Pose! A workshop by Dr. Mark Ingham 2014

When was the first photograph taken?

“Enhanced version of Nicéphore Niépce’s View from the Window at Le Gras (1826), the earliest surviving photograph of a scene from nature taken with a camera obscura”

The year 1839 is generally regarded as the year that photography, as we know it, commenced. There had been some earlier experiments, but problems with long exposure times and difficulties in fixing the image. But it was in 1839 that both Daguerre and Talbot announced their discoveries.

In an 1828 letter to his partner, Nicephore Niepce, Louis Daguerre wrote, "I am burning with desire to see your experiments from nature.” Burning with Desire: Conception of Photography by Geoffrey Batchen (Batchen, G, (1999) Burning with Desire: Conception of Photography. The MIT Press)

Daguerre's discovery The Daguerreotype 7 January 1839 Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre’s discovery of his Daguerreotype photographic process was announced in The Literary Gazette and in La Gazette de France on 7 January The public announcement giving details of the Daguerreotype process was not made until 19 August 1839 i.e. after the French Government had bought the rights to the process, and the process had been patented in England and Wales.

Talbot' discovery Photogenic Drawing 25 January 1839 William Henry Fox Talbot displayed the results of his negative/positive process to the Royal Institution in London on 25 January He then presented a Paper to the Royal Society on 31 January 1839, describing his process as “photogenic drawing”

1-minute Portrait What was it like posing for an early photographic portrait? Recreate the experience by timing yourself sitting completely still for one minute. Have someone photograph you at the end of that time. Reflect. Look at the photograph. What does your facial expression and body language convey? How did it feel to be that still for that long?

In a sentence describe what is happening in the next photograph.

What is happening in this photograph?

How does the next image change how you think about this photograph?

Do you know what context this photograph was taken in?

What was you initial reaction to this photograph? And has it now changed?

ROBERTO SCHMIDT/AFP/Getty Images – British Prime Minister David Cameron, Denmark’s Prime Minister Helle Thorning Schmidt and President Obama take a selfie during the memorial service for Nelson Mandela.

Is this the first selfie?

Or was this?

Robert Cornelius self-portrait, Oct. or Nov. 1839, approximate quarter plate daguerreotype. The back reads, "The first light picture ever taken.”

What do you think the difference is between a ‘self-portrait’ and a ‘selfie’?

Can you try and take an un- posed ‘self-portrait’.

Capture yourself in a photograph unawares?

Now take the most posed ‘selfie’ you can.

Next take a photograph of someone taking a photograph of themselves. One Posed and then one Un- posed.

Have a close look at the next set of photographs and then write down your initial reactions to them.

How do you think these photographs were taken?

“To create his Heads series, diCorcia rigged a powerful strobe light to a scaffold high above the street in New York’s Times Square. He activated the strobe by radio signal and captured unwitting pedestrians in a flash of light from over 20 feet away. Remarkably, the strobe was imperceptible to his subjects since the photographs were taken in broad daylight. Using this technique, the figures appear to emerge from inky darkness, spotlighted and haloed and as if there was almost no distance between the camera and the subject. Over the course of two years diCorcia took more than 4,000 of these photographs, though he chose only 17 for the series.” From: MoMALearning Heads

DiCorcia’s Heads series was at the center of a debate between free speech advocates and those concerned with protecting an individual’s right to privacy. In 2006, one of diCorcia’s subjects sued the artist and his gallery for exhibiting, publishing, and profiting from his likeness, which was taken without permission. While critics claim that the project violated his subjects’ right to privacy, diCorcia explained that he did not seek consent because, “There is no way the images could have been made with the knowledge and cooperation of the subjects.” From: MoMALearning Heads

Free speech advocates argue that street photography is an established form of artistic expression and that the freedom to photograph in public is protected under the first amendment to the United States Constitution. The lawsuit was eventually dismissed, but the presiding judge suggested the complex nature of this issue, stating, “Even while recognizing art as exempt from the reach of New York’s privacy laws, the problem of sorting out what may or may not legally be art remains a difficult one.” The debate rages on. From: MoMALearning Heads

?v=OA3DCtLB-wo PHILIP-LORCA DICORCIA. PHOTOGRAPHS

“Examining the themes of presence and absence, the relationship between photography and theatre, history and death, these 'reflections on photography' begin as an investigation into the nature of photographs. Then, as Barthes contemplates a photograph of his mother as a child, the book becomes an exposition of his own mind.” Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography by Roland Barthes

“What the Photograph reproduces to infinity has occurred only once: the Photograph mechanically repeats what could never be repeated existentially.” (Barthes 2000:4) Barthes, R. (2000/1980) Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography. Vintage.

“The Photograph then becomes a bizarre medium, a new form of hallucination: false on the level of perception, true on the level of time: a temporal hallucination, so to speak, a modest shared hallucination (on the one hand 'it is not there,' on the other 'but it has indeed been'): a mad image, chafed by reality.” (Barthes, 2000:115)

“To photograph people is to violate them, by seeing them as they never see themselves, by having knowledge of them that they can never have; it turns people into objects that can be symbolically possessed. Just as a camera is a sublimation of the gun, to photograph someone is a subliminal murder - a soft murder, appropriate to a sad, frightened time.” (Sontag 1979:14-15) On Photography by Susan Sontag. First published in 1977, from essasy written in 1971, 1974 & 1977 Sontag, S. (1977/1979) On Photography, Penguin Books.

“All photographs are memento mori. To take a photograph is to participate in another person's (or thing's) mortality, vulnerability, mutability. Precisely by slicing out this moment and freezing it, all photographs testify to time's relentless melt.” (Sontag 1979:15) On Photography by Susan Sontag. First published in 1977, from essasy written in 1971, 1974 & 1977 Sontag, S. (1977/1979) On Photography, Penguin Books.

“The photograph proceeds by means of the lens to the taking of a veritable luminous impression in light – to a mold....But photography is a feeble technique in the sense that its instantaneity compels it to capture time only piecemeal. The cinema...makes a molding of the object as it exists in time and, furthermore, makes an imprint of the duration of the object.” (Bazin 1967:95-124) by André Bazin (An influential film critic and theorist, André Bazin was the founder of the reknowned and pioneering film journal, Cahiers du cinéma.) Bazin, A. (1967) Theater and Cinema (Part Two), in What is Cinema? University of California Press. Berkely.

“This is the story of a man marked by an image from his childhood.” La Jetee by Chris Marker