Chapter 13 explores The Camera Arts, media which allow artists to explore the fourth dimension—time. The images that come from still, motion pictures and video cameras are first and foremost informational. But while cameras record the world, chapter 13 will concentrate on their function to produce and create art. Like collage, photography is inclusive rather than exclusive. According to Robert Rauschenberg, "The world is essentially a storehouse of information. Creation is the process of assemblage. The photograph is a process of instant assemblage, instant collage."
After reading this chapter you should:
- know the following terms and expressions:
- auteur
- calotype
- camera obscura
- cross-cutting
- daguerreotype
- flashback
- interactive
- montage
- photogenic drawing
- post visualization
- wet-plate collodion process
- know the basic history of photography's development starting with the works of William Henry Fox Talbot and Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre.
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know that photography didn't kill painting, as originally feared by many painters, but actually contributed to its further development.
- know which early pioneers of the medium were among the first to recognize photography's potential as an art medium.
- see that photojournalism does not seek to aestheticize the subject, but still has the power to focus our attention on what we might otherwise avoid by placing us behind the viewfinder.
- consider what still attracts many photographers to black-and-white photography as opposed to color photography. Also consider the nuances of color that many photographers to find it preferable to black-and-white.
- consider how (WORKS IN PROGRESS) artists Jerry Uelsmann and Bill Viola have both contributed to the camera arts.
- know what aspect of film initially attracted artists to the medium and how Eadweard Muybridge and Etienne-Jules Marey may have been, in part, responsible for this attraction.
- know innovations and techniques that D.W. Griffith and Sergei Eisenstein contributed to film making. Also, consider how Andy Warhol equated "reel" time with "real" time.
- know how the evolution of popular cinema contributed to film as an art genre. Which movie directors became known as auteurs?
- know the advantages that video has over film for artists, and the who art thought to be the primary pioneers of the medium. Consider why the works of artists such as William Wegman, Bill Viola, and Gary Hill are better suited to video than perhaps any other medium. How have women artists both used and impacted video?
Of all the arts, perhaps none seem to have more elements of realism and objectivity than film, video, and photography. This notion of reality, combined with the temporal characteristics of film and video have allowed artists working in these media to become great "story tellers." In Chapter 13's The Critical Process, consider how Jeff Wall brings the elements of story telling back to a "still image," and what techniques are required to tell an "almost true" story as convincingly as a documentary film?
