History in Focus (1900 – 1930): Photography as an art-form

The early 20th century was an integral period for the rise and increase in popularity of the use of photography as an art-form. Skimming through these years, one can see the transformation of photography from a practice mainly utilised by scientists and inventors, into one which artists embraced and took up as a new way of expressing their vision.

One of the main proponents of the photographic art movement was Alfred Stieglitz. An American photographer from New York, Stieglitz led the Photo-Secession movement, a society which promoted the use of photography as a fine-art.

Stieglitz started out by trying to reproduce the effects of paintings through photography, by using his skills in composition and tone to his advantage. However, within a few years photographic art started to take on its own original style – not surprising given its contrast in methodology from that of painting and other fine arts. Photography became an art form which allowed the artist to express his/her artistic views through the use of reality and through capturing that reality and the world around us. From Pictorialism to Modernist photography.

One of Stieglitz’s most famous works, ‘The Steerage’ (1907), depicts immigrants being sent back to Europe from America. It marks his transition towards Modernist photography, and is regarded as one of the first in this art form. Stieglitz’s use of lines and space in this photograph was at the time praised by prominent artists such as Picasso.

‘The Steerage’, Alfred Stieglitz. (1907) Taken from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Alfred_Stieglitz_(American_-_The_Steerage_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg

It was also in the early 1900s where photography started to be used in surrealistic art movements. The American-born Man Ray was a pioneer in the manipulation of photography, and one of his most famous works ‘Le Violon d’Ingres’ (depicted below) gained much artistic influence because of the alterations he physically made to the actual photograph.

The portrait of a woman (Kiki de Montparnasse) in ‘Ingres’s Violin’, was originally inspired by the painter Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, who had also experimented with the female form in his paintings. Man Ray, drawing inspiration from Ingres’, likened the woman’s form to a violin, the invisibly positioned arms playing an important part in the composition. He then took it all a step further by painting a violin’s F-holes unto the actual photographic print, and then rephotographed the print, creating a more suggestive portrait.

What Man Ray created in 1924 with that photographic manipulation, can undoubtedly be seen as one of the first precursors to our modern-day Photoshop creations, and photo manipulation techniques. His work was visionary, in the sense that it foretold what was to come – an age where photography not only depicted reality, but where it also could be used to manipulate reality and to tell a different story.

‘Le Violon d’Ingres’ (Ingres’s Violin), Man Ray. (1924). Taken from http://www.galleryintell.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Man_Ray-Violin-de-Ingres_galleryIntell-e1396892405878.jpg