Famous Photographer Presentation

• Because you care about your own artwork looking good.
  

• But, to many it needs more appreciation than a 30 second look.
  

• When your friend asks you "does this look good?" you don't want to tell them it sucks. They force you to look and then formulate an opinion.
  

• When you write, it forces you to analyze what you are looking at.
  

• When you look at artwork, it can be intimidating.
• Writing helps you HONOR that feeling and it informs a wider audience about how YOU feel/think.
  

• Brings you closer to people you care about or do not care about.
• It helps someone better appreciate what you stand for and who you are.

1. To create a bank of important photographers so that you and others can learn about famous photographers and their work.
   

• The value to you is to help you see who you are as a photographer and artist.

1. Your job is to create a scholarly opinion in presentation format that includes facts about your artist

• life
  
• work
  
• why he / she was important
  

1. Include
   

• when and where they were born,
  
• education
  
• how they started their career in photography
  
• how they worked
  
• their primary influences
  
• why their work was important. It can be based on
  

-historical
-aesthetic
-technical

1. Minimum of 5 examples of their work, which relates to your opening "opinion" or statement.
2. Multiple drafts are encouraged before final presentation.
• Sharing your presentation in a google doc/powerpoint is ideal
3. You may not plagiarize.
4. Correct spelling and punctuation are a must.

• Edward Curtis
  
• Lee Friedlander
  
• Richard Avedon
  
• Imogen Cunningham
  
• Diane Arbus
  
• Edward Weston
  
• Edward Fox Talbot
  
• Paul Strand
  
• Alfred Stieglitz
  
• Edward Steichen
  
• Sabastiao Salgado
  
• Gordon Parks
  
• Timothy O'Sullivan
  
• Arnold Newman
  
• Nadar
  
• Joel Meyerowitz
  
• Dorthea Lange
  
• Andre Kertesz
  
• Yousef Karsh
  
• Walker Evans
  
• William Eggleston
  
• Robert Doisneau
  
• Brassai
  
• Margaret Bourke-White
  
• Eugene Atget
  
• Ansel Adams
  
• Bernice Abbott
  

1. Read through evaluations written by others.
   
2. Watch documentaries or YouTube.
3. This is not solving a mathematical equation because, there is rarely a 'correct' view about

• What a particular photographer was trying to achieve
• Whether he/she succeeded
• How beautiful his/her photograph is.

1. It is not your conclusion about a photograph that matters - it is your reasoning: in other words, WHY you like it, or hate it, or feel indifferent towards it.
   

When analyzing a photograph

It is merely a composition arranged in a certain way. No more, no less.

Look at

1. How the artist has used lines & shapes
2. The different tones
3. How the artist catches your eye - for instance, are there features that catch your eye and lead it around the composition? is the picture organized horizontally from left to right, or diagonally, or vertically?
4. Is the artist trying to represent something real, like a person, or scene?
5. If so, is he simply trying to replicate reality, or is he trying to say something about it?
6. Are some items included in the picture for symbolic reasons?
7. In the old days, for instance, if an artist included a dog in his portrait of a married woman, it implied that the woman was faithful to her husband.
   

If you noticed (point 2 above) that the artist used a lot of contrast - ask yourself why?

1. What was the artist trying to achieve?
2. Or, if you notice that your attention is drawn to a particular object in the picture - ask yourself why the artist might wish to attract your eye to this particular spot.
3. If you can form an opinion as to what the artist's intention was, in relation to the above points, you are bound to have a pretty good appreciation of the photograph itself.
   

Born in 1886 in Chicago, Weston helped to take photography out of the Victorian age, where it had served as a kind of pictorial addendum to painting, and make it modernist in every sense of the word.

• My opinion is that he took photography out of the Victorian Age & how we can relate it to a painting. I also make you BELIEVE he was a modernist because I say "every sense of the word."
  

Whether photographing elemental landscapes, sculptural nudes or everyday objects, Weston's formal brilliance was allied to a democratic approach to his subject matter.

• I give a broad description of him, but because I use brilliance and democratic approach to describe him, this is me further formulating my opinion and trying to convince you that he is what I claim.
  

He wanted, he said, "to make the commonplace unusual", a statement that has reverberated through photographic practice to the present day.

• Again, I am trying to convince you of my beginning sentence. Using a quote shows validity in your claim.
  

Weston's still lives, for instance, the tonal quality of his black-and-white prints imbue everyday objects, both natural and man-made, with a heightened presence that sometimes makes them seem almost unreal.

• I talk more about what he did in detail, but I am STILL including an opinion because of the way I am describing what I see and backing it up with art vocabulary adjectives.
  

In his journals, he wrote that his aim was to render "the very substance and quintessence of the thing itself, whether it be polished steel or palpitating flesh".

• Because he is WIDELY known for his day journals, this is a critical piece to include about him. The quote I chose fits my opinion and further helps prove my point of who I THINK he is.
  

To this end, he photographed seashells that had been collected by his lover, the photographer and revolutionary Tina Modotti, and transformed them, in her words, into something "mystical and erotic". (A vintage print of one of his seashells, Nautilus, 1927, sold for $1,082,500 at Sotheby's New York in April.)

• It is important to talk about the work that he did do and providing any examples or evidence further helps prove your opinion. Using art vocab gives us the mental picture that is CRITICAL to the success of your opinion.