Ansel Adams by Melis Taslak

Jeffrey Pine, Sentinel Dome

Ansel Adams, as a victim of great San Francisco earthquake, was interested in depicting crooked or unusually existing pieces of the nature. He badly broke his nose during that earthquake, and he echoed his bad memory into his great landscape photography. This photo had taken from many different points of view, but this point of view showed the uniqueness of the scene effectively.

Photo 1: Adams, Ansel. “The Ansel Adams Gallery – Jeffrey Pine, Sentinel Dome” 2008. 9 December 2008. <http://www.anseladams.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWPROD&ProdID=174>

In this photo, he tried to capture the very basic elements of the photography. His composition was perfect in a way that he could lead the viewers’ eyes first to the tree and then to the framed mountains in the back. The braches echoed the shape of the peaks as the shadow of the same branch inversely did. Horizontal lines divided the photo into horizontal bands. In addition, Ansel Adams used rule of thirds very efficiently. Ansel Adams led the viewers’ eyes to the lower left, where one of the virtual intersection points existed.

Storm and Rocks, Tımber COve

In this photo, Ansel Adams adds danger of the nature to the landscape he captures. Rusticity and the nostalgia completely leave the moment and reflect the reality. Since f64 is the widest f-stop to catch the largest point of view, we can see the clearest image of the moment.
Photo 2: Adams, Ansel. “The Ansel Adams Gallery – Storm and Rocks, Timber Cove” 2008.
9 December 2008.
<http://www.anseladams.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWPROD&ProdID=146

Movement of the wave and the stillness of the rocks create a contradictory scene. What we have to think applaud about this photo is the correct timing. If he doesn’t push the button on right time, this moment will be meaningless. Also, the balance between white, foamy waves and dark, solid rocks creates a balance between black and white.

Point Sur, Storm

Ansel Adams made a combination of what the previous artists want to do. The sublime view, the rusticity and the nostalgia are the main ideas of the previous photography. You may say that Ansel Adams completely destroys the idea of rusticity, but he clearly manipulates the sublime, aesthetically perfect but also realistic, atmosphere. He removes the idea of safety in nature in a realistic manner which his group f64 manifested. If you compare Adams’ photos to John Hill’s painting, View by Moonlight, Near Fayetteville, you will easily see the change. The safeness of the nature and the warm atmosphere of the night are changed into to the wild and destroying nature.
Photo 3: Adams, Ansel. “The Ansel Adams Gallery – Point Sur, Storm” 2008. 9 December 2008. <http://www.anseladams.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWPROD&ProdID=2287>



Photo 4: Delahunt, Michael. “ ArtLex - Picturesque”
1996-2008 9 December 2008
< http://www.artlex.com/ArtLex/Pf.html>


Mount Williamson

In this photo, what we can observe is the piece and whole relation. As f64ers wants to show the reality, this is the Ansel Adam’s way to show the real side of the objects. More interesting part of this photo is the point of view it was taken. It is taken from under the eye level, so it creates an effect that the mountains are higher than they are. Also, the light plays a huge in role in this photo. The sun rays above the mountains
Photo 5: Adams, Ansel. “The Ansel Adams Gallery – Mount Williamson” 2008.
9 December 2008.
< http://www.anseladams.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWPROD&ProdID=118>

generate mysticism, so that in some ways Ansel Adams repeats what previous artists want to do but what he misses: rusticity and nostalgia.



Sources:

Adams, Ansel. “The Ansel Adams Gallery – Point Sur, Storm” 2008. 9 December 2008.
< http://www.anseladams.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWPROD&ProdID=2287>

Adams, Ansel. “The Ansel Adams Gallery – Jeffrey Pine, Sentinel Dome” 2008. 9 December 2008.
< http://www.anseladams.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWPROD&ProdID=174>

Adams, Ansel. “The Ansel Adams Gallery – Storm and Rocks, Timber Cove” 2008. 9 December 2008.
< http://www.anseladams.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWPROD&ProdID=146>

Adams, Ansel. “The Ansel Adams Gallery – Mount Williamson” 2008. 9 December 2008.
< http://www.anseladams.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWPROD&ProdID=118>

Delahunt, Michael. “ ArtLex - Picturesque” 1996-2008 9 December 2008
< http://www.artlex.com/ArtLex/Pf.html>

Ansel Adams by Pelin Kansu

ANSEL ADAMS


In his landscape photographs, Ansel Andams, didn’t seek to be realistic. His photographs are the visualisation of intense and pure emotional and psychological experiences of natural beauty. “He created a sense of the sublime magnificence of nature that infused the viewer with the emotional equivalent of wilderness, often more powerful than the actual thing.” (http://www.anseladams.com/content/ansel_info/anseladams_biography2.html)

“Mt. Ansel Adams, Lyell Fork”
Ansel Adam’s photographs are so technically mastered that they look like landscape paintings. This photo is one of those masterpieces. The vertical lines are emphasizeed through the trees, the mountain peaks and the river which also leads the eye into the photo. The extend of the technical excellence can be seen from the perfect manipulation of light, and the amount of detail. Ansel Adams wanted to achieve these qualities while showing every detail in the frame.


“Unicorn Peak, Thunderclouds”
Ansel Adams belongs to a group of artist who believe that the technical mastery in photography even in large depth of field, is very important. What Ansel Adams try to achieve is that, he wants to shoot photos that show every single detail in the frame. To reach perfection in this photo, Ansel Adams, actually waited for a very long time for the thunderclouds to accumulate in a very hot day. This shows that he doesn’t just shoots photos randomly. He actually waits to get the perfect shot in the perfect time.
“Bridalveil Fall”
Ansel Adams always tries to show how grandiose nature is. This photo shows his purpose clearly. The black and white contrast between the water and its surroundings create a mistic atmosphere. This can also be seen from the white cloud of water vapour. Adams tries to provoke an emotional response in the viewer.













“Cathedral Peak and Lake”
Ansel Adams belonged to a group of artists called “f/64”. “f/64” photographers’ main objective was to shoot photos as clear as possible. Unlike the sof-focused “pictorialist” photographers who valued the artistic quality more than the subject itself, “f/64” artists aimed only to show the subject as pure as possible with great resolution and depth of field. This aspect is pretty clear in this photo. Even though the subject matter covers a wide area, every single detail can be seen, and every single object is in focus. Ansel Adams try to show the land itself in a realistic way without any supplementary artistic techniques like blurring the image or modifying the negatives. This seperates Adams from the “pictorialist” photographers, and makes his photos realistic. However, the issue that with his photos he tries to provoke an emotional response can not be overlooked.

Landscape Photography by Ugur Yildirim

The photographers of the 19th and early 20th century called themselves “explorers”. They didn’t actually explored new lands. They brought back photographs of what is unknown to them. People had some stereotypes of the eastern world. The photographers went to the eastern world to photograph these stereotypes. They did not go there to photograph a street or a building. People back in western world also had streets or buildings, so they had to photograph what’s unusual to them in order to satisfy the thoughts of the people. They went there to photograph Taj Mahal or the pyramids which is what people wanted to see from the east.

The orientalism of this era is connected with the romanticism. In their attempts to free themselves from the chain of their lifes, they looked for exotic, unknown lands, so they went to China, India, Egypt, etc. which gave them exactly what they were looking for.

Samuel Bourne went to India.

Felice Beato went to China.

Francis Frith went to Egypt.

Dan Holdsworth by Tugce Sezer

Dan Holdsworth
Dan Holdsworth makes photographs of landscapes and interiors that lack human figures, and his works have a strange, illusionary quality. His photographs often appear otherworldly; the viewer has hard time believing that such sites actually exist. He explores farthest reaches of the earth to take photos. He uses only traditional photographic methods to achieve the effect of his strange, futuristic landscapes. Dan Holdsworth's large-scale photographs explore the limits of perception and the possibilities of photography. He has three major works exhibited At the Edge of Space (1999) The Gregorian (2005), Hyperborea (2006). Hyperborea is a series of landscapes. He pictured landscapes at night. The frightening lighting effects look like computer manipulation; but it is the natural occurrence of Northern lights.
This photograph is showing the Aurora (the Northern Lights) from the city limits of Reykjavik in Iceland and from the Andoya Rocket Range above the Arctic Circle in Norway. Holdsworth himself describes taking this photo “It’s like being given a glimpse of the rhythm of the universe.”
The lights maintain a grey-green and some pinkish color. He uses long exposures. This photograph manage to convey a sense of planetary motion and connect the landscape with a wider view of space and time.
Untitled, Hyperborea, 2006

http://some-landscapes.blogspot.com/2006/08/hyperborea.html
http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/artists/dan_holdsworth.htm
http://www.nmm.ac.uk/dan-holdsworth

Lanscape Photography by Sırma Munyar

William Henry Jackson

Jackson was probably one of the most fortunate landscape photographers of his time, since he was there when the undiscovered became unraveled; he was a member of The U.S. Geological Survey, led by Ferdinand Hayden, and this fact officially started his career as a well-known photographer.

"Hayden en Route" by William Henry Jackson

"Hayden en Route" is one of the greatest examples of Jackson's works and his motivations in art; this shot is not just a remaining moment from history but also an evident of Jackson's admiration to the very recently developed techniques of photography in his time. He does not only take advantage of the lake's function as a mirror, but he also places the symmetrical reciprocal lines of horses and men according to the Rule of Thirds, which makes them and this revolutionary moment stand out even more.
Traveling around the newly discovered American lands was vital for Jackson's art. Here is another example from one of his journeys:

"Castle Geyser and Crested Pool, Upper Geyser Basin", 1871, Yellowstone NP, by William Henry Jackson

This time, Jackson focuses a bit more on the bare, defenseless, plain and pure "land", rather than picturing human beings intruding to the lands of nature and make them their own. However, he still introduces "the unknown" to the people; in the end, a crested pool was not something that people of 1800s could observe in their everyday lives. Hence, without including any other distractions, Jackson directly photographs this plain crested pool; a true wonder of nature which is already enough by itself to capture the attention of the observer.

Even after his death, Jackson remained as one of the greatest photographers and explorers in history. He received credit especially for his landscape photographs from American West, which did not only represent his wide point of view but also the fragments of many historical incidents.

Timothy O'Sullivan

Like his contemporary Jackson, Timothy O'Sullivan was an explorer who integrated the incidents he witnessed in his art; mostly from American Civil War and Western America. However, in contrast with Jackson, O'Sullivan was not just dedicated to shooting young and fresh lands of the United States but also sanguinary evidents of war and the remaining corpses intermingling with the land itself, which made him even more distinctive and special than the other landscape photographers.

"The Harvest of Death", Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, 1863, by Timothy O'Sullivan

"The Harvest of Death" became O'Sullivan's signature without a doubt; even though his main motivation was to "tell the news", his dramatic eye definitely caused this image to be interpreted from a subjective point of view. O'Sullivan pictures this unique incident by focusing on the bodies lying right in front of the lens of his camera, which emphasizes the wretchedness of the soldiers, and leaving the others in the blurry background, underlining the fact that they (and many others like them) were deceased and forced to become parts of the land they fought for. The twisted surface line of the land in O'Sullivan's eye also suggests the idea that something has to be wrong with this picture; something clearly breaks all the morals and orders down.

"Slaves J.J. Smith's Plantation”, South Carolina, 1862, by Timothy O'Sullivan

“Slaves J.J. Smith’s Plantation” is another significant work by O’Sullivan with a great historical value; this picture represents the freshly liberated women, children and men, who worked as slaves for J.J. Smith’s cotton plantation in South Carolina for many years. With this shot, O’Sullivan did not just freeze this special moment but he also reflected amazement and confusion; this crowd apparently gathered for their departure to start their new, free lives, yet, they seem like they had no idea back then, how to handle such freedom since it was a new term in their lives.

Although Timothy O’Sullivan especially stood out with his historical photographs like the two examples above, he was also attracted to the untamed nature. In the pictures he presented the lands without any industrilization or inhabiting, he combined scientific, natural features of the Earth with his emotions toward them, which rendered the pictures to become artistically beautiful.

Carleton Watkins

Carleton Watkins, in spite of a beginning career on portraits, was a well-known landscape photographer who mostly worked in California. He was not just a photographer but he was also an experimentalist; he developed many techniques in landscape photography on his own. For instance, unlike many of his contemporaries, he chose to focus on “subjects” related to the lands he wished to picture. He was such an original artist that his works were copied and printed several times even without his permission.

“Mirror Lake”, from “Yosemite History; New Series”, California, by Carleton Watkins

“Mirror Lake” is a remarkable piece from Watkins’ series of Yosemite History, in which he focuses on the horizontal line of symmetry between the real image and the reflection of it. Apparently, Watkins was amazed by the fact that the lake became the photograph of the land above it; so, in a way, by shooting this picture, Watkins did not just photographed an image but he also reflected the image’s reflection harmoniously. By putting the line of symmetry right in the middle of the picture unlike William Henry Jackson did in “Hayden en Route”, he did not just capture the attention of the viewer but he also urged them to contemplate on the fact that there might me two reciprocal worlds, just like the one represented in this piece.

The Hudson River School

In 19th century, many artists became interested in landscape; some of them made paintings of it and some of them shot photographs of it. Yet, they usually had one common point; they were influenced by the movement of Romanticism. They did not just reflect the true and exact view they saw but they interpreted them in their own ways, according to their own sentiments, emotions. Many of these artists focused on one primary area: Hudson River Valley and the surrounding lands. Thus, their inspired, sensual, romantic depictions of the same area over and over again, resulted with a categorization: The Hudson River School.
Here are some exemplary works by famous photographers of The Hudson River School:

“The Oxbow (The Connecticut River Near Northampton)”, 1836, by Thomas Cole

“Landscape with Rainbow” by Robert Scott Duncanson



Pictorialism

In the late 19th century and 20th century, some photographers were influenced by the movement of expressionism, as well as the impressionistic style, which conquered almost every painting of its time. With these affections, main functions of photography like documenting the history, reflecting the exact image and freezing the moment faded out and were replaced by the ideal romanticism; photographers tended more and more to act like painters. In order to achieve this “pictorial” effect on their photographs, many of them used unusual techniques like “soft focus”, some special filters and manipulated their images as much as they could in the dark room. This distinct movement handed its place over to modernism, when a new fashion of art was needed.
Here are some examples from Pictorialistic Era:

“Venise du Nord (Bruge, Belgium)” by Alfred Fauvarque-Omez

“Water Lilly Pads” by Jaroslav Krupka

“Versailles” by Laura Albin- Guillot


Explorers for Art

The indispensable material for landscape photographers of 19th century was exploration; either they wished to reflect the natural Earth as it was or with human impact on it. Although the main targets of exploration for the people and especially traders was to gain more land and more money, the artists were amazed by the fact that the world had so many places yet to be intruded. Thus, beginning with Age of Discovery, the artists, especially the painters and photographers wandered around to get more and more material to picture. William Henry Jackson, Timothy O’Sullivan and Carleton Watkins were the most outstanding photographers of this influence.

Michael Heizer by Selin Çakmak

Michael Heizer(1944- ) is a contemporary artist specializing primarily in large-scale sculptures and land art. He explored City* (and usually focused on the City itself) and the deserts in Nevada. He also has abstract paintings, large-scale sculptures. He was inspired on the Native American forms that are found in the museums and in the public spaces worldwide.
*City is a piece of earth art located in Garden Valley.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Heizer
His work reflected Minimalist tendencies, included square and rectangular canvases with broad bands of gray and white.
“His "Double Negative,"1969-70, two vast incisions opposite one another on the edge of Virgin River Mesa, Nevada, displaced 240,000 tons of earth. Since most Earth artists view themselves as environmentalists, one wonders how Heizer justified this destruction of the natural desert land. Although primarily an earthmover, he has also raised forms above ground.”
http://www.askart.com/askart/artist.aspx?artist=32839

He started painting again and accepted the tradition of creating an art object rather than an art event or a series of activities in an art context, Heizer returned to his earlier style. However, for the rigid geometrical units, he substituted circles and ovals. Like the earlier pieces, too, these are occasionally shaped by cuts into the framing edges.

Andy Goldsworthy by Selin Cakmak

Andy Goldsworthy (born 26 July 1956) is a British sculptor, photographer and environmentalist who produces site-specific (meaning in a certain place, here it is environment) sculpture and land art situated in natural and urban settings. His art involves the use of natural and found objects, to create both temporary and permanent sculptures which draw out the character of their environment.
"I think it's incredibly brave to be working with flowers and leaves and petals. But I have to: I can't edit the materials I work with. My remit is to work with nature as a whole" said Andy Goldsworthy about his style and his materials. He usually works with natural stuff; thorns, flowers, trees, rocks… He is consisted as the founder of modern rock balancing meaning that his works depend on the intent of practitioner. He doesn’t take a picture of a stone lying on the ground, he arranges the materials. By using those stones he prepares something like a tail to make nature more interesting. He uses his hands, teeth, found tools and sometimes machine tools to prepare his materials.

Photography plays a crucial role in his art due to its often ephemeral and transient state. According to Goldsworthy, "Each work grows, stays, decays – integral parts of a cycle which the photograph shows at its heights, marking the moment when the work is most alive. There is an intensity about a work at its peak that I hope is expressed in the image. Process and decay are implicit
Goldsworthy produced a commissioned work for the entry courtyard of San Francisco's De Young Museum called "Drawn Stone", which echoes San Francisco's frequent earthquakes and their effects. His installation included a giant crack in the pavement that broke off into smaller cracks, and broken limestone, which could be used for benches. The smaller cracks were made with a hammer adding unpredictability to the work as he created it.
“His works have to be appreciated in real time. Although photos did capture some powerful moments, his sculptures are truly 4-dimensional. He is more like a film director, and nature plays a starring role. He has the vision to discover the best actors in nature, and put together a scenario under the best natural light and timing, then let these characters improvise. Using nature as raw material, Andy superimposes something on nature which feels just proper and perfect. This way nature is elevated, for the sense of divinity and temporality is fully revealed. His works only made me realize that nature by itself is not enough” said a blogger called Xenia which accurately explains the style of Goldsworthy and the materials in Andy Goldsworthy’s art.


http://degine.blogspot.com/search?updated-min=2007-01-01T00%3A00%3A00-05%3A00&updated-max=2008-01-01T00%3A00%3A00-05%3A00&max-results=50
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_Goldsworthy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_balancing