Lecture 8: Photography

This lecture was another chronology; the history of photography.

The first series of photos shown to us were from the 1800's. This one in particular is from 1888, from the book by Jacob Riis 'How The Other Half Live':

I find it interesting because it has a slight aggressive feel to it; the photo was not staged, so the subjects of the photo didn't really know what was happening - or the technology that was being used.

You can tell they feel slightly intimidated, at the same time as making you feel intimidated, due to the fact they seem unsure on what to do next. It's a good way to capture their ordinary every day life.

Where the first was unplanned, the gents below were ready to have this picture taken:

Lewis Hine's 'Russian Steel Workers' of 1908 and 'Duffer Boy' in 1909, were to bring attention to the child workers of factories. There's no particular sympathy for them, but they are standing in their own right.


This is an ironic photo in the sense that the magazines stuck on the walls would publish this type of photo.

Margeret Bourke-White took a series of photos "Sharecroppers Home" to try and portray the poverty that people like this boy lived in.

I think this is an interesting subject because photography can show important subjects such as poverty very simply but powerfully. You can see the torn clothes and basic furniture that this boy had to live with, which if shown in the right light can show people 'how the other half live'.

This woman on the right was the subject of Dorothea Lange's series of photos "Migrant Mother" (1936). 

She could be seen in a religious nature, in the sense of her caring about her children, no matter what poverty they live in.

In this series of photos, Dorothea Lange cropped some of the photos, to remove a thumb from the bottom corner, for example.

This shows some of the earliest signs of modernism.

Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp

I found this documentary of war photograph by George Rodger interesting, because it shows a young boy just strolling past some dead bodies - from a concentration camp - obviously unaffected by what he is seeing. 

This shows how the war affected young people's thoughts on the events that were happening around them, almost as if they think it is normal.

Robert Haeberle photographed these "People about to be shot" (1969).

Apparently, he told the shooters to stop, so that he could get a photo of these people just before they were killed.

It's interesting because you can see the despair in their faces and body language - no one knows why they were sentenced to death, or what was going through their minds as they were lined up to be shot...

It is a rare moment to capture on film, so Haeberle took the opportunity when he could, and captured the emotions well.

This is the last photo that was shown in the lecture.

"this work brings together" says the artist "in a very dense way, all the obsessions of my earlier works; traces, scars, the destruction of human presence, or the obstacles of all kinds that are built in order to keep others out".

This quote that was shown with the photo makes sense; it gives the destruction of this road more meaning, since it represents how we sometimes destroy our planet or each other.

Learning some historical facts about Photographers and their work has been interesting, since I never knew photographs could have such big background stories/meanings.