1900-1920

Notes 

Why Hollywood came about

• Thomas Edison created the Motion Picture Patents Company so he would be in charge of the film industry. He owned the patents to all films so companies would have to pay him to have their films shown. 
•  he also painted sprockets in film so people had to pay him to use this technology.
• Edison's patents were really angry because of the large fee's that they had to pay him so the 'patents war' ensued.
•  many people went away to make their films to escape this charge.
• The first film studio was created in 1910.

US Film

• Actors and actresses started to become famous for being in films
• Florence Lawrence - first famous actress
• Theaters became commercial they used to be called Nickelodeons 
• Films showed a lot of racism and historical events.
• Editing changed film completely and allowed flashbacks for better storytelling.

photography and art

• photo's showed ghostly images because of exposure time was long and people would move in between the photo being shot and the photo developing.
• cheap portraits of people were mad because it became cheaper to make photo's.
• some artists wanted to use photography as an art form. 
• A lot of paintings were re created in photo's.
• A lot of soft focus images were made by Alfred Steiglitz,  Edward Steichen, 
  John Dudley Johnston and Wilbur Porterfield
      to create the soft painting techniques in Japanese painting
• The Japanese had a massive influence on him and a few other photographers at that time.
• out of focus, soft photos photos referenced impressionism which was inspired by Japanese painting. 
• pre raphalite work was also referenced within photographs.
• Nudes started being used like they are in paintings. 

Photography as document

• Alfred Stieglitz- shows upper and lower class he used really good composition.
• photos were made that showed children in the work house this promoted campeigns against social issues at the time. 
• In France a photo was made that shows a woman jumping. in the pgoto she is in mid air but shutter speed didn't exist when it was created but the photo exists.
• Photography shows the changes in fashion.

Modern art

• Art started being used as decoration
• Abstract came from impressionism
• there was a gradual move from realistic to abstract.
• Picasso was influenced by African tribal art.
• Picasso created art that couldn't be created with a camera.
• he started to collage using found materials. 
• Cubism was the centre of all art around that time.
• it was short lived in the development of modern art. 
• German expressionism was created more to evoke emotion.
• Futurism started in Italy.
• Anti art, art was created (Dada) in response to the war
• news didn't show the bad side of the war because it went against the moral of the country.
• so photographers would use photography to show the real side of the war (deformities and injuries)

1900-1920

• The Twentieth century began with optimism as people were looking to the future (new technology) 

Research task

Research Art Photography in the early 20th. Century.

In the early 20th century the Kodak introduced the Box brownie camera, this allowed little snapshots to be taken. This also made photography a lot cheaper so artists decided to use this to their advantage and started to create photographs for artistic purposes rather than for documentation or portraiture. A lot of masterpieces such as vermeer's paintings (figure 1) were re created within photography (figure 2), this was done to prove that photography was a creditable form of art. The artists that did this called themselves "Pictorialists."

Aligning themselves with the aspirations of contemporary movements in painting, the pictoralists were able to make the point that they were practicing a fine art in photography.[1]

Jan Vermeer,The Art of Painting, c. 1666-73 Oil on canvas

Richard Polack – the Artist and his Model 1914.

Alfred Steiglitz, Edward Steichen, John Dudley Johnston and Wilbur Porterfield were all photographers in the early 20th century and they created photographs inspired by the impressionist art movement. The impressionist movement was heavily inspired by Japanese paintings so you can also see the influence from that within their photographs. Their photographs were very subtle and soft  creating a more abstract and ambient look as seen in (figure 3), much like the pioneer of impressionism Monet's work (figure 4). 

In the fall of 1890, George Davison gave a paper...called "impressionism in photography." He aimed to connect modern photography with modern art, explaining that the 'newer school of photographers" and "the body of painters known as impressionists" embraced the same principles...[2]

 (figure 1) John Dudley Johnston. Liverpool—An Impression, 1906. 
Gum bichromate print. Royal Photographic Society, Bath. England. 
 

(figure 2) Claude Monet, San Giorgio Maggiore at Dusk, 1908–1912, Oil on canvas

[1] Edited by: L Warren, Pictoralism in Encylopedia of twentieth century photography, volume 1, Routledge, 2006. P 1263   

[2] Edited by: J Hannavy, Impressionist photography in Encyclopaedia of Nineteenth century photography, Routledge, 2008. P 737