charles sheeler

CMoore · Jun 23, 2016

A pretty big name i suppose, but i am just learning about all these people. I really dig the machine, factory industrial, empty, style of his stuff.
I really find his photos to be fascinating and a bit awe inspiring. They can bring a feel of humility that is incredible.
I guess (in general) i long to capture that Big Sense Of Scale that are in many of his pics.
Anyway.....i get the feeling he is a guy that would qualify as a Master Photographer.

gone · Jun 23, 2016

Sheeler was the right man at the right time. His stark photographs of industrial constructions, always so perfectly observed and composed, transcended their stark utilitarian providence at the precise moment that America was stepping full force onto the path of brute factory industrialism. He intuitively understood that dispute their cold, utilitarian appearance, industrial buildings, artifacts and machines contained the living, breathing heart and soul of the life that created them. It was his great genius that allowed him to photograph unpeopled industrial landscapes in a way that always contained them by their very absence. In his photographs, humanity is more alive by their lack of presence than if they were clearly visible. Sheeler somehow managed to capture something greater than simple apparent reality

CMoore · Jun 23, 2016

Jesus.....you have put to words, exactly what i feel when looking at his prints.
I am assuming that some of these shots of his would not have looked as good if they had been shot in a smaller format.?
That sense of scale and life that you talk about, would He/I be able to capture that as well ( you know..."all else being equal") with a 35mm SLR.?
His Experience and Abilities aside, would those shots be as "breath taking" had they been shot with a Nikon F2.?
You know what I am trying to ask.......
Thank You

gone · Jun 23, 2016

Yeah, there is something spiritual going on there for sure. I could live to be 200 and never make anything like he did, because he saw something that I can't see except through his photographs. The video works much better for me w/ the sound muted. He once said that "Photography is nature seen from the eyes outwards. Painting is nature seen from the eyes inward". In his hands, photography was also seen from the eyes inward.

benjiboy · Jun 24, 2016

I've been into photography for more than sixty years and I've never heard of him.

Jim Jones · Jun 24, 2016

momus said:
. . . The video works much better for me w/ the sound muted. . . . .

Yes, indeed. A clean presentation of such images without superficial babble gives us a better appreciation of such photography than an attempt to make a lively video. This was a lesser flaw in Ric Burns' documentary on Ansel Adams. It was natural for one with an interest in Weston, Ansel Adams, and 20th century art to be led to Sheeler's work.

DREW WILEY · Jun 24, 2016

He was primarily a painter. But as a photographer he brilliantly grappled with aesthetic tension between a three dimensional world and a two-dimensional plane in the print - an important theme in the 1920's Constructivism. Carlton Watkins was even more prescient in certain images, by
decades, so is also regarded as one of the predecessors of Modernism in photography, with both producing works beyond their mere historic interest
to us today. Take your time with these images and you might understand what I mean. For example, is the image posted above, from that link, intended as a two-dimensional picture, or does it hold a kind of subtle tension inviting you, at the same time, into a three dimensional world. It's
the ambiguity itself that evidences his genius. Any fool with a wide-angle lens could have bagged the nominal subject if here were there; but it wouldn't elicit the same effect.

pbromaghin · Jun 24, 2016

Amazing. I've never heard of him nor seen his work, even in passing. But this is exactly the look and aesthetic I have been trying for in my own photography, without ever having more than the vaguest idea of what it is. Thank you so much for posting this. But alas, how to proceed without being accused of blind imitation?

Jim Jones · Jun 24, 2016

pbromaghin said:
. . . But alas, how to proceed without being accused of blind imitation?

To paraphrase Isaac Newton, "If you see farther than other photographers, it is because you are brave enough to stand on the shoulders of giants."

pbromaghin · Jun 24, 2016

Jim Jones said:
To paraphrase Isaac Newton, "If you see farther than other photographers, it is because you are brave enough to stand on the shoulders of giants."

So, enter into a period of intense imitation until I understand, and then move beyond?

rwjr · Nov 20, 2017

charles sheeler was an artist & photographer of the ( american ) precisionist movement , the precisionist artists & photographers took for it's main themes the industrialization & modernization of the american landscape . i like his photography work very much

charles sheeler

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