Week 7

Journal Quote 11:
"I have often photographed when I am not in tune with nature but the photographs look as if I had been. So I conclude that something in nature says, 'Come and take my photograph.' So I do, regardless of how I feel. " ~Minor White 

Manifestations of the Spirit Exhibition

Chapter 7 Continued:
Photography, Social Science, and Exploration:
While Art photography was influence by science and technology, travel, exploration, survey, and social-scientific photography continued patterns set in the mid-19th century.
The idea that traditional life was disappearing so rapidly around the world that it must be recorded.  In 1889, the British Journal of Photography's Cosmo Burton said "keep a library of great albums containing a record as complete as it can be made , and permanent photographs only of the present state of the world"
And so it was understood that any expedition would most emphatically need to have a photographer and photographs documenting the travels and the people of their occurrence.
Africa: Dr. David Livingstone and his brother, Charles Livingstone, as photographer were renowned missionaries on a British exploration seeking mineral wealth and agricultural potential in a Zambezi expedition.  John Kirk replaced Charles and made some of the first camera images of African foliage, land, and people.  The Boer War (1899-1902) was not actually photographed, where horrific mortality rates in prison camps where nearly 50%, about 20,000 people died. Instead, there was staged photographs by Underwood and Underwood and then sold as stereo graphs to the public.
The National Geographic Society:
Began in 1888 as a small group of professional photographers and sponsors. Alexander Graham Bell took over the societies leadership he stressed the dissemination of knowledge, but it wasn't until 1915 that the society issued a policy statement "Absolute Accuracy" and "nothing of a partisan or controversial character is printed"
Samoa:  In Western art and literature, the Pacific Islands were long mythologized as paradise, where labor was almost unknown and physical wants, including sexual ones, were easily gratified. John Davis was the first commercial photographer in Apia (now the capital),  His photographs supported social stereotypes  as the ones above.
Criminal Likenesses:
During the  1880's these became routine in police work, (think Modoc war). In the lat 19th century the photography of criminals became standardized and less like portraits and more like Mugshots. Alphonse Bertillon developed a verbal and visual system to describe criminals.
War and Revolution:
Spanish American War: Hearst publications influence the vote for war in 1898
James Henry Hare- aka Jimmy Hare (1856-1946) war photographer.
World War 1: Governments start to take the lead on what is and is not photographed or "seen" by the public. Earnest Brooks, Photographer;

The Russian Revolution: Karl Bulla, Bulla Photography.
Philosophy and Practice:
The Real Thing by Henry James (In Class)

 
Journal Quote 12: "While there is perhaps a province in which the photograph can tell us nothing more than what we see with our own eyes, there is another in which it proves to us how little our eyes permit us to see. "
~Dorothea Lange

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