Monthly Archive for January, 2011

From Sue Hubbard at 3quarksdaily….

In his Allegory of the Cave, Plato’s chained prisoners, trapped in their subterranean world, mistook shadows cast on the wall for reality.  When they spoke of the objects seen what was it they were speaking of; the object itself or its shadow? Such conundrums lie not only at the heart of western philosophical debate about the nature of reality but, also, of photography. The essence of photography involves an apparent magical ability to fix shadows on light sensitive surfaces.  As far back as the second half of the eighth century, the Arab alchemist Jabir ibn Hayyan (c.721-c.815) recorded that silver nitrate – the significant element of the light-sensitive emulsion of photographs – darkened in the light.  In the eighteenth century Thomas Wedgwood experimented with painting on glass placed in contact with paper and leather made chemically sensitive to the effects of light. Sadly the results remain unknown as Wedgwood lacked the know-how to fix his images.

From 1834 William Henry Fox Talbot (1800-1877) created ‘sciagrphaphs’ (the depiction of shadows) and ‘photogenic drawings’ using botanical specimens and lace placed on sensitized paper. These spectral images implicitly posed questions about the nature of reality. The term for all such works is a ‘photogram’, though strictly speaking they do not depict shadows as they are caused by the blocking of light rather than by a cast shadow. The photogram was later usurped by the process of projecting negatives through an enlarger lens. In an increasingly mechanist age this new technology proved more seductive to the scientifically minded Victorians than camera-less photography, which became the idiosyncratic realm of those interested in exploring the subconscious and the so-called spirit world. The playwright August Strindberg  took to leaving sheets of photographic paper in developer exposed to the night sky, believing that his resulting ‘celestographs’ were caused by this exposure to the heavens rather than to the more prosaic explanation of dust collecting on the surface of the paper.  In 1895 the previously unwitnessed interior of the human body was revealed by Wilhelm Konrad von Röntgen’s newly discovered x-rays, mirroring a growing interest in the unconscious and the revelation of that which could not be seen by the naked eye. More…

From Elizabeth Gumport at NYRBlog…

Given that her complete catalogue is composed almost entirely of work she produced as a student, the posthumous critical esteem for American photographer Francesca Woodman is astonishing. Unlike music or math, where precocious displays of talent are not uncommon, photography tends not to have prodigies. Woodman, who committed suicide in 1981 at age 22, is considered a rare exception. That she has achieved such status is all the more remarkable considering only a quarter of the approximately 800 images she produced—many of them self-portraits—have ever been seen by the public.

Now, on the thirtieth anniversary of her death, Woodman is having something of a moment. In coming months, her work will be shown by several British galleries, and later this year San Francisco’s Museum of Modern Art will mount a major retrospective of her work, the first of its kind in the United States. In 2012, the show will travel to the Guggenheim. The Woodmans—C. Scott Willis’s thoughtful new documentary about the photographer and her family—opened last week at Film Forum in New York. More…