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Berenice Abbott - Creating a New Aesthetic
I have written that photography is creating a new esthetic. This is based not only on perspective and plastic form as expressed by the lens but also on the new subject matter made possible in our age by science.
When the first stroboscopic photographs were exhibited, it was evident that in them was to be seen a real hyperreality, a true fantasy beyond what the subconscious could concoct. Some of Atget's photographs of reflections in Paris shop windows had had an intuitive premonition of the bizarre juxtapositions of objects from nature, which surrealism likes to flaunt, but with this difference—Atget's incongruities were seen and understood from life, not fabricated. They had the spontaneous absurdity or even madness of nature's chaos; they were not melancholy arrangements of the paranoiac vision. A step beyond this visual comment is the comment made by science when it sees the unseen, by means of all the most intricate and modern devices—the stroboscope and electronic radiography.
Here, at last photography sees with its own eye, untouched by any memories of how painters saw in the past. For it is true, that in photographing subjects from life—people, buildings, landscape—we cannot help but be slightly influenced by the remembrance of how these subjects have been painted through the ages. The portraits of Hill and Mrs. Cameron are examples of how tradition imposed itself on the new art. The final liberation of photography from the past may come through the new subject matter of science, where there is no precedent for what is seen and photographed.
No man before photography could know what an invisible particle of silver halide looked like. Enlarged 40,000 times, it is still less than two inches long. In these basic forms of materials may be found the new esthetic of photography.
I do not mean to suggest that photography will abandon its old subjects. By no means. Through centuries, pictures have used the same materials, because they are essential themes of human experience. I think of the new uses and the new themes—the unseen substances of life—as being a widening of the scope of photography, which will react to widen the imaginative approach of photographers to more usual subjects. For what our age needs is a broad, human art, as wide as the world of human knowledge and action; photography cannot explore too far or probe too deeply to meet this need.
Text: Berenice Abbott
Voice: Annie Smith (AI)
+ info
www.audiotecafotografica.com
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By Isabel HernándezI have written that photography is creating a new esthetic. This is based not only on perspective and plastic form as expressed by the lens but also on the new subject matter made possible in our age by science.
When the first stroboscopic photographs were exhibited, it was evident that in them was to be seen a real hyperreality, a true fantasy beyond what the subconscious could concoct. Some of Atget's photographs of reflections in Paris shop windows had had an intuitive premonition of the bizarre juxtapositions of objects from nature, which surrealism likes to flaunt, but with this difference—Atget's incongruities were seen and understood from life, not fabricated. They had the spontaneous absurdity or even madness of nature's chaos; they were not melancholy arrangements of the paranoiac vision. A step beyond this visual comment is the comment made by science when it sees the unseen, by means of all the most intricate and modern devices—the stroboscope and electronic radiography.
Here, at last photography sees with its own eye, untouched by any memories of how painters saw in the past. For it is true, that in photographing subjects from life—people, buildings, landscape—we cannot help but be slightly influenced by the remembrance of how these subjects have been painted through the ages. The portraits of Hill and Mrs. Cameron are examples of how tradition imposed itself on the new art. The final liberation of photography from the past may come through the new subject matter of science, where there is no precedent for what is seen and photographed.
No man before photography could know what an invisible particle of silver halide looked like. Enlarged 40,000 times, it is still less than two inches long. In these basic forms of materials may be found the new esthetic of photography.
I do not mean to suggest that photography will abandon its old subjects. By no means. Through centuries, pictures have used the same materials, because they are essential themes of human experience. I think of the new uses and the new themes—the unseen substances of life—as being a widening of the scope of photography, which will react to widen the imaginative approach of photographers to more usual subjects. For what our age needs is a broad, human art, as wide as the world of human knowledge and action; photography cannot explore too far or probe too deeply to meet this need.
Text: Berenice Abbott
Voice: Annie Smith (AI)
+ info
www.audiotecafotografica.com