photography artist::Max Dupain, David Moore and Dorothea Lange

Australian/ International Photography: Mid 20th century photography artist such as David Moore and Max Dupain Balanced their practice between commercial and individual/personal pursuits. Discuss how one of these artist developed his individual styles to portray particular meanings and messages. Compare their work.

What is Photography? 

        what does it actually mean

• Two Australian photographers, Max Dupain and David Moore. Their personal and commercial pursuits.

• Frameworks, focusing on two for each artist.

• An international recognized photographer Dorothea Lange US photographer) 

Australian/ International Photography: Mid 20th century photography artist such as David Moore and Max Dupain Balanced their practice between commercial and individual/personal pursuits. Discuss how one of these artist developed his individual styles to portray particular meanings and messages. Compare their work.

Today we are going to talk about,

•                  What is Photography?

        what does it actually mean

•                 Two Australian photographers, Max Dupain and David Moore. Their personal and commercial pursuits.

•                 Frameworks, focusing on two for each artist.

•                 An international recognized photographer Dorothea Lange US photographer)

What is photography?

Photography is the process, activity and art of creating still or moving pictures on a sensitized surface by the action of radiant energy and especially light…

 

This is recorded most traditionally in photographic film, (such as 35mm, 120 or medium format and large format).

 

Photography has changed, but its definition is still valid, the digital era has changed it in the sense that the digital camera is the new medium in which photographs(pictures/images are obtained. A digital camera obtains images by the action of light on a light sensitive surface.(digital sensor).

 

The actual word “ photography” is derived from the Greek language. Photo means light and graph means written. So you get the idea.

Different types of photography

•         Art photography, which is when the photographer produces photographs that are created in accordance with the creative vision of the photographer as artist. Fine art photography stands in contrast to photojournalism, which provides visual support for stories, mainly in the print media, and commercial photography, the primary focus of which is to sell products or services.

•         Commercial photography is probably best defined as any photography for which the photographer is paid for images rather than works of art.

•         Photojournalism, is a particular form of journalism that creates images in order to tell a news story. Strands from these can be, documentary photography, social documentary photography, street photography and so fourth.

•         Scientific photography is another form of photography

•         And so fourth the list can go on.

 

Max Dupain

VITAL BEGININGS OF DUPAINS LIFE

–      Maxwell Spencer Dupain (1911-1992) is regarded as one of Australia's greatest photographers. He stressed simplicity and directness in his work, creating images of sharp focus, boldness and graphic composition.

–      Max Dupain got his 1^st camera when he was 13 years old and quickly developed his own artistic photographic skills. 

–      In 1928 he joined the NSW Photographic Society and there he met one of his biggest influences, Harold Cazneaux, another great Australian pictorial photographer. (who Dupain has said was his biggest influence.

–      In 1930 he began an apprenticeship with another master of photography Cecil Boston, there in the studio he learnt many photographic techniques, disciplines and a rigorous attention to detail. which later became one of his most significant talents.

–      Outside the various studios he was part of, he attended Julian Ashton's Art School.

–      By 1934 Max Dupain had struck out on his own and opened a studio in Bond Street, Sydney. His work became purely commercial, working with clients such as David Jones, Sydney based magazines such as home, the Australian Broadcasting commission and the likes. His work ranged from Fashion Photography to portraiture and illustrative photography.

 

Max Dupain

VITAL MILSTONES OF DUPAINS LIFE

–       In 1937, while on the south coast of New South Wales, he photographed the head and shoulders of a friend Harold Salvage lying on the sand at Cullburra Beach. The shot, entitled "Sunbaker", became Dupain's most famous piece, However, it was not until the 1970s that the photograph received wide recognition. It was purchased in 1976 by the National Gallery of Australia

–      During world war II, he served with the Royal Australian Air Force in both Darwin and Papua New Guinea helping to create camouflage and thus his work changed once the war was over, it made him realize a greater truth in documentation. We built camouflage and photographed it for southbound reports’, Dupain recalled.

–      In the 50’s he started venturing once again in the commercial or promotional photography medium, advertising for agencies. This is when his love for architecture evolved and began a new step in his carrier. A step he continue to pursue right until the end of his life in 1992.

–      His personal and commercial work both varied from portraiture to architectural photography.

 

Max Dupain

•       He is particularly well known for his intimate portraits of beach culture in the 1930s and 40s, but for Dupain, these photographs were simply “how I used to spend my weekends, taking pictures for exhibition as a break from commercial work." His most celebrated image, Sunbaker, was taken while on holidays - "The best work is always done on holidays"

 

•         Sunbaker 1937, his most iconic images

 

 

Max Dupain

Architecture.

•         During the week however, Dupain was a versatile commercial photographer and an early champion of modernist architecture. One of his most comprehensive projects was his documentation of the entire construction process of the Sydney Opera House, a project he photographed so extensively that his final catalogue of some 1500 photographs was said to have resembled a flick-book depicting the iconic sails rising from the ground.

•       His architectural photography is sharp, simple and straightforward, with angles and compositions that were considered to be daring and occasionally controversial at the time.

 

 

 

 

 

Activity One

Formal framework: Visual analysis, technique, style, symbols and metaphors.

Visual Analysis:

         As a group, choose ONE of Max Dupain’s images you like and ONE you don’t like.

1) What do you like about it?  Think about a range of elements and principles, such as light, line, etc.

 ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

2) What don’t you like about it? Discuss among your group.

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

 

Contemporary framework: How current art idea/issues challenge understandings, or create new meanings in contemporary context.

1). Write down a sentence on how photography has change from its beginnings to now?

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

 

DAVID MOORE

Early years

 

•         David Moore was born in 1927, Sydney.

•         He first got into photography when at the age of 11, his father John D Moore, an architect gave him his 1^st box camera.

•         Moore was went to school at Geelong Grammar School, but he began his carrier as a photographer/photojournalist when he went to the studio of Russell Roberts in Sydney where he learnt many techniques in 1947.

•         He also worked with Max Dupain and despite being offered a junior partnership with Dupain, Moore decided to leave Australia and moved to London.

 

•         Just before his departure overseas David Moore took a photograph of a cruise ship liner, Departure of the 'Himalaya', Sydney  1950. this photo helped him be recognized through out the photographic community.

 

 

 

 

 

David Moore

International recognition

 

•         Leaving Australia to live in London in 1951 changed Moore’s life. there he took full advantage of commercial photography of the era,

•         Moore’s adoption of the lightweight hand-held 35mm cameras used by top photojournalists after his arrival in London also enabled him to capture more spontaneous movement and action in his assignments. Based in London for 7 or so years, Moore was send on many assignments around Europe, Africa and the U.S.A

•         His commissioned work appeared in the New Yorker, Time, The observer and other publications alike

 

•         Moore’s best-known photograph from these years is of a group of nuns at Washington airport taken in 1956.

 

 

 

 

David Moore 

Returning Home

 

•         He returned to Australia in 1958, contributing picture stories to magazines including Walkabout but continued to publish in American and British magazines, joining the New York-based Black Star photo agency.(top photo agencies in the world)

 

•         In the 1970s Moore developed non-commissioned works aimed at capturing what he called "the soft flow of time", as opposed to the "decisive moment" favored by magazine editors. Moore was based in Sydney and here his work reflected his views of Australia.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dorothea Lange

•          Dorothea Lange was born in May 26, 1895 in Hoboken New Jersey.

•          She was born Dorothea Margaretta Netzhorn at birth but when her father abounded her family at the age of twelve, she dropped her middle name and too on her moderns maiden name Lange.

•          At the age of seven she contracted polio which left her with a weakened right leg and a permanent limp

    "It formed me, guided me, instructed me, helped me and humiliated me," Lange once said of her altered gait. "I've never gotten over it, and I am aware of the force and power of it.

•          Dorothea Lange was fiercely independent. She studied photography at Columbia University which upset her mother, who wanted her to become a teacher, just like her. Instead she went to uptown in New York to the studio of a famous portrait photographer, Arnold Genthe, and asked him for a job. She was hired, and her life's work began. She learned how to set up a camera and studio lights, there she learnt the techniques that helped her become one of U.S.A most famous and respected photographers.

•          In 1918, she moved to  San Francisco and by the following year she had opened a successful portrait studio

 

Dorothea Lange

•          With the onset of the Great Depression, Lange turned her camera lens from the studio to the street. And her personal work became her commercial work.

 

•          The pain of her childhood, gave her a fuller sense of what suffering meant, Her searing studies of homelessness immediately captured the attention of local photographers and led to her employment with the federal Resettlement Administration (RA), later called the FSA. From 1935 to 1940, Lange's work for the RA and FSA brought the plight of the poor and forgotten, particularly displaced farm families and migrant workers, to public attention. Distributed free of charge to newspapers across the country, her poignant images quickly became icons of the era,

 

•          The great depression deepened her compassion for the destitution and despair that she saw all around her.

•          She would walk into camps, where homeless pea-pickers and refugees of the Oklahoma dust bowl were scraping by, sometimes starving to death, and talk to them until they felt comfortable enough to have their pictures taken. Her limp, she thought, created an instant rapport between herself and her subjects. She said that people trusted her more because she didn't appear "whole and secure" in the face of their poverty and insecurity.

 

Dorothea Lange

Her most famous photograph, commonly known as Migrant Mother, 1936.

Dorothea Lange

 

•          Her assignment work as a photographer for the Resettlement Administration (RA), which soon would become the better-known Farm Security Administration (FSA) made her carrier. She took powerful, provoking, awaking and profound images that showed the suffering people across America where experiencing during the great depression.

 

•          I saw and approached the hungry and desperate mother, as if drawn by a magnet. I do not remember how I explained my presence or my camera to her, but I do remember she asked me no questions. I made five exposures, working closer and closer from the same direction. I did not ask her name or her history. She told me her age, that she was thirty-two. She said that they had been living on frozen vegetables from the surrounding fields, and birds that the children killed. She had just sold the tires from her car to buy food. There she sat in that lean-to tent with her children huddled around her, and seemed to know that my pictures might help her, and so she helped me. There was a sort of equality about it.

•          Lange sent the photograph to the editor of a San Francisco newspaper to the plight of the workers at the camp, presenting him with two of her photos. The editor informed federal authorities and published an article that included Lange's images. As a result, the government rushed a shipment of 20,000 lbs. of food to the camp. The photos' wider impact included influencing John Steinbeck in the writing of his novel The Grapes of Wrath.

 

Max Dupain, David Moore and Dorothea Lange

•         All three photographers, had a long life perusing their personal artistic photographic skills and commercial photographic journeys.

•         They all varied and distinguished themselves by adapting to their environment.

 

•         Dupain with his impressive comprehension of form, light, line and contrast in his amazing architectural work and in his personal work.

 

•         Moore, with his ability to reportage basic everyday events, focusing in showing the greater audience the ability to use contrast to emphasis beauty.

 

•         And Lange, with the ability to capture photographs that told a story, from her work in the great depression to her work in wwII.

 

•         All three photographers adapted their personal and commercial work to fit their particular audiences.