11.1: 11PH PAST PHOTOGRAPHERS

One of my favorite photographers is Julia Margaret Cameron. Likely it is because she does things in her photographs I could never do. If I tried to emulate her romanticism, it would come out cheap and tawdry—heck, I even think some of her images are cheap and tawdry. But beautifully so.

Anyone interested in any pursuit is going to be concerned with how others have approached that pursuit. As you learn about photographers, you will see that they are no different. They learn from what others have done, whether it is an approach from yesterday or from over a hundred years ago. Styles and approaches change, but that indefinable quality of good somehow runs irrespective of style. As humans we respond (or we don’t).

As one gets to know how photographic images work, there is a communication with those who have come before. Through looking at photographs you feel a bond with the photographer—you can see into the corners of what they are doing, you can feel them. 

So, I look at Cameron’s images. On the surface are the conventions of the age—a Victorian way of dressing and heroic poses. But beyond that is something deeper, but impossible to explain. A close connection between us that bridges more than a hundred and fifty years.

This is one of a series of images photographed with a flatbed scanner before digital cameras and printed on an early ink-jet printer. These were an homage to (copy of?) the very beginnings of photography, as digital was a rebirth of those beginnings. As such, they were simple, somewhat scientific , and had a raw feel. Much like a photograph from 1840. Digital Talbots. Sometimes concepts don’t work. I still love the images, but I rarely get anyone to agree with me on this.

There is a myth about creativity—we celebrate those who find new solutions, who come up with new things. But in reality, there is nothing new under the sun. Styles change, we combine things to come up with something new. The past is a lot closer than we think. This is true in any medium—we are copiers, we can spit out only what we know. For example, you may think that some singer or band is totally new. But they are instead building upon what others have done. Imagine someone who has never heard a song coming up with one. What kind of song would they come up with? Surely not what they came up with after a lifetime of listening to songs!

Take tours through the past. See what hits you, what makes you respond. If you like something, follow the path that it presents. Find some heroes. Looking at what others have done teaches you far more than you might think, and influences what you do in a multitude of ways.

Of course anything that was done yesterday is history, but some good resources that go back farther include the Victoria and Albert Museum, which is easy to navigate with thumbnails; the Eastman Museum, which includes not only many photographers, but also a lot of technical things; and the Science + Media Museum, which has not only the canon of photography, but also some intriguing things off of that path. Once you get to know some of the ins and outs of the history, you can do searches at some excellent image repositories such as the Digital Public Library of America, which is full of images culled from other sources; the Getty Museum; the New York Public Library; and of course the Library of Congress, which is difficult to navigate, but very rich. There are also other sites which deal with the history of photography—Photogrammer lets you search for images from the Farm Security Administration by location on a map (find your home town!).

Some early 20th Century photographers are recognized to have shifted the direction of the medium. These include Alfred Stieglitz, who not only made images, but published and exhibited the work of other photographers such as Paul Strand and Edward Steichen. Steichen was also very influential as the first director of the photography collections at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA later went on to become an outsized influence on how the art of photography was defined). 

Gertrude Kasebier’s dreamy and fuzzy images are some of the best examples of Pictorialism, a turn-of-the-century style which used the camera as an instrument of feeling instead of fact. Man Ray’s and Andre Kertesz’s photographs epitomize the exuberant experimentation of the Surrealist movement, and Bill Brandt picked up about where they left off.