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WORLD OF ARTWORLD OF ART

CHAPTER

EIGHTH EDITION

World of Art, Eighth EditionHenry M. Sayre

Copyright © 2016, 2013, 2010by Pearson Education, Inc. or its affiliates.

All rights reserved.

Photography and Time-Based Media

11

Learning ObjectivesLearning Objectives1 of 31 of 3

1. Describe the origins of photography and the formal principles that most inform it.

2. Describe how color and digital technologies have transformed photographic practice.


3. Outline the basic principles of film editing, including montage, as well as the technological developments that advanced the medium.

4. Outline some of the ways that video art has exploited the immediacy of the medium while at the same time critiquing popular culture.


5. Discuss some of the technological innovations that have advanced time-based art into the digital age.

IntroductionIntroduction1 of 31 of 3

• Catherine Opie's series of photographs for the Cleveland Clinic installation was created over the course of 12 months. It illustrates the fundamental ability of

photography to capture moments in time.

• Photography began in 1838 with still images.

Catherine Opie, Untitled #13 (Spring), from Somewhere in the Middle, suite of 22 photographs installed at the Cleveland Clinic's Hillcrest Hospital.

2011. Inkjet print, 50 × 37-1/2".© Catherine Opie. [Fig. 11-1]


• Eadweard Muybridge captured photographs of a horse trotting with the use of a trip wire.

• Thomas Edison and W. K. Laurie Dickson invented the Kinetoscope, which used celluloid film to produced images that could "move" by being advanced on a roll.

Eadweard Muybridge, Annie G., Cantering, Saddled.December 1887. Collotype print, sheet 19 × 24-1/8", image 7-1/4 × 16-1/4". Philadelphia

Museum of Art.1962-135-280. © 2015. Photo Philadelphia Museum of Art/Art Resource/Scala, Florence.

[Fig. 11-2]


• The first projected motion picture for large audiences debuted in 1895.

• Soon, sound was added to film to better simulate real life.

• The history of time-based media involves increasing semblance to real life.

Poster for the Cinématographe, with the Lumière Brothers film L'Arroseur Arrosé (Waterer and Watered) on screen.

1895. British Film Institute.Mary Evans/Iberfoto. [Fig. 11-3]

The Early History and Formal The Early History and Formal Foundations of PhotographyFoundations of Photography

• The photograph is a process of "instant assemblage" and "instant collage."

• Walker Evans's Roadside Stand near Birmingham, Alabama represented the artist's desire to capture every aspect of American visual reality.

• Tension between form and content is a common theme of photography.

Walker Evans, Roadside Stand near Birmingham, Alabama.1936. Library of Congress.

[Fig. 11-4]

Early HistoryEarly History1 of 61 of 6

• A darkened room called a camera obscura was used by artists to create nature accurately in the sixteenth century. A small hole shows a ray of light that

projects a scene upside-down on the the opposite wall.

While it could capture an image, it could not independently preserve it; artists traced on canvas or paper.

The first published illustration of a camera obscura observing a solar eclipse.Published in 1544 by Dutch cartographer and mathematician Gemma Frisius. Woodcut.

Bridgeman Images. [Fig. 11-5]


• William Henry Fox Talbot used paper coated with light-sensitive chemicals to produce photogenic drawings.

• Independently in France, a process yielding a positive image on a polished metal plate was called the daguerrotype. It was so realistic that it was declared

"Painting is dead!"

William Henry Fox Talbot, Mimosoidea Suchas, Acacia.ca. 1841. Photogenic drawing. National Media Museum, Bradford, U.K.

1937-366/14. National Media Museum/Science & Society Picture Library. [Fig. 11-6]

Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre, Le Boulevard du Temple.1839. Daguerreotype. Bavarian National Museum, Munich.

© Corbis. [Fig. 11-7]


• The popularity of the daguerrotype made portraits available to more than just the upper classes, who would have been able to afford painted portraits.

• However, its disadvantages involved preparation, time, and utmost care; it also could not be reproduced.


• Talbot's method of calotype, or exposing sensitized paper to light, became the basis of modern photography. His photograph, The Open Door, shows

how photography became a work of art in its own right.

Henry Fox Talbot, The Open Door.1843. Calotype. National Museum of Photography, London.

Digital image courtesy of Getty's Open Content Program. [Fig. 11-8]


• Frederick Archer introduced a wet-plate collodion process in 1850. It was a cumbersome process but had

short exposure time.• Julia Margaret Cameron set up a studio

in her chicken coop and photographed many influential British men. The Portrait of Thomas Carlisle was an

attempt to capture the inner man.

Julia Margaret Cameron, Portrait of Thomas Carlyle.1863. Albumen print, 14-7⁄16 × 10-3⁄16". The J. Paul Getty Museum.Digital image courtesy of Getty's Open Content Program. [Fig. 11-9]


• Photographs of war were first published during the Crimean War.

• A Harvest of Death, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, July 1863 is a condemnation of the horrors of war. Both foreground and background are

blurred to draw attention to the corpses.

Timothy O'Sullivan (negative) and Alexander Gardner (print), A Harvest of Death, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, July 1863, from Gardner's Photographic Sketchbook of the War.1866. Albumen silver print (also available as a stereocard), 6-1/4 × 7-13⁄16". The Library of

Congress. [Fig. 11-10]

Form and ContentForm and Content1 of 41 of 4

• By emphasizing formal elements over representation, an artist can underscore the abstract nature of photographs.

• The Steerage by Alfred Stieglitz portrays the artist's interest in spatial relations. The photo's geometry was inspired by

the work of Charles Sheeler.

Alfred Stieglitz, The Steerage.1907. Photogravure, 12-5/8 × 10-3/16". Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Provenance unknown, 526.1986. © 2015. Digital image, Museum of Modern Art, New York/Scala, Florence. © 2015 Georgia O'Keeffe Museum/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New

York. [Fig. 11-11]


• Sheeler's task in his photographs of the Ford factory was to aestheticize the plant.

• The Farm Security Administration funded fifteen photographers to document the plight of farmers after the Great Depression. Walker Evans captured heroism in his

subjects for Let Us Now Praise Famous Men.

Charles Sheeler, Criss-Crossed Conveyors—Ford Plant.1927. Gelatin silver print, 10 × 8". Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

© Lane Collection. Courtesy Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. [Fig. 11-12]

Walker Evans, Alabama Tenant Farmer's Kitchen (Washstand with View into Dining Area of Burroughs Home, Hale County, Alabama).

1936. 35mm photograph.Courtesy of Library of Congress. Image copyright Walker Evans Archive, Metropolitan

Museum of Art, New York. [Fig. 11-13]


• An-My Lê's series of photographs, 29 Palms, shows soldiers preparing for deployment to Afghanistan and Iraq. Her work deals with reenactments of

war through training exercises; O'Sullivan's work was similarly staged to heighten the dramatic effect of the image.

An-My Lê, 29 Palms: Night Operations III.2003–04. Gelatin silver print, 26 × 37-1/2".

© An-My Lê, courtesy of Murray Guy, New York. [Fig. 11-14]


• Henri Cartier-Bresson discussed the relationship between form and content to the instant composition allowed by photographs. Athens shows a second story Classical-

style facade above two women walking past on the street below.

Imagine how the artist might have spied the location and waited for the subjects to appear at the "decisive moment."

Henri Cartier-Bresson, Athens.1953.

Magnum Photos, Inc. [Fig. 11-15]

The Photographic Print and itsThe Photographic Print and itsManipulationManipulation

1 of 21 of 2

• Fred Archer developed the Zone System for darkrooms. A zone represents the relation of the

image's brightness to the value the photographer wishes it to appear in the final print.

He also adjusted his camera's aperture to establish the desired luminescence prior to taking the photograph.

The Photographic Print and itsThe Photographic Print and itsManipulationManipulation

2 of 22 of 2

• Dodging is a technique that decreases the exposure of selected areas the photographer wishes to be lighter.

• Burning increases the exposure to areas of the print that should be darker.

• Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico features both of these techniques to create the feeling of a changing world.

Ansel Adams, Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico.1941. Gelatin silver print, 18-1/2 × 23".

© Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust/Corbis. [Fig. 11-16]

Color and Digital PhotographyColor and Digital Photography1 of 61 of 6

• Color was associated with advertising and was ignored by fine art photographers until the 1960s.

• Gary Alvis, who worked with both color and black-and-white, maintained the tension in The Painted Hills with cool and warm colors.

Gary Alvis, The Painted Hills, John Day Fossil Beds National Monument, Oregon.2008. Six-stitch Cibachrome print, dimensions variable.

© Gary Alvis. [Fig. 11-17]


• The Darkroom as Laboratory: Jerry Uelsmann's Untitled Uelsmann considers photography to be

about what happens after an image is captured on film rather than the moment it is photographed.

He fits images from his contact sheets together in the darkroom, creating nearly surrealist landscapes.

The Creative ProcessThe Creative Process

• The Darkroom as Laboratory: Jerry Uelsmann's Untitled Formal relations among elements

influence his decisions most. The second version of Untitled features

hands echoing the lines of the mountain in the background.• In the artist's words, it is "obviously

symbolic, but not symbolically obvious."


• Nan Goldin worked primarily in color because she could not get access to a darkroom. Goldin shot her photographs indoors in

artificial light to enhance the vibrancy of the colors.

In Vivienne in the green dress, blues and greens contrast with the red of the subject's lips and bangle as well as red-orange leaves in the vase.

Nan Goldin, Vivienne in the green dress.1980.

Courtesy of Matthew Marks Gallery. [Fig. 11-23]


• The rise of color photography coincided with the growing popularity of the color television. Polaroid cameras and inexpensive

processing for Kodak film contributed to this movement.

• Today, digital technologies transform photography into a highly manipulable medium.


• Andreas Gursky's Ocean II is a sweeping view of the world's oceans made from high-definition satellite photographs. The cloudless parts of the oceans and

land had to be generated digitally. The image is disconcerting, like an

inside-out atlas where oceans are edged by land.

Andreas Gursky, Ocean II.2010. Chromogenic print, 11' 2-1/4" × 8' 2-1/8" × 2-1/2".

© 2015 Andreas Gursky/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn. [Fig. 11-24]


• Constructing Helen from Helen's Odyssey features an enlarged model Helen transformed to gigantic proportions. It parodies academic paintings like

Alexandre Cabanel's Birth of Venus.

Eleanor Antin, Constructing Helen, from the series Helen's Odyssey.2007. Chromogenic print, 5' 8" × 16' 7".

Courtesy of the artist and Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York. [Fig. 11-25]

Alexandre Cabanel, The Birth of Venus.1863. Oil on canvas, 4' 4" × 7' 6". Musée d'Orsay, Paris.

Inv. RF273. Photo © RMN-Grand Palais (musée d'Orsay)/Hervé Lewandowski.[Fig. 11-26]

FilmFilm1 of 51 of 5

• Cubist painter Fernand Léger created the film Ballet Mécanique to study a number of images repeated again and again in film.

• Assembling a film through editing is a kind of linear collage. The first great master of editing was D.

W. Griffith, who invented a filmmaking vocabulary in The Birth of a Nation.

Fernand Léger, Ballet Mécanique.1924. The Humanities Film Collection, Oregon State University.

© 2015 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris. [Fig. 11-27]

Battle scene from The Birth of a Nation, directed by D. W. Griffith.1915.

[Fig. 11-28]


• Shots A full shot shows an actor from head to

toe. A medium shot shows the waist up. A close-up shows the head and

shoulders. An extreme close-up shows a portion

of the face. A long shot shows a wide expanse.


• Shots The iris shot opens a scene with a

widening circle and closes it by shrinking the circle back down.

The pan, or panoramic vista, moves the camera from one side of the scene to the other.

A traveling or tracking shot moves the camera parallel to the action.


• A flashback involves narrative episodes that took place before the start of the film.

• Cross-cutting is an editing technique that moves focus back and forth between two scenes at an ever faster pace.


• Another great innovator in film was Sergei Eisenstein, who utilized the montage to create a multifaceted narrative. Battleship Potemkin is based on an

unsuccessful uprising against the Russian monarchy in 1905.

• Douglas Gordon's extremely slow-motion film 24 Hour Psycho is a contrast to the montage.

Sergei Eisenstein, Battleship Potemkin.1925. Film still.

Goskino/Kobal Collection. [Fig. 11-29a]


Goskino/Kobal Collection. [Fig. 11-29b]


Goskino/Kobal Collection. [Fig. 11-29c]


Goskino/Kobal Collection. [Fig. 11-29d]

Douglas Gordon, 24 Hour Psycho.1993.

Photo: Studio lost but found (Bert Rossi), Courtesy of Gagosian Gallery © Douglas Gordon. From Psycho, 1960, USA. Directed and produced by Alfred Hitchcock, Distributed

by Paramount Pictures Universal City Stuidoes, Inc. [Fig. 11-30]

The Popular CinemaThe Popular Cinema1 of 31 of 3

• Audiences of popular cinema expect an entertaining narrative.

• Charlie Chaplin was one of the greatest Hollywood stars, merging humor with a sympathetic character in the silent film The Gold Rush.

• By 1939, Hollywood had reached a zenith and produced films in a variety of genres.

Charlie Chaplin in The Gold Rush.1925. United Artists.

Everett Collection. [Fig. 11-31]


• Citizen Kane was esteemed as featuring a wide variety of editing effects unique to film at the time.

• Before the production of Gone with the Wind, art director William Cameron Menzies spent two years creating storyboards for each of the movie's scenes.

Orson Welles in Citizen Kane.1941.

Kobal Collection. Citizen Kane © 1941 RKO Pictures, Inc. All rights reserved. [Fig. 11-32]

William Cameron Menzies, Storyboard for the burning-of-Atlanta scene from Gone with the Wind.

1939.MGM/Photofest. [Fig. 11-33]

Burning-of-Atlanta scene from Gone with the Wind.1939.

MGM/Photofest. [Fig. 11-34]


• The studio of Walt Disney produced animated films featuring up to 24 drawings per each second of film time.

• After World War II, directors were viewed as the auteurs of their works. Federico Fellini, Ingmar Bergman, Jean-

Luc Godard, and Alan Resnais• Star Wars inaugurated a new era of

"blockbuster" Hollywood films.

Video ArtVideo Art1 of 91 of 9

• The more sophisticated the techniques used to produce a film, the more expensive it is. Artists were more easily able to work

with film when the handheld video camera was introduced in 1965.

• Nam June Paik used altered televisions in his large-scale installations that explore film.


• Megatron/Matrix featured 215 monitors programmed with live video images from the Seoul Olympic games and animated montages.

• Video Flag was created as three separate flag sculptures. Over time, parts for maintaining the

video monitors became obsolete and were replaced by new technology.

Nam June Paik, Video Flag.1985–96. Seventy video monitors, 4 laser-disk players, computer, timers, electrical

devices, wood and metal housing on rubber wheels, 7' 10-3/8" × 11' 7-3/4" × 47-3/4". Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

Holenia Purchase Fund, in memory of Joseph H. Hirshhorn, 1996. Photo: Lee Stalsworth. © Estate of Nam June Paik. [Fig. 11-35]


• Bruce Nauman explored "real" time in his Live-Taped Video Corridor, in which viewers inched down a narrow hallway toward two monitors that recorded their own image. This mimicked the proliferation of CCTV

systems in the U.S. by the early 1970s.

Bruce Nauman, Live-Taped Video Corridor.1970. Wallboard, video camera, two video monitors, videotape player, and vide-otape,

dimensions variable. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. Installation view: 1970 Annual Exhibition of Contemporary American Sculpture, Whitney Museum of American

Art, New York, December 12, 1970–February 7, 1971.Panza Collection, Gift, 92.4165 © 2015 Bruce Nauman/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New

York. [Fig. 11-36]


• Chris Burden's Shoot exploited the "truth factor" of video works. A fellow student fired a rifle at him from

halfway across the gallery; rather than grazing his skin, the bullet produced a more serious wound.

Only 8 seconds of the film remained in the video work.

Chris Burden, Shoot.1974. Still. Videotape of a 1971 performance, approx. 2 min. 15 sec.

Courtesy of Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), New York. © Chris Burden. [Fig. 11-37]


• Dara Birnbaum explored sexist representations of women in her video Technology/Transformation: Wonder Woman. Sequences from an episode of the TV

show featuring Linda Carter were repeated.

Dara Birnbaum, Technology/Transformation: Wonder Woman.1978–79. Still. Video, approx. 5 min. 16 sec.

Courtesy of Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), New York. [Fig. 11-38]


• William Wegman created works that challenged the authority of the visual experience. Deodorant featured the artist spraying

an entire can of deodorant under one armpit while extolling its virtues.

Rage and Depression featured the artist reciting a monologue about shock therapy while smiling.

William Wegman, Rage and Depression, Reel 3.1972–73. Still. Video, approx. 1 min.Courtesy of the artist. [Fig. 11-39]


• Gary Hill's Crux consists of five television monitors in the shape of a cross that play video of the artist trekking through a deserted island, a representation of Christ's journey.

• Some archival footage is becoming increasingly available, but most contemporary works are available only at museums and galleries.

Gary Hill, Crux.1983–87. Five-channel video installation (NTSC, color, sound), 5 video monitors, 5 speakers, 1

synchronizer. Hamburger Bahnhof–Museum für Gegenwart, Nationalgalerie, Berlin.Inv. FNG 68/93. Photo: Jens Ziehe. © 2015. Photo Scala, Florence/bpk, Bildagentur für Kunst, Kultur und Geschichte, Berlin. © 2015 Gary Hill/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. [Fig.

11-40]


• Bill Viola has released his early works on DVD. The Reflecting Pool, a seven-minute

film, features a stationary camera that allowed the artist to create three separate recordings and overlap them.

Some aspects of the film are dissolved, some real-time, and some reverse motion.

Bill Viola, The Reflecting Pool.1977–79. Still. Video, color, mono sound, 7 min.

Bill Viola Studio LLC. Photos: Kira Perov. [Fig. 11-41a]


Bill Viola Studio LLC. Photos: Kira Perov. [Fig. 11-41b]


Bill Viola Studio LLC. Photos: Kira Perov. [Fig. 11-41c]


Bill Viola Studio LLC. Photos: Kira Perov. [Fig. 11-41d]


• Der Lauf der Dinge (The Way Things Go) by artists Peter Fischli and David Weiss is widely available. A kinetic sculptural installation activates

over a 30-minute sequence, including a series of physical and chemical chain reactions.

It serves as both a metaphor for Western culture and a slapstick comedy of errors.

Peter Fischli and David Weiss, Der Lauf der Dinge (The Way Things Go).1987. Still. 16 mm color film, 30 min.

© Peter Fischli David Weiss, Courtesy of Matthew Marks Gallery. [Fig. 11-42a]

Peter Fischli and David Weiss, Der Lauf der Dinge (The Way Things Go).1987. Still. 16 mm color film, 30 min.

© Peter Fischli David Weiss, Courtesy of Matthew Marks Gallery. [Fig. 11-42b]

The Computer and New MediaThe Computer and New Media1 of 21 of 2

• To make The Reflecting Pool, Bill Viola used the CMX 600 to escape the necessity of editing in chronologically.

• Digital nonlinear editing programs followed Avid's Media Composer system in 1989.

• CGI technology has since been integrated into many digital video works.

The Computer and New MediaThe Computer and New Media2 of 22 of 2

• David Claerbout's Selections of a Happy Moment is a video generated by computers that at first appears to be a slideshow of shots taken simultaneously. The artist worked from more than

50,000, choosing only 180 images into the background scenes.

Viewers are caught in a paradoxical representation of time.

David Claerbout, Sections of a Happy Moment.2007. Stills. Single-channel video projection, 1920 × 1600 hd progressive, black-and-

white, stereo audio, 25 min. 57 sec.Courtesy of Galerie Micheline Szwajcer, Brussels and Sean Kelly, New York. [Fig. 11-43]

The Creative ProcessThe Creative Process1 of 21 of 2

• Revisioning a Painting as Video: Bill Viola's The Greeting Inspired by Jacopo da Pontormo's The

Visitation, Viola created Buried Secrets about hidden emotions.• The element that stood out the most to

him was a look of understanding between two women in the street of Pontormo's painting.

Bill Viola, Sketch for the set of The Greeting.1995.

Bill Viola Studio LLC. Photo: Kira Perov. [Fig. 11-44]

Jacopo da Pontormo, The Visitation.1528. Oil on canvas, 6' 7-1/2" × 5' 1-3/8". Pieve di S. Michele, Carmignano, Italy.

Canali Photobank, Milan, Italy. [Fig. 11-45]

Bill Viola, The Greeting.1995. Video/sound installation for the exhibition Buried Secrets. United States Pavilion,

Venice Biennale, 1995. Arizona State University Art Museum, Tempe.Bill Viola Studio LLC. Performers: Angela Black, Suzanne Peters, Bonnie Snyder. Photo:

Kira Perov. [Fig. 11-46]

The Creative ProcessThe Creative Process2 of 22 of 2

• Revisioning a Painting as Video: Bill Viola's The Greeting Viola recreated sketches of a street for

the setting of his video. Ten slow-motion minutes capture the

moment, never shifting point of view. A final decision was projecting it onto a

wall rather than using a screen.

Cao Fei, RMB City, in Art in the Twenty-First Century, season 5 episode, "Fantasy".2009. Production still. Segment: Cao Fei.

© Art 21, Inc. 2009. [Fig. 11-47]

The Critical ProcessThe Critical Process

• Thinking about Photography and Time-Based Media A Sudden Gust of Wind is modeled on a

Hokusai print but dramatically transforms the scene into a billboardlike depiction.

Jeff Wall's format is meant to invoke cinema and was carefully shot over the course of five months.

Jeff Wall, A Sudden Gust of Wind (After Hokusai).1993. Transparency in lightbox, 7' 6-3⁄16" × 12' 4-7⁄16". Tate Gallery, London.

Courtesy of the artist. [Fig. 11-48]

Hokusai, Sunshu Ejiri, from the series Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji.ca. 1830–32. Polychrome woodblock print, ink and color on paper, 9-7/8 × 14-3/4".

Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.Henry L. Phillips Collection, Bequest of Henry L. Phillips, 1939, JP2953. © 2015. Image

copyright Metropolitan Museum of Art/Art Resource/Scala, Florence. [Fig. 11-49]

Thinking BackThinking Back1 of 31 of 3

1. Describe the origins of photography and the formal principles that most inform it.

2. Describe how color and digital technologies have transformed photographic practice.


3. Outline the basic principles of film editing, including montage, as well as the technological developments that advanced the medium.

4. Outline some of the ways that video art has exploited the immediacy of the medium while at the same time critiquing popular culture.


5. Discuss some of the technological innovations that have advanced time-based art into the digital age.