Oscar Gustave Rejlander

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

Anybody want to enter a photo contest?

The Georgia O'Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, NM, is having a contest!

See here.

Late 19th Century Photography

One of the prominent photographers from the late 19th century that I really like is Robert Demachy. I found this website about him here. He was known for manipulating his prints so much that they look more like paintings than photographs. The photo above is one of my favorites. I think it looks so much different than most of the stiff, straight-on portraits we have seen so far.

Here's another article about late 19th century photography that I thought was pretty funny. The article is about dishonest photographers that would claim they have "spiritual studios" to make a living. At the time, the United States was very big on spirits and ghosts. These photographers would take someone's portrait then dodge and burn faces into the background. The customers would believe that these faces were long lost ancestors. Below is one of the examples of these photographs.

Late 19th Centurt "Art Photography"

      After discovering "The Encyclopedia of 19th century Photography," I began scrolling through the alphabet in attempt of finding some 19th photographers that stuck out to me. This website is mostly text about photographers ( which are actually really interesting.) but does have some samples of work within the encyclopedia blog.


This is when I stumbled on Constant Alexandre Famin. His work can be found here. His work is often featuring farm scenes with workers, children, and the animals. These photos were interesting to me because it gave you this feeling of desolation when comparing it to today's farming. ALthough, these farm photos were not what intrigued me the most.

    My favorite Famin shots were when he went out into the forest of Fountainbleu and began taking pictures of just od organic shapes. There was probably nothing to document about those trees, but the fact the he just thought someone needed to see its aesthetic!

http://19th-century-photography.blogspot.com/2010/12/f_14.html    "The Encyclopedia of 19th Century Photographs

Julia Margaret Cameron

Her portraits are up close, have well thought out compositions, and just beautiful. I expect we will discuss her in class at some point because she is such an important photographer in the late 19th century. Here is a link to a collection of her work.

Late 19th-century art photography...

Hi all,
Another great week on the blog, I'd say. I'm especially loving the links and images of contemporary photographers that you all are posting and commenting on. You'll be working on research papers and presentations starting in October that deal with current/recent photography so this is a wonderful start.

I am wondering, though, what resources you might be able to find that deal with "art photography" in the late 19th century. We've introduced some of the basic early processes, and tomorrow we'll cover some more, including the collodion process, tintypes, ambrotypes, and so on. And we're seeing more and more people take up the camera after 1850 or so for uses that extend far beyond portraiture. The development of "art photography" is something that Talbot envisioned, and we are going to start looking at images that attempt to "elevate" the photograph to fine art status by Nadar, Julia Margaret Cameron, Gustave Le Gray, and others. This week, I'd like to send you out into the interwebs to find resources that deal with prominent photographers of the late 19th c. Maybe you'll find videos, museum collections, galleries, archives...whatever. But let's do some hunting and see what solid resources we can collect here.

Each student should write at least one new post by 5pm on Sunday, Sept 9. Keep commenting on each others' posts, too. In fact, just for fun, you can comment on this one and see if you can come up with the best name for this precious brother-sister duo that we saw the other day...

Method

Hey guys, I just found this on StumbleUpon! A gallery in Arizona, Method,  has a current photography show up. Check out the artist's portfolio page! Overall, Rachael has amazing prints, but I feel drawn most to the surreal self portraits! Hope you guys enjoy this!