Man Ray

Here is an example of the solarization done my Man Ray

Glass tears.

This one is an example of his "rayogram" or pictogram.

This is one of the very surrealist images

Man Ray was born in Pennsylvania in 1890. He was such an innovative photographer for his time. He was often just labeled as a modernist. He contributed so much to the photography side of surrealism, the dada movement and avant- garde. He considered himself a painter. At the beginning of his career he actually was a painter. He had a strong cubist influence in his paintings. After he got involved with the dada movement is when he abandoned painting and turned to photography. His photographs went well with the surrealist movement I think. For example, the image of the woman laying on the grass with the lips in the sky is something you would see in a surrealist style painting. The other techniques used were also very surreal, like solarization. He coined the term "rayograms" which is basically what we call pictograms today. He also reinvented solarization. Man Ray brought about or reinvented so many of the techniques we still use today.

"I paint what cannot be photographed, that which comes from the imagination or from dreams, or from an unconscious drive. I photograph the things that I do not wish to paint, the things which already have an existence."- Man Ray

Roy DeCarava

Over the last couple years I have seen the work of Roy DeCarava. He is one of my favorites photographers. I like the idea behind his work. He is know as the Harlem photographer. I decided to do my blog on him this week because he recently passed away at the age of 89. He changed the history of African- American art and lifestyle. He actually had 60 years of photography under his belt. His photography was revolutionary for his time. Looking at his photos, I see a similarity between them and quite a few photographers that I have written about already. However, they have a different quality to them. They are all of African-American life and people. His images gave insight into what it was like to live in Harlem New York. They provoke very different emotions than other "street photographers" if you will. I recently took a trip to Nashville, where I tried this type of photography. I shot many images of African- American elderly men who were "down on their luck." These didn't quite turn out the way I was expecting. Mine were a bit exploitive. I think that Roy DeCarava did a wonderful job documenting instead of exploiting.

Alan Sailer

Here he shot a rose dipped in liquid nitrogen.

Here he shot a plum dipped in liquid nitrogen.

Here he shot a chocolate kiss.

Here he shot bacon

Here he shot a snow globe

Seeing that I'm bad about forgetting, I figured I would go ahead and do the blog for this week. A friend of mine found this photographer and shared it with me through facebook. His name is Alan Sailer. He is considered an expert in high speed photography. I have never seen anything like his photography before (though I read that it has been done before). He literally shoots his subjects. He used a rifle to shoot the objects that he wishes to photograph. He has shot everything from fruit to snow globes to roses. He shots something at room temperature, some hot, and even freezes some in liquid nitrogen to enhance the explosion that he will then photograph. He is very aware of the colors as well. He often uses the complement color of the object being shot for the background to make it stand out. This is such an interesting project to me. I love to try new things and this would not have even crossed my mind. I liked this so much it was quite difficult for me to pick the ones to post here.

Warren Thompson

In the last couple weeks I have changes my film photography project drastically. Warren Thompson is doing what I would like to take a shot at for the rest of the semester. He photographs people doing their job, walking around, talking to others, etc. Some of these images are more staged but others look at if they do not know that the photographer is there much less taking an image of them. Most of the time when someone sees a camera they smile and try to look nice. It has become a natural reaction to the camera. He catches unflattering images of people. I am interested in the expressions and actions that people do not want a camera to catch. When they are not expecting to have a picture made of them. I think he does a wonderful job of catching these actions.

Louis Daguerre

Louis Daguerre was the inventor of the daguerreotype. No surprise that he was a chemist. A daguerrotype images is processed by exposing an image directly onto a mirror-polished surface of silver bearing a coating of silver halide particles deposited by iodine vapor. Then developing by heating over a cup of mercury. After this you "fix" these in hyposulfate of soda It was a very advanced process for his time. He invented this type in 1839. It is very similar to the tintype processing. I love these types of processing because of the history behind them. I feel like by processing film and images as they once were long ago you have a better understanding of photography itself. For example, I think that taking film photography in the darkroom will help my to understand digital much better. These basics are where photography first came from and they are why photography has come so far today. The images themselves are very beautiful, they are usually portraits. The examples are of the Daguerreotype process, not done by Louis himself.

Julius Shulman

This week I was looking at movie reviews and I came across a movie titled " Visual Acoustics The Modernism of Julius Shulman." After doing a little research on this I found that he was a celebrated architecture photographer. I feel like I should have know him before because of my brief attempt of shooting architecture. He had a different outlook on shooting building and making them interesting. Some of the images are taken at night making for very beautiful lighting. The compositions are also quite different. They are not you plain, boring, straight on shots of buildings and houses. The example with the stepping stones is what I am referring to. Normally that would be a bother in an image but instead he turns it to make it the focus, or at least the part that leads you into the entire image. He makes the lines and the curves of the homes and buildings work in his advantage. In one of the examples I'm going to put up, the lines help to lead you around the image. He took photographs of many famous architects work, including Frank Lloyd Wright and Pierre Koenig.

Robert Frank

Robert Frank is someone who Gay told me to look into durning my last critique. He was born in Switzerland in 1924. His most popular work is "The Americans." The book was actually first published in France and showed post-war America. His works are of the American culture. Which I find interesting because he is not from America. He has an outside view of post-war America and the people who live there. I think that sometimes when you live somewhere you forget the beauty of it, and sometimes cannot see it when other people come into town and say how gorgeous everything is. For example, moved to Cullman about 7 years ago and I see nothing more than a town with nothing in it. However, when my roommate came to visit she told me how beautiful of a place it was. I just don't see it anymore since it's home. I think that the same applies to Robert Frank in this situation. America is new to him. So he sees the beauty of it still. These images are very "America Dream." They depict american flags, cowboys, soda shops, etc. Things that you think of to be "American." Things that you don't see much anymore, but were there and played a large part in our culture.