Diane Arbus, was born on March 14, 1923 in New York City. She is one of the most distinctive photographers of the 20th century. She was known for her work of portraits of people she met in the city. Her talents emerged when she was a young age, while she was creating interesting paintings. However she didn’t enjoy painting very much, so when she met Allan Arbus, and he gave her a camera her talent took off. She married Allan Arbus in 1941, and he taught her the ins and outs of photography. She joined Allan Arbus in fashion photography, but later realized that she wanted to photograph something more. So she photograph people who were normally known as ugly or surreal, however, to her they were interesting. Her contemporary issue was the non-normal …show more content…
people that are in the city. So she would walk around New York City and took pictures of the people she saw. She was known for going to great lengths to find a good photograph. She would go into old runned down hotels, and parks and even a morgue to meet the people she wanted to photograph. She valued the psychological above the social expectations, which gave her photographs a raw quality, that made the popular. “She was interested in them for what they were most specifically: not representatives of philosophical positions or lifestyles or physiological types, but unique mysteries” (Diane Arbus). Which also inspired Cindy Sherman, who was also a portrait artist. However, she took photographs of mostly herself. Her photographs where herself in different places, and costumes. The photographs were made to represent the role and representation of women in society. They both had very similar styles in their portraits. Cindy Sherman, worked a lot with clown faces, which is similar to Diane Arbus’ different people. Cindy Sherman was inspired by Diane Arbus, but Diane did what she did because of artist Allan Arbus. Allan Arbus was Diane’s husband, and he gave her the first camera she ever had.
He was also known for his photography, in the fashion world. Also being the psychiatrist on the television show M*A*S*H. He photographed the war in the Army Signal Corps, then came back to photograph fashion. He ended up taking photographs for big companies like Vogue and Glamor. However, in 1956 Diane Arbus left the photography partnership and started taking her portraits. They separated three years later, and didn’t share it to their family for another three years. They continued to share a darkroom, and remained friends until the end of her …show more content…
life. Her photograph use many of the techniques we learned in class this semester. She used a gray scale, because of the time she was in, and the cameras. I really liked how she used the negative and positive space to her advantage, she would center the portraits so they features stood out. If there were multiples then she would center them in the middle so it felt like they were a lot of those people. It also made it extra creepy feeling, like they were staring into your soul. She used the space and the color well, and made sure background was a color that made you eye focus on the parts she wanted you to. For example, if she wanted you to see a girl in a black dress, then the background was lighter than the dress. She did that with symmetry too, she would have twin sisters stand right next to each other, and be wearing the same thing, and doing the same pose, to give you that ghost twin feeling. Which I think was her approach, and goal of the picture. I think she uses a realistic approach, might be too realistic, because it shows you the people that aren’t shown in most pictures. They aren’t the people who are shown in magazines and on television. She showed the world, that not everyone looks the same, and that's just the reality of the world. She also felt like she was, a little bit of a “freak” so that is why her subjects interested her. Since her time, art has changed, in a couple different ways. There are obvious things like color cameras. However, there is also the things like, how society has changed around the art. The art that was accepted back then, isn’t the same as now. Every piece of art will get different reactions than they did back then, because nowadays people have seen more modern art. People now think differently than they did then. So they would think about that art different then they would now. That being said, I think Diane Arbus was an important artist for her time. She shocked a lot people with her pictures. Not only for the fact that she was a housewife that turned into a rogue photographer, but she also took these strange photographs. She also left her stable fashion photography business, to wonder around the streets taking photos of people on the side of the road. I think that it was a brave thing to do, knowing that people probably acted like she was crazy. She used her talent for what she wanted to do, and shocked everyone. She followed her heart and made art that made her happy, and that is what art is about. She shocked people with the subject of art she choose. I think that the contemporary issue she chose to deal with, was out of personal interest. She was interested in the different types of people. She wanted to show the people she found, and show the differences that they all had. I think she was just really interested in these people, and not trying to create any social change. I think that just came with it. That was just how society took her photographs. When Diane Arbus took her photographs, she was always thought the subject was more important than the picture. She would say that “I don't like to arrange things; I arrange myself” (Diane Nemerov Arbus). She spent many days returning to these subject to make them feel comfortable with her. Diane Arbus, got many of her works placed in museums. In 1967 she had over 30 pieces of art in the Museum of Modern Art. This was at the highest point in her career. She was photographing subjects, from everything like circus people, to nudest. Where she was called the “Wizard of the odds”, and “to cater to the peeping tom in all of us” (Diane Nemerov Arbus). In 1966, Diane Arbus started to struggle with hepatitis which left her sick, weak, and made her depressed. Then she divorced her husband in 1969, and married someone else. Which left her depressed. She still managed to do some great works during this hard time. However, 1971 in her New York apartment Diane Arbus committed suicide. Her long term friend, Richard Avedon said, “Nothing about her life, her photographs, or her death was accidental or ordinary” (Diane Nemerov Arbus). Diane Arbus, affected 20th century photography.
She mixed up the scene, she showed other artist that they can do what interest them, not just what's popular. I think that is what is so interesting about art, artist can show other people what they are interested in, and people can enjoy it. Art is about what the artist wants to do, not about doing what everyone wants the artist to do. It is about self expression, and self interest. Diane Arbus left the fashion business, which was a popular job, to make the art she wanted to make. She didn’t care about any of societies roles. She didn’t care about the photographer role, and she didn’t care about the female roles. She stopped being the housewife, and husbands assistant to do what she wanted. What she wanted was to be herself, and follow her interest, so that's what she did. That is why I chose her as my contemporary issue
artist.
It was not until a trip to Japan with her mother after her sophomore year of studying painting at the San Francisco Art Institute that Annie Leibovitz discovered her interest in taking photographs. In 1970 Leibovitz went to the founding editor of Rolling Stone, Jann Wenner, who was impressed by Leibovitz’s work. Leibovitz’s first assignment from Wenner was to shoot John Lennon. Leibovitz’s black-and-white portrait of Lennon was the cover of the January 21, 1971 issue. Ironically, Leibovitz would be the last person to capture her first celebrity subject. Two years later she made history by being named Rolling Stone’s first female chief photographer. Leibovitz’s intimate photographs of celebrities had a big part in defining the Rolling Stone look. In 1983 Leibovitz joined Vanity Fair and was made the magazine’s first contributing photographer. At Vanity Fair she became known for her intensely lit, staged, and alluring portraits of celebrities. With a broader range of subjects available at Vanity Fair, Leibovitz’s photographs for Vanity Fair ranged from presidents to literary icons to t...
She starts by bringing a pessimistic view to photographs of nature, by describing what may or may not lie just outside the boundaries of the picture. Mockingly she leads the reader to assume that there are no real nature photos left in the world, but rather only digitaly enhanced photos of nature wit...
The warm wind blew my hair back, while I listened to the chatter and thumps from the steps on the wooden walkway. Car horns occasionally sounded as they passed by up the road. Colorful sail boats provided a picturesque background. Paris had his camera wrapped around his neck and was focused on the glowing sunset. We sat on a black swinging chair, facing the rippling water that held the sunset’s warm reflection. Paris scrolled through the pictures on his black professional camera.
Art could be displayed in many different forms; through photography, zines, poetry, or even a scrapbook. There are many inspirational women artists throughout history, including famous women artists such Artemisia Gentileschi and Georgia O’Keeffe. When searching for famous female artists that stood out to me, I found Frida Kahlo, and Barbara Kruger. Two very contrasting type of artists, though both extremely artistic. Both of these artists are known to be feminists, and displayed their issues through painting and photography. Frida Kahlo and Barbara Kruger’s social and historical significance will be discussed.
Practiced by thousands who shared no common tradition or training from the earliest days of taking photos, the first photographers were disciplined and united by no academy or guild, who considered their medium variously as a trade, a science, an art, or an entertainment, and who often were unaware of each other’s work. Exactly as it sounds photography means photo-graphing. The word photography comes from two Greek words, photo, or “light”, and graphos, or drawing and from the start of photography; the history of the aforementioned has been debated. The idea of taking pictures started some thirty-one thousand years ago when strikingly sophisticated images of bears, rhinoceroses, bison, horses and many other types of creators were painted on the walls of caves found in southern France. Former director of photography at New Yorks museum of modern art says that “The progress of photography has been more like the history of farming, with a continual stream of small discoveries leading to bigger ones, and in turn triggering more experiments, inventions, and applications while the daily work goes along uninterrupted.” ˡ
No other artist has ever made as extended or complex career of presenting herself to the camera as has Cindy Sherman. Yet, while all of her photographs are taken of Cindy Sherman, it is impossible to class call her works self-portraits. She has transformed and staged herself into as unnamed actresses in undefined B movies, make-believe television characters, pretend porn stars, undifferentiated young women in ambivalent emotional states, fashion mannequins, monsters form fairly tales and those which she has created, bodies with deformities, and numbers of grotesqueries. Her work as been praised and embraced by both feminist political groups and apolitical mainstream art. Essentially, Sherman’s photography is part of the culture and investigation of sexual and racial identity within the visual arts since the 1970’s. It has been said that, “The bulk of her work…has been constructed as a theater of femininity as it is formed and informed by mass culture…(her) pictures insist on the aporia of feminine identity tout court, represented in her pictures as a potentially limitless range of masquerades, roles, projections” (Sobieszek 229).
The first technique that Graciela Iturbide learned from Manuel Bravo was the idea of waiting for a photograph. Manuel Bravo states in Eyes to Fly With, “Be patient, the best pictures come when you least expect it” (20). This is a distinguishing technique because many photographers take as many pictures as they can in a hurry. Graciela Iturbide states, “…and yet (the photographers) cannot get a photo as good as Manuel Álvarez Bravo…” (Eyes To Fly With 6). Manuel Bravo taught Iturbide the patience and joy of taking photographs. He always demonstrated patience when taking photographs. Graciela comments, “He took very few photographs, but even if he took only two shots he never got frustrated.” (Eyes To Fly With 8). Graciela also learned to photograph the things that interested her without bothering the people or events taking place. As she observed Manuel Bravo, she would see that way he, “…went to little towns, to fiestas, and how, in an almost imperceptible way, he photographed what interested him without bothering people or offending them” (Eyes to Fly With 6-7). Almost instantly Graciela Iturbide began to realize the kinds of relationships Bravo obtained with his subjects. This idea of building relationships with the people that are being photographed directly influenced some of Graciela Iturbide’s most famous photographs.
Throughout history art has played a major role in society. It started out with paintings and went to photography and eventually to films. Artistic interpretation depended on whom the artist was and what he or she wanted to present to the audience. When it came to portraiture, whether it was paintings or photography, the idea of mimesis was very important. However important this may have been, the portraits were mostly products of the media and fashions during that time period. Whatever was popular during the time was used such as columns or curtains in the background. The face was the main focus in the painting and there was little focus on the body. Later on during photography the body was focused on more. Even though photography was used much later after paintings were used, it allowed the artist even more artistic interpretation because of the ability to play a different role and not having to be ones self. The artists that will be focused on are Frida Kahlo and Cindy Sherman. They lived during different periods and their artistic intentions varied because of that. They also had similarities in that they thought outside of the conventional roles. These women were both self-portraiture artists and although they were considered that their interpretations did not always make their portraits self-portraits. Traditionally the artist was an outsider, but when it came to self-portraiture they became the subject and the audience became the outsider. The similarities and differences of Frida Kahlo and Cindy Sherman’s art were tied into the strength and also vulnerability they had because of their roles as women. They wanted the audience to see a background story to the portraits and not just an image of a beautiful face.
McKay’s uses the art of dance and fashion to allure the men and women. He chose to have the woman dancing sensually and half clothed, to capture everyone’s attention. By having the woman portrayed this way, it signifies her worth. Similarly, Rossetti uses art to objectify women, however, she uses the art of painting and fashion as well. “In an Artist’s Studio”, he objectifies the woman by painting her the way he sees her, not the way she actually is; In doing this, it is symbolizing that woman are controlled.
She was hired to take pictures as the Japanese and Japanese Americans were taken from their homes and moved from the camps. They wanted her pictures to look like they were having a good time and that the process was not dangerous. Although the government wanted her pictures to look fun and appealing, she did the exact opposite. She captured the hectic scenes where the Japanese and Japanese Americans were being crowded onto buses and other forms of transportation. She also captured their emotions and looks. Some looked stressed and sad while others were confused about what was happening. The government did not care for the look of her pictures since it depicted the stress and activity of the situation, so they forbid her from publishing the pictures. Some of them are in museums today such as the Skirball Cultural
The camera is presented as a living eye in her work, capable of bending and twisting, contorting reality in its own light. It is at the same time a sensuous device, one that exp...
The rise of photography began in the early 1830’s in France, and wasn’t very popular as most artists preferred a paintbrush and canvas to a new contraption that wasn’t popular and wasn’t manufactured locally or globally yet and that was fairly expensive to try to produce, and since this time it has been debated if photography deserves its place in the art world. Through the late 1800’s and the early 1900’s it grew in popularity and throughout time photography went from being badly received to a new form of art though people around the world still debate if it is indeed “art”. Photography has a long history from the first camera obscura in the 18th century to the latest Nikon or Canon camera in the 21st century.
... she was enhanced, modified, airbrushed, and computerized, creating a false, unobtainable beauty. The "media truly distorts the truth and instills in women this false hope because, in essence, they will live their lives never truly attaining this ideal physical appearance." Though many women are aware that such beauty is unreal, they will still strive to obtain it because it is the object that their peers judge them with. They feel unaccepted until they can feel beautiful.
When going for a walk, a person takes in the beauty around them. On this particular day, the refulgent sun is extra bright, making the sky a perfect blue. White, puffy clouds fill the sky, slowing moving at their own pace. The wind is peacefully calm, making the trees stand tall and proud. There is no humidity in the air. As this person walks down the road, they see a deer with her two fawns. The moment is absolutely beautiful. Moments like this happen only once in a great while, making us wanting to stay in the particular moment forever. Unfortunately, time moves on, but only if there were some way to capture the day’s magnificence. Thanks to Joseph Niépce, we can now capture these moments and others that take our breath away. The invention of the camera and its many makeovers has changed the art of photography.
Women desire to become beautiful and powerful, even if they don’t say it in words. And the Photographer plays with that concept and creates that desire, that you can become that person you see in the photograph. And live that lifestyle. Photographers use techniques from the cinema/cinematic, to create the desire of viewers/Buyer/Consumers. The cinematic techniques made it possible the way people lived and the...