Contemporary photographer
The amateur photographer uses a technique that everyone is familiar with. It's such a common technique that one might wonder if photography is an art form like painting or sculpture.
The contemporary photographer now uses all digital tools. Yet, the original essence of photography remains fundamental to the discipline. The photographer is a contemporary artist . Since the appearance of the first photographs, following the work of Niepce and Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre (1824), photographic images have possessed an artistic character.
At the time, the technique was in its infancy. A plate coated with a thin layer of silver iodide was exposed in a darkroom, then treated with mercury vapors which produced an image.
Soon, creative minds, such as painters, saw in this process a new means of expression. An artistic movement ensued.
Nowadays, there are many styles of photographic art. From photojournalism to conceptual photographic art, including all the digital compositions that new technologies make possible.
Is photography an art?
The question remains relevant.
Often on the margins of the concepts that define a work of art, photographic images have long since invaded our contemporary societies.
Increasingly, they are taken with a smartphone camera. Digitized, they become easier to duplicate and process.
Photographs are consumed in large quantities. However, an image is not necessarily a "photographic work." To become one, it must meet certain conditions:
- The proof must have been executed by the artist.
- It must bear the imprint of its author's personality
- It must be signed or authenticated by the artist
- It will be limited to a print run of 30 copies
But what does photographic work mean?
Photographs are classified into commercial, leisure, and art photography.
To put it more explicitly, there's a long-standing tendency to think that people who take photographs are professional photographers. They're paid for their work, while art photographers aren't bound by a commission. The line isn't always clear.
Professionals in fashion photography, or press photography, some nevertheless became famous. Mario Testino, Guy Bourdin, Annie Leibovitz, Helmut Newton, Annie Leibovitz, Peter Lindbergh, for fashion photography; Robert Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Raymond Depardon and Robert Doisneau , for press photography.
They revealed the beauty of the models and immortalized moments in history, or simply bore witness to an era.
Fashion photographers
Through their vision, these artists revolutionized the art image. Like Flemish painters such as Johannes Vermeer, these pioneers of photography expressed scenes of life and symbols of our contemporary societies.
In reality, it's difficult to distinguish between an art photographer and a photographer in general. It's the approach and the vision that make the difference.
Glamour or romantic photography
From the very beginning of photography, glamour photography held a prominent place in the discipline. Initially, it served as a model for painters, but it quickly became considered an art form in its own right.
Initially quite confidential, the glamour photographer gained notoriety from the 1950s onwards. Exhibitions on the theme showcased increasingly well-known artists such as David Hamilton, for example.
Avant-gardism
As photography established itself as a fully-fledged artistic discipline, an avant-garde movement emerged. Some photographers adapted the new ideas of Cubism, Constructivism, and Surrealism. The works of Moholy-Nagy and Man Ray
Photojournalism
From the very beginnings of photography, the press seized upon this new medium, intended as an objective record. In reality, photographers immediately took liberties in their coverage of events.
Photojournalists break free from newsrooms and question aesthetics itself at the heart of the most dramatic situations.
Robert Capa participated in the D-Day landings on Omaha Beach in June 1944. He took numerous photographs that contributed to historical memory, as well as to art history. Unfortunately, many of his negatives were destroyed forever during the operation.
Conceptual photography
The widespread adoption of photography has prompted a reaction from the art world. Three main positions can be considered:
1- Conceptual realism , which questions raw reality without artifice. ( Bernd and Hilla Becher drew inspiration from industrial heritage)
2- The event-based narrative, which serves as testimony. Andreas Gursky produces extremely precise, large-format photographs. Furthermore, he can be classified as a realist who followed the theories of the Düsseldorf School .
Andreas Gusky's work would evolve towards the pop art of Andy Warhol.
Artistic photography uses technique to compete with graphic arts.
Artistic photography employs techniques akin to those of graphic arts.
In the realms of street art and pop art, with the advent of digital processing, late 20th-century photographers drew inspiration from advertising codes. The aim was to interact with the viewer through the symbols of the consumer world. As the public showed renewed interest in photography, the medium evolved toward the perfection of form. Artistic approaches varied, but they solicited the viewer's interpretation more than ever. (Note the arrival of Gilbert & George on the photographic scene with their series of photomontages.) They positioned themselves as anti-elite and close to the people. The "Naked Shit Pictures" (1995) became very popular. " Class War, Militant, Gateway " was exhibited in 2015 at the Louis Vuitton Foundation.
The Birth of Contemporary Artistic Photography
The term "contemporary photographer" has taken root in the last twenty years. Before that, nobody used this kind of term.
The year 1995, with the birth of the Internet, saw an irreversible change regarding the production and distribution of art.
Immediately, a vast number of images flooded the internet at high speed. With the advent of social networking sites (SNS) like Facebook (2004) and Instagram (2010), the daily images and videos taken by strangers were added to the already massive collection of photographs. This phenomenon continues to grow exponentially. This rapid change has even exceeded expectations.
Since Wolfgang Tillmans won the Turner Prize in 2000, photography has irreversibly moved towards contemporary art.
Why such a change?
Reference should be made to the book by curator Charlotte Cotton, "Contemporary Photography: The Future of Photography as Contemporary Art," published by the British publisher Thames & Hudson in 2004. This publication quickly gained a global influence.
This book marks the birth of photography in contemporary art. The wide range of photographers considered in this book includes artists such as Isa Genzken, Jeff Wall, Sophie Calle, Thomas Demand, Nan Goldin and Sherry Levine, not forgetting emerging artists like Sara VanDerBeek, Rashid Johnson, Viviane Sassen and Amalia Ulman.
This edition is not the first on the subject. However, it highlights more recent practices that are still revolutionizing our perception of images. Photography is becoming a culturally essential medium. It is more than ever a powerful means of expressing socio-political power.
Isn't the noblest function of contemporary art to offer alternatives to bourgeois conservatism, which tends to freeze conventional trends in order to better control them?
Behind its didactic aspect, Charlotte Coton's book demonstrates the need for contemporary photographers to break out of the artistic niche where some art thinkers would like to confine them.
I think we must not forget that the emergence and establishment of the term "photography as contemporary art" occurred in a similarly contemporary environment.
The impact of the digital revolution on art
The advent of the Internet society gave rise to SNS (Social Networks). This is transforming the art world in relation to economic globalization.
The widespread adoption of digital image processing and mobile phone technology has completely changed the paradigm surrounding the art of photography. The raw image captured with a camera becomes a material that can be molded and transformed at will to create images often far removed from the original photograph. The possibilities are limitless for transforming reality and extending human visual culture beyond the realm of the real through new effects.
Digital tools have emerged, such as "digital capture", "Photoshop", pigment printing and recently 3D printing.
They have permanently altered our approach to images. Photographers initially adapted. Then, they became specialists in these new technologies. The evolution is frenetic, and the world has become " connected fantasy."
As Charlotte Cotton says, we are on the "edge of chaos" with "modern photography" acting as a foreign body. Without going to that extreme, it seems clear that behind the artificial image, the contemporary photographer has a responsibility to maintain a connection with the nature of art.
What is the future of photography? Positioning photography as a contemporary art form
From the 1990s onward, photography went completely digital. This brought about a profound change in photographs that went beyond the simple shift from analog to digital optics. Photography became fundamentally different from painting. The meaning of photography in relation to "truth" was completely overturned. New photographic works emerged. The developments in this field still seem to be underestimated. Photography as an expression of physical truth is still defended by conservatives. Others believe it is time to break free from reality entirely and live in the virtual world. For my part, I think that technological evolution and economic globalization are not keeping pace with the evolution of humanity. It is necessary not to lose the foundations of this art. Moreover, many young artists still use film photography, the old-fashioned way. Artistic richness cannot exist without a coexistence of genres; this is almost a fundamental rule. Nevertheless, we must prepare ourselves for such "chaos." Then, let's reconsider the context of photography as a contemporary art form. Photographers have now moved beyond digitization, entering the era of economic globalization through innovative information technologies (Blockchain, NFTs, etc.). At the same time, they are recognized as key players in contemporary art. For how long? We must never forget that photography is an art form, with its own language and aesthetic. Among contemporary photographers, there is no consensus. Only time will tell!
Related topics:
- Contemporary sculptors
- The contemporary painter