The History Of Realism

Realism

Realism started to emerge in the mid-nineteenth century. Realism was a response to the romanticism movement. During the romanticism period, artists focused on beauty and ignored the boring and ugly. Realism focused on the mundane things in day to day life. For example, romantic photographers would capture a beautiful landscape where everything was perfect. Whereas, a realism photographer might capture some trash in the river or sidewalk with leaves everywhere. The first exhibit of realism artwork was actually painting. However, the painter, Gustave Courbet used the camera to study the nude body. The fact that when a drawing, painting or sculpture still uses camera to assist the piece shows how important photography is to art. In

Those are mundane, everyday subject matter, which is what the realism movement is all about.

Snapshot Impulse

The snapshot impulse relates to realism because the subject matter of the snapshot is typically of everyday subjects. The snapshots were typically pictures of the family taken by a non-professional in their own home. Basically, the snapshot impulse is the need to capture a moment or a memory. For example, a non-professional family picture counts as a snapshot because it’s informal and there is most likely a story or memory behind it. The family could be celebrating a birthday or holiday and felt the need to take a picture to remember that. The key difference between portraits and snapshots of families is snapshots aren’t professional. The family doesn’t have to go to a studio and pay for someone to take a picture of them. They do it themselves.

The most basic would be the combination an image of the sky and the image of the ground. The reason was to have proper exposure for both sky and ground when taking a landscape. For example, if the photographer measured the proper exposure for the ground and took the picture, the sky would be blown out and over exposed. This results in little to no detail in the sky. To fix this, combination printing was created. It required at least two different negatives, therefore, it was “complicated, time-consuming, and expensive” (Hirsch 92). One negative would have proper exposure and detail in the sky and the other one in the ground. Photographs caught on and stock piled properly exposed sky negatives to use for future landscapes. However, those are just with two images. They can get more complicated. For example, the artist Oscar Rijlander used 32 negative to make one print. This relates to modern day use with Photoshop. Photoshop, essentially, allows the artist to combine prints. There are several ways to combine images in Photoshop. One could copy and paste something in a picture. Or stack them on top of each other and eraser certain parts are use masks. Whatever Photoshop process one chooses to use, it is very similar to combination