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.
..., 1820-1865. Columbia Studies in American Culture Series (New York: Columbia University Press, 1942): 13-14.
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.
... without him, the world would not be as it is today. Jerry Uelsmann always incorporated his inner self and beliefs into his photography instead of the outside. He was able to find the will to so exstensively work for one photograph through his surrealistic philosophy and beliefs in art. He used many techniques and styles in hsi photography that was absolutely unfathomable in his time because Photoshop did not exist. I personally believe that Jerry Uelsmann was perhaps one of the most important artists in photography. Without him, this sense of inner self and creativity he subscribed himself to would not have engulfed the photography world. He focused on dreamlike story bound photos that connected deeply inside a person instead of a connection on the outside. He defined the idea that the mind and dreams can be more real a reality than the one that is presented to us.
Meredith, Roy. Mr. Lincoln's Camera Man Mathew B. Brady. New York: C. Scribner's Sons, 1946. Print.
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
Gustavon, Todd. Camera: A History of Photography from daguerreotype to Digital. New York, NY: Sterling Publishing, 2009
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.
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.
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...
Raeburn, John. A Staggering Revolution: A Cultural History of Thirties Photography. Chicago: University of Illinois, 2006. Print.
From a young age, Richard Avedon was exposed to fashion. But little did the small boy sitting in his father’s 5th Avenue womens’ clothing store know, that he would later become the worlds’ biggest fashion photographer. He was born in New York City in 1923 to Jacob Avedon a Russian immigrant who worked his way up in the city to finally own his own clothing store. Avedon’s mother, Anna, was a musical and artsy woman who was his artistic muse. His sister, Louise, was also an inspiration to him. As a child, he constantly took pictures of his beautiful sister, his first model. His interest in photography began after joining a photography club at his local Young Men's Hebrew Association. After graduating high school in 1941, Richard attended Columbia University to study philosophy and poetry, but after just one year, he dropped out to enlist in the military marines. In the marines,he was a photographer in World War Two, taking pictures for identification cards.
As seen in paintings of battle scenes and portraits of wealthy Renaissance aristocracy, people have always strived to preserve and document their existence. The creation of photography was merely the logical continuum of human nature’s innate desire to preserve the past, as well as a necessary reaction to a world in a stage of dramatic and irreversible change. It is not a coincidence that photography arose in major industrial cities towards the end of the nineteenth century.
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