranged to portray a narrative that was perhaps violent or erotic. At the same time, the viewer is prevented from complete comprehension of context by interposed objects obscuring portions of the scene. For instance his work Miss Tracy, 1994 shows what is assumed to be a nude woman face down on a bloody sheet, the center of the image blocked by a large rectangle leaving the peripheral region as the only source of understanding. In the mid-1990s Hilliard further expanded the scale of his photographic works by printing on canvas or vinyl, the size approaching that of a mural. He continued to present the viewer with a disruption of full understanding, a critical comment on the viewing process. [4]

Exhibits

From Christmas 1983 to mid-June 1984, Hilliard's art was shown in Germany at the Kölnischer Kunstverein, the Kunsthalle Bremen, and the Frankfurter Kunstverein. Art historian and critic Jean Fisher wrote a biographical piece and analysed the works for a 69-page museum book edited by art historian and publisher Peter Weiermair. [9]

In early 1989, an exhibit of Hilliard's large scale works was featured for one month at Chicago's Renaissance Society museum. [10] The works consisted of large Cibachrome and Scanachrome prints, the latter being saturated colour applied to canvas using dyes. [8] A 30-page book on Hilliard's work to date was printed for the event, with 19 images by Hilliard, and critical art analysis written by Fisher. [11]

In 1999, a major retrospective of Hilliard's works was mounted, and shown in three German art galleries. [12]

In 2003, German publisher Verlag das Wunderhorn published a monograph of his works, entitled The Less Said The Better, [13] with an accompanying solo exhibit in Amsterdam. [14]

Career

Hilliard taught for a time at Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts. [4] He was later associated with the Slade School of Fine Art, University College London, serving as professor, the head of Graduate Fine Art Media, the director of Graduate Programmes, and a tutor of graduate students. [13] Currently, Hilliard lives and works in London.

Related Research Articles

Photography Art, science and practice of creating durable images by recording light or other electromagnetic radiation

Photography is the art, application, and practice of creating durable images by recording light, either electronically by means of an image sensor, or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film. It is employed in many fields of science, manufacturing, and business, as well as its more direct uses for art, film and video production, recreational purposes, hobby, and mass communication.

Daguerreotype Photographic process

Daguerreotype was the first publicly available photographic process; it was widely used during the 1840s and 1850s. "Daguerreotype" also refers to an image created through this process.

Pictorialism Photography movement

Pictorialism is an international style and aesthetic movement that dominated photography during the later 19th and early 20th centuries. There is no standard definition of the term, but in general it refers to a style in which the photographer has somehow manipulated what would otherwise be a straightforward photograph as a means of "creating" an image rather than simply recording it. Typically, a pictorial photograph appears to lack a sharp focus, is printed in one or more colors other than black-and-white and may have visible brush strokes or other manipulation of the surface. For the pictorialist, a photograph, like a painting, drawing or engraving, was a way of projecting an emotional intent into the viewer's realm of imagination.

Negative (photography) Image on photographic film

In photography, a negative is an image, usually on a strip or sheet of transparent plastic film, in which the lightest areas of the photographed subject appear darkest and the darkest areas appear lightest. This reversed order occurs because the extremely light-sensitive chemicals a camera film must use to capture an image quickly enough for ordinary picture-taking are darkened, rather than bleached, by exposure to light and subsequent photographic processing.

Color photography is photography that uses media capable of capturing and reproducing colors. By contrast, black-and-white or gray-monochrome photography records only a single channel of luminance (brightness) and uses media capable only of showing shades of gray.

Steven Pippin is an English artist. Pippin works with converted or improvised photographic equipment and kinetic sculptures.

Jerry Uelsmann American photographer

Jerry N. Uelsmann is an American photographer and was an early exponent of photomontage in the 20th century in America. His work in darkroom effects foreshadowed the use of Adobe Photoshop to make surrealistic images in the late 20th century, a process led by his now-ex-wife, Maggie Taylor, at that time. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1967, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in 1972, and the Lucie Award in Fine Art in 2015. He is a Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain, a founding member of The Society of Photographic Education.

History of photography Invention and development of the camera and the creation of permanent images

The history of photography began in remote antiquity with the discovery of two critical principles: camera obscura image projection and the observation that some substances are visibly altered by exposure to light. There are no artifacts or descriptions that indicate any attempt to capture images with light sensitive materials prior to the 18th century.

A chromogenic print, also known as a C-print or C-type print, a silver halide print, or a dye coupler print, is a photographic print made from a color negative, transparency or digital image, and developed using a chromogenic process. They are composed of three layers of gelatin, each containing an emulsion of silver halide, which is used as a light-sensitive material, and a different dye coupler of subtractive color which together, when developed, form a full-color image.

The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to photography:

Susan Derges is a British photographic artist living and working in Devon. She specialises in camera-less photographic processes, most often working with natural landscapes. She has exhibited extensively in Europe, America and Japan and her works are in several important museum collections.

Robert Howlett British photographer

Robert Howlett was a pioneering British photographer whose pictures are widely exhibited in major galleries. Howlett produced portraits of Crimean War heroes, genre scenes and landscapes. His photographs include the iconic picture of Isambard Kingdom Brunel which was part of a commission by the London-based weekly newspaper Illustrated Times to document the construction of the world's largest steamship, the SS Great Eastern.

Barbara Probst

Barbara Probst is a contemporary artist whose photographic work consists of multiple images of a single scene, shot simultaneously with several cameras via a radio-controlled system. Using a mix of color and black-and-white film, she poses her subjects, positioning each lens at a different angle, and then triggers the cameras’ shutters all at once, creating tableaux of two or more individually framed images. Although the pictures are of the same subject and are taken at the same instant, they provide a range of perspectives. She lives and works in both New York City and Munich. She relocated to New York City in 1997.

Tony Tasset is an American multimedia artist. His works consists mainly of video, bronze, wax, sculpture, photography, film, and taxidermy. He has exhibitions that can be seen in Dallas, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, Germany, Canada, Portugal, Italy, Ecuador, and London.

Peter Fraser is a British fine art photographer. He was shortlisted for the Citigroup Photography Prize in 2004.

Alfred Horsley Hinton English photographer

Alfred Horsley Hinton was an English landscape photographer, best known for his work in the pictorialist movement in the 1890s and early 1900s. As an original member of the Linked Ring and editor of The Amateur Photographer, he was one of the movement's staunchest advocates. Hinton wrote nearly a dozen books on photographic technique, and his photographs were exhibited at expositions throughout Europe and North America.

Hans Rudolf Thull is a German artist who works in the fields of photography, collage and sculpture. He was one of the first German contemporary fine-art photographers to have his work shown in solo exhibitions in German art museums.

Astrid Klein is a German contemporary artist. Klein works in a variety of mediums including drawing, painting, text, photography and installation and sculpture.

Abstract photography Photography genre

Abstract photography, sometimes called non-objective, experimental or conceptual photography, is a means of depicting a visual image that does not have an immediate association with the object world and that has been created through the use of photographic equipment, processes or materials. An abstract photograph may isolate a fragment of a natural scene in order to remove its inherent context from the viewer, it may be purposely staged to create a seemingly unreal appearance from real objects, or it may involve the use of color, light, shadow, texture, shape and/or form to convey a feeling, sensation or impression. The image may be produced using traditional photographic equipment like a camera, darkroom or computer, or it may be created without using a camera by directly manipulating film, paper or other photographic media, including digital presentations.

<i>Animal Locomotion: An Electro-photographic Investigation of Consecutive Phases of Animal Movements</i> Photographic study of animal movement

Animal Locomotion: An Electro-photographic Investigation of Consecutive Phases of Animal Movements (1872–1885) is a series of scientific photographs by Eadweard Muybridge to study motion in animals including humans. In all, over 100,000 images were made, resulting in a portfolio of 781 composite collotype prints published in 1887.

References

  1. 1 2 "John Hilliard Biography" (PDF). Artfacts.net. Retrieved 21 June 2012.
  2. ↑ "John Hilliard: Highlights". Visual Arts. British Council. Archived from the original on 26 July 2012. Retrieved 21 June 2012.
  3. ↑ "A Century of Artists' Film in Great Britain". Tate Britain. 2004. Retrieved 29 May 2011.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Parsons, Sara-Jayne (2006). "John Hilliard". In Lynne Warren (ed.). Encyclopedia of 20th Century Photography. Encyclopedia of Twentieth-century Photography. Vol. 1. CRC Press. pp. 695–697. ISBN   0415976650.
  5. ↑ Sherman, Mary (10 February 1989), "Hilliard challenges image of photos reflecting reality", Chicago Sun-Times , archived from the original on 29 March 2015.
  6. 1 2 3 Wright, Terence (2004). Photography Handbook (2 ed.). Psychology Press. p. 112. ISBN   0415258049.
  7. ↑ Galer, Mark (2007). Photography Foundations for Art and Design: The Creative Photography Handbook (4 ed.). Taylor & Francis US. pp. xviii–xix. ISBN   978-0240520506.
  8. 1 2 Artner, Alan G. (10 February 1989). "Hilliard's photoworks hold secrets within their images". Chicago Tribune.
  9. ↑ Fisher, Jean (1984). Peter Weiermair (ed.). John Hilliard. Kölnischer Kunstverein.
  10. ↑ "John Hilliard: January 15 – February 19, 1989". The Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago. Archived from the original on 15 April 2013. Retrieved 22 August 2012.
  11. ↑ Hilliard, John; Fisher, Jean (1989). John Hilliard. Renaissance Society. ISBN   0-941548-15-5.
  12. ↑ "John Hilliard – Works 1969–99", Artforum , 1 September 1999, archived from the original on 29 March 2015, In the '70s, a survey of recent British art would scarcely have omitted the work of John Hilliard ... This seventy-work retrospective should initiate the reassessment he deserves.
  13. 1 2 "Academic Staff". Slade School of Fine Art. Archived from the original on 24 January 2008. Retrieved 21 August 2012.
  14. ↑ John Hilliard, "the less said the better", UCL discovery, retrieved 29 August 2012.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.