Pictorialism movement in photography is a movement that is mostly active during 1885-1915. When proponents used a range of darkroom techniques to take photos that allow them to include their own creativity in it.

Straight photography is a type of photography skill that emphasizes the camera’s own technical capability to produce images that contain plenty details.  The main difference shown in two type of photography is the time difference, besides time difference, the purpose and the style is quite different. While Pictorialisms mainly focus on the photographer’s creativity. Straight photography instead focus on the quality and the focus more for the photos. It is popular mainly because of the inspiration of this kind of style, letting photographer’s to record their daily life, which is completely new during that time and also differented from other type of art.

Edward Weston’s photo

Aaron Sisikind’s photo

Straight photography had mainly affected Edward Weston by his kind of style he use. He take high resolution and realistic images of organic shapes, which it belongs to a part of straight photography. Comparing with Edward Weston, Aaron Sisikind is quite affected in a different way, which Aaron Sisikind’s photo were mainly focused on abstract, by adding elements from straight photography, the overall level had highly increased.

Andreas Gursky’s Photo

Uta Barth’s photo

Another two artists, Andreas Gursky and Uta Barth, two of the abstract photographers. In their photos, both of them have concentrated more on the background content, which makes the subject no longer interesting. Even though both photographer has similar style, but the two of them were quite different in terms of pictorialism or straight photographer. Andreas Gursky is more a straight photographer, due to the focus, lighting and other elements more represent straight photography. Instead, Uta Barth is a pictorialism photographer, which focus more on creativity instead of the “elements.

Reference:

“Straight Photography Movement Overview.” The Art Story, https://www.theartstory.org/movement/straight-photography/. Accessed 22 Jan. 2025.

“Pictorialism Movement Overview.” The Art Story, https://www.theartstory.org/movement/pictorialism/. Accessed 22 Jan. 2025.

“Aaron Siskind Photography, Bio, Ideas.” The Art Story, https://www.theartstory.org/artist/siskind-aaron/. Accessed 23 Jan. 2025.

Anthony, Jordan. “Edward Weston – Explore the Edward Weston Photography Style.” Art in Context, 10 Jan. 2023, https://artincontext.org/edward-weston/.

https://www.moma.org/artists/7827 (contains error for mla)

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/29/arts/andreas-gursky-is-taking-photos-of-things-that-do-not-exist.html (contains error for mla)

write your own definition of abstract photography add to your blog: Abstract photography (抽象摄像) is a type of photography style, that can be a normal photo. However, usually the most interesting part of abstract photos is usually not the subject, instead, the most interesting part is one of the object or background. This infers that abstract photos are usually hard to analyze.

Summary: Abstract photography is a type of photography style that doesn’t focus on the subject, instead, it mainly focused on other objects or background as it’s most interesting part, and this type of feeling are usually hard to understand unless the picture’s actual “subject” can be recognized and understand.

Abstract photography can be defined as capturing images in which the subject isn’t the most interesting element. Albert Renger-Patzsch and Aaron Siskind photographed the ordinary to reveal their beauty. Uta Barth reversed the typical use of the camera, shooting out of focus and Andreas Gursky photographs the repetition of elements. During this unit, you will investigate appropriate examples of abstract photography and respond in your own way.

describe your Initial thoughts about the unit.

What do you think is meant by “Abstract photography can be defined as capturing images in which the subject isn’t the most interesting element”?

It is meant by abstract photos, is a type of style that is different from regular style. According to this definition, abstract photography had made other elements becoming the most interested element instead of making the subject the most interesting one. It is meant by not only the subject can be the most attractive/interesting part of the photo. But also other content from the photo can be the interested part of the photo. For example, the photo above this text is an example of abstract art, the picture seems like it doesn’t have a subject to look on, but this picture is way different by comparing pictures, while this picture have make the background for their subject instead of choosing a subject to focus on. Overall, abstract photography is a style that doesn’t use a subject to attract audience, instead, it might use elements like background or other objects to make it interesting. So, this shows that abstract photos are hard to analyze because the subject is hard to define.

Fussell, Matt. Understanding Abstract Art. 5 Aug. 2013, https://thevirtualinstructor.com/blog/understanding-abstract-art.

https://dx.isb.cn/dash/#/classroom/648613/sections/lesson/344121/page/344123. Accessed 17 Jan. 2025.

Untitled design

• Can a ‘bad’ picture ever be ‘great’? A picture can be great in different aspect, it can be either unique or organized. While the picture “Wrong” is a picture that people tend to feel more harder to understand. The reason that this picture is hard to understand is because it doesn’t follow the core rules of photography, which there is a significant difference between pictures using or not using the core rules of photography. Usually, the pictures that follow the core rules of photography tend to get a better effect and a better quality than the ones that doesn’t follow the rule. However, this doesn’t mean the picture that doesn’t follow the core rules of photography all receive low quality. Some pictures still tend to look mediocre, and usually, pictures that doesn’t follow core rules are belonging to abstract art, which requires people for deeper understanding. For example, in John Baldessari’s series, named “Wrong”, he uses selection of photograph that includes poor composition. The deeper meaning helps him to explain his perspective, that he thinks taking pictures should be something that is fulfilled with freedom, instead of these rules, and encourages people not to be limited by these rules and don’t be easily judged by someone else because of the quality of the photo. Overall, this mean a bad picture can somehow be great, but deeper understanding is definitely required.
• How important is context in photography? The context of photography usually includes lot of things, for example, it includes what the author wants to explain, the attitude of the author towards something (example: society, life), etc. Which photography is how photographers use to explain ideas, or to show an unique/deeper understanding of ideas. In my perspective, the context of photography is extremely important. It is mainly because the context is just basically how photographer express ideas through pictures and scenes. Besides the expression of content, another reason is mainly about the purpose, most pictures that were usually taken by different people were purposeful, for example, I sometimes take picture of random scenes because I personally feel the scene is beautiful or unique. While the others would think this is a purposeful picture because it can explain plenty of ideas.
• What feelings/states of mind of the photographer are suggested by the image? The feelings/state of mind of the photographer in one of the picture chosen by the series wrong, the photographer wants to express the feeling of not being judged by others because of the quality of the photo. The photographer had also suggested that there isn’t a specific idea that is wrong or right.

MLA: https://dx.isb.cn/dash/#/classroom/648613/sections/lesson/344114/page/344116. Accessed 14 Jan. 2025.

扫描全能王 2023-01-17 13.04

This book mainly talks about the woman reporter Nellie Bly‘s history. From being discriminated to the Mad house, to travel around the world and being a legend in a perspective in Americans that time.

First part:She was discriminated and she was arranged by the judge that she need to got in the madhouse.

Second part:She went to the madhouse to discover the madhouse and report it to the government.

Third part:After she reported the madhouse, she went to travel around the whole entire world.

Fourth part:She went back to NY.

The main theme of this book is mostly about discrimination on different kind of people. The reason why that my perspective for theme is mostly about discrimination is because from the start paragraph that she can’t find a job for herself. Secondly when she went to the madhouse to discover the truth of the madhouse, women patients were abused by the doctors and the nurses so both of the evidence represents women discrimination. Thirdly, even though it wasn’t talking about women being abused and women being discriminated. At Egypt, beggars are beaten by men and women passengers really badly when Nellie was a witness that time.

The central idea that author wants us to think about the topic was the mad house for mostly(chapter1-8) it doesn’t really talk about she traveling around the world that much in my perspective. The author of this book wants us to understand the topic of the book, maybe the topic about madhouse can inspire more readers to read this book because if the author named the book like Women traveling around the world, it might not inspire more people as if the topic is named Ten days a mad women.

Another theme for me(chapter 1-8) is about women can also do things that men do. Even though this is not the main theme but it is still a theme that is really important, in Nellies whole entire legend, from being discriminated by different newspaper company and others, to when she discovered the madhouse and when she travel around the world. Until she went back to NY, she was been a legend and the people that time changed to perspective of women.

The strength of out product is you could eat the whole piece of sushi really easy and it is easy to control but the con of this point is that it is hard to not ruin the sushi, it doesn’t really impact the environment since it is not made of plastic so it won’t really impact the environment.

Most of the feedback from our project is explain our project more clearly and adding more detail to our product.(example; make the drawing more clear or make the explaining more clear) but lot of them like our idea and our drawing. These comments for me is kind of helpful because it could help us to improve.

One of the example of our product that failed at last is about the extension claws for chopstick for sushi, it failed at last cause it is too difficult to do it so we didn’t chose that for our product.