Oscar Gustave Rejlander was a Victorian art photographer. He studied art in Rome. He is best known for his work, Two Ways of Life. This photo is made up of 32 images seamlessly montaged together, which this technique would be easily done in Photoshop, but this took him six weeks. The photograph depicts two partial nude youths surrounded by virtuous and sinful pleasures, but because of the nudity it was called indecent until Queen Victoria ordered a copy as a present for Prince Albert which resolved some of the debate of its decency.
I found this all out on this great website. Check it out!
Two Ways of Life, 1857
Armer Jo, 1860
Young girl holding a jug, ca. 1860
I also found this other website that allowed you to purchase 19th century photographs. I don't know how legit it is but it's cool to look through the gallery.
"When photography was invented artists thought that it would bring ruin to art but it is shown that photography has been an ally of art, an educator of taste more powerful than a hundred academies of Design would have been..."
- "Photography and Chromo-lithography," 1868
PS when I posted this I didn't realize our reading was over Rejlander
ReplyDeleteI think it's crazy interesting how Two Ways of Life was so controversial and how it was banned from a lot of places because it was "immoral" because of the nudity-- when art has had a long standing practice of the artistic nude, and he was even basing his image off of the paintings of the Renaissance! Once again, it leads back into "photography as truth", what I'm starting to see as the central theme for this class.
ReplyDelete((Daniel Na))