What makes a photographer when everyone is taking pictures?
PBS News
3 minutes, 2 seconds

Vivian Maier - Street Photographer

"Vivian Maier (February 1, 1926 – April 21, 2009) was an American amateur street photographer who was born in New York but grew up in France, and after returning to the U.S., worked for about forty years as a nanny in Chicago. During those years she took about 100,000 photographs, primarily of people and cityscapes most often in Chicago, although she traveled and photographed worldwide." (Quote from Wikipedia article on Vivian Maier)

Below
VIVIAN MAIER
9 minutes, 33 seconds

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VIVIAN MAIER SLIDESHOWS ON VIDEO

VIVIAN MAIER - STREET PHOTOGRAPHY - Part 1
9 minutes, 56 seconds
VIVIAN MAIER - STREET PHOTOGRAPHY - Part 2
10 minutes, 17 seconds
Below
VIVIAN MAIER - STREET PHOTOGRAPHY - Part 3
6 minutes, 5 seconds
The woman shown below, before the video starts, is not Vivian Maier. She is one of Maier's subjects.

 Many of Maier's Chicago pictures remind me of some of Bruegel's paintings where there are many, many people packed into the overall scene and much going on -- one to a few people in clusters acting out their own tiny dramas and paying no attention to the others all around, yet all of them fitting equally well into the larger setting.

Netherlandish Provers, 1559, by Pieter Bruegel, the Elder

I feel intrusive when I'm looking at Maier's photographs. I feel that I was right with her as she butted in on other people's private moments. Many street photographs look artful but not intrusive ... They look too carefully composed and they just don't seem to relate to human life in any meaningful way; they may be a "slice of life" but it's not a slice that matters. Many street photographs are neither artful nor intrusive. Many look as if they were not taken by a human being...Somehow they seem to have taken with an invisible camera. Vivian Meiers' photographs look both artful and intrusive -- artful not meaning that her photos look carefully thought out ahead by an "artist," but that she knew exactly when and where to point that camera to best capture the essence of what she was observing; plus the subjects do look in many cases as if they were intruded upon (and sometimes they knew it, and she apparently didn't care that they knew it).

Most of her photographs that I have seen were taken in downtown Chicago, the streets of which seem to have been filled with an unending supply of human interest vignettes that Maier, with camera in hand, must have been constantly on the lookout for. Obviously she was fascinated by human life. She had a sense of humor and a sense of the absurd. She was sympathetic to some, and simply fascinated by others -- by what they were doing, how they presented themselves (wittingly and/or unwittingly) in public and how they related to others (including to her) and to their surroundings.

She knew instinctively what looks odd together, such as the woman holding a doll, the man in a suit, sleeping in his car, his hat hanging on the gearshift, the old gentleman sleeping on his back on the steps of a doorway, his hat to the side (an especially odd sight since we cannot see the man's head). In another picture a well-dressed man's head is missing due to a balloon being held in front of it by a baby he's tending, and in another picture a man, smoking a cigarette, is looking in a window (we see this from inside the room) at second- or third-story level (must be a window washer), and then there's the man with a long beard and dressed as if on safari waiting to cross a street. And lots more.

One reason her photographs, at least the ones I've seen, are so powerful (I think) is that she caught people "living their lives," not posing. Even when someone stops what they're doing to look at the camera because she called their attention for that purpose, as Maier apparently did now and then, it's only for a brief second of their lives and they do not get "out of character" while watching her watching them. So although they're looking right at the photographer the result is not a "posed" picture, but rather a revealing look at the subject's immediate and natural reaction to the situation they suddenly encounter (i.e., they are being photographed), their facial expressions reflecting their own personalities and concerns.

I think we're very lucky that the man who bought Maier's pictures at that auction realized how extraordinary her photos were and has devoted himself to scanning and preserving and sharing them.

Andre Kertesz

ANDRÉ KERTÉSZ, PHOTOGRAPHER

(Born in Hungary in 1894; died in New York City in 1985)

Photographers Robert Doisneau at left, André Kertész at right, during a talk in Arles, France, in 1975 - Photo provided through Creative Commons License 3.0 by Wolfgang H. Wogerer, Wien

AN INTERVIEW WITH ANDRÉ KERTÉSZA IN FOUR VIDEOS - Watch Them Below

There are many of Kertész's photographs shown in these videos. Don't be put off by the first video because of his difficult-to-understand English. It is definitely worth the trouble of trying to pick up what one can (and the interviewer, as well as the photos shown, do help). You will be glad you were patient when you get to the second and third videos, especially. The second and third time I went back through the interview, I understood what he was saying better and better, and of course I was able to see the photographs again and again.

After Kertész moved to the United States, to New York City, in 1936, his work, in the style he had always worked in, was rejected by magazines here (though his pictures had been published in European magazines) because it was too "human," too "sentimental" and "tells too many stories." Yes, he said, they were right, as that is what his photographs are about, those are the kinds of pictures he took. He said that they wanted photographs that were mechanically perfect, that were "documents," but his were, instead, sensitive and human, and "real."

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"He left behind him a successful career and many close friends.  New York was a disaster.  His kind of photography was not understood, and magazines would not print his tender and sober images." (From second video, see below)

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Nevertheless, he did some magazine work here in the U.S., though not able to fully exercise his unique creativity in the assignments he was given (for example he worked for House and Garden from 1945 to 1962), and he was very disappointed, but he stayed.  After he left House and Garden he was finally able to take the kinds of pictures he wanted to again.  Now he is recognized as the fine photographer that he was.

Note that you can watch these videos in a much larger size in the Thinking About Art Library.

André Kertész - Part 1

Master Photographers BBC series (1983)
9 minutes, 55 seconds

When first video finishes, scroll down to the next video

WHEN THIS VIDEO FINISHES, SCROLL DOWN BELOW TO THE NEXT ONE
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André Kertész - Part 2
Master Photographers BBC series
10 minutes, 20 seconds



WHEN THIS VIDEO FINISHES, SCROLL DOWN BELOW TO THE NEXT ONE
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André Kertész - Part 3

Master Photographers BBC series
7 minutes, 33 seconds



WHEN THIS VIDEO FINISHES, SCROLL DOWN BELOW TO THE NEXT ONE
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André Kertész - Part 4
Master Photographers BBC series
3 minutes, 53 seconds

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Here is another interview with Kertész, which you can read rather than listening to. It appears to be a transcription of a filmed interview. This is quite different than the interview in the videos, above. Almost every bit of this is regarding his experiences with photography from childhood until before he came to the U.S.

An excellent NY Times article on André Kertész (2005)


"Everything is a subject. Every subject has a rhythm. To feel it is the raison d'être. The photograph is a fixed moment of such a raison d'être, which lives on in itself." - André Kertész

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Alfred Stieglitz

Alfred Stieglitz - 1902
Photographer: Gertrude Kasebier

Alfred Stieglitz (1864-1946) was "an American photographer and modern art promoter who was instrumental over his fifty-year career in making photography an accepted art form." (Quote is from Wikipedia article on Stieglitz.)

Although Stieglitz was born in Hoboken, New Jersey (January 1, 1864), his parents were from Germany. In fact, the family moved back to the home country in 1881, when Alfred was a teenager. There he attended the equivalent of high school in Karlsruhe, then studied mechanical engineering in Berlin. He fell in love with photography at that time and traveled through the countryside in Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands taking pictures (he received a large allowance from his father). All of the family except Alfred returned to the U.S. in 1884 - Stieglitz stayed on until he was called back by his family in 1890. By then he was thoroughly dedicated to photography, had read extensively on the subject, and had written regular articles on photography for magazines in England and Germany. Also, he was winning prizes for his photographs.

When he got back to the U.S. in 1890, he was in his twenties. He already considered himself an artist (with a camera) and did not look for employment and did not have to as his father continued to support him. Later, his first wife was also able to support him. And so, with his natural talent and sensitivity, constant hard work, unflagging enthusiasm, and unwavering love for his photographic art - and usually no need to work at anything else - he lived quite a fascinating life that ordinary people could only dream of.

Below I am including three of his photographs (one is of his second wife, artist Georgia O'Keeffe), and also one very good video. Please note that you can see this video in a much larger size and also see more videos on Stieglitz in the Thinking About Art Library.

Above: Fifth Avenue, Winter (New York City) - 1892
Photographer: Alfred Stieglitz

"My picture, 'Fifth Avenue, Winter' is the result of a three hours' stand during a fierce snow-storm on February 22nd 1893, awaiting the proper moment." - Alfred Stieglitz

Above: The Hand of Man - 1902
Photographer: Alfred Stieglitz

Above: Georgia O'Keeffe - Hands - 1918
Photographer: Alfred Stieglitz

"The ability to make a truly artistic photograph is not acquired off-hand, but is the result of an artistic instinct coupled with years of labor." - Alfred Stieglitz

ALFRED STIEGLITZ - EARLY WORK/PICTORIALISM
9 minutes, 15 seconds



VIEW THIS VIDEO - AND OTHER VIDEOS ON ALFRED STIEGLITZ - ALL IN A MUCH LARGER SIZE - in the Thinking About Art Library. There are other art-photography videos in the Library, also.
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Alfred Stieglitz - Biographical material

There are several articles on the web on Stieglitz. I liked these:

Article on Stieglitz on Wikipedia. This is a thorough one-page biography that includes many facts that are not necessary to know and yet do make him seem more like a person who is connected to the past, to what was going on in the world while he was alive, to his unique experiences in that world, to his family, to his friends, to people who didn't like him, to his lovers, and to his wives.  If one believes that a person's achievements all come entirely from within that person without outside influence of any kind, then it would not be necessary or of interest to read anything other than, for example in this case, how he composed and developed his pictures and what he did with them in the darkroom afterwards, what kinds of cameras he used, what his subjects were, etc.  There is nothing wrong with keeping an article to these sorts of facts, but neither is it a crime to place the photographer in his world, and that is what this writer has done, although certainly there are many more details than I personally think were necessary to do this effectively.  Still, if you feel like taking the time to read it, it's a good story.

New York Times article on Alfred Stieglitz - February 13, 1983  This article refers to an exhibition of Stieglitz' photographs at the National Gallery of Art. The author mentions that Stieglitz's earliest pictures (taken in Europe) were reminiscent of quiet rural genre scenes by painters such as Courbet and Millet (this kind of treatment is known as "Pictorialism"), but when he began taking his late-19th-early-20th century photographs in New York City the scene was so different that Stieglitz's style changed dramatically as he reacted to a city where much was happening and rapidly changing; and later his familiarity with and admiration for modern art seems to have made him look for more abstract compositions.
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NOTE: There is a new post on Alfred Stieglitz (Jan. 25, 2012)

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Artists and Photography - Bonnard

Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947) was a French painter and printmaker.

Bonnard's paintings were much-influenced by various factors including the ideas of Paul Gauguin (who inspired the Nabis, of which Bonnard was a member), and Japanese prints (which became widely available and influential in Europe beginning in the 1860s), and photography.

According to Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-Century Photography, Bonnard "did not begin photographic work in earnest until 1898." However, he had had his camera since the early 1890s and many of his peers, including his close friend, Vuillard, were enthusiastic photographers. So even though he may not have spent much time at it himself until 1898, Bonnard had for a long while been well aware of how photography had given us a new way to look at things and suggested new ways of painting them.

But these were just suggestions. Bonnard didn't copy photographs when he painted. He composed pictures, in fact, basically from his imagination and from memory. ("Bonnard explained that having the actual subject in front of him would distract him from his work. His art was always the result of an initial attraction to something: ‘If this attraction, this primary conception fades away, the painter becomes dominated solely by the motif, the object before him. From that moment he ceases to create his own painting.’" This quote is from an article entitled Bonnard: Observing Nature on the nga.gov.au site.

He might get something out of a photograph, but never more than a tidbit that would help him achieve the effect he wanted.

"It appears that he viewed his photographs as sketches; both were meant to inspire a mood or capture a fleeting movement for later reference." This quote is from the above-mentioned Encyclopedia of Nineteenth Century Photography, which has much more on Bonnard and photography.

But also Bonnard's compositions reflect a more general idea that was gleaned from photography by anyone who was familiar with a camera. In many of his pictures there is a "snapshot" look. Obviously these paintings were not composed to look like formal compositions of the past. Notice feet cut off at the bottom, or part of a person missing at the edge of a picture, for examples. Or very intimate subject matter that does not look as if it had been composed but, instead, had been "caught." The result is a casual look, as if something very "real" (a "slice of life") was captured and shown to us.

Because Bonnard's works are still under copyright, I can't show any of them on this post. There are many of his works shown on this page on the Metropolitan Museum of Art site. Click on a picture to see it in a larger size.

You can see a photograph of Bonnard on this site, and there is also an artistic (rather than personal and artistic) biography. Here, at AskART there is a more personal biography.

More Posts on this blog in series on artists and photography:

Edgar Degas and Photography
Degas and Photography - More
Eugène Delacroix and Photography
Édouard Vuillard and Photography
There will be more posts in this series, from time to time.

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Degas and Photography - More

In an essay in his book (which I have been reading), To The Rescue of Art, Rudolf Arnheim (1904-2007) explains how the composition of a double portrait by Edgar Degas affects how we think about the relationship between the couple portrayed. Here is the portrait:

Edmondo and Thérèse Morbilli, 1867
Edgar Degas (1834-1917)
Source: The Athenaeum

Degas painted this picture of his sister and her husband in 1867. Arnheim points out Thérèse's fearful expression, her hand on her face and the other hand barely touching her husband's back as if she's afraid of him, the shadow of her husband on her face, the fact that she is behind him and taking much less space than he does in the picture, the "reserved and suspicious" look on his face, his knee thrust "forward against the viewer," the spreading out of his elbows to take over as much room as possible (as she, in contrast, shrinks away), and "the almost brutal insensitivity of the husband's domineering right hand." As Arnheim says, "The message could not be clearer." I think we can all agree with that; this is not the kind of marriage that a woman hopes for.

Arnheim goes on to say that this type of pose was new to art, and the reason behind it was photography.

Degas did not begin taking photographs himself until he was sixty-one years old, in the mid-1890s (at which time he became a very enthusiastic photographer); however, he had been interested in photography for three decades by that time. See my earlier post on Degas and Photography.

Arnheim explained that in earlier times painters (and sculptors) portrayed their subjects in conventional ways utilizing conventional gestures; but when people who were not aware of or didn't see the need for or didn't have the patience -- or their subjects didn't have the patience -- to follow those conventions started taking pictures with cameras, there were endless examples of "unposed" or "accidental" poses. "What is new here," writes Arnheim about this painting, "is that the telling constellation is caught in the kind of accidental pose that may come about when the visiting brother asks the family to let him take a snapshot."

In other words, as I understand it, he meant not that Degas caught them in such a pose and got it down fast; rather, Degas was aware of what an accidental pose could reveal and so he invented a very un-accidental "accidental-looking" composition in order to say what he wanted to say about the couple. The result is that it looks very real to us and we feel a great deal of uneasiness when looking at the picture.

I don't mean to imply that what we "know" about this couple as a result of seeing this painting is the complete truth about them, or even that it our interpretation (or Arnheim's) of their relationship is necessarily completely accurate. The point is that how we feel about them is a result of how Degas painted them, and he was quite aware of what he was doing.

As an interesting aside, I want to add another painting, of the same couple, that Degas painted a year or two earlier. It is nothing like the painting discussed above.

Edmondo and Thérèse Morbilli, 1865-66
Edgar Degas
Source: Source: The Athenaeum

In this painting of the same couple, Degas' sister and her husband, it is his sister who is dominant and the feeling is extremely different. Between the time Degas painted this portrait and the one in 1867 the couple lost a child, and this might help explain the change in the way they felt about themselves and each other and the way they were seen by Degas, and it also might help us interpret the "signs" a little differently.
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Artists and Photography - Vuillard

Édouard Vuillard (French Nabi/Post-Impressionist painter - 1868-1940) was another artist who was taken with photography. In the mid 1890s, he acquired a simple Kodak camera which he used as a help in composing his pictures (as well as to take snapshots of his family and friends). "What was interesting in this connection was the role the camera played in distorting, foreshortening, perspectival riddles, and in the cropping of pictures frames" according to the same article.

Indeed, many of Vuillard's pictures have very unusual compositions that look as though they could have been inspired by "snapshot" views.  He did not, however, paint exactly what his camera saw; rather he used photographs as reference and rearranged elements to suit his fancy.

"His paintings are never mere copies of photographs. Always, changes in emphasis and in the handling of light transform the photographic aide-memoire into a poignant work of art." (Quote is from the Carrick Hill website.)

Square Berlioz (aka La Place Vintimille)
Édouard Vuillard - 1915
Oil on canvas - 17.72" X 29.88" (45 cm X 75.9 cm)
Source: the-athenaeum.org

The painting shown above of "La Place Vintimille" is a view from the window of Vuillard's apartment on the second floor.
"Vuillard took many photographs of Place Vintimille, from his fourth-floor windows beginning in 1909 and, after he moved in 1913, from the second floor of the same building" according to this article in Art in America.

In this article on the Christie's auction site, it states that after Vuillard became familiar with photography, there was a difference in how his pictures looked, including the use of "optical foreshortening" and "radical cropping."

In this review on the "New York Art World" site about a Vuillard exhibition at the National Gallery of Art in 2003, it states that more than 2,000 photographs taken by the artist have survived.

It seems odd to me that some see quite a lot of influence of photography on Vuillard's paintings, but others see very little. Here is an article in Slate Magazine on Édouard Vuillard (and other artists of his time) and photography that minimizes the part photography played in Vuillard's artwork, explaining that he bought his camera mainly for the purpose of taking snapshots of friends and relatives. It is admitted, though, that Vuillard did utilize the camera as a tool at times, to help him with "details" in some of his paintings. The author brings up something that hadn't occurred to me, which is the idea that it must have been unsettling for Vuillard to try to compose pictures (with his camera) that were not going to be seen in colors, but in black, white, and grays; and therefore he wouldn't have been inclined to think of his photographs as "art" -- but it seems to me that that is beside the point (which is that he did or did not use material from some of his photographs as aids in making some of his paintings -- There is no reason at all for photographs to be "artistic" in order to be of this kind of use).

This is the third in a series on artists and photography. Here are the others (and there will be more in the future):

Edgar Degas and Photography
Eugène Delacroix and Photography

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Artists and Photography - Degas

Edgar Degas enthusiastically photographed ballet dancers, his friends, himself, and other subjects. (If you click on the "ballet dancers" link, you will come to a web page that shows three of his negatives of photographs of dancers.) He referred to photographs while making some of his paintings and drawings -- not copying entire photographs but just using parts of them as a guide to certain details such as the twisted back of a woman bending over or the arms of a ballet dancer while in a pose that was hard to keep. As pointed out on this page on the same site, Degas eventually went back to relying much more on his sketches for his paintings as at that time a camera was not capable of capturing split seconds and a pose had to be held for a very long time, making it practically impossible to photograph a movement or casual position. Besides, it's hard to capture in a photograph what we "see" in real life. We do not see, for instance, action as a series of frozen stills -- we experience it as continuous movement, and so a painting or drawing made without reference to photos (but, instead, with knowledge of how people actually experience what they see) can look more real than what is captured by a camera. Making many, many sketches of real things as he saw them turned out to be of much more use to Degas than the camera, though he did appreciate some uses of photography as an aid to an artist, and he certainly had a lot of fun with it.

There is quite a lot more on Degas and photography on the above-mentioned site, and I recommend you click around to different pages.

Four Dancers - c. 1899
Oil on canvas
Edgar Degas, French Realist/Impressionist Painter and Sculptor,
1834-1917
Source: Humanities Web

The painting above is one of those that was made with the help of photographs.

According to this article, although Degas had been interested in photographs three decades earlier, he did not take up photography himself until he was sixty-one years old. "[In] a burst of creative energy that lasted less than five years, [Degas] threw himself into photography for a short but intense period." There is much more in this article about Degas and photography.

This article, entitled "Camera Obscura," in Slate Magazine, is about the 1999 exhibition of Degas' photographs at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles. There are small photographs from the exhibit here, but although you are supposed to be able to enlarge them, it didn't work for me. Watch the video below on this page to see many of Degas' photographs.

Note 1: A Los Angeles Times article entitled Reframing Degas is also about the exhibition of Degas' photographs.

Note 2: Since writing this post on Degas and Photography, I've written another called Degas and Photography - More.

Note 3: Excellent article on Degas and photography. It is an article called "Dance to the music of time" in RA (Royal Academy) Magazine, Autumn 2011

Note 4: There are now four posts in this series about Artists and Photography. This on on Degas is the second. The first was about Delacroix. The third is on Vuillard and Photography, and the fourth is the second post on Degas and Photography, mentioned in the paragraph just above.

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Artists and Photography - Delacroix

There are many people who believe, sometimes very strongly, that it is "cheating" to use photographs to help one to compose drawings, paintings, or other artwork. However, many highly respected (and self-respecting) artists, from the time photography became an accessible tool for artists (in the 1800s) until the present day have found it to be a great help.  Eugène Delacroix (1798-1863) is one of them.

Many of Delacroix's paintings were based on photographs, requested by him to be made, of nude male and female models. 

"Delacroix based a number of his figures on photographs, and himself experimented in several modes of photography, regretting that 'such a wonderful invention' had not been made earlier in his career." 150 Years of Photographic Art by Jason Edward Kaufman

The Musée national Eugène Delacroix is presently exhibiting photographs Delacroix used along with the pictures he made from them. You can see some examples if you go to the museum's website (click on the link just above).

I recommend that even if you don't understand French to look at both the French and English-language pages. You can read it in the language you prefer, but the pictures aren't all the same on both pages.

In English
In French

I don't know whether Delacroix used the photograph below to as a reference in painting his self-portrait within two years of the date of the photo, but I suspect not as all he had to do was look in a mirror and he would see a much more "alive" and colorful image of himself from which to paint, but seeing these two portraits together makes me realize that a painting can look more "real" than a photograph -- or you might say more "alive" -- than a photograph.

Eugène Delacroix in 1858

Portrait by Nadar (pseudonym), real name: Gaspard-Félix Tournachon (April 6, 1820 – March 21, 1910)
Source: Wikipedia

Eugène Delacroix - self portrait, 1860
Source: Wikipedia

This is the first of a series of short posts on artists and photography.

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