New Approaches and Techniques
Laurie Schneider Adams
The Making and Meaning of Art
2007
As with painters, major photographers strive for new approaches to their medium that advance style as well as technique. One of the most innovative twentieth-century photographers was the American Surrealist Man Ray (1890-1937). He moved from his native Philadelphia to Paris, where he worked in film and fashion. A member of the Dada movement that flourished between the two World Wars, Man Ray enjoyed verbal as well as visual punning and famously published two works: Art is Not Photography and Photography is Not Art.
One of Man Ray's technical inventions, the rayograph, was made in the darkroom by placing objects on light-sensitive paper and exposing them to the light of the enlarger. When the light penetrated the object, it created a muted texture; where the object blocked the light, the shape of the object remained in white. The area around the object turned black when placed in the developing solution. The resulting image, although taking the form of an actual object, often appeared abstract and mysterious. Such is the case with the rayograph illustrated in figure 11.20.
11.20 Man Ray, Rayograph, 1923
In this case, the object, which is also the subject, is a roll of negative film that appears randomly spread out on the light-sensitive paper. On further inspection, however, we can see that Man Ray emphasized the circular shape—alluding both to the camera lens and the and the eye—and created a wide range of lights, darks, textures, and patterns by curling the film. In so doing he produced a photograph about photography, including in it some of the visual elements that enhance the potential subtleties of the medium and its techniques.
Another darkroom technique used to create unusual aesthetic effects is known as the Sabattier effect, first discovered in 1862. Named for its inventor, this procedure involved partially developing a negative in print, then briefly exposing it to light in the darkroom before finishing the development process. This has the effect of reversing the expected tones of a print. Today this is referred to as solarization, which darkens the normally light areas and often results in an eerily surreal image. Such is the case in Man Ray's Profile and Hands, Solarization/Sabattier Effect of 1932 (figure 11.21). Here, the brief exposure to light in an otherwise dark room produced an artificial black outline around the profile and hands, leaving the intervening spaces white, so that parts of the body appear oddly disconnected.
11.21 Man Ray, Profile and Hands, Solarization/Sabattier, 1932. Gelatin silver print, 7 x 9 in. J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles.
"Bored housewife" is the theme of the feminist film still number 16 (figure 11.22), devised by the contemporary American photographer Cindy Sherman, whose Untitled we discussed in Chapter 7 (see figure 7.7). The still is one of a series begun in 1977. Inspired by B-movies, Sherman explores the roles of women in American society. Although Sherman used straightforward techniques, her relationship as an artist to her subject was new. In the film stills, she plays the starring role and challenges the expected roles of women in film and in society. The very notion of a film still as an independent photograph was a new conception; it suggests a before and after, so that the viewer reads the image as a moment frozen in time.
Here, Sherman is in the guise of a bored 1950s housewife, primly and passively smoking in front of a television set. Her plain surroundings, in which a chair is the only visible piece of furniture, accentuates her boredom and her detachment. She directs her attention not to the viewer, but to the unseen TV screen, and manipulates the channels with the remote control. In contrast to the neatly dressed man in the portrait on the wall, Sherman appears frumpy, as in Untitled, and her silver shoes seem at odds with the rest of her outfit. In addition, her static pose, varied only by the implied (and minimal) motion of changing channels and smoking, makes her seem more of an object than a person engaged with life.
11.22 Cindy Sherman, Untitled Film Still #16, 1978. Courtesy the artist and Metro Pictures Gallery, New York.
The recent appeal of digital photography has led to new kinds of visual manipulation. Digital cameras now on the market do not use flexible film. An important advantage of digital photography is that it can be sent over the internet, altered in various ways, and printed like a traditional photograph. In place of light-sensitive silver salts, digital images are produced by pixels, which are small, light-sensitive squares that can transmit electrical signals determined by the intensity of received light. The pattern of squares—the grid—is then scanned, electronically stored, and can be reproduced on a screen, a print, or sheet of paper. Usually the pixel grid is not visible to the naked eye, creating the impression of a photographic image.
In the digital Untitled (Triple) of 1993 (figure 11.23), Keith Cottingham (b. 1965) creates a pyramid composed of three androgynous figures; their age and gender appear somewhat elusive. The boundary between reality and constructed identity is uncertain, with shadows revealing the unnatural appearance of the three figures. Their enigmatic expressions and the copper streaks in their hair accentuate their odd, surreal quality.
11.23 Keith Cottingham, Untitled (Triple), 1993. Digitally constructed color photograph. Courtesy the artist and Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York.
