SNAPSHOT PHOTOGRAPHY

FRENCH PAINTING AT THE BEGINNING OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

Eugene Delacroix, Liberty Leading the People, 1830, oil on canvas.

Eugene Delacroix, Liberty Leading the People, 1830, oil on canvas.

Jacques-Louis David, Leonidas at Thermopylae, 1814, oil on canvas.

Jacques-Louis David, Leonidas at Thermopylae, 1814, oil on canvas.

Francois Gerard, Jean-Baptiste Isabey and His Daughter, 1795, oil on canvas.

Francisco Goya, Ferdinand Guillemardet, French Ambassador in Spain, 1798-1800, oil on canvas.

Francois-Marius Granet, The Church of Trinita dei Monti in Rome, 1808, oil on canvas.

Joseph Wright, View of the Lake of Nemi at Sunset, ca.1790, oil on canvas.

Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, The Bather of Valpincon, 1808, oil on canvas.

JAPANESE WOODBLOCK PRINTS FROM THE EDO PERIOD (1615 - 1868)KNOWN AS UKIYO-E - THE FLOATING WORLD.

Hishikawa Moronbu, Scenes in a Theater Tea-House, 1685, handscroll painting.

Ando Hiroshige, Dyers’ Quarter, Kanda, 1857, woodblock print,from One Hundred Views of Edo.

Ando Hiroshige, Moon Pine, Ueno, 1857, woodblock print,from One Hundred Views of Edo.

Ando Hiroshige, Plum Estate, Kameido, 1857, woodblock print,from One Hundred Views of Edo.

Ando Hiroshige, Ushimachi, Takanawa, 1857, woodblock print,from One Hundred Views of Edo.

Kitagawa Utamaro, Lovers In An Upstairs Room, ca. 1795, woodblock print.

Torii Kiyomasu I, The Actors Otani Hiroji and Ichikawa Danzoin an armour tugging scene, 1717, woodblock print.

Utagawa Kuniyoshi, Picking Cherry Blossoms, ca. 1840, woodblock print.

Vincent Van Gogh, The Garden of Saint Paul’s Hospital (The Fall of Leaves), 1889, oil on canvas.

Tsukioka Yoshitoshi, Yuki (Snow), 1890, woodblock print.

EDGAR DEGAS

Edgar Degas, Woman Drying Herself, ca. 1889-90, pastel on paper.

Edgar Degas, The Rehearsal, 1873-74, oil on canvas.

DEGAS' USE OF PHOTOGRAPHS

The peculiar decentralized compositions used by the artist, and the odd angle of vision of the
latter are quite distinct from normal pictorial convention.

Placed at the edge of the picture space, the figures appear to communicate with something
outside, enhancing the fortuitous character of the subjects and creating an implied space
external to the paintings - 'in the wings', so to speak.

These are entirely germane to snapshot photographs of the time, or for that matter any time.

The instantaneous photograph with its unexpected cutting-off, its shocking differences in scale,
has become so familiar to us that the easel-paintings of that period no longer astonish us. No
one before Degas ever thought of doing them, no one since has put such 'gravity' . . . into the
kind of composition which utilizes to advantage the accidents of the camera.

Edgar Degas, The Rehearsal on Stage, 1874, pastel and brush and ink drawing.

Degas created something new in painting from such photographic images. The
Classical vestiges which lingered on in the work of Ingres and others, vanished in
Degas' pictures.

The deformities of his subjects, the uncouth poses and gestures, the commonplace
and even ugly expressions, the apparently artless accidents of composition, are
paralleled only by the images of the instantaneous camera.

They are not, as some of his critics maintained, the results of a passive submission to
the photograph. Degas made these things pictorially feasible, fabricating a style from
sources which had no style.

Edgar Degas, Dancers, 1890, charcoal and pastel on paper.

Edgar Degas, Dancers, Pink and Green, 1890, oil on canvas.

Edgar Degas, Blue Dancers, ca. 1893, oil on canvas.

Edgar Degas, Dancer (Arm Outstretched), 1895-96, gelatin dry plate negative.

Modern gelatin silver print from Dancer (Arm Outstretched) negative.

Edgar Degas, Mathilde and Jeanne Niaudet, Daniel Halevy, and Henriette Taschereau; Ludovic and Elie Halevy, 1895, gelatin silver print.

Edgar Degas, Nude (Putting on Stockings), ca. 1895-96, gelatin silver print.

Edgar Degas, Nude (Drying Herself), 1895-96, gelatin silver print.

Edgar Degas, Nude (Drying Herself),1895-96, gelatin silver print.

TECHNICAL DEVELOPMENTS IN THE LATE NINETEENTH CENTURY.

1878:
Dry plate film - gelatin replaces wet collodion - greater portability and ease of use.
Introduction of silver bromide film emulsions - greater sensitivity.

1880:
Celluloid begins to replace glass as a film substrate.

1882:
The focal plane shutter is invented, allowing exposures of up to 1/1000 sec.

1884:
Introduction of orthochromatic, later panchormatic, film - wider range of gray tones, greater accuracy in tonal rendering.

1886:
Improvements in lens designs - greater speed, sharper focus, wider views without distortion.

1890:
Introduction of sensitometry - greater control of film exposure and development.
Silver chloride (“gaslight”) and silver bromide papers - more rapid exposures in a darkroom without the use of the sun.

The Kodak, 1888.

The Kodak, 1888.
Cost $25. Contained a roll of film yielding 100 circular 2 1/2” images. After the film was exposed,
it was sent to Kodak with a $10 fee. Kodak sent back 100 mounted prints and the camera
reloaded. One F/9 stop, one shutter speed, one fixed focus lens.

The Kodak Brownie, 1900. A daylight loading camera using 2 1/4” six expsoure film.

A FEW ECCENTRIC CAMERAS

T. Skaife’s Pistolgraph, 1866. Used wet collodion plates and anticipated later miniature cameras.
The shutter was powered by a rubber band. It used an F/2.2 lens and yielded an image size of 1
1/8 x 1 1/2”

Edmond Bloch’s Photo-Cravate, 1890. Carried 6 plates smaller than a postage stamp - about 1”
square. A pneumatic bulb was hidden in the palm of the hand which released the shutter. The
concealed camera weighed 10 ounces.

Enjalbert’s Photo-Revolver, 1882. The lens was housed in the barrel. Turning the chambers
changed the plates and cocked the single shutter speed. No view finder, its pictures were
16mm, a little over a half inch square.

Kauffer’s Hand Bag Camera, 1895. It took 9x12 cm (roughly 4x5”) plates. Film plate holders
and the ground glass were kept in the bag.

Bloch’s Photo-Bouquin Stereoscopique, 1904. A stereo camera, the taking lenses were in the
spine of the book, with the view finder opening between the lenses.

JACQUES-HENRI LARTIGUE

Lartigue’s albums cronicle a fascination with the motion and speed that was transforming the
world and providing new aesthetics.

The ease of the hand-held camera allowed anybody to embrace the physical act of seeing
subjects as they moved through time. Lartigue took his camera everywhere, eventually
deforming his shoulder from carrying it.

Lartigue’s intuitive images reveal and confirm what serious photographers struggled to discover
and master: the expertise of anticipation.

Lartigue’s obsession was with capturing the peak moment of action where critical timing was
achieved through observation and calculation.

His most advanced Block Note camera had a top shutter speed of 1/300th of a second, making
his decision when to release the shutter crucial.

Pushing the shutter at the moment the image was seen was too late, due to the mechanical and
physiological delay between seeing and exposing.

Lartigue compared it to playing tennis - one had to foresee the exact moment beforehand and
have the ability and training to act without consciously thinking.

As a child Lartigue was an unthreatening spectator, able to glide into situations and uncover
unguarded instances of highly complex, fleeting human interrelations.

Although he never received amy photography training, through practice Lartigue was able to
use the camera to organize the random attributes of life with coherent clarity.

Lartigue’s work did not influence the practice of his time; It remained unknown to the public until
it was presented at the Museum of Modern Art in 1963.

- Hirsch, p. 300-301

SNAPSHOT FORM

Blurring.
Shallow depth of field.
Cropped edges.
Cropped forms and figures.
Frozen motion.
Tangents.
Perspective distortions.
Unusual points of view such as very high and very low.
Near / far juxtapositions without transitions.
Spatial distortions.
Intrusive shadows.
Light flares.
Incongruities and radical juxtapositions.
Spontaneity.
Motion.
Intimacy, closeness.
Extreme fragmentation, pieces of time frozen out of a much larger continuum.