Muybridge : photographic exhibition at the Tate

Tate Britain does not often show photography but the Tate as a whole has made a committment to showing photography, recognising it as an art form. However, one wondered what had made them choose Edweard Muybridge, whose work could be shown in a science museum since his photographic studies of locomotion in both animals and humans, led to a better scientific understanding of motion as a whole.

Some of Muybridge's early work reveals landscapes photographed with great attention to detail which are given wider impact by an artistic sensitivity towards composition. Using a large camera with the wet-plate collodion process (he continued with this method until the 1880's) that produced sizeable contact prints, he made images that predate and resemble those that Ansel Adams was to make in the following century for Muybridge worked a great deal in the Yosemite National Park.

Muybridge's photographs from the 1870's of San Francisco contain among them detailed 360 degree panoramas of the city before it was destroyed in the 1906 earthquake and fire. They also show the area before the building of the Golden Gate Bridge which opened in 1933.

However, Muybridge is best known for his studies of motion, made with a line of cameras that were fired one after the other by the subject passing and setting off the shutter by a trip wire. The old age question of whether that had been discussed as far back as the ancients of Greece, of whether a galloping horse ever left the ground completely or always had a foot on the ground, was finally solved; a horse when galloping can be entirely off the ground at a given moment since Muybridge was able to photograph this and show the different movements that led up to and followed it.

Although Muybridge did not actually invent cinematography, he certainly anticipated it as he did many other things. One might point to the case of O.J.Simpson who many consider escaped justice after killing his wife and her lover for Muybridge on discovering his wife had an affair, went out and shot the offending man, a theatre critic, and was eventually acquitted by a jury.

Yet, Muybridge also influenced many artists which is perhaps the main reason his work is being shown at Tate Britain. Degas is one artist who copied directly from his work, with one of his bronze sculpture's being of an image of a horse called Daisy and named 640 after a negative that had recorded it. Muybridge was aware of just how little artists really new about motion and so was able to show them not just a new way of conveying it but of a much more realistic one too though many may not have fully realised this at the time.

The surrealists were also affected by Muybridge's studies as were more recent artists such as Francis Bacon.  Yet his work also influenced many photographers.

If Art can be said to make us see the world differently then Muybridge is a great artist and a realsitic one too.

Eadweard Muybridge from Front Row, Radio 4, september 6'th 2010

Eadweard Muybridge broke new ground in the emerging art form of photography. Best known for his extensive portrayal of animal and human subjects in motion, he was also a landscape photographer, documentary artist and inventor. Joanna Pitman reviews a new retrospective at Tate Britain, London

M was both scientist and artist as his photography reveals.

An artistic sensibility but carefully and thoughtfully considered photographs!

Landscape pictures of American West. Commissioned to photograph Alaska that had just been bought by the American government.

First to climb up Yosemite with plate glass cameras. Dangerous .. porters refused to follow!

Used skies from other photographs even cut down trees to create better views.

Wife Flora, left alone when M went off on trips. She had an affair with someone and when M found out, M went and killed him. Was however, acquitted in court!

Art and Photography

The relation between the two has created many a discussion, book and article.

Last night, the discussion came from a BBC Nature programme called Springwatch where wildlife photographer Chris Packham was talking about a spectacular photograph of a Brown-headed Gull flying directly at the camera; the detail is captured perfectly along with the intent gaze of the bird while there is artistic flair in the spread of the wings. Chris Packham thought the image could be taken further via Photoshop by copying one foot of the bird and flipping it over to cover the other foot of the bird which is hanging limper.

This strive for perfection is what one might call art while photography accepts that nature is not perfect and that lack of symmetry can be a strength rather than a weakness in the final image.

reply to inquiry about my After Vermeer photo from an OCA art teacher

Dear Emma

Thanks for your interest in my work! May I ask where you saw it!?

My website is www.amanosamarpan.com

If you like I can send you a card-print of the work, Milkedmaid from the After Vermeer competition, since I still have dozens left from the 100 the OCA printed for me. Let me know your address.

I have looked at your website ... always like to see work by artists.

I wonder though if you realise my work is actually a photograph rather than a painting?

One of the other entrants to the After Vermeer competition remarked that she could have easily done a photograph herself rather than go the trouble of making a painting. I did not reply to her directly but pointed out that I did spend a lot of time making this image even if it only took 1/15'th of a second to take.

The photographic session took less than an hour although it took longer to set up and find a suitable place. What actually took a lot of time, several hours in fact, was working over the image in Photoshop. Removing unwanted objects such as shelves in the background was the easier part, creating the right contrast and appropriate colours was not so easy as one never quite knows what a photograph might look like on someone else's screen or when printed.

I expect you know that there is little doubt that Vermeer used a camera lucida. For some artists, it is hard to accept the fact that some of the Great Masters used this device, an approach enlarged upon in David Hockney's book Secret Knowledge.

If you want to know more about the technical procedure I used in Photoshop, I could send you a screen grab of the layers from a Photoshop file. I do not have a set method though I do usually start with basic optimisation which means balancing contrast , brightness and colours. After this, it is a matter of changing the image to meet one's vision. For instance, the carton of orange juice was moved a few inches so that it stood in a more fitting place while the text on the carton was also changed!

I do not consider my work art, it is merely photography. If you do not like my photography that is fine, you do not have to look at it. However, you have and I am flattered that a tutor of art at the OCA should consider my work worthy of consideration.

With Thanks

Amano

about this ART OF PHOTOGRAPHY blog

Although I have finished the Open College of the Arts module 1 course called Art of Photography, I still muse over it and even contemplate redoing it!

The relationship between art and photography is an interesting albeit largely academic one.

It does seem that nowadays, there are many artists who use photography but not so many photographers whose work is worthy of being called art. One does surely need to know a few basics relating to exposure since these relate to both the moment of making an image as well as to outputting that image in the chosen media.