Genius of Photography - Documents for Artists

1. What are typologies?

     The potential for making systematic and accurate records of places, people and things. They are pure documents, just the facts and nothing else.

2. What was "The Face of the Times"?

     A human typology by August Sander, published in 1929. Photographs of working class people in Germany.

3. Which magazine did Rodchenko design?

     USSR in construction - it was a showcase of political propaganda glorifying the achievements of the soviet system. It had a radical photographic style and included cutting edge graphics.

4. What is a photo-montage?

     A graphic techniques inspired by cinema montage. It holds more than one photographs together that has been cut and then put back together to give it a different meaning and perspective. Shows up photographs for what they really are, mute documents whose meaning remain fluid.

5. Why did Eugene Atget use albumen prints in the 1920s?

     Other people tried to make him use modern techniques but he said: "I don't know how to use them". He was a creature of the 19th century.

6. What is solarisation and how was it discovered?

     Man Ray discovered it in the 1920s, He was putting interesting objects on photographic paper and just by switching the light on briefly the objects printed themselves on the paper and were developed without using a camera.

7. What was the relationship between Bernice Abbot and Eugene Atget?

     Abbott, one of Man Ray's assistants took portrait photographs of Atget. She thought of him as an old, poor photographer, who was selling his pictures for nothing.

8. Why was Walker Evans fired from the FSA?

     He was commissioned to produce propaganda images for the FSA (Farm Security Administration) but after a while he couldn't fit his own vision with the propaganda expectations. He sometimes changed reality to fit his visions.