Academicist Photography
Photography
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Academicist Photography
With very few years of existence (the first photographic records are from the twenties), photography in the mid-nineteenth century was not considered art. In general, it was considered a technique, as the photographer only performed a mechanical act to portray what was in front of the camera.
This is when the academicist photography trend was born. Photographers treated their photographs as works of art, inspired by painting. Academicist painting prevailed at that time (until the irruption of modern art, the direct experience, of Manet and the impressionists). It was painting with aesthetic canons and traditional “rules,” which were taught and defended in the academies of fine arts.
Photography became art when the photographer stopped being a technician and became an artist. The photographers’ talent, creativity, and points of view started to be noticed.
Creating a photograph-art became something very sophisticated, where in general, sketches were made, a lot of scenery was used, a lot of props, costumes, several negatives were combined (photomontage), and the artists also introduced their creativity and points of view. The language was no longer so direct, but rather allegories were used, it was a figurative language.
Among the themes, also taken from academicist painting, we find, in addition to allegories, history and mythology.
For example, we can see an allegory in the photograph below: The infant Photography Giving the Painter an Additional Brush, by the Swedish Oscar Gustav Rejlander, one of the fundamental representatives of this current. An image that, in a very academicist composition, speaks of the newborn art that is next to the painting.
Each academicist photograph implies a lot of work, and this makes it clear that it is not a simple mechanical action to portray reality, but a work of art.
Representative Photographers: André-Adolphe-Eugène Disdéri, Oscar Gustav Rejlander, Julia Margaret Cameron, Henry Peach Robinson.
Image: Infant Photography Gives the Painter an Additional Brush (1856). Oscar Gustav Rejlander.
Recommended links:
Social Documentary Photography.
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