Photography, when studied as a language, is perhaps the most impactful and purest form of communication: it trandscends verbal and written language, objectifies both time and space, and is at the same time both art and fact; both beauty and information.

In Class

Review student picks from Flickr, and discuss student’s persoanl connection to the image and evaulate images according to Creative Devices.

Photography’s Purpose

First and foremost, in both a historical and conceptual sense, photographs are used to record time and place. Though visual art has always transformed three-dimensional space into two dimensions, photography, for the first time in written history, has married science and art to create mechanically accurate but humanly emotional archive of time.

Record

Photography’s greatest power it to document and archive our human experience. From it’s earliest uses, photographic image making turned memory into an object.

Communicate

Soon after the invention of the camera, photographers began recognizing the power of photography. As camera technolgy became smaller – and thus – moblile, photography became a means of storytelling; bringing images of the world back to an audience who otherwise could not witness the events being photographed.

Express

As our understanding of Photography evolved, so too did our use of it. Narritive themes, social and political commentary, and personal expression all became and remains motives and subject matter for photographers.

Photographer Focus: Man Ray

Born: Emmanuel Radnitzky, August 27, 1890 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Died: November 18, 1976.

Man Ray was an American artist who spent most of his career in Paris, France. Categorized as a modernist, he was a significant contributor to both the Dada and Surrealist movements. He is best known in the art world for his avant-garde photography, namely, the technique that bears his namesake, the ‘Rayograph’.”

Man Ray’s interpretation of the image making technique called a Pictogram was indicative of the “anti-art” spirit of Dadaism, a cultural movement that peaked during WW I. Like many Dada works of art, Man Ray’s Rayographs instilled a sense of parody. By making photographs without a camera, he begged the cultural and artistic questions to redefine what a “photograph” is, and how they are made.

Printed in a darkroom on photographic paper, a photogram is created by placing opaque objects on the unexposed paper before using a photographic enlarger or other controlled light source to expose the uncovered paper, creating a silhouetted print.

Man Ray also produced major works in a variety of media and considered himself a painter above all. He was also a renowned fashion and portrait photographer, and exuded the quintessential eclecticism of artists persona, counting many influential Dada and Surrealist artists of the era as friends: Marcel Duchamp, Salvador Dali, and Georges Braque.

Slideshow: Man Ray Images

OTHER LINKS
Official Man Ray Licensing Archive
George Eastman House Still Photograph Archive

Class Reading: Chapter #1 & #2

Assignment: Create a ‘Scanograph’. Assignment #1 [.pdf]

Handout: Basic Scanning Tips