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(0)Camera Lucida Productions.
Description
Does the decline of the darkroom mean the end of "real" photography? This program profiles contemporary artists who use a variety of methods to create photographs, from the analog-only lomographers to those who employ the computer as a camera. Adaptation of traditional techniques is seen in works by Frederic Lebain, who prefers an old Instamatic; Vera Lutter, who built a room-sized camera obscura; and in Christian Marclay's homage to 19th-century...
2) Press usage
Description
The alliance of photography with the popular press led to an era of creativity in the medium in the 1930s, with eye-catching layouts replacing the traditional rectangular photo format. But before long press photography took on a potent life of its own. The men and women behind the camera became special witnesses to current events and through newspaper reporting were able to pass their visions on to the wider world. Dorothea Lange's "Migrant Mother"...
3) Found images
Description
To create "Pictures from the Street" Joachim Schmid sifted through torn photos that had been thrown away, then patched them together to produce entirely new images, thus bringing the practices of "found art" to photography. By contrast, in "From an Ethnographic Museum" Hannah Höch made montages by combining museum-quality prints with snapshots - still a form of found photography, but with much more altering and reinterpretation of the materials....
Description
At some point during the early 20th century staged photography fell out of fashion, but in the 1960s it made a spectacular comeback, enriched by the external influences of popular culture. This program explains how staged photography has been used to deconstruct the idea of literal photographic realism. Also explored are the ways in which this art form trounces the notion of a camera's objectivity, as in Cindy Sherman's parodies of B-movie portrayals...
Description
When Jacques Henri Lartigue began taking pictures in 1901 it was for the sheer enjoyment of recording his family's daily life. Lartigue's albums were featured at the MoMA in 1963, inspiring a new movement in photography called diarism. By the 1980s the genre had become even more intimate as the diarists added increasingly radical levels of introspection to their work. This program studies photos by Nobuyoshi Araki, Nan Golden, Antoine d'Agata, John...
Description
In 1968, Bernd and Hilla Becher set out to photograph industrial buildings such as water towers, silos, and blast furnaces. Their goal was to return photography to the documentary nature of its origins and free it of "Expressionist meanderings," as German artists of the New Objectivity movement had done with other visual arts. The Dusseldorf school - the Bechers and their students - was to radically impact photography with its strict, dispassionate...
7) Pictorialism
Description
Fifty years after it was invented, photography once again sought to rival painting. The Pictorialist photographers at the turn of the 20th century reproduced the subjectivity and timeless themes of earlier visual arts by experimenting with soft focus, special lenses, printing effects, and by drawing, engraving, or painting directly onto prints. Providing an overview of the movement and its influences, this program studies the works and the methods...
Description
Walk in the street trying not to blink. Each time you blink, snap a photo. These instructions by Vito Acconci, the basis of his series "Blink," characterize the methods and philosophies of the Conceptualist Photography movement that began in the 1960s. Aided by his low-tech amateur camera, Acconci meant to deconstruct the notion of artistic subjectivity while suggesting that the open shutter replaces his closed eyes. Using works by Acconci and others,...
Description
Here Comes the New Photographer!, by Walter Graeff, was published in conjunction with Stuttgart's influential 1929 "Film und Foto exhibition" and became the handbook for a new breed of artists evolving out of the Constructivist and Bauhaus schools. New Vision photography was based on the idea that modern, urban people see the world in a different way, both figuratively and literally, and was steeped in industrial motifs. This program examines the...
Description
Nothing proves the truth of Surrealism like photography, wrote Salvador Dali in 1925. Using works by Dali, Man Ray, Dora Maar, and others, this program illustrates the philosophies of Surrealist photographers as well as the techniques they used to express a particular artistic vision. The video explains how the camera was wielded as a tool for revealing an inherent connection between real and surreal; and for revealing that, when captured on film,...
Description
Following his move to Rome, Raphael soon cornered the market in Vatican commissions-but the frescoes and tapestries that display his gifts on a grand scale are not his only legacy. Portraits focusing on intimate relationships are among Raphael's finest creations. Inviting some of the world's leading art experts to scrutinize its Raphael collection, the Louvre allowed them to come into close contact with The Portrait of Baldassare Castiglione, the...
Description
A staggering number of paintings were once thought to be Rembrandts, but of the 800 or so works attributed to the Dutch master during the 19th century, only about 300 remain authenticated. Interestingly, the 1800s were also a period in which France dominated Rembrandt collecting and research. In the 20th century, expertise shifted to Holland, Great Britain, and the U.S., leaving French holdings isolated and neglected for a time. The Louvre, however,...
Description
The artist who created the fete galante painting style achieved wide recognition during his lifetime, and yet virtually all of Antoine Watteau's major works are cloaked in mystery, raising unanswered questions as to their origins, provenances, and meanings. Should his Pilgrimage to Cythera be interpreted as an arrival or a departure? Why, and for whom, was the no less innovative Pierrot (or Gilles) brought into being? Is the air of melancholy that...
Description
Some art scholars would see it as a kind of Holy Grail experience - an invitation from the Louvre to come and scrutinize works by Leonardo, including the Mona Lisa, La Belle Ferronnière (also referred to as Portrait of an Unknown Woman) and Saint John the Baptist . This film observes just such a gathering, made up of some of the world's leading experts on the life and career of the great Renaissance figure. The guests are given access to major works...
15) The inventors
Description
I am at the dawning of a new world," wrote Nicéphore Niépce in 1827 after he used a camera obscura to fix the scene outside his window onto a metal plate, thus creating the world's first surviving photograph. "View from the Window at Le Gras" far surpassed earlier attempts to capture images using methods that only managed to reproduce outlines and shadows. This program traces the early history of photography, from Renaissance dabblings with the...
Description
Look beneath the surface of any centuries-old painting and you'll find no shortage of stories. More than likely the picture, like an ancient building, has a colorful history of damage and restoration. But some masterpieces tell a separate tale that can't be seen with the eye or a microscope. Poussin Study Day at the Museé des Beaux-Arts in Lyon focused on a single work, The Flight into Egypt, which was acquired in association with the Louvre and...
Description
With an overview of its pioneers - called "the primitives of photography" by Felix Nadar - this program explores the brief golden era between the time that photography was invented and the time it became an industry. The transformation of the camera from mere recording device to new artistic medium is seen in works that feature deliberate composition as well as in staged photos and composite prints. The technical processes by which photographers enhanced...