Assignment 3, Colour

For this assignment I have decided to make a study of still life photography throughout its history. Still life has always appealed to me as it gives you the opportunity to use your imagination and be truly creative, it does not get much press these days, if you pick up any photography magazine you will find tips on all other type of photography, but not still life.
    I thought it would be interesting to apply the colour relationships required for this assignment to styles of still life photography that were originally in black and white, interesting it was, but also quite difficult. As Henri Cartier-Bresson stated it is difficult enough to organise form in photography " imagine having to think about colour on top of all this," cited by G.Dyer 2005.
    I found that when working in early styles of still life photography the fact of using colour tended to modernise the image because we are used to seeing colour images. By using colour as the starting point of each image brought a new dimension to the final images, as Paul Outerbridge said " I think that still life presents perhaps the greatest possibilities for purely creative work in colour photography, for to put life into still life, into inanimate objects, to create new rhythms and patterns requires imagination." cited P. Martineau 2010.
    The first still life photograph was made before photography was even announced in 1839 in Paris and London in 1839, the photograph was The Set Table by Nicephore Niepce, ( 1765-1833) and shows a table laid out for a simple supper and reminds us of laid tables in paintings, such as the Last supper ( Martineau,P 2010). Because of the long exposure times required in early photography still life became a very popular subject and largely followed the traditions set by still life painting, and was indeed used as a teaching aid for painters.
   One of the most successful of these early photographers was Roger Fenton (1818-1869) who during a short photographic career of just eleven years (1851-1862) manged to fit in war, landscape, portraits and still life. His still life work followed the previous art tradition and tended to either be hunting scenes or exotic scenes of great abundance for the gentry of the time.

Poppies and Buddleah, Contrasting Colours

    My first image,above, looks at first sight quite modern because of its high key tone and bright colours, but its structure with its swathed cloth and arch naturalism is pure nineteenth century. I have included the dead poppy as a symbol of vanitas, a warning against vanity, we all wilt in the end, which was a common feature of still life images of the time, carrying on the symbolic traditions from painting.

Asian Ingredients, Accent

  This image I admit looks like an advert for an Indian restaurant but it echoes Fentons' images of exotic abundance and the triangular composition evident in many of his images, such as Still Life with Fruit and Decanter,(1860) which helped give them a sense of depth and movement.
  As photographic technology improved during the 1870s and 1880s and exposure times became shorter the popularity of still lifes began to wane, cameras became smaller and lighter so photographers could venture out of the studio.Also the development of paper negatives meant that copies could be made, so photographic images lost their exclusivity, the gentry could no longer use them to ' show off '.
  Toward the end of the nineteenth century groups such as the Linked Ring in Great Britain and the Photo Secession in America began to push for photography to be recognized as an art form in its own right, and by the beginning of the twentieth century photographers such as Edward Steichen (1879-1973) and George H Seeley (1880-1955) had returned to still life as a subject. Using soft focus lenses and various darkroom techniques they produced works that were as painterly as possible and tied to attain in overall effect, a feeling of the subject. They were actually reflecting a statement made by Sir William Newton in 1853 to the Photographic Society that he favoured a " broad and general effect" and that "the object is better obtained by the whole subject being a little out of focus".( Clarke,G 1997) We can see this Pictorialist effect in Seeleys' early colour photograph Still Life of Vase with Peacock Feather, Laquered Box and Paint Brushes, 1914, the picture is barely there, everything is muted, there is very little hard detail, the composition is very flat  in keeping with the Japonisme style that was popular at the time.
  I have taken as the inspiration for my next picture an image by Baron Adolph De Meyer (1868-1946), Hydrangea, 1908 pictures a cut flower in a glass suffused with light, just a mere impression.( Jeffrey,I 1997)

Blue Daisy, Accent

  By using natural light and a wide aperture I have managed to a nicely diffuse, soft effect for the vase in pictorialist style, whilst leaving the flower sharp as a point of focus as the accent.
  As the world of painting changed at the beginning of the twentieth century with the work of artists such as Cezanne, Picasso, Matisse and Mondrian becoming more widely known, so photography started to become more experimental and finally began to find its own language. Still life became an important tool in refining this new language, this new way of 'seeing'.
  Paul Strand (1890-1976) made abstract still life photographs for a short period between 1914 and 1916 to try to see what photographies answer might be to the new modern style of painting, as he explains he used " the simplest of subject matter, or maybe object matter would be a better term in this case- such as kitchen bowls, cups, plates, pieces of fruit, a table, a chair, the railing of the porch, the shadows of the railing of the porch- things as simple as that were my material for making experiments to find out what an abstract photograph might be," cited Hoffman, M (1976). From these abstract still lifes Strand learnt to apply these new rules to his other work, that there must be a unity about the picture, like painters of the time the new modernist photographers were learning to use the surface of the print as the subject rather than as a window to look through.( Hoffman, M. 1976 )
  By the late 1920s Edward Weston (1886-1958) had also started to make his famous still lifes of shells and vegetables, but also found still lifes such as toilets and rocks, Weston was generally interested in form and the way light shaped it, his images tend to be of single items rather the interplay of those items as explored by Strand.(Pitts,T. 2008)

Echinops, Similar Colours

Orchid, Complimentary Colours

 Both  of the above images have Westons' approach, they are both about the form of the subject and show his concern with the utmost clarity in his images.
  Also working on still life at this time was Andre Kertesz (1894-1985) whilst he was living in Paris he rubbed shoulders with many of the great modern artists of the time and like Strand he began to make the same discoveries. He shot many of his pictures from unusual angles so that the shapes of the objects and the strong shadows used used create dynamic movement across face of the image, Kertesz avoided frontal compositions  which he felt had a more documentary bias.(Naef, W. 1994) Kerteszs' photographs were deeply personal to him as he says " The camera is my tool. Through it I give reason to all around me." cited Sontag,S 1977, in his image Melancholic Tulip, 1939 we see a self portrait of the artist as a wilted tulip drooping to the ground, this was made when Kertesz was having a particularly tough time whilst living in New York.

Puzzle, Accent

Red Onions, Blue Paper, Contrasting Colours

 In both of the above images I have tried to use triangular compositions across the face of the picture to add some dynamism, I think it it more successful in the puzzle picture because I have used more of a Kertesz style shooting angle.
  During the 1930s Paul Outerbridge(1896-1958) managed to grasp the technicalities of the three colour carbro transfer printing process and became a highly successful commercial photographer, in his free time he produced highly developed works such as Kandinsky, 1937, obviously relating to the famous Russian abstract artist, creating a colour abstract composition from household objects, managing to balance colour and form in a way that Bresson thought would be too difficult.
 The second world war proved to be a low point for still life photography, but when it ended there was a huge demand for commercial photography. At the forefront of this field was Irving Penn (1917-2009), he was highly successful and produced clear well defined pictures for food, and fashion goods, bit also had exhibitions of cigarette butts, animal bones and rubbish he found in the gutter. His pictures can be quite difficult to look at, he strips things to their component parts and leaves them bare.(Szarkowski,J 2000)
  One of the images I have produced is a pastiche of a Penn picture Cholesterol's Revenge,1994, I think it can be instructive sometimes to try to reproduce another artists work to uncover the techniques they used.

Steak and Eggs, Contrasting Colours

  The following images are also influenced by Penn, I must admit that before I started to research still life photography I had only known Irving Penn as a portrait photographer after seeing his exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in 2010, which did not make much of an impression on me. On seeing his still life work I was quite shocked at how visceral some of them are,and how inventive.

Dismantled Poppy, Similar Colours

Watermelon, Strawberries, Complimentary Colours

Liqueurs, Similar Colours

Beans & Fish Fingers, Complimentary Colours

   I think this final image is interesting because it could be a set up shot by Irving Penn, but it could also be a found still life by someone like Martin Parr( b.1952).
  Another pastiche I have made is of the images by Jan Groover (b.1943), I have long admired her pictures of kitchen utensils and the way the objects seem to defy gravity. In using utensils as her subject she is recalling those first abstract attempts by Strand and Kertesz (Rumsey,D 2011), I have used red and green filters to fit in with the assignment brief, getting the composition to work was deceptively difficult.

Pots and Pans, Complimentary Colours

  Another influential post war still life photographer is Robert Mapplethorpe (1946-1989) who I have discussed earlier on my blog, in some of his flower photographs he used graphic backgrounds so that they become part of the image plane.

Crocsima Lucifer, Contrasting Colours

  In this the shapes and colours unify the image, it is not just a flower against a background, the diagonal of the flower is held in place by the blue shapes.

Yellow Daisy, Lavender, Accent

 The above image is a simple found still life.

Lemon and Lime, Similar Colours

   The picture above seems to bring us full circle because the initial inspiration for it came whilst I was looking at paintings by Cezanne, I think it was the folds in the linen that set me off. It has a minimalist style and the absence of any obvious humanity seems to imbue the fruit with their own life.
   Although still life photography does not seem popular among amateur photographers it appears to be thriving in the art community, with many conceptual artists like Gabriel Orozco (b.1962) using still life as a record of, their work, found still life and in making photography part of the artistic act.(Cotton,C 2009)
  I have found my research into still life photography compelling and surprising, I have discovered that quite often the simplest looking compositions are the most difficult to achieve and that choice of colours can make or break a picture.

   References : Dyer,G,2005, The Ongoing Moment.Abacus.London.
                       Martineau,P,2010, Still Life in Photography,Getty Publications,Los Angeles.
                       Clarke,G,1997,The Photograph,Oxford University Press, Oxford.
                       Jeffrey,I,1997, The Photo Book,Phaidon Press,London.
                       Hoffman,M,1976,Paul Strand Sixty Years of Photographs,Aperture,New York.
                       Pitts,T,2008, Edward Weston,Taschen,Cologne.
                       Naef,W, 1994,In Focus Andre Kertesz,Getty Publications, Los Angeles.
                       Sontag,S,1977,On Photography,Penguin Books,London.
                       Szarkowski,J,2000, Still Life Irving Penn,Thames & Hudson,London.
                       Rumsey,D,20/07/2011,www.davidrumsey.com/amica/institution
                       Cotton,C,2009,the photograph as contemporary art,Thames & Hudson,London.