153 pages

English

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The Critical Eye , livre ebook

Intellect Books - Lyle Rexer

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153 pages

English

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Description

Based on the highly successful course at the School of Visual Arts developed by the author, this book provides a comprehensive approach to the critical understanding of photography through an in-depth discussion of fifteen photographs and their contexts – historical, generic, biographical and aesthetic. This book presents an intensive course in looking at photographs, open to undergraduates and general audiences alike. Rexer argues that by concentrating on fifteen carefully chosen works it is possible to understand the history, development and contemporary situation of photography.

Looking to images by photographers such as Roland Fischer, Nancy Rexroth and Ernest Cole, The Critical Eye is the only book to address the totality of issues involved in photography, from authorial self-consciousness to the role of the audience. Its subjects are not limited to art photography but include vernacular images, commercial genres and anthropology. With every chapter it seeks to link the history of photography to current practice. This highly illustrated and beautiful book provides a much-needed introduction to image production.

Introduction: How Is a Photograph?

Life and Work: Does Biography Matter?

Reading Photographs: Decisions in and Beyond the Frame

The Origins of Photographies

Portraits: The Other Side of the Mask

Street Photography: Where the Sidewalk Ends

From Self-Portrait to Selfie: Memes Come True

Other Natures (Landscape in Five Views of Yosemite)

Beyond Fashion

Troubling Images: Don’t Look Now

Them/Us

Abstraction in Photography: Picture Nothing

Photojournalism: A World of Witnesses

Unphotographable

Everybody’s Pictures

Sujets

Arts visuels

Histoire des Arts

Photographie

History of art

Ernest Cole

Rolland Fisher

General officer

Photography

School of Visual Arts

General

History

ART

Histoire des arts visuels

Informations

Publié par	Intellect Books
Date de parution	04 novembre 2019
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781789380422
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	424 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,1144€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

understanding of photography through an in-depth discussion of îfteen

Irst time. The writing is totally visual,

out of context, and as cultural signiIers.

The Critical Eye Fifteen Pictures to Understand Photography

Lyle Rexer

The Critical Eye Fifteen Pictures to Understand Photography

Lyle Rexer

intellect publishers of original thinking

First published in the UK in 2019 by Intellect Books, The Mill, Parnall Road, Fishponds, Bristol, BS16 3JG, UK

First published in the USA in 2019 by Intellect Books, The University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th Street, Chicago, IL 60637, USA Copyright ©2019 Intellect Ltd Copy-editor: MPS Cover and layout designer: Aleksandra Szumlas Cover image: Graciela Sacco,Bocanada, (detail of installation), urban interference, Cartier Foundation for Art, Paris, 2013. Oset printing on paper, dimensions variable Courtesy estate of Graciela Sacco Production editors: Katie Evans and Jelena Stanovnik Typesetting: Contentra Technologies All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written consent. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Printed and bound by Gomer, UK.

Print ISBN: 978-1-78320-984-2 ePDF ISBN: 978-1-78938-042-2 ePub ISBN: 978-1-78938-041-5

Part of the Investigations of Lens and Screen Arts series

ISSN: 2632-5691 eISSN: 2632-5705 Published in collaboration with the School of Visual Arts

Contents

Introduction: How Is a Photograph?

Life and Work: Does Biography Matter?

Reading Photographs: Decisions in and Beyond the Frame

The Origins of Photographies

Portraits: The Other Side of the Mask

Street Photography: Where the Sidewalk Ends

From Self-Portrait to Selîe: Memes Come True

Other Natures (Landscape in Five Views of Yosemite)

Beyond Fashion

Troubling Images: Don’t Look Now

Them/Us

Abstraction in Photography: Picture Nothing

Photojournalism: A World of Witnesses

Unphotographable

Everybody’s Pictures

Bibliography

009

017

025

037

049

059

069

077

085

093

105

113

123

133

141

149

Acknowledgments

In addition to the photographic credits in each caption, the author would like to thank the following individuals and institutions.

First and foremost, the School of Visual Arts (SVA) and its president, David Rhodes, for providing support for the publishing project of which this book is a part, and for a sabbatical semester during which a signiîcant portion of the book was written. The Visual Arts Foundation also provided administrative support in the securing of additional funding.

Charles Traub, chairman of the department of MFA Photography, Video, and Related Media, encouraged the project from the outset and offered detailed comments on the manuscript. Rachel Klein read the manuscript with an editor’s eye and provided essential insights. Colleagues and students at SVA read all or parts of various drafts and provided valuable criticism: Yasaman Alipour, Stephen Frailey, former chair of the department of BFA Photography, Abby Robinson, and Steel Stillman. Outside of SVA, the author owes special thanks to others willing to read, react, and correct errors: Dan Estabrook, Christopher James, Sally Mann, Alison Nordstrom, and Mark and France Scully Osterman. Anonymous readers for Intellect Press prompted signiîcant rethinking of arguments and examples.

The author also wishes to thank Karl Mann for a grant of support during the book’s extensive revision stage. Parts of the înal chapter originally appeared in different form inHarper’smagazine.

Finally,Furthermore,the J.M. Kaplan Fund, provided essential înanciala program of assistance in the securing of photographic reproduction rights. For independent scholars in the arts, the increasing cost of picture rights can be a barrier to the full presentation of their research.Furthermorethe very few programs in theis one of nation targeted to overcoming this hurdle.

Introduction: How Is a Photograph?

To get all this into one photograph he had to acquire an extraordinary technical skill, but only then would Antonino quit taking pictures. Having exhausted every possibility, at the moment when he was coming full circle, Antonino realized that photographing photographs was the only course that he had left – or, rather, the true course he had obscurely been seeking all this time.

1 Italo Calvino, “The Adventure of a Photographer”

It’s only a tree. It isn’t an actual tree, of course, but rather a picture of a tree. The backdrop erected behind it in the photograph reminds the viewer of the fact. It recalls the philosophical joke told in various versions about a man who sees a sign advertising a sale in a shop window only to înd that the sign itself is really what is for sale. The photographer, Myoung Ho Lee (b. 1975), from Korea, shot a series of such trees (2005–16) – each one different but all of them, in a broad sense, the same. His purpose, he tells us, was to focus attention on the fragility and beauty of the “beings” in the natural environment by framing each tree with a background cloth, as if the photographer’s studio had been moved outside and nature had been treated as a 2 valued customer. It is the unmanipulated record of an act of concern, if not reverence. Yet Lee’s image is also a suggestive metaphor for much that has happened in photography in the recent past, especially in art photography. It deliberately separates the subject from its photographic context, and in doing so inter-rupts the surface continuity of the image and whatever re-sponse a viewer might have to it. Above all, it calls attention to the photograph as discourse, a structured communication that is not merely a direct outgrowth of the scene itself. “It’s a picture,” we want to say. Very much a picture. The cloth recalls the fabric back-drops and painted scenes photographers of an earlier time used to stage their portrait subjects, whether in the studio or on the street. In the thoroughfares of Tokyo or the wilds of British Columbia, in Bamako or Teheran, backdrops

framed the subjects, cut out extraneous elements, and cre-ated a restricted and often fantastic space for what amoun-ted to a still performance. The photographer captured it all on glass plate or coated tin or silver plate or paper. It was a perfect illusion of presence, but sometimes the photo-grapher would pull back to do a test, and the image would show assistants or scaffolding holding up the background, the whole imsy structure of contrived credibility. Such images fascinate us now because they reect a heightened sense of photography as an arranged presentation, a game played with appearance and expectation. Lee’s photograph serves as a starting point for a book about photography because it suggests that the environ-ment in which people encounter photography is at least as important as the subject within the frame, and that envir-onment, the atmosphere of looking, has changed. Myoung Ho Lee has a deep appreciation for the precise descriptive powers of a photograph, but he also seeks, beyond mere ac-ceptance or rejection, pleasure or instruction, a more active role for the viewer – and the photographer. It is a role re-quired by the changes going on in and around the medium. It is the goal of this book to promote that active awareness. So as much as this is a book of photographs, it must be equally a book of words that respond to those photo-graphs. The words are meant to serve as an introduction to the shifting universe of photography, to identify some of its themes, problems, and practices by questioning what is visible. Photographs need words in order to be understood, appreciated, and shared. It’s not just that photographs