Born of Irish immigrants in 1823 in a little place called Warren County, New York; Mathew Brady is known as “The Father of Photojournalism.” While a student of Samuel Morse and a friend of Louis Daguerre (inventor of the “Daguerreotype,” a method of photography that the image is developed straight onto a metal coated surface), in which he had met while under the study of Morse, Brady took up his interest in photography in the year of 1839, while only seventeen years of age. Brady took what he had learned from these two talented and intellectual men to America where he furthered his interest in the then-growing art of photography.
Upon his arrival in America, Brady had opened a gallery of Mr. Daguerre’s photographs named the “Daguerrean Miniature Gallery,” which could be found intersecting Broadway and Fulton in New York, This event occurred in 1844. Later that very same year Brady entered and won an annual fair of the “American Institute,” He won first place. Brady’s second gallery, “A Gallery of Illustrious Americans,” which featured the most well-known men and women of Brady’s day and age (including Robert E. Lee and Abraham “Abe” Lincoln, who later used Brady’s photographs for support in campaigning for presidency over America) was not published until 1850.
In the same year of 1850, however, Mathew Brady met Juliette Handy while in his studio. After an exaggeratedly long courtship to Juliette Handy, of a year, Brady had foreseen the fact that they were, in fact, in love, Brady and Handy were married into the law in the year of 1851. Some seem to think Handy was an inspiration to Brady since he won Queen Victoria’s “world Fair” that very same year, the most second accomplished award to be accredited to him, but the firs...
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...te viewers up to date. I also admire the way he lived his life and I hope mine can be just like it, except completely and utterly different. All I am really trying to say is that I am a one man wolf-pack, but if Brady were still alive we would be a Two-man wolf-pack. Brady’s photographs also inspire me by bringing out the deadliness brought with freedom through war. Also as being a musician, I understand that emotions strongly influence art, so Brady must have been roaring with emotions after he married Juliette Handy since this is when he is generally seen as becoming more creative and developed as a professional photographer making a name for himself in this world of high set bars and expectations. I find, too, the fact that Brady stuck with two genres of photography, portrait and photojournalism/documentary, to be a sign of dedication and passion for photography.
For Emerson, the reticent beauty of nature was the motivator. To him, photography should be recognized because its still-life beauty was able to persuade the public’s appreciation of the life and nourishment
Johnson, Brooks. Photography Speaks: 150 Photographers on their Art.” New York: Aperture Foundation Inc., 2004. Print.
Brought into this world on October 17, 1821, Alexander Gardner’s work as a Civil War photographer has often been accredited to his mentor, the better-known Mathew Brady. Only recently has the true extent of Alexander Gardner’s work been acknowledged, receiving the credit that has been long overdue. Born in Paisley, Scotland, Gardner and his family were quite the movers. Relocating to Glasgow, Scotland, shortly after his birth, and later in 1850, to the United States with his brother James in attempt to establish a community in Iowa (CWO). In need of more money to fund the establishment, Gardner returned back to Glasgow and purchased what would soon become one of largest newspapers in the city, and one of the most known newspapers in the entire country, the Glasgow Sentinel. The newspaper made a considerable amount of profit for Gardner and he returned to the United States a year later in 1851, but this time paying another state a visit, New York.
In the chapter, “The Mirror with a Memory”, the authors, James Davidson and Mark Lytle, describe numerous things that evolved after the civil war, including the life of Jacob Riis, the immigration of new peoples in America, and the evolution of photography. The authors’ purpose in this chapter is to connect the numerous impacts photography had on the past as well as its bringing in today’s age.
Practiced by thousands who shared no common tradition or training from the earliest days of taking photos, the first photographers were disciplined and united by no academy or guild, who considered their medium variously as a trade, a science, an art, or an entertainment, and who often were unaware of each other’s work. Exactly as it sounds photography means photo-graphing. The word photography comes from two Greek words, photo, or “light”, and graphos, or drawing and from the start of photography; the history of the aforementioned has been debated. The idea of taking pictures started some thirty-one thousand years ago when strikingly sophisticated images of bears, rhinoceroses, bison, horses and many other types of creators were painted on the walls of caves found in southern France. Former director of photography at New Yorks museum of modern art says that “The progress of photography has been more like the history of farming, with a continual stream of small discoveries leading to bigger ones, and in turn triggering more experiments, inventions, and applications while the daily work goes along uninterrupted.” ˡ
Mathew Brady was an amazing photographer. He is considered the father of photojournalism and the greatest photographer of the 19th century. He is most well-known for his photography of the Civil War. His photographs had a great impact on the people during the time of war. Many photographers today look to him for inspiration. His pictures tell powerful stories about the soldiers. These soldiers had families that they would never get to see again. Mathew Brady’s pictures are of images most people never want to see. He is forever remembered for the...
..., 1820-1865. Columbia Studies in American Culture Series (New York: Columbia University Press, 1942): 13-14.
In a society that is focused on visual stimuli, it isn't uncommon to see a person taking a picture with a camera or making a "movie" with their camcorder. But, in the 1840s and 1850s, life just wasn't like that. If someone said they could make a picture of a mining town or of the route to the West without a pencil or paint people would have laughed at them. Laughing would have been appropriate because photography didn't come into being until 1839. James Horan reveals in his book, Mathew Brady: Historian with a Camera, that it wasn't even called photography then, it was called the "new art" (5). There were very few people who knew what it was to take a picture, or make a picture with light. The only pictures that were around at that time were those that were drawn, painted, or printed from lithographs or etchings. Newspapers didn't have real live pictures that showed the actual things that were written about. The population of America as it was in 1800 didn't know what the "West" looked like. According to Eugene Ostroff, sketches and paintings were the only illustrations of the West before photography (9). Ostroff tells us that these weren't usually accepted if the painter had taken artistic license (9). All Americans knew were the stories of the people who returned because it was too difficult to live there or the letters from friends and family telling the horrors they saw. So, with the invention of photography, especially the ability to "fix" the image onto the paper or metal plate had a major effect on the expansion to the West because the pictures that were taken showed how the West really was beautiful. Unfortunately, it was a while before the public was able to see the pictures that were taken by the photographers of the West because 1839 was only the very beginning of photography as a profession and a hobby.
Tolmachev, I. (2010, March 15). A history of Photography Part 1: The Beginning. Retrieved Febraury 2014, from tuts+ Photography: http://photography.tutsplus.com/articles/a-history-of-photography-part-1-the-beginning--photo-1908
"A photograph is not merely a substitute for a glance. It is a sharpened vision. It is the revelation of new and important facts." ("Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History."). Sid Grossman, a Photo League photographer expressed this sentiment, summarizing the role photography had on America in the 1940’s and 50’s. During this era, photojournalism climaxed, causing photographers to join the bandwagon or react against it. The question of whether photography can be art was settled a long time ago. Most major museums now have photography departments, and the photographs procure pretty hefty prices. The question of whether photojournalism or documentary photography can be art is now the question at hand. Art collectors are constantly looking to be surprised; today they are excited by images first seen in last week’s newspapers as photojournalism revels in the new status as art “du jour” or “reportage art”.
Throughout the course of the Civil Rights movement, minority children have been involved in racial discrimination. As we can see from this photo, it shows how racial hatred and discrimination is being portrayed. Sometimes when we first look at an image, we often assume or jump to the wrong conclusion than taking into consideration other factors and contributors to what is actually being shown in front of us. There are two sides to every story as to why this picture was taken. Therefore, my argument is that all too often, we quickly make inaccurate judgments or conclusions to what we are visualizing in this photo, rather than investigate circumstances between the minority children and the firefighters in order to make a final conclusion
Imogen Cunningham and Edward Weston were two influential pioneers of photography. Through the images they created, photography became accepted as an art form in and of itself. Without the work of these two, the field of photography might have become an entirely different landscape than it is today. As both Cunningham and Weston were members of the same photographer’s society, Group f/64, their images share some artistic qualities and have similar philosophy behind them. Despite this, there are many fundamental differences between their artwork, such as subject matter, inspiration, and composition.
He would ride his bike around the city, camera around his neck, and find people wearing high fashion, to shoot. His signature type of photos were candids, according to the Kodak Pocket guide to Photography, “The Candid in which the photographer acts as a detached and preferably unnoticed observer to show a person in natural and revealing habitat” (Eastman Kodak Company 58). He would capture them walking, talking, eating, and doing whatever they were doing when he saw him. Like said in an online article, “Street photographers take photographs of fleeting moments that may exist in a greater narrative” (Complex). Cunningham clearly believed that these fleeting moments had narratives worth sharing, and as he did share these moments, he received booming results. Candid photos are better received than posed pictures, and that's exactly what Bill Cunningham was getting at. The fact that he was one of the first people to think about doing this is awesome, and very impressive. He would carry his camera wherever and snap pictures. He had crates, full of candid photograph negatives in his home, neatly tucked away until needed to be taken out. This type of permanence to these unposed photos, creates a particular attraction for wanting to take more, leading to unanticipated and surprisingly joyful
Born to Nettie Lee Smith and Bill Smith on December 18, 1918 in Wichita, Kansas was William Eugene Smith, who would later revolutionize photography. His mother Nettie was into photography, taking photos of her family, especially her two sons as they grew up, photographing events of their lives (Hughes 2). Photography had been a part of Smith’s life since he was young. At first it started out always being photographed by his mother, and then turned into taking photographs along with his friend Pete, as he got older. They often practiced developing photos in Nettie’s kitchen, and he later began to create albums with his photographs. His photographs diff...
Photojournalism plays a critical role in the way we capture and understand the reality of a particular moment in time. As a way of documenting history, the ability to create meaning through images contributes to a transparent media through exacting the truth of a moment. By capturing the surreal world and presenting it in a narrative that is relatable to its audience, allows the image to create a fair and accurate representation of reality.