Burn Magazine -Curated by Magnum Photographer David Alan Harvey

This online publication features mostly documentary photographic essays by contemporary photographers. They also give away an Emerging Photographer Grant.

http://www.burnmagazine.org/

Class on Monday April 1st. - The Issues of John Szarkowski(Part#1)

On Monday we will meet in the Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery at 1pm to discuss the exhibition White Boys. Please prepare by reading the essay in the catalog or reviewing the exhibition web page http://exhibits.haverford.edu/whiteboys/ We will primarily look at the photographs in the show, discuss the artists methods, themes, the medium they are using, and how their work fits within the framework of the exhibition. 

For our first Assignment, which I am calling the Issues of Szarkowski (Part #1), please shoot a roll of film and attempt to capture the "Thing Itself" and "The Detail". Consider the effect of aperture and depth of field as you compose your image. For Monday please bring a developed roll of film and the contact sheet. On Wednesday April 3rd please be ready to show four 8x10" photographs that are your interpretations of: 

1. The  Thing Itself

2. The Detail

3. Shallow Depth of Field

4. Long Depth of Field 

Szarkwoski's essay is fully printed here http://jnevins.com/szarkowskireading.htm

This is an interesting interpretation of Szakwoski's essay from a blog called Traces of The Real - http://tracesofthereal.com/2010/02/21/introduction-to-the-photographers-eye-john-szarkowski-1966/

For our Class Tomorrow, March 27th!

Diane Arbus, Child with Toy Hand Grenade in Central Park, New York City, USA (1962)


“The magic of the image emerging from a blank piece of paper exposed to light and placed in a chemical has never left me." Bruce Davidson 

Robert Frank Contact Sheet
We will continue working in the darkroom on your prints from Monday. Our goal is to learn the use of Contrast Filters, Dodging and Burning.

Here are a few descriptions of the processes:

Print contrast is the difference between shadow and highlight areas of your print.  While good print contrast is somewhat subjective, you generally want to control print contrast to maintain good detail in both the dark shadows and bright highlights.  Print contrast is in large part determined by the contrast in your negative, which was determined by lighting, film and
exposure when taking the photo as well as by film development.   However, we can adjust contrast in the darkroom by using variable-contrast paper and variable-contrast filters. You do this by placing a variable-contrast filter between your enlarger light and the photo paper.

Filters use a rating system that generally offers a range from #0 to #5 with half step increments in between.  The higher the number, the greater the resulting contrast.

That is, #0 represents the lowest possible contrast and #5 represents the highest.  A #2 filter represents average contrast.                                                        

                                                                                                                                                   Sally Mann

Here is how to use the filters:

1.  Make a test strip and based on the results, make a well-exposed print.

2.  Examine the print for contrast.  Look closely at the range of tones.  Prints with normal contrast have both light and dark areas with grays in between.  High contrast prints have mostly dark shadows and light highlights while low contrast prints are mostly gray and lack deep blacks and/or bright whites.

3.  Determine what affect you want to achieve and whether you want to increase or decrease the contrast.  This is where the subjective part comes in- high contrast produces a hard edge; low contrast produces a softer look.  To increase the contrast, select a #2 1/2 filter or higher.  To decrease the contrast, select a filter lower than a #2.

Edward Weston 

4. Depending on the type of filter you use, you will either place the filter in the filter drawer located just below the light in the enlarger or you will hand-hold the filter just beneath the enlarger lens. The Ilford filter sheets go into the filter drawer. The smaller Kodak or Ilford filters that are in the black frames are held beneath the lens.

5.  Adding a filter affects the amount of light that hits the photo paper.  The higher the number the less light that comes through and the more likely you will need to increase the exposure time. You should make another test strip to determine whether you will need to adjust the exposure time.  The test strip will also help you determine whether you have selected the appropriate filter given the results you want.

6.  Once you have determined the proper exposure time, make a new print and examine it for both density and contrast. 

7.  Adjust the exposure time if the print is too light (more time) or too dark (less time). Replace the filter is the print is too low in contrast (switch to a higher filter#) or too high in contrast (switch to a lower filter#).

8.  Conserve paper—make another test strip before a new print if you changed filters.

From: http://loh.loswego.k12.or.us/brownn/photoII/Using%20Filters%20to%20Adjust%20Contrast.htm

Dodging and Burning: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F92D8zqN2B0 - In depth description of darkroom enlarging, dodging and burning.

Please also read and be prepared to discuss John Szarkowski's The Photographer's Eye. 

Rittai Konen and Karoline Hjorth, Eyes as Big as Plates

http://www.sadanduseless.com/2013/03/old-people-wearing-vegetation/

http://eyesasbigasplates.wordpress.com/

Panel Discussion with Hank Willis Thomas and Lunch!

Commercial Bodies: The Market of Sports and Race

Do sports and their marketing also advertise and sell race? Commercial Bodies brings together scholars, writers, artists, agents, and athletes to discuss issues Hank Willis Thomas raised in Other People's Property. How have concepts of "property" and "image," which figure prominently within the history of race, applied and worked within the development of professional sports and the increasing commercialization of college sports? How are these issues playing out amid the diversification and cross-over of media from radio and television to video games to Twitter, Facebook, and other new social media?

Friday, March 22

12:30-2pm

Stokes 106

Roundtable discussion

A panel of scholars and conceptual artist Hank Willis Thomas consider the role of race in sports, advertising, and commercial consumer culture. How have ideas of "property" and "image" informed and been informed by this history and contemporary social dynamics?

Hank Willis Thomas, conceptual artist, Other People's Property, and curator of White Boys

Adrian Burgos, Professor of History, University of Illinois, and author of Playing: America's Game: Baseball, Latinos, and the Color Line and Cuban Star: How One Negro League Owner Changed the Face of Baseball

Elizabeth Chin, Professor of Media Design, Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, CA, and author of Purchasing Power: Black Kids and American Consumer Culture

Fath Davis Ruffins, Curator and Archivist, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution

lunch will be provided

AIPAD PHOTOGRAPHY SHOW IN NYC, APRIL 6th.

I hope you can make it to NYC for this Photography Fair and exhibition. Please read about it below. The Fine Art Department will cover the cost of transportation and perhaps the entrance fee as well. Though the entrance fee is only $10 dollars for students. I would like for us to leave early Saturday morning, April 6th. 

The AIPAD Photography Show New York, one of the most important international photography art events, will be presented by The Association of International Photography Art Dealers (AIPAD), April 4-7, 2013.

More than 75 of the world's leading photography art galleries will present a wide range of museum-quality work, including contemporary, modern and nineteenth-century photographs, as well as photo-based art, video, and new media, at the historic Park Avenue Armory in New York City's Upper East Side.

http://www.aipad.com/photoshow/new-york/

We would also attend a panel discussion on Color Photography at 4pm. that day.

Color Rush: 75 Years of Color Photography in America

A talk with the curators Lisa Hostetler, Smithsonian American Art Museum, and Katherine Bussard, Princeton University Art Museum, about their current exhibition at the Milwaukee Art Museum, which surveys color photography from 1907 through 1981. Artists Barbara Kasten and John Pfahl, whose work is included in the exhibition, will also participate. They will be joined by andy Grundberg, Associate Provost, Dean of Undergraduate Studies, Corcoran College of Art and Design, Washington, DC. This panel was organized in association with Aperture Foundation on the occasion of the publication of Color Rush: American Color Photography from Stieglitz to Sherman.

PLEASE LET ME KNOW IF YOU CAN MAKE IT!! SO THAT I CAN GET BUS TICKETS FOR ALL OF US!

John Szarkowski

“One might compare the art of photography to the act of pointing. It must be true that some of us point to more interesting facts, events, circumstances, and configurations than others.” - John Szarkowski 

http://www.lensculture.com/szarkowski.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/09/arts/09szarkowski.html?pagewanted=all

Monday's class, March 25th

1. Shoot one roll of film and take notes on each exposure, the aperture and shutter speed.
2. Develop the roll of film on your own.
3. We will be printing contact sheets from this roll of film and making enlargements.
4. Read the essay and look through the Photographer's Eye by John Szarkowski. Be ready to discuss.
5. Please take a look at the images and the links provided from Chapter One. Our discussion today was cut short, but on Monday please bring any questions or comments about the rest of the reading.
6. WHITE BOYS opens this Friday. Please come to the curator talk at 4:30pm at the Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery in the Campus Center, HC.

I'm glad we made it over to the Special Collections to meet Diana and look at the images. I wish we had a little bit more time to talk about them. Perhaps we can continue our discussion in class on Monday.
Here is a link to their website and to Tri-arte where you can find a catalogue of the images in the Fine Art Photography Collection.

http://www.haverford.edu/library/special/
http://triarte.brynmawr.edu/?sid=14867&x=363402

Gustave Le Gray

"It is my deepest wish that photography, instead of falling within the domain of industry, of commerce, will be included among the arts. That is its sole, true place, and it is in that direction that I shall always endeavor to guide it. It is up to the men devoted to its advancement to set this idea firmly in their minds." - Gustave Le Gray  


http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/gray/hd_gray.htm#thumbnails

Hill and Adamson, the Callotype Masters

http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/hlad/hd_hlad.htm

http://www.flickr.com/photos/nationalgalleries/sets/72157610901994870/

The Callotype and The Pencil of Nature

http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/tlbt/hd_tlbt.htm

http://digital.nls.uk/pencilsoflight/process.htm

http://www.thepencilofnature.com/

The Daguerreotype Explained + Southworth and Hawes the early masters

http://camerapedia.wikia.com/wiki/Daguerreotype_Process

http://museum.icp.org/museum/exhibitions/southworth_hawes/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/george_eastman_house/sets/72157606223836462/

Abelardo Morrell and the Camera Obscura

http://www.abelardomorell.net/posts/category/photography/cameraobscura/

History of the Camera Obscura

"Aristotle (384-322 BC) understood the optical principle of the camera obscura. He viewed the crescent shape of a partially eclipsed sun projected on the ground through the holes in a sieve, and the gaps between leaves of a plane tree.
The Islamic scholar and scientist Alhazen (Abu Ali al-Hasan Ibn al-Haitham) (c.965 - 1039) gave a full account of the principle including experiments with five lanterns outside a room with a small hole.
In 1490 Leonardo Da Vinci gave two clear descriptions of the camera obscura in his notebooks. Many of the first camera obscuras were large rooms like that illustrated by the Dutch scientist Reinerus Gemma-Frisius in 1544 for use in observing a solar eclipse.
The image quality was improved with the addition of a convex lens into the aperture in the 16th century and the later addition of a mirror to reflect the image down onto a viewing surface. Giovanni Battista Della Porta in his 1558 book Magiae Naturalis recommended the use of this device as an aid for drawing for artists.
The term "camera obscura" was first used by the German astronomer Johannes Kepler in the early 17th century. He used it for astronomical applications and had a portable tent camera for surveying in Upper Austria.
The development of the camera obscura took two tracks. One of these led to the portable box device that was a drawing tool. In the 17th and 18th century many artists were aided by the use of the camera obscura. Jan Vermeer, Canaletto, Guardi, and Paul Sandby are representative of this group. By the beginning of the 19th century the camera obscura was ready with little or no modification to accept a sheet of light sensitive material to become the photographic camera. The other track became the camera obscura room, a combination of education and entertainment. In the 19th century, with improved lenses that could cast larger and sharper images, the camera obscura flourished at the seaside and in areas of scenic beauty. There are several pages that features images of camera obscura rooms such as this page on US park camera obscuras from our collection. Today the camera obscura is enjoying a revival of interest. Older camera obscuras are celebrated as cultural and historic treasures and new camera obscuras are being built around the world." - The Magic Mirror of Life, Jack and Beverly Wilgus 

Wednesday Class

1. Please bring the roll of film that you shot on Monday.
2. We will review Camera Functions so please bring your cameras.
3. Read Chapter 1. in the Rosenblum reading. We will be discussing the chapter and then going over to the Special Collections to look at the photographs.
4. Make sure you are planning on ordering the supplies for this class soon.

See you tomorrow!

White Boys Opening and Curator Talk

White Boys

Friday, March 22–Friday, May 3, 2013 @ The Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery. 

Opening Friday March 22nd with Curators Talk at 4:30pm. 

Curated by Hank Willis Thomas and Natasha L. Logan, White Boys charts the ways artists are aestheticizing white, male identity in the United States today. Privilege, invisibility, fear, anxiety, purity, emptiness, cowardice–whiteness and masculinity conjure an array of competing associations, emotions and imagery. Taken together, they present a perspective paradoxically ever-present and ever-absent: white is both the sum of all colors and no color at all. But how have whiteness and masculinity 'evolved' as relational constructs vis-a-vis blackness, femininity, and sexuality, modes of otherness that have often been scrutinized and alienated? Where are these terms' entrenchments, and where do they become more pliant? Through photography, video, painting, printmaking and sculpture, the 'white' and 'non-white' artists of White Boys variously imagine male whiteness within this broader network of racial and sexual tropes and identities, marking seeming commonalities and more subtle gradations.

White Boys is made possible with the support of the John B. Hurford '60 Center for the Arts and Humanities and the Mellon Tri-College Creative Residencies Program. 

http://exhibits.haverford.edu/whiteboys/

Introductions

Welcome to Arts Foundation Photography! 
I am hoping you will be checking this blog regularly through out the semester.  I will be posting class assignments, reminders about due dates, announcements about openings, talks, and screenings, and links that relate to our conversations in class. 
On Monday March 18th, we will be discussing the syllabus and course expectations, going over camera functions, shooting a roll of film and learning how to develop it. I will provide you with your first roll of film, but please bring your 35mm SLR film camera to the first class. If you do not have one and have no way of obtaining one there are a few cameras that can be loaned from the Fine
Arts Department for the semester. However, I strongly encourage you to buy your own 35mm, especially because they have significantly dropped in price . I highly recommend Nikons and Cannons. If you have any questions please don't hesitate to email me - vlitvak@haverford.edu