Experimental photography
Encyclopedia
Experimental photography is a phrase that includes alternative process techniques
, and broadly refers to any photographic process or product falling outside the realm of straight film or digital photography
.
s. Photography was no exception to the rule, as it too was affected by the global happenings.
sprung to life. Dada artists Hannah Höch
and Raoul Hausmann
were pioneers of an experimental photographic technique which came to be known as photomontage
. Photomontage is a process that involves making an image from the combination and composition of different photographs. It differs from the process of collage
in that the material used for composition is primarily, if not exclusively, photographs. The works created by Höch and Hausmann, as well as other Dada artists such as George Grosz
and John Heartfield
, acted as visual representations of their environment. The way the images were composed, sometimes seemingly haphazardly, reflected the quick changes to life felt during the period after World War I.
Another Dada artist who made an impact on traditional photography was Christian Schad
. He developed a photographic printing technique that was a "reinvention" of a process developed by William Henry Fox Talbot
. Tristan Tzara
called Schad's work "schadography," for various speculated reasons, including the term being a reference to both Schad's name and the German word "schaden," which means "damaged." "Damaged" is an appropriate adjective to describe Schad's work, as he used scraps of paper and various other little bits of trash to create his compositions. Schad would arrange his findings on a piece of sensitized paper, put a plate of glass over them to keep them in place, and expose the whole thing to light, sometimes adjusting elements in the composition during the exposure process.
created photographic prints by laying objects on sensitized paper and exposing the whole set-up to light. In line with constructivist
notions of industry and the machine age, Moholy-Nagy's work was composed with pieces that had a very industrial feel or look to them. His compositions, which he called photogram
s, were experiments with the boundaries of photography. Moholy-Nagy's work explored the abstract capabilities of photography, extending the medium beyond its typical use of reproducing literal images of the world. He wished to show through his works that which the naked eye alone was not capable of seeing.
movement, as it could act as a visual method of free association
. Many Surrealist photographers chose to work in this vein, literally shooting from the hip and taking photographs without framing the shot in the viewfinder first. Man Ray's
work was more calculated than that; instead he chose to keep with the trend of cameraless photography. Ray made photographs following a similar process to that of Schad and Moholy-Nagy, but used different objects to form his compositions. Ray renamed the process once again, calling his works rayographs.
Man Ray also experimented with the process of solarization
. The technique of solarization involves briefly exposing a print to a light source during development, which then produces reversed tones in the photograph. Other Surrealist photographers experimented with making normal banal subjects look extraordinary, while still others took straight photographs whose subject matter dealt with the idiosyncrasies of life. Two artists that worked in the later fashion are André Kertész
and Henri Cartier-Bresson
. Both Kertész and Cartier-Bresson looked to photograph moments in life when harmony existed, and Cartier-Bresson came to describe that critical time as "the decisive moment."
ing involves placing a negative, or other materials, on top of a piece of sensitized material, placing glass on top of the negative to force its contact with the material below, and exposing the whole set-up to light. They are listed below in alphabetical order.
process is a contact-printing technique that yields blue, or cyan, colored prints, hence their name. This process has been used by contemporary artists such as Clarissa Sligh, Tatiana Parniakova and Robin Hill.
are made using negatives, and multiple coatings and exposures of the paper and negative to light. Finished gum prints are quite painterly, and the colors can be infinitely manipulated as per the artist's desires. Contemporary artists who produce gum print include Jacqueline and Jean-Louis Giudicelli, and Stephen Livick.
s, Van Dykes
and kallitype
s are three similar processes in which a paper is coated with a light-sensitive solution. These three processes all use sodium of some sort, hence their grouping as salted paper prints. Each of the three processes yields different colored prints, with both calotypes and Van Dykes being different shades of brown, and kallitypes ranging from warm black to ultra-black tones depending on the composition of the developer used on the prints.
Alternative process
The term alternative process refers to any non-traditional, or non-commercial photographic printing process. Currently the standard analog photographic printing process is the gelatin-silver process, and standard digital processes include the pigment print, and digital laser exposures on...
, and broadly refers to any photographic process or product falling outside the realm of straight film or digital photography
Photography
Photography is the art, science and practice of creating durable images by recording light or other electromagnetic radiation, either electronically by means of an image sensor or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film...
.
Historical background
Between the years of 1918 to 1945, the world was experiencing a great deal of change during the time of the World warWorld war
A world war is a war affecting the majority of the world's most powerful and populous nations. World wars span multiple countries on multiple continents, with battles fought in multiple theaters....
s. Photography was no exception to the rule, as it too was affected by the global happenings.
Dada
It was during this time period that DadaDada
Dada or Dadaism is a cultural movement that began in Zurich, Switzerland, during World War I and peaked from 1916 to 1922. The movement primarily involved visual arts, literature—poetry, art manifestoes, art theory—theatre, and graphic design, and concentrated its anti-war politics through a...
sprung to life. Dada artists Hannah Höch
Hannah Höch
Hannah Höch was a German Dada artist. She is best known for her work of the Weimar period, when she was one of the originators of photomontage.-Biography:...
and Raoul Hausmann
Raoul Hausmann
Raoul Hausmann was an Austrian artist and writer. One of the key figures in Berlin Dada, his experimental photographic collages, sound poetry and institutional critiques would have a profound influence on the European Avant-Garde in the aftermath of World War I.-Early biography:Raoul Hausmann was...
were pioneers of an experimental photographic technique which came to be known as photomontage
Photomontage
Photomontage is the process and result of making a composite photograph by cutting and joining a number of other photographs. The composite picture was sometimes photographed so that the final image is converted back into a seamless photographic print. A similar method, although one that does not...
. Photomontage is a process that involves making an image from the combination and composition of different photographs. It differs from the process of collage
Collage
A collage is a work of formal art, primarily in the visual arts, made from an assemblage of different forms, thus creating a new whole....
in that the material used for composition is primarily, if not exclusively, photographs. The works created by Höch and Hausmann, as well as other Dada artists such as George Grosz
George Grosz
Georg Ehrenfried Groß was a German artist known especially for his savagely caricatural drawings of Berlin life in the 1920s...
and John Heartfield
John Heartfield
John Heartfield is the anglicized name of the German photomontage artist Helmut Herzfeld...
, acted as visual representations of their environment. The way the images were composed, sometimes seemingly haphazardly, reflected the quick changes to life felt during the period after World War I.
Another Dada artist who made an impact on traditional photography was Christian Schad
Christian Schad
Christian Schad was a German painter associated with Dada and the New Objectivity movement. Considered as a group, Schad's portraits form an extraordinary record of life in Vienna and Berlin in the years following World War I.- Life :Schad was born in Miesbach, Upper Bavaria, to a prosperous...
. He developed a photographic printing technique that was a "reinvention" of a process developed by William Henry Fox Talbot
William Fox Talbot
William Henry Fox Talbot was a British inventor and a pioneer of photography. He was the inventor of calotype process, the precursor to most photographic processes of the 19th and 20th centuries. He was also a noted photographer who made major contributions to the development of photography as an...
. Tristan Tzara
Tristan Tzara
Tristan Tzara was a Romanian and French avant-garde poet, essayist and performance artist. Also active as a journalist, playwright, literary and art critic, composer and film director, he was known best for being one of the founders and central figures of the anti-establishment Dada movement...
called Schad's work "schadography," for various speculated reasons, including the term being a reference to both Schad's name and the German word "schaden," which means "damaged." "Damaged" is an appropriate adjective to describe Schad's work, as he used scraps of paper and various other little bits of trash to create his compositions. Schad would arrange his findings on a piece of sensitized paper, put a plate of glass over them to keep them in place, and expose the whole thing to light, sometimes adjusting elements in the composition during the exposure process.
Constructivism
Following in Schad's footsteps, László Moholy-NagyLászló Moholy-Nagy
László Moholy-Nagy was a Hungarian painter and photographer as well as professor in the Bauhaus school. He was highly influenced by constructivism and a strong advocate of the integration of technology and industry into the arts.-Early life:...
created photographic prints by laying objects on sensitized paper and exposing the whole set-up to light. In line with constructivist
Constructivism (art)
Constructivism was an artistic and architectural philosophy that originated in Russia beginning in 1919, which was a rejection of the idea of autonomous art. The movement was in favour of art as a practice for social purposes. Constructivism had a great effect on modern art movements of the 20th...
notions of industry and the machine age, Moholy-Nagy's work was composed with pieces that had a very industrial feel or look to them. His compositions, which he called photogram
Photogram
A photogram is a photographic image made without a camera by placing objects directly onto the surface of a photo-sensitive material such as photographic paper and then exposing it to light. The result is a negative shadow image varying in tone, depending on the transparency of the objects used...
s, were experiments with the boundaries of photography. Moholy-Nagy's work explored the abstract capabilities of photography, extending the medium beyond its typical use of reproducing literal images of the world. He wished to show through his works that which the naked eye alone was not capable of seeing.
Surrealism
Photography was an essential part of the SurrealistSurrealism
Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....
movement, as it could act as a visual method of free association
Free association (psychology)
Free association is a technique used in psychoanalysis which was originally devised by Sigmund Freud out of the hypnotic method of his mentor and coworker, Josef Breuer....
. Many Surrealist photographers chose to work in this vein, literally shooting from the hip and taking photographs without framing the shot in the viewfinder first. Man Ray's
Man Ray
Man Ray , born Emmanuel Radnitzky, was an American artist who spent most of his career in Paris, France. Perhaps best described simply as a modernist, he was a significant contributor to both the Dada and Surrealist movements, although his ties to each were informal...
work was more calculated than that; instead he chose to keep with the trend of cameraless photography. Ray made photographs following a similar process to that of Schad and Moholy-Nagy, but used different objects to form his compositions. Ray renamed the process once again, calling his works rayographs.
Man Ray also experimented with the process of solarization
Solarisation
Solarisation is a phenomenon in photography in which the image recorded on a negative or on a photographic print is wholly or partially reversed in tone. Dark areas appear light or light areas appear dark...
. The technique of solarization involves briefly exposing a print to a light source during development, which then produces reversed tones in the photograph. Other Surrealist photographers experimented with making normal banal subjects look extraordinary, while still others took straight photographs whose subject matter dealt with the idiosyncrasies of life. Two artists that worked in the later fashion are André Kertész
André Kertész
André Kertész , born Kertész Andor, was a Hungarian-born photographer known for his groundbreaking contributions to photographic composition and the photo essay. In the early years of his career, his then-unorthodox camera angles and style prevented his work from gaining wider recognition...
and Henri Cartier-Bresson
Henri Cartier-Bresson
Henri Cartier-Bresson was a French photographer considered to be the father of modern photojournalism. He was an early adopter of 35 mm format, and the master of candid photography...
. Both Kertész and Cartier-Bresson looked to photograph moments in life when harmony existed, and Cartier-Bresson came to describe that critical time as "the decisive moment."
Contact-Printing Techniques
These photographic techniques are primarily historical in origin, and have been revisited by numerous contemporary photographers. The general processes of contact printContact print
A contact print is a photographic image produced from film; sometimes from a film negative, and sometimes from a film positive. The defining characteristic of a contact print is that the photographic result is made by exposing through the film negative or positive, onto a light sensitive material...
ing involves placing a negative, or other materials, on top of a piece of sensitized material, placing glass on top of the negative to force its contact with the material below, and exposing the whole set-up to light. They are listed below in alphabetical order.
Cyanotypes
The cyanotypeCyanotype
Cyanotype is a photographic printing process that gives a cyan-blue print. The process was popular in engineering circles well into the 20th century. The simple and low-cost process enabled them to produce large-scale copies of their work, referred to as blueprints...
process is a contact-printing technique that yields blue, or cyan, colored prints, hence their name. This process has been used by contemporary artists such as Clarissa Sligh, Tatiana Parniakova and Robin Hill.
Gum Prints
Gum printsGum bichromate
Gum bichromate is a 19th century photographic printing process based on the light sensitivity of dichromates. It is capable of rendering painterly images from photographic negatives. Gum printing is traditionally a multi-layered printing process, but satisfactory results may be obtained from a...
are made using negatives, and multiple coatings and exposures of the paper and negative to light. Finished gum prints are quite painterly, and the colors can be infinitely manipulated as per the artist's desires. Contemporary artists who produce gum print include Jacqueline and Jean-Louis Giudicelli, and Stephen Livick.
Salted Paper Prints
CalotypeCalotype
Calotype or talbotype is an early photographic process introduced in 1841 by William Henry Fox Talbot, using paper coated with silver iodide. The term calotype comes from the Greek for 'beautiful', and for 'impression'....
s, Van Dykes
Van dyke brown
Van Dyke Brown is an early photographic printing process. The process was so named due to the similarity of the print color to that of a brown oil paint named for Flemish painter Van Dyck.-Printing:...
and kallitype
Kallitype
Kallitype is a process for making photographic prints.Patented in 1889 by W. W. J. Nicol, the Kallitype print is an iron-silver process. A chemical process similar to the Van dyke brown based on the use of a combination of ferric and silver salts. Many developing solutions can be used to give a...
s are three similar processes in which a paper is coated with a light-sensitive solution. These three processes all use sodium of some sort, hence their grouping as salted paper prints. Each of the three processes yields different colored prints, with both calotypes and Van Dykes being different shades of brown, and kallitypes ranging from warm black to ultra-black tones depending on the composition of the developer used on the prints.
See also
- List of photographers
- List of photographic processes
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- Photo manipulationPhoto manipulationPhoto manipulation is the application of image editing techniques to photographs in order to create an illusion or deception , through analog or digital means.- Types of digital photo manipulation :...
- PhotographyPhotographyPhotography is the art, science and practice of creating durable images by recording light or other electromagnetic radiation, either electronically by means of an image sensor or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film...
- Toy cameraToy cameraToy cameras are simple, inexpensive film box cameras made almost entirely out of plastic, often including the lens. The term is misleading, since they are not merely 'toys' but are in fact capable of taking photographs. Many were made to be given away as novelties or prizes...