LARGE FORMAT PHOTOGRAPHERS

SALLY MANN...

Sally Mann has used her 8 × 10 view camera to capture in fine detail, among other subjects, images of her children as they mimic and act out social and familial roles in the lush landscape of their rural Virginia home. For the series Immediate Family,posed or simply arrested in their activity, Mann’s children (who often appear nude) convey both primal and playful aspects of human behavior.

http://www.mocp.org/collections/permanent/mann_sally.php

ANDREAS GURSKY...

Andreas Gursky's large-scale color photographs of landscapes, buildings, and masses of people have been likened to paintings. Gursky studied with Bernd and Hilla Becher at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in the 1980s, where he honed his fascination with the ways people live in the world and how their existence impacts their surroundings. In the early 1990s he began using digital tools to heighten formal elements and circumvent the limits of perspective in his pictures.

http://www.matthewmarks.com/artists/andreas-gursky/

EMMET GOWIN...

My pictures are made as a part of everyday life and are not the result of any project or assignment. Most of the pictures here were made with a camera on a tripod. In this situation, both the sitter and photographer become part of the picture. Sometimes my photographs resemble home snapshots, which are among the richest resources of images I know. But I always want to make a picture that is more than a family record. I feel that the clearest pictures were at first strange to me; yet whatever picture an artist makes, it is in part a picture of himself - a matter of identity.

http://www.masters-of-photography.com/G/gowin/gowin_articles1.html

BERND AND HILLA BECHER...

For nearly fifty years, Bernd and Hilla Becher photographed the industrial architecture of Western Europe, creating an archive of basic forms of the industrial era. Rendered with absolute precision in large format, medium-contrast gelatin silver prints, each structure is centered against a cloudless sky, filling the picture frame. The Bechers tended to arrange their photographs in grids or sequence them in monographs, a standardized presentation that facilitates a comparative analysis of form. Influenced by the objectivity of photographic practices between the two World Wars and embraced by practitioners of Minimalist and Conceptual art in the 1960s and 1970s, the systematic nature of their approach has become a recognizable style.

http://www.getty.edu/art/gettyguide/artMakerDetails?maker=1813

RICHARD AVEDON...

http://www.vam.ac.uk/vastatic/microsites/photography/photographer.php?photographerid=ph006&row=1

ANSEL ADAMS...

Other photogrpahers include:

• Thomas Ruff
• Eliot Porter
• Paul Strand
• Alec Soth
• Hiroshi Sugimoto
• Jeff Wall
• Edward Weston
• Thomas Struth
• Walker Evan
• Gregory Crewdson
• Rineke Dijkstra and many others.

DAN MOUNTFORD

GEORGES BRAQUE

Braque's oil paintings of 1908–1913 began to reflect his new interest in geometry and simultaneous perspective. He conducted an intense study of the effects of light and perspective and the technical means that painters use to represent these effects, appearing to question the most standard of artistic conventions. In his village scenes, for example, Braque frequently reduced an architectural structure to a geometric form approximating a cube, yet rendered its shading so that it looked both flat and three-dimensional by fragmenting the image. He showed this in the oil painting "House at L'estaque". In this way, Braque called attention to the very nature of visual illusion and artistic representation.

Beginning in 1909, Braque began to work closely with Pablo Picasso, who had been developing a similar approach to oil painting. At the time Pablo Picasso was influenced by Gauguin, Cézanne, African tribal masks and Iberian sculpture, while Braque was mostly interested in developing Cézanne's idea's of multiple perspectives. “A comparison of the works of Picasso and Braque during 1908 reveals that the effect of his encounter with Picasso was more to accelerate and intensify Braque’s exploration of Cézanne’s ideas, rather than to divert his thinking in any essential way.” The invention of Cubism was a joint effort between Picasso and Braque, then residents of Montmartre, Paris. These artists were the movement's main innovators. After meeting in October or November 1907, Braque and Picasso, in particular, began working on the development of Cubism in 1908. Both artists produced paintings of monochromatic color and complex patterns of faceted form, now called Analytic Cubism.

A decisive moment in its development occurred during the summer of 1911, when Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso painted side by side in Céret, in the French Pyrenees, each artist producing paintings that are difficult—sometimes virtually impossible—to distinguish from those of the other. In 1912, they began to experiment with collage and papier collé.

The chateau at la Roche - Guyon, 1909.

Oil on canvas.

Violin and Newspaper (musical forms), 1912.

Oil, charcoal and pencil on canvas

Piano and Mandola, 1910. Oil on canvas.

Violin and Pitcher, 1919. Oil on canvas

Source (image & text): http://www.georgesbraque.org/index.jsp

I've included Braque's work in my research as his work has directly influenced the work of Hockney, although he works using a different medium the principles of their work are linked with the use of lines. I feel Hockney saw the 'lines' in Braque's work as links to the edges of each individual image he took, creating a frame for each piece of detail.

PHOTOMONTAGE & SURREALISM

I feel that surrealism is one of the key areas which seem to influences the composite photograph, its also an area which i am extremely interested in. With this in mind I have decided to research briefly into numerous photographers within this genre.

Pierre Boucher

DIY manuals, 1937-41

This image of a hand and lake was apparently created by Boucher especially for the book by Marcel Natkin, Fascinating Fakes in Photography (1939). The text notes the need for seamless lighting of all elements, and that two arms were stuck to the print to obtain the reflection. A little later, Crazy Camera: Secrets of Photomontage (1941) was published by Focal Press, London. In the U.S., a translation of Croy's German photomontage manual Hunderterlei Kotokniffe (1936) was published in 1937.

Surrealist photography

Manifesto of Surrealism, 1924

Surrealist photography officially began with the publication of Andre Breton's Manifesto of Surrealism (1924). Double exposure, solarisation, distortion, shadows, reflections, and extreme close-up all became common approaches. Such photographs, and 'found' photography, are widely used in surrealist publications.

While surrealism clearly shows how art can be made from a dark and anxious eroticism..."The surrealist photographers (Man Ray, Raoul Hausman, Bill Brandt, Brassai, etc.)rarely used photomontage." — from:Photographic Conditions of Surrealism(1984), and... "comparatively few surrealists persisted with photomontage after initial experiments"— from: Ades, Photomontage (1976).

Max Ernst's collages

Engraving composites, 1919-1924

Max Ernst discovered the process of surreal collage in 1919, using Victorian engravings (many originally made from photographs), ..."I was struck by the obsession which held under my gaze the pages of an illustrated catalogue ... It was enough at that time to embellish these catalogue pages, in painting or drawing, and thereby ... transformed into revealing dramas my most secret desires from what had been before only some banal pages of advertising." Ernst credited Max Klinger (1857-1920), a Symbolist painter, as the inspiration for his collages. Many of Ernst's collages might better be termed composites - because many strive for a seamless consistency.

Max Ernst Collage

Dada photomontage

1916-1918: German dada 'invents' photomontage

The date of the 'invention' of photomontage is commonly claimed to have been in May 1916 in Germany, by George Grosz and John Heartfield; although their description of the event sounds more like a crude political collage of elements that happened to include some photographs from the German illustrated press.

Fellow dadaists Raoul Hausmann and Hannah Hoch made a slightly more convincing claim to have 'invented' photomontage in 1918, apparently having seen how ordinary people were sticking cut-out photos of the face of their loved-ones onto"a coloured lithograph of a grenadier in front of barracks".

Fake fairies

1917-1920: the "Cottingley fairies"

Sisters Elsie Wright (aged 16) and Frances Griffiths (aged 10) created five photographs that purported to show the girls with fairies and a gnome. Amazingly, the photographs sparked decades of heated debate over their authenticity. It is likely that the photographs were created using painted cardboard cut-outs held up with tacks. Elsie (seen below) went on to work in a photography studio, creating composite pictures of fallen First World War British soldiers with their loved ones.

Futurist photodynamism

1911-13: Anton Giulio Bragaglia

Bragaglia created a ghostly — almost spirit photography -like — photography of movement and blurring that he terms "photodynamism". He writes: "A shout, a tragical pause, a gesture of terror, the entire scene, the complete external unfolding of the intimate drama, can be expressed in one single work." — "Fotodinamismo Futurista" (1913).

Jacques Henri Lartigue, 1902 ~

Jacques Henri Lartigue created some of his most important 'trick' flying / levitating pictures from 1902 to about 1906. These included: "Zissou as a ghost" (1902); "Cousin Bichonnade in flight" (1905); "Zissou's first attempts at flying" (1905); and "My Nanny" (1904). His work only became widely known and published from the late 1960s and early 1970s. With this theme, he appears to contribute one of the major themes to the contemporary nu-real — although he was himself influenced by spirit photography.

Lartigue worked in stereo, a process that views pictures as if made up of elements suspended in "layered planes"; perhaps a spur to the appreciation of photomontage.

Spirit levitation

1872: Frederick Hudson

Frederick Hudson's "Spirit Photograph" (1872) can be seen in the left picture below. This is the first known spirit photograph that shows the 'levitation' of a table. The levitation happens in the presence of a man and a 'spirit'. Levitation and flying is a theme that is dominant in contemporary nu-real photography; possibly this arises out of seeing a handful of key Lartigue photographs, but in most cases it probably also reflect an awareness of early spirit photography.

Oscar Gustave Rejlander

1857: "The Two Ways of Life".

Working in Wolverhampton, Oscar Rejlander took six weeks to create a seamless combination print from 32 negatives. Loosely based on a classical theme, there were two versions — both complex high Victorian tableaux. They depict the life-choices of a young man, Industry or Dissipation. It was first shown at the Manchester Art Treasures Exhibition of 1857, when many objected to the nudity. But Royal patronage followed, and Rejlander moved to London and made his name as "the father of art photography".

source: http://www.d-log.info/timeline/index.html

GERHARD LANG

The Typical Inhabitant of Schloss-Nauses 1992/2000 Composite Photography 1/5 1992/2000

111 prints and 2 composites

I N 1992 Gerhard Lang photographed all residents(58) of his home village Schloss-Nauses before superimposing them over each other by means of a particular photographic technique - composite photography. The outcome was The Typical Inhabitant of Schloss-Nauses 1992. Eight years later, Lang repeated the process. The composite from the year 2000 shows how much the typical inhabitant of Schloss-Nauses 1992 had changed with eight years.

source:http://www.gerhardlang.com/e_work_nauses.html

Lang's work for me is very similar in its visual appearance to that of Idris Khan, I feel that the use of composite photography in this style has quite an impact on the viewer. What your looking at is a photo but the resemblance to a drawing/sketch is very apparent. Again i do feel that this i a technique which i wish to experiment with but via digital manipulation.

NANCY BURSON

COMPOSITE PHOTOGRAPHY BY NANCY BURSON

Nancy Burson produced some of the earliest computer-generated portraits, and in collaboration with MIT engineers Richard Carling and David Kramlich, became a pioneer in the now familiar territory of computer-manipulated imagery. Burson continued to collaborate with Kramlich, together the two developed a significant computer program which gives the user the ability to age the human face and subsequently has assisted the FBI in locating missing persons. In Evolution II she combined the face of a man with that of a monkey to produce an imaginary portrait of a species (as well as a technology) in transition. This image was published in a series of manipulated portraits, reproduced in the book Composites (1986).

Evolution II, 1984.

First and Second Beauty Composites (First Composite: Bette Davis, Audrey Hepburn, Grace Kelley, Sophia Loren and Marilyn Monroe. Second Composite: Jane Fonda, Jacqueline Bisset, Diane Keaton, Brooke Shields and Meryl Streep) 1982.

Mankind (Oriental, Caucasian and Black, weighted according to current population statistics) 1983-85.

Warhead I (55% Reagan, 45% Brezhnev, less than 1% each of Thatcher, Mitterand and Deng) 1982

Whist looking to find more information on the works of Nancy Burson I came across some quota

tions (comments) she had made on her work and the purpose behind some of the ideas.

"My work from the last 25 years has been asking people to see differently"

" All of my early images were visual experiments to me. They were attempts to answer unasked questions like, what happens if you put images of six men and six women together, or if we combined a monkey's image with a human, would the result approximate an image of early man?"

" Don't we have to respond to people who don't seem "normal" to us?" Will my child grow up able to accept that not everyone looks the same?"

Burson's work is borderline between art and science, she creates imagery through digitally manipulated portraits which explore the human face. The work does not portray an actual, existing person but rather someone fictitious who is created in merging of several people's features. The Technique of superimposing portrait photographs was originally developed in the late 1870's by Francis Galton.

sources: //www.mocp.org/collections/permanent/burson_nancy.php

http://nancyburson.com/pages/fineart.html

http://www.photoquotations.com/a/119/Nancy+Burson

http://arken.wp.dk/content/us/arkens_collection/photography_and_graphics/nancy_burson

FRANCIS GALTON

Galton devoted many years of study to the use of "Composite Portraiture", in which photographs of different subjects were combined, through repeated limited exposure, to produce a single blended image. Galton perfected the technical details of the method by repeated trial-and-error over many years, using apparatus of his own design. He was especially interested in the use of these composites to test if there was a recognizable criminal type revealed by them, but his experiments in this direction proved that, within the range of data available to him, no such type revealed itself. The portraits of criminals tended to blend away into normality.

Galton tried using Composite Portraits in many other applications, including identification of the chronically sick by the appearance of a "sick type". The results were, again, ambiguous at best. He was not entirely wrong about the link between physical appearance and psychological traits, however, as modern studies have shown that, for very large samples, there is indeed a weak but significant link between physical peculiarities and traits like criminality.

source: http://galton.org/composite.htm