Dorothea Lange

Following her studies at Columbia University in New York under Clarence H White between 1917 and 1919, Dorothea Lange started out as an independent portrait photographer in San Francisco. Shocked by the number of homeless people in search of work during the great depression, she decided to take pictures of people in the street to draw attention to their plight. In 1935 she joined the farm security administration (fsa) and reported on living conditions in the rural areas of the USA. In an unflinchingly direct manner she documented the bitter poverty of migrant workers and their families.

Dorothea Lange's pictures not only showed the hopelessness and despair, but also the pride and dignity with which people endured their circumstances. One of the most famous and most frequently published photographs of the FSA project is "Migrant Mother" the portrait of a Californian migrant worker with her three children. The face of the young woman is marked by wrinkles, the gaze full of worry directed in the distance. To the right and the left the two children, seeking protection, lean against her shoulders, hiding their faces from the camera, while the small baby has fallen asleep on its mother lap. This highly concentrated, tightly composed image has made Dorothea Lange an icon of socially committed photography.

David Octavius Hill

David Octavius Hill was described as one of history's most important portrait photographers, who actually was a landscape painter and lithographer.

He resorted to photography only as an aid for executing an unusual assignment that he was given in 1843. He was commissioned to paint a group portrait of the 457 man and women who participated in the founding convention of the free church of Scotland in Edinburgh.

At the suggestion of his friend Sir David Brewster, Hill decided first to photograph all the delegates individually, and then to use the resulting pictures as guides for the rendering their facial features correctly in the painting of the group.

He was fortunate in securing the cooperation of a competent photographer, Robert Adamson, who had opened a photographic studio in Edinburgh a short time earlier. Even though the photographs were initially intended as a short of memory aid, the two men did not concentrate exclusively on the facial features of their clients. Instead they created elaborate and well composed portraits in the style of painted portraits of their time.

Some of their portraits, those that show ladies robed in luxuriant silk garments, are even reminiscent of Dutch painting of the 17th century.

 Nearly all the portraits were made outdoors, with exposure times of several minutes. As backdrops they used an open air studio on Carlton Hill and the baroque monument of Greyfriars Cemetery.

August Sander

After working in the mines for seven years and serving in the military, August Sander studied painting in Dresden between 1901 and 1902. His intention was to enhance his artistic skills, in order to apply them to his interest in photography, which he had developed on numerous trips and while working at many photographic business in Berlin, Magdeburg, Leipzig, Halle and Dresden in 1898 band 1899.

Finally, in 1902 he moved to Linz where he first worked at studio Greif and then in 1904 founded the August Sander studio for artistic photography and painting. In 1909 he returned to Cologne, where he founded his studio in Lindenthal in 1910.

There he began his life's work, people of the 20th century, which occupied him into the fifties. In the thirties he got into trouble with the National Socialists on account of his son's political activities, causing him in those years to devote himself almost exclusively to taking pictures of landscapes in the Rhine River area and in old Cologne. Prior to that, by publishing the mirror of Germany and face of the times, he was able to accomplish at least the initial stage of his idea of  an encyclopedic and systematic picture of the German people.

Finally in 1980 his son Gunther, collaborating with Ulrich Keller, published the combined work under the original title "people of the 20th century". After the destruction of his studio and archive in 1944, Sander moved to Kuchhausen in the Westerwald region, where he continued working under the most primitive conditions. His name almost forgotten in Cologne until L. Fritz Gruber showed his work at photokina in 1951 and arranged for his pictures of Old Cologne to be taken over by the museum of the city of Cologne.

Sander's portrait work constitutes an important contribution to the recognition of photography as an art. Today his systematic approach is viewed as an early example of conceptual art, which was also not with out influence on the development of the creative arts. He is now considered to be Germany's internationally best known photographer of this century.

Assignment 208 Theme 2

STATEMENT OF INTENT

Candidate name:-               Charlotte Allen
Theme:-                              People and portrait
Title of the theme:-             Natural Life

Intentions/purpose of the photography to be undertaken

1) Take a minimum of 10 images of people in there natural state in a natural environment, in my case on a farm.

2) I would like to take images of people working at work on the farm.

3) I would also like to put some of my work in black and white.

4) I can do both parts of my course at the same time the nature and the portrait

5) Take some images both in Derbyshire and in Scotland as we own a farm in derbyshire and my brother works on a farm in Scotland and i think this will enable me to put some variation in my work.

Reason for selection of theme (including inspiration from the work of other)

I am going to try to join up my to assignments Theme 1 and 2 as i want to do it all based around the life on the farm and the people that work on it a little bit like the work of Paul Strand this is on of the main reasons for choosing this as i like his work and enjoy looking at it.

I also have been brought up on a farm and this subject really interest me.

I have chosen people and portrait because i have two small children and enjoy photographing them but don't seem to quite get it right.

I did not choose the studio assignment because i don't have the ready access to a studio and feel i enjoy photographing people in there natural way in an environment they are comfortable in.

I have been looking at the work of Paul Strand and i am going to try to do the same thing with my work all natural in there every day life.

I would like to do some of my work in black and white like the work of Johnathan Chritchley.

The photo imaging and equipment and medium that will be used and why

I have got a Canon powershot S5 IS 8.0 mega pixels with a 4 gb sansdis. Unfortunately i can not change the lens on this camera so hopefully i will be able to borrow a camera of my fathers friend this is a Canon EOS 450d with a Sigma DC 18 - 200mm 1:3 .5 - 6.3 lens.

I would like to buy a new camera but at the moment don't really know what i want and don't want to just go out and buy the first thing i see, i would like to learn first what i want to get out of the camera.

As i am shooting outdoor i will take an umbrella with me and cloths to clean the lens just in case the English weather decides to rain.

I would also like to invest in a tripod which will keep the camera nice and still and will produce a sharper picture.

I have now been out and brought a new camera its a canon 550 d with a ef-s 18 - 55 and a canon EF 70 - 300 f/4-5.6 is lens

Techniques that will be used and how they will help convey the visual message

When i am photographing a person i am going to try to make the person stand next to a wall, wood or a solid back ground to try to get the same theme running through my pictures and allow the viewer to be drawn to the person not the back ground.

I am going to try to photograph people/farmers in the working environment in there natural state no dressing up just as they stand.

I will also going to  photograph people/farmers in their work place and on  machinery as this is a visual message of what job they are doing on a day to day basis.

How light quality can be used to help convey the visual message

Farmers work in all weather conditions so i should get a good variation of light.

Try different iso setting and shutter speed to get the best out of my camera.

Safety considerations

Always beware of the persons needs that you are photographing.

As i am going to try to photograph people in the farming environment so always be aware of moving machinery and animals.

Always be aware of the environment around you.

When in the countryside make sure all equipment and littler is taken with you as this could be eaten by animals or spoil the environment around you.

LEWIS W.HINE

Lewis W.Hine

1974 – 1940

Lewis W.Hine was born in 1874 in Oshkosh Wisconsin USA.

After his father died in an accident he began working and saved his money for a college education.

He became a teacher in New York City at the ethical culture school where he encouraged his students to use photography as an educational medium, the classes travelled to Ellis Island in New York harbour photographing the thousands of immigrants who arrived each day.

Between 1904 and 1909 Hine took over 200 plates (photographs) and eventually came to the realization that his vocation was photojournalism.

Hine became a photographer for the National Child Labour Committee (NCLC) and left his teaching position.

Hine photographed people in there working life, such as life in the steel making districts, people of Pittsburgh and in World War 1 he photographed for the American Red Cross.

Hine made a series of “work portraits” which emphasized the human contribution to modern industry.

Despite his professional successes, Hine found it hard to keep his head above water leading him to accept the offer to document the construction of The Empire State Building. Hine photographed the workers in precarious positions while they secured the iron and steel framework of the structure, taking many of the same risks the workers endured. In order to obtain the best vantage points. Hine was swung out in a specially designed basket 1,000 feet above Fifth Avenue.

 In 1936, Hine was selected as the photographer for the National Research Project of the works projects administration but his work there was never completed.

The last years of his life were filled with professional struggles due to loss of government and corporate patronage. Nobody was interested in his work, past or present and Lewis Hine was consigned to the level of poverty he had earlier recorded in his pictures.

He died at the age of 66 on November 3^rd 1940 at the Dobbs Ferry Hospital after an operation.

 I have chosen the following images as they make you feel like you are actually in the photo, i lot of his images give a visual message a lot to do with child labour you can feel the hurt in there eyes, also being in black and white makes they realise that the images were taken a long time ago.

This is one of the steel work pictures in his early day of photographing people in the working enviroment.

Child labour this young girl is at work, visual message is very strong you can feel the hurt and pain is very present in her eyes.

This you boy is another of his child labour photos.

Just hope he holds on is all i can say about this picture.

The pain in this mothers eyes looking after her children the children not showing there faces you can read a lot in to this image.

 This image is well composed and the rule of the thirds is present, you would not get a photo like this any more i don't think health and safety would allow it !!!

An old man the back ground show the poverty that they lived in the visual message is it his job or just what he does in his own home it up to you to decide!!

Child labour rule of the thirds and the visual message with the young girl lookingout of the window you can feel the pain in this image.

The thing i like about these pictures are that they are all in there natural state, i know that i cant do exactly what Hine did to attache his images i don't think health and safety would let you !!! but i want to take pictures of workers farming in there every day jobs.

All of Hine images give a very strong visual message about child labour and the working life of people in the 1930's if it was not for images like these people would not have believed that things like this really went one.

Even though Hine was not very famous when he was alive, his images are now being sold at place like Ikea and are in peoples houses all around the world and are still giving a visual messages now...

Paul Strand

Paul strand (1890 – 1976)

Paul strand was born in 1890 in New York Paul Strand started work as a commercial photographer in 1912 where he experimented in soft focus lenses and enlarged negatives.

During these early years of his career he was influenced by artists including Picasso and Brancusi. In 1915 some of his work was exhibited and published in “camera work” working closely with Alfred Stieglitz.

By 1916 he had his first one man show which included images of New York and other places. In the following year (1917) he began to take close up images of machine parts.

In 1918 and 1919 he joined the Army medical corps where he worked as an x ray technician and became interested in surgery techniques. After he left the army he went to Nova Scotia where he became interested and took his first landscape photographs and close ups of rock formations.

By 1922 he purchased an Akeley motion picture camera and started to work freelance. This continued up until 1932.

During these 10 years he stayed around New York and Mexico where in his spare time he photographed machines. In fact in 1926 he photographed tree root forms and cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde.

Much of his work at this time was close up work of things such as plants, rocks and drift wood. In 1929 – 1930 he did a lot of work exploring the relationship between land and sky.

This work was undertaken both in America and Mexico, several exhibitions were staged at this time.

In 1936 at the age of 46 he married Virginia Stevens but it did not last.

During 1937 he started frontier films (and was president of the company) along with some of his friends such as Leo Hurwitz and Ralph Steiner. This work continued until 1943 when he moved to Vermont to continue his work on till photography after 10 years in the film industry.

In 1950 he moved to France to begin work on a book “Le France de profile”.

In 1951 he married for the second time to Hazel Kingsbury where France became his centre of work as well as being his home.

During the 1950’s he worked in France and Italy.

In 1954 he visited South Visit (Outer Hebrides) where he took photographs, which were eventually published in 1962 in the book “Tir a’Mhurain”

In the last few years of his life he visited Egypt in 1959 Romania and Hungary in 1960 and Ghana in 1963 at the age of 73 years many of these photographs were used in exhibitions and books. He died at the age of 86 in Orgaral in France.

Paul Strand uses black and white for all his images, what i like about his work is that everyone is in the natural state normal in there work clothes he takes the photos with the person with a solid background (wall or wood) this help with the composition of the photo, and makes the focal point being the person and not the background.

This little girl is again is stood next to wall she is not smiling and is in natural state.

This is another sort of photo he takes just a part of a person, this is taken as a close up and you can see the texture of the hands you can tell that they are an old person even though you cant see her face.

This is of men at work again wood as the background, He uses squares for the image and this frames the picture well.

The visual message is in both the picture and in what it says around her neck the rule of the thirds is present in this image.