When a student would present me with a photograph I would often look at it upside down. I don't this works for every image, but it is a good guide to see if some form of aesthetic composition is at play.
Very cool. Apart from the the technical stuff I find it very difficult to teach photography
nikos79, I taught some technical stuff, but mainly I would say I was a facilitator, nudging them to experiment and look at the work of others. Also, to understand the value of doing something agaain and again and again. For a few years I also worked as a moderator in assessing A-level artwork for an Examining Board around the country, assessing work in photography, graphics and fine art. The fine art lecturer in my own college once brought some work to show me, where one of her own students had made many repeated drawings of her own hand of about 15 or 20 in total. The Fine Art lecturer, asked me if I thought this was a grade A, as she wasn't sure. I said definately. Do you teach nikos79?
"They are scatological and coprophagous. They photograph only their anxieties and their neuroses", referencing the works of Richard Avedon, Jean Sudre, David Hamilton, Diane Arbus, Duane Michals, and the late work of Bruce Davidson
"In photography colour remains chemical, not transcendental as it is in painting".
It's a shame such quotes exist, since they mostly show a lack of understanding on Cartier-Bresson's part. "Kids these days and their silly ideas" is what it reads as.
I’m not asking anyone to agree with it.
And I was talking about him, not you.
It's a shame such quotes exist, since they mostly show a lack of understanding on Cartier-Bresson's part. "Kids these days and their silly ideas" is what it reads as.
It would be illuminating to know how old he was when he said this. It’s a thing that happens with age. There’s your own way and the wrong way.
It would be illuminating to know how old he was when he said this. It’s a thing that happens with age. There’s your own way and the wrong way.
I partly agree with it, especially about color working very differently in photography than in painting
Seems to be often the case but I wouldn't have pegged Cartier-Bresson for being one of them. Particularly the criticism of newer photographers (all of which are now old and/or dead). It shows an unwillingness to accept that others can use the medium in their own way. It's not something he should have concerned himself with. It's like refusing to acknowledge the value of a different culture.
Meaning what? My guess is you can't come up with two cogent words to say about it. Colour photography is a different animal from black and white. Photography itself is different from painting. But colour photography "works" a lot more like painting than black and white does.
HCB also advised young photographers to study Lohte's book about composition. Anyone ever read it?
Never seen it. Do you know the title?
Maybe I should find the exact paragraph where he said and what exactly and put it here. Or maybe not even his words felt embarrassing and bad for the other artists.
What he acknowledged was that color in photography was a whole new uncontrolled parameter that he should consider, making things exponentially more difficult. And that the color in painting is a tool for transformation while in photography just a reality check
Thanks. Traités du paysage. I can't find a translation. Many copies in French available online. It looks quite an undertaking unless one's French is very good. Have you read it yourself?Treatise on Landscape Painting, 1939
There would be little or no BW photography if color film were developed first.
Thanks. Traités du paysage. I can't find a translation. Many copies in French available online. It looks quite an undertaking unless one's French is very good. Have you read it yourself?
Somewhat easier, I've just been studying a few photobooks upside-down out of curiosity.
Somewhat easier, I've just been studying a few photobooks upside-down out of curiosity.
I very much disagree. Black & white photography is akin to drawing and the grey scale tonal divisions enhance a certain type of aesthetic in composition.
No conclusion - at any rate, not yet.
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