If the cliché about garbage – ‘Out of sight, out of mind’ – is true, its inverse, unfortunately, is not. Heaps and masses of garbage brought into direct view still somehow manage to escape acute recognition, let alone social responsibility or global political activism. This article investigates this trend as a growing problem between the human world and representation. Focusing on historical and contemporary landscape photography, the article questions whether data visualization trends, particularly those that attempt to visualize (...) the post-industrial consumer landscape, help or hinder our capacity to understand our environment, and possibly even ecological endeavors. The article charts the history of photography’s landscape genre, mapping the contours of a shift from the classical ‘nature’ aesthetic, to an industrial, post-industrial, and eventually a mathematical aesthetic contingent on emergent techniques and data visualization in the attempt to depict ever amassing magnitudes of environmental despoliation. (shrink)

Along with discussions of other contemporary photographers, this extensively illustrated volume demonstrates the influence of settler societies on landscape photography, in which skilled photographers captured the fascination with and the ...

This article examines recent practices of landscape photography in light of Henri Lefebvre's influential theorisation of the production of space. The abiding value of Lefebvre's analysis for our understanding of social geography and contemporary Capitalism is elaborated through discussion of selected photographic works that, in different ways, each foreground the socio-hisotrically constructed character of space. This analysis enables the rearticulation of Lefebvre's influential analysis of space in light of later artistic practices and in relation to subsequent developments in (...) the form of Capitalism. (shrink)

This article takes inspiration from Allan Sekula’s remarks on New Topographics photography, as well as his own ‘geography lessons’, to interrogate how photographs of ‘man-altered landscapes’ give visual form to the problems of temporality, natural history and historical agency that mark life in the Capitalocene. It proposes that combining Fredric Jameson’s analysis of the way that capital congeals ‘quantities of the past’ into dead labour with Andreas Malm’s diagnosis of our ‘warming condition’ allows us both to diagnose and counter (...) the temptation to a sublime inhumanity that so often haunts contemporary panoramas of ecological devastation. (shrink)

It's time to see Photoshop as a tool of your craft This book is not about "fixing it in Photoshop." It's about how you, the serious nature photographer, can use technology to enhance your art. Rob Sheppard sees Photoshop not as an eraser for mistakes and the effects of careless shooting, but as an artist's tool, one that assists you in the craft of producing art from your digital camera. He shows you how to use Photoshop CS2 to extend tonal (...) range, remove color haze, correct lens distortions, create multi-frame panoramas, and so much more--all to reveal the work of art you knew was there all along. * Learn to apply Photoshop techniques to the unique requirements of landscape and nature photography * Be aware of correct exposure when shooting for Photoshop * Use layers to enhance images and correct tonality and color for optimum images * Discover a better way of dodging and burning * Understand midtones and manage color correction with an eye to the finished product * Process images twice in Camera Raw for better shadow and highlight detail * Explore how Photoshop CS2 can support proven techniques used by the masters of traditional nature photography Photoshop offers great power for controlling color so you can get natural, realistic colors that best express what you see in nature Unsharp Mask is unmasked so that you can get the most from this powerful sharpening tool Utilize the best methods of black-and-white conversion. (shrink)

Streets of Crocodiles is a walk on the wild side, an expedition down a melancholy boulevard of dreams.---J. Hoberman, film critic, Village Voice, author of The Red Atlantis: Communist Culture in the Absence of Communism --Book Jacket.

The twelve contributors to Looking for Los Angeles focus on dramatic shifts in the urban landscape, important moments in the city's architectural history, and the role of the image in this mecca of image makers.

Photography has been part of Irish cultural life since 1839 but little is known of its long and sometimes complex history. Outside Ireland there has been scant attention given to Irish photography beyond picturesque tourist views of the Irish landscape and photojournalistic representations of 'The Troubles'. This book changes the picture, casting its focus between these polar, and often clichéd, extremes to address the political upheavals, social transformation and geographical re-imaginings of Ireland as a colony, a nation, (...) a province and a sovereign state. As Justin Carville demonstrates, photography has not only documented these transformations but has also helped shape how Ireland is viewed, both by itself and the rest of the world. Photography and Irelandexplores the role of the photographic image in colonial and post-colonial visual cultures of Ireland from the nineteenth century to the present day. Furthermore, it emphasises the transnational dimensions of photography in Ireland, discussing foreign photographers who have contributed to cultural imaginings of Ireland as well as indigenous Irish photographers. Beginning with a brief history of photography in Ireland the book discusses the tensions between colonial and global representations of Ireland and the formation of an indigenous photographic culture. Featuring commercial portraits and landscapes, as well as ethnographic photography, photojournalism and documentary works it explores Ireland’s photography through a number of interrelated themes. Accessibly written and accompanied by a wealth of images, Photography and Irelandis essential reading for all those interested in photography history, as well as Irish history and culture. (shrink)

The digital camera has revolutionized photography. Sporting events, breathtaking landscapes, the mood of the sea, or a child's eyes as a present is opened-capture whatever fascinates you. Learn touse your images in ways only highly skilled professionals could manage a mere decade ago. With this practical guide in your camera bag, you'll have professional advice at your fingertips to help you get great shots, use all your camera's features, download and enhance your photos, and share them in dozens of (...) creative ways. * Understand digital camera basics * Learn the secrets for getting a good close-up * Find out when and why to use RAW format * Explore dozens of formulas for shooting a variety of scenes, including suggested lenses, settings, and lighting options * Rid your pictures of red-eye and other imperfections * Create a slide show, prints, or e-mail- and Web-ready images * Make the most of your camera's abilities with filters and other accessories. (shrink)

Gustave Le Gray was one of the most technically accomplished and aesthetically enlightened of the early "artist-photographers." Trained as a painter of portraits and landscapes, Le Gray was attracted in the 1840s to the artistic potential of photographic processes. As a photographer he evolved and refined much of photography's primary aesthetic theory. By 1855 he had influenced, if not taught, every important photographer in France. Drawing on entirely new material Eugenia Parry Janis fully analyzes the life and work of (...) Le Gray and demonstrates the originality of his artistic achievement in the context of discoveries about his personal and professional history. Janis, approaching the photographs of Le Gray with the methods and sensibilities of an art historian, reveals telling connections between Le Gray's choices of subject matter and formal means of presentation and the existing pictorial practice of other media such as painting. This same approach makes her sensitive to Le Gray's departures from such traditional practice, and she skillfully illustrates how he evolved from student painter into master photographer. In doing so she gives us a glimpse of the way in which Le Gray's manipulation of the photographic process was always informed by his pictorial needs and by his developing style. (shrink)

From Ansel Adams to Carleton Watkins, Diane Arbus to Weegee, Richard Avedon to James VanDerZee, American photographers have recorded their vast, multicultural nation in images that, for more than a hundred years, have come to define the USA. In Photography and the USA, Mick Gidley explores not only the medium of photography and the efforts to capture key events and moments through photographs, but also the many ways in which the medium has played a formative role in American (...) culture. Photography and the USA encompasses the major movements, figures and works that are crucial to understanding American photography, but also pays attention to more obscure aspects of photography’s history. Focusing on works that reveal many different facets of America, its landscapes and its people, Gidley explores the ambiguities of American history and culture. We encounter images that range from an anti-lynching demo in 1934 to Dorothea Lange’s poster “All races serve the crops in California;” an early photographic view of Niagara Falls against the painstaking detail of Edward Weston’s Pepper, No. 30; a fireman’s fight in the San Francisco earthquake of 1906 to the Ground Zero images of 2001 by Joel Meyerowitz; an 1890s “Wanted” image to Elliot Erwitt’s shot of the Nixon–Kruschchev “Kitchen Debate.” Organizing his narrative around the themes of history, technology, the document and the emblem, Mick Gidley not only presents a history of photography, but also reveals the complexities inherent in reading photographs themselves. A concise yet comprehensive overview of photography in the United States, this book is an excellent introduction to the subject for American Studies or visual arts students, or for anyone interested in US history or culture. (shrink)

With its lush and diverse landscapes, ancient ruins, and stunning architecture, China is a photographer’s dream. Exploring this visually rich and evocative country, Photography and China highlights Chinese photographers and subjects from the inception of photography to the present day. Drawing on works in museums, and archival and private collections across China, the United States, Europe, and Australia, Claire Roberts locates images from commercial, art, and documentary photography within the broader context of Chinese history. She focuses on (...) the images as well as the studios and individuals who created them, describing the long tradition of Chinese artistic culture into which photography was first absorbed and subsequently expanded. As she recounts the stories of practitioners—from China and overseas—who were agents in that process of change, she also examines the commercial, political, and artistic purposes for which they used photography. Featuring one hundred striking, little-known images, Photography and China will make a significant contribution to photography, Chinese art, and twentieth-century history. (shrink)

For more than 35 years, James Welling has explored the material and conceptual possibilities of photography. Diary/Landscape - the first mature body of work by this important contemporary artist - set the framework for his subsequent investigations of abstraction and his fascination with nineteenth- and twentieth-century New England. In July 1977, Welling began photographing a two-volume travel diary kept by his great-grandmother Elizabeth C. Dixon, as well as landscapes in southern Connecticut. A beautiful and moving meditation on family, (...) history, memory, and place, the work reintroduced history and private emotion as subjects in high art, while also helping to usher in the centrality of photography and theoretical questions about originality that mark the epochal Pictures Generation. (shrink)

Used for everything from geographic evaluation to secret spy missions, aerial photography has a rich and storied history, ably recounted here in Photography and Flight. Aerial photography is marked by its dependency on technological developments in both photography and aerospace, and the authors chart the history of this photography as it tracked the evolution of these technologies. Beginning with early images taken from hot-air balloons, fixed platforms, and subsequent handheld camera technology, Denis Cosgrove and William (...) Fox then explain how military reconnaissance and governmental projects were instrumental in catalyzing these and other innovations in the field. They examine pivotal historical moments in which aerial photography began to establish itself as essential tool, such as in World War II military strategies, high-altitude photography taken from postwar rockets and aircraft, and the use of aerial photography during the cold war and the Cuban Missile Crisis. The book also explores the advancement of geographic scholarship through aerial photography, ranging from military excursions into Antarctica to the images of the curvature of the earth taken during the Apollo space missions. While digital technology and remote sensing have changed the landscape of photography, Photography and Flight argues that they have not diminished the significance of aerial photography in providing images of the earth. Rather, new technologies and resulting innovations such as Google Earth have enabled the mass democratization of access to such information. Photography and Flight ultimately reveals how the camera lens from far away continues to unearth telling details about the land and those who live upon it. (shrink)

Egypt immediately conjures images of the pyramids, the temples, and the Sphinx in the desert. Early photographs of Egypt took these ancient monuments as their primary subjects, and these have remained hugely influential in constructing our view of the country. But while Egypt and its monuments have been regularly photographed by foreigners, little is known about the early days of photography among Egyptians. Photography and Egypt examines both, considering a wide range of images from the mid-nineteenth century to (...) the present day, including studio portraits, landscapes, and photojournalism. Two forces drove photography’s early development in Egypt: its use as an essential tool of archaeology and the accelerating effects of archaeological photographs on the burgeoning tourism industry. In this richly illustrated book, Maria Golia examines these twin drives, while looking closely at the work of early Egyptian photographers such as Colonel Mohammed Sadiq, Mohammed Badr, and Atiyya Gaddis, many of whom have never before been studied. Golia examines how photography was also employed for propaganda purposes, including depictions of celebrated soldiers, workers, and farmers; and how studio-based photography was used to portray the growing Egyptian middle class. Today’s young photographic artists, Golia reveals, use the medium both to celebrate everyday life and to indict the political and social conditions that contribute to their hardship, with photography bearing witness to this history—as well as helping to shape it. (shrink)

This article suggests itself as a movement towards a theory of thinking in photography – that is to say, of thinking photographs. The notion of art as related to thinking is by no means a contemporary one. Within this tradition that has its roots in the advent of modernity, artworks – and particularly paintings – have long been viewed as a form of both thought and thinking. Photography’s place within this tradition, however, is not an easy one. Many (...) of the philosophical accounts surrounding thinking in painting focus on the devices through which painting is said to be thinking. Hubert Damisch and Gilles Deleuze offer the two most comprehensive accounts on this topic, but are the thinking devices proposed by them applicable to photography? Through the discussion of these theories, this article maps the existing philosophical landscape vis-à-vis the thinking image: locating photographic thought within that landscape is the first step towards understanding the peculiarities of photographic thinking. (shrink)

"You are here, a map declares, but of course you are not, any more than you truly occupy the vantage point into which a landscape painting puts you. How maps and paintings figure and reconfigure space--as well as our place in it--is the subject of Edward S. Casey's study, an exploration of how we portray the world and its many places. Casey's discussion ranges widely from Northern Sung landscape painting to nineteenth-century American and British landscape painting and (...) photography, from prehistoric petroglyphs and medieval portolan charts to seventeenth-century Dutch cartography and land survey maps of the American frontier. From these culturally and historically diverse forays a theory of representation emerges. Casey proposes that the representation of place in visual works be judged in terms not of resemblance, but of reconnecting with an earth and world that are not the mere content of mind or language--a reconnection that calls for the embodiment and implacement of the human subject." -- Book jacket. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Caring for Landscapes of Justice in Perilous Settler EnvironmentsMishuana Goemanindians are the "singing remnants" or "graffiti," in the words of Leanne Betasamosake Simpson ("i am graffiti"). The forms this graffiti takes, our inscriptions on the landscape, are as numerous as our Nations, abundant as our ancestors who loved, lived, and passed down knowledge of our lands and histories. "You are the result of the love of thousands," writes (...) Linda Hogan, who beseeches us to listen to the environment surrounding us (159). Deborah Miranda (Coastal Esselen and Chumash) reminds us that we are also the result of violent histories, in her tribal memoir Bad Indians, a book that relishes the tales of her ancestors who resist and act out to survive. This harm, genocide, and settler mapping of worlds also must be attuned to in our surroundings and in "our bodies [that are] bridges over which our descendants cross, spanning unimaginable landscapes of loss" (Miranda 74). Visual cartographic mapping has been part and parcel of the erasure of California Indians, relegated to the small, contained, and past temporal space of a romanticized mission.This paper centers on the NDN Collective's work and the photography of Cara Romero's project Tongvaland and the works of Gabrielino Tongva artist Mercedes Dorame. The setting of these projects is in the sprawling landscape of Los Angeles, or the homelands of the Gabrielino Tongva people, who call it Tovaangar. I will examine the anti-colonial aesthetics and care practices mapped out in the work rather than presenting a "true" Indigenous map or alternative map. Mapping a history of the landscape by creating a "new" narrative or "true" narrative is not enough. As Maori scholar Linda Tuhwi Smith states, "[w]e believe that history is also about justice, that understanding history will enlighten our decisions about the future. Wrong. History is also about power. In fact, history is mostly about power. … [A] thousand accounts of the truth will not alter the fact that indigenous peoples are still marginal [End Page 50] and do not possess the power to transform history into justice" (34). The Gabrielino Tongva, who comprise an estimated 2,300 people, do not possess the population power and cannot access the form of voting or democracy to make the changes needed just by telling their truth. Across California, people know about the raw deal, the embezzlement, the genocide, and the so-called lost treaties. In fact, under Eisenhower, recompense was paid out in small amounts to Tongva families of the dispossessed. Instead, to continue with the words of Smith, "[i]t is also about reconciling and reprioritizing what is really important about the past with what is important about the present" (111). What Romero and the NDN Collective—made up of numerous tribal leaders, scholars, and other artists—did was relay and prioritize how they wanted to be seen in their homelands. These billboards invite us in, in a gift of sharing, or what tribal cultural leader Craig Torres related to me as a spirit of Maxxa, a sharing, gifting, or swapping of knowledge. Dorame's beautiful and critical installations in public art spaces reflect Maxxa—they invite the viewers to think through land from her curious arrangements. As artists, part of their practice is not that of a Western version of a tortured genius but instead is energized by pulling in community and creating a collective practice. They undo settler space together and with us. The cartographic practices of these California Indians' creative arts exemplify communities of care that must be considered when we think through the unmapping of settler terrains. This question requires an approach of radical care. As Hi'ilei Hobart and Tamara Kneese make clear, the notion of care is "inseparable from systemic inequalities and power systems" (Hobart and Kneese 1).The work of the NDN Collective and Dorame counters a settler-based, commercial map of Los Angeles. Indigenous people, relegated by the settler state as expendable and erasable graffiti, confront capitalist and state ordinances at various scales. Rather than understand this as a subjugated positionality, I posit that graffiti is the critique necessary and valuable to understanding interlocking structures of oppression. In the following words of Leanne... (shrink)

From the earliest silver-chloride calotypes of inventor of photography William Henry Fox-Talbot to developments in digital photography and the tiny but surprisingly capable cameras that are a component of every smartphone today, photography has changed dramatically over the past 150 years. As technology has advanced, so too has photography as a living, dynamic art form, as evidenced by the innovative techniques and compositions of contemporary photographic artists. Drawing on a diverse collection of historical and contemporary photographs (...) held by Bank Austria and on display at the Museum der Moderne Salzburg, Focus on Photography provides a rich visual record of the history of photography. The photographs reproduced here date from the 1840s to the 1970s and include works by Julia Margaret Cameron, Lewis Carroll, André Kertész, Josef Sudek, Eadweard Muybridge, Alexander Rodchenko, Lászlo Moholy-Nagy, Man Ray, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Diane Arbus, and Arnulf Rainer, among others, and range from landscapes and portraits to cutting-edge modern compositions. Together, they offer readers a series of invaluable reference points for thinking about of the important trends and developments throughout the history of photography. A stunning, kaleidoscopic portfolio featuring nearly two centuries of photographic art with representation from among many major movements and figures, Focus on Photography will be welcomed by all with an interest in this powerful medium. (shrink)

Susan Sontag once remarked that since the invention of the camera, photography has “kept company with death.” And indeed, images of suffering human beings and devastated landscapes appear regularly in the popular media and even in contemporary art. This volume explores these painful images from the past few decades of photography, weighing in on the intense critical debate that has arisen in recent years around depictions of acute human suffering—especially those that are beautifully rendered. Drawing on works from (...) advertising, photojournalism, art photography, and conceptual art, Beautiful Suffering features reproductions of all the pieces in the Williams College Museum of Art exhibition that shares its name—including portrayals of AIDS sufferers, Abu Ghraib prisoners, refugees, and casualties of war. It also includes five critical essays that engage the works themselves as well as the larger issues the exhibition confronts: Is it inherently problematic to seek aesthetic pleasure in a rendering of pain? And if so, why? These essays, composed by scholars in fields as diverse as art history and political science, are perfect complements to the powerful images of suffering that probe some of the most pressing issues we face today. (shrink)

There have always been some uninhabitable places, but in the last century human beings have produced many more of them. These anti-landscapes have proliferated to include the sandy wastes of what was once the Aral Sea, severely polluted irrigated lands, open pit mines, blighted nuclear zones, coastal areas inundated by rising seas, and many others. _The Anti-Landscape_ examines the emergence of such sites, how they have been understood, and how some of them have been recovered for habitation. The anti-landscape (...) refers both to artistic and literary representations and to specific places that no longer sustain life. This history includes T. S. Eliot’s _Wasteland_ and Cormac McCarthy’s _The Road_ as well as air pollution, recycled railway lines, photography and landfills. It links theories of aesthetics, politics, tourism, history, geography, and literature into the new synthesis of the environmental humanities. _The Anti-Landscape_ provides an interdisciplinary approach that moves beyond the false duality of nature vs. culture, and beyond diagnosis and complaint to the recuperation of damaged sites into our complex heritage. _This is the first volume in the new series _Studies in Environmental Humanities_._. (shrink)

Streets have always drawn the attention of photographers. As both defining features of urban landscapes and places for all varieties of chance encounter, they offer a nearly endless combination of static and moving elements that are the stuff of stunning photography--as the photographers in Road Atlas show brilliantly. From classic New York City street scenes by Helen Levitt to the works of the more contemporary street photographers, including, among others, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Beat Streuli, and Pieter Hugo, Road Atlas presents (...) a survey of the very best of street photography. Captured here is the everyday bustle of streets, sidewalks, and alleyways from Tokyo to São Paulo and beyond, offering tantalizing glimpses of buildings and their inhabitants, people immersed in their daily activities--shedding light, in the process, on poverty and prosperity, stagnation and vanishing urban spaces, and sometimes even of radical change. Through the practiced eyes of the twenty-eight artists showcased here, streets are threads linking cities and bringing people together yet also tokens of the distances that separate them and consign them to solitude. With more than 100 photographs from the renowned DZ Bank art collection in Frankfurt, Road Atlas captures both the oft-overlooked moments of everyday life and the distinctive character of cities worldwide. It accompanies an exhibition that will also be shown at the Opelvillen Rüsselsheim and the Kunstmuseum Dieselkraftwerk Cottbus. (shrink)

An historical and artistic account of the rise of apartheid in South Africa, using source documents and original photographs of the South Africa landscape. Apartheid's Landscape and Ideas: A Scorched Soul is an historical and artistic exploration of the culture of racism that gave rise to apartheid. This work represents twelve years of extensive archival research conducted throughout South Africa. A mosaic of intriguing first-hand historical accounts of the country, its people, significant events, and moral and political predicaments, (...) these accounts have been culled from diaries and correspondence from early missionaries, soldiers, politicians, laborers, and ordinary settlers. These historical documents display the prejudices, fears and character of the sojourners in South Africa. (shrink)

How can an art practice based upon lens imaging help us to question landscape as a pictorial category fixed in space and time? This article proposes that we practise landscape as an ongoing process that always surpasses human spatial and temporal framing while enfolding the activity of the human within it. Starting with reference to a specific geographic, geological and environmental site, the article tracks a process of situated making using the smartphone camera as the fulcrum of a (...) performative activity. (shrink)

Among one of the main inspirations for the research behind this Special Issue is Jussi Parikka’s 2010 book Insect Media: An Archeology of Animals and Technology. In this interview, the guest editors, Nina Mangalanayagam and Louise Wolthers, ask Professor Parikka to revisit some of the book’s core issues in relation to digital photography and the current media landscape in general. The conversation also revolves around artificial intelligence (AI), bugs, mimicry, contemporary art as well as scale and operational images, (...) which reflect Parikka’s recent research. (shrink)

In the August riots in England 2011, web sites provided up-to-date access to bare witness to the unsettling events that conveyed the essence of contemporary war and crisis reporting. These characteristics include events happening in real time, dramatic accounts, continuous coverage and multimedia footage, with also the inclusion of eyewitness stories and images. The rhetoric of war was used and dramatic photographs played a pivotal role in conveying the civil unrest as a ‘war zone.’ Significantly, the local environment becomes the (...) place for potential trauma, but also a space where the spectacle of violence, destruction, as well as community spirit are foregrounded. This article examines the background to the riots and the vernacular of war photography and the cultural landscape civil unrest and urban space. (shrink)

Following the socialist revolution, a colossal shift in everyday realities began in the 1920s and '30s in the former Russian empire. Faced with the Siberian North, a vast territory considered culturally and technologically backward by the revolutionary government, the Soviets confidently undertook the project of reshaping the ordinary lives of the indigenous peoples in order to fold them into the Soviet state. In Agitating Images, Craig Campbell draws a rich and unsettling cultural portrait of the encounter between indigenous Siberians and (...) Russian communists and reveals how photographs from this period complicate our understanding of this history. Agitating Images provides a glimpse into the first moments of cultural engineering in remote areas of Soviet Siberia. The territories were perceived by outsiders to be on the margins of civilization, replete with shamanic rituals and inhabited by exiles, criminals, and "primitive" indigenous peoples. The Soviets hoped to permanently transform the mythologized landscape by establishing socialist utopian developments designed to incorporate minority cultures into the communist state. This book delves deep into photographic archives from these Soviet programs, but rather than using the photographs to complement an official history, Campbell presents them as anti-illustrations, or intrusions, that confound simple narratives of Soviet bureaucracy and power. Meant to agitate, these images offer critiques that cannot be explained in text alone and, in turn, put into question the nature of photographs as historical artifacts. An innovative approach to challenging historical interpretation, Agitating Images demonstrates how photographs go against accepted premises of Soviet Siberia. All photographs, Campbell argues, communicate in unique ways that present new and even contrary possibilities to the text they illustrate. Ultimately, Agitating Images dissects our very understanding of the production of historical knowledge. (shrink)

Sarah Angelina Acland is one of the most important photographers of the late Victorian and early Edwardian periods. Daughter of the Regius Professor of Medicine at Oxford, she was photographed by Lewis Carroll as a child, along with her close friend Ina Liddell, sister of Alice of Wonderland fame. The critic John Ruskin taught her art and she also knew many of the Pre-Raphaelites, holding Rossetti's palette for him as he painted the Oxford Union murals. At the age of nineteen (...) she met the photographer Julia Margaret Cameron, whose influence is evident in her early work.Following in the footsteps of Cameron and Carroll Miss Acland first came to attention as a portraitist, photographing the illustrious visitors to her Oxford home. In 1899 she then turned to the challenge of colour photography, becoming, through work with the 'Sanger Shepherd process', the leading colour photographer of the day. Her colour photographs were regarded as the finest that had ever been seen by her contemporaries, several years before the release of the Lumière Autochrome system, which she also practised.This volume provides an introduction to Miss Acland's photography, illustrating more than 200 examples of her work, from portraits to picturesque views of the landscape and gardens of Madeira. Some fifty specimens of the photographic art and science of her peers from Bodleian collections are also reproduced for the first time, including four unrecorded child portraits by Carroll. Detailed descriptions accompany the images, explaining their interest and significance. The photographs not only shed important light on the history of photography in the period, but also offer a fascinating insight into the lives of a pre-eminent English family and their circle of friends. (shrink)

As American settlement expanded westward in the 1860s, the U.S. government undertook large-scale investigations of its new territories. Images of the West: Survey Photography in French Collections, 1860–1880 presents memorable glass-plate photographs from these federal surveys. The selection includes breathtaking views of such iconic sites as Yosemite, as well as lesser-known ethnographic portraits taken by Timothy H. O'Sullivan, William H. Jackson, and William Bell, among others. The accompanying essays discuss how the photographs were used to promote white settlement, how (...) their distribution at home and abroad contributed to the aggrandizement of the American West, and how the exploitative ideology underlying the use of photography extended to attitudes toward both American landscapes and American Indians. The images are all drawn from French public collections, which hold an astonishing number of these U.S. survey photographs. Accompanying an exhibition at the Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, Images of the West provides a critical new examination of a bygone era. (shrink)

This lavishly illustrated book establishes the towering influence of the scientist Victor Regnault in the earliest decades of photography, a period of experimentation ripe with artistic, commercial, and scientific possibility. Regnault has a double significance to the early history of photography, as the first leader of the Société Française de Photographie and as the maker of more than two hundred calotype portraits and landscapes. His photographic and scientific careers intersected a third field with his appointment in 1852 as (...) director of the Sèvres porcelain works. Readers are treated to Regnault's own beguiling pastoral, garden, and forest scenes; striking portraits of the scientists and artists in his circle of friends; quirky images of acoustic experiments; and an insider's view of the Sèvres porcelain works. Regnault's richly varied photographs also encompass perhaps the most extensive group of family portraits in early photography, and his romanticized landscapes reflect a moment when the rural outskirts of Paris were being aggressively suburbanized and industrialized. Occupying a unique and powerful position in the overlapping spheres of photography, science, industry, and art, Regnault was elected president of the newly formed S.F.P. in 1855. By examining his intertwined activities against the backdrop of French photography's nascent pursuit of institutional legitimacy, this book illuminates an important and overlooked body of images and the irregular cultural terrain of early photography. (shrink)

Both similarities and differences were observed when comparing scenic beauty evaluations of rural landscapes made by persons from different cultures. Differences seem due to the westernized tourists' misinterpretation or ignorance of the meaning associated with certain landscape features by the Balinese. This implies scenic beauty is dependent upon meanings assigned to landscape features, which in turn implies that scenic beauty is, to some extent, learned. Similarities between tourists' and Balinese' scenic evaluations are significant and correspond to consistencies found (...) in other landscape preference studies. Multiple methods were used, including participant photography, rating scales, and a variety of statistical analyses. A review of the literature reveals evidence and theory which suggests both similarities and differences are to be expected when comparing scenic evaluations made by persons of different cultures. This review also suggests three methodological concerns which should be addressed in landscape studies: a concern for the participant's purpose for evaluating a landscape; a concern for the participant's familiarity with a landscape; and a concern for the criterion's appropriateness to all participants. Research designs which ignore these concerns may mask true cultural differences. (shrink)

"My energies for near a lifetime have been used almost entirely to win such prominence as I could in outdoor photography."--H. H. Bennett Henry Hamilton Bennett became a celebrated photographer in the half-century following the American Civil War. Bennett is admired for his superb depictions of dramatic landscapes of the Dells of the Wisconsin River and also for his many technical innovations in photography, including a stop-action shutter and a revolving solar printing house that is now housed at (...) the Smithsonian Institution. With his instantaneous shutter, he gained recognition for his striking images of moving subjects, such as lumber raftsmen shooting the river rapids and his son Ashley leaping in midair from a bluff to the craggy pillar of Stand Rock. Less well-known are Bennett's splendid urban photographs of nineteenth-century Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul. This engaging biography of H. H. Bennett tells his life story, illustrated throughout with his remarkable photographs, some of them rarely viewed before. It draws on the photographer's own letters and journals, along with other family documents, to portray the sweep of his career and personal life. An important figure in the history of photography, he also contributed to the growth of American tourism: his nationally distributed stereoscopic views of Dells rock formations and his portraits of local Ho-Chunk Indians played a significant role in creating the Wisconsin Dells as the popular tourist destination it is today. Despite personal challenges--a crippling Civil War injury, the death of his first wife, and continual financial worries--Bennett produced an extensive portfolio that captures the midwestern culture of his time. He accepted commissions in the 1890s to document Chicago's modern skyscrapers, grand residences of Milwaukee's entrepreneurs and sailing ships in its harbor, enormous scenic panoramas along the routes of Wisconsin railroads, and sparkling ice palaces lit by fireworks at the St. Paul Winter Carnival. Finalist, Midwest Regional Interest, Midwest Book Awards. (shrink)

Gustave Caillebotte not only depicted the 19th-century Paris of Haussmann, but also painted landscapes, still lifes, portraits and interiors. Today, he has taken his place as one of the most outstanding French Impressionists. His avant-garde approach to perspective and composition anticipated pictorial forms of 20th-century photography. The work of Caillebotte added a new dimension to French Impressionist painting. His radical and modern designs with a photographic quality inspired a new kind of perception and anticipated the dynamism and abstraction of (...) photography which was in the process of being developed. Selected photographs by André Kertész, Wols and László Moholy-Nagy, among others, demonstrate a strong affinity with the work of Caillebotte. (shrink)

Natural environments have a restorative effect from mental/attentional fatigue, prevent stress, and help to revitalize psychological and physical resources. These benefits are crucial for promoting active aging, which is particularly relevant given the phenomenon of population aging in recent decades. To be considered restorative, green spaces have to meet specific requirements in ecological and psychological terms that can be assessed through Post-Occupancy Evaluation, a multimethod approach commonly used by environmental psychologists and landscape architects after construction to evaluate the design (...) outcomes from the users’ perspective. Generally, POEs consist of surveys and/or interviews accompanied by more or less structured observations of onsite users’ behavior. Despite this, various practical constraints can prevent physical access to the renovated area. Exploiting digital tools for such an assessment can be a crucial support in such circumstances. The current study presents the visual POE of a restorative garden for older adults in Milan, Italy. We developed a web application, that includes the exp-EIA© patented method, which allows participants to virtually explore a visual simulation of the environment and provide their feedback. We identified 3 representative viewpoints in the redeveloped garden differing from each other for the functions and the design principles that inspired the transformation. For each point of view, we created 360° Virtual Reality photographs, that can be navigated by looking around, i.e., panning, from the standing point of each view. In connection to each virtual scene, a survey was conducted. The focus was the psychological experience related to each viewpoint, assessed with two psychometric scales investigating the constructs of emotions and restoration ; such information is integrated with behavioral aspects, including the main activities prefigured by participants and their visual exploration of the VR photography. The results of the virtual exploration show that the garden is perceived as restorative, with a more intense effect in a spot purposely designed. The emotions experienced in the garden are positive and a mild level of arousal is observed. The behavioral dimension is characterized by predominantly contemplative activities and contact with nature. A cartographic representation of the psychological and behavioral data is developed, to support the maintenance of the garden. (shrink)

In Pastoral and Monumental, Donald C. Jackson chronicles America's longtime fascination with dams as represented on picture postcards from the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century. Through over four hundred images, Jackson documents the remarkable transformation of dams and their significance to the environment and culture of America. Initially, dams were portrayed in pastoral settings on postcards that might jokingly proclaim them as “a dam pretty place.” But scenes of flood damage, dam collapses, and other disasters also captured people's attention. (...) Later, images of New Deal projects, such as the Hoover Dam, Grand Coulee Dam, and Norris Dam, symbolized America's rise from the Great Depression through monumental public works and technological innovation. Jackson relates the practical applications of dams, describing their use in irrigation, navigation, flood control, hydroelectric power, milling, mining, and manufacturing. He chronicles changing construction techniques, from small timber mill dams to those more massive and more critical to a society dependent on instant access to electricity and potable water. Concurrent to the evolution of dam technology, Jackson recounts the rise of a postcard culture that was fueled by advances in printing, photography, lowered postal rates, and America's fascination with visual imagery. In 1910, almost one billion postcards were mailed through the U.S. Postal Service, and for a period of over fifty years, postcards featuring dams were “all the rage.” Whether displaying the charms of an old mill, the aftermath of a devastating flood, or the construction of a colossal gravity dam, these postcards were a testament to how people perceived dams as structures of both beauty and technological power. (shrink)

London-based company ScanLab Projects is a multi-disciplinary commercial collaboration between architect, artist, coders and designers who utilize technologies surrounding 3D laser scanning in their practice. Inherent in the manner their projects are pitched is through reference to the photographic as technological process. Central to their engagement with the light detection and ranging (LiDAR) scanning apparatus is a consideration of the relationality between virtual or digital object and what could be determined as extrinsic or ‘real’ terrain. In Post-lenticular Landscapes, 2017, ScanLab (...) created a series of LiDAR scans of Yosemite National Park. The landscape, presented as a stereoscopic film work where the spectator flies through an ephemeral black and white point cloud, is contextualized relationally to a certain photo-historical context and lineage: As Yosemite is synonymous with the advent of photographic process through the work of Muybridge, Watkins, Woods and Adams, the work revisits an archetypal image of the American sublime. In this text, I unpack ScanLab’s usage and conceptualization of LiDAR scans referentially to an understanding of the photographic. By considering how ScanLab frames our understanding of the project through the technological apparatus, the text attempts to problematize the scans by reading them through a particular art historic heritage. In this context, I posit alternate ways of reading the work, specifically through reference to the image of Yosemite that has proliferated across the desktops of Apple computers since 2014. Furthermore, through a reading of metonymy in the writing of Eelco Runia, the eerie as understood by Mark Fisher and in relation to Lev Manovich’s description of photorealism, I propose that the future of the mediation and understandings of machinic vision are to be thought with a reconsidered notion of the photographic. (shrink)

Describes the features of the Sony Alpha DSLR-A100 camera, with information on such topics as exposure, lighting, lenses, composition, landscape photography, panoramic photography, and editing pictures.

This study analyzes the interests of Spanish audiences in travel magazines within the current context of press consumption. The objectives are to identify the readers' reading frequency and reasons for reading, what contents interest them, and what aspects of the photographs attract them. The methodology involves a structured questionnaire completed by a representative sample of the Spanish population (n=1000). The main results reveal a low reading frequency, great interest in practical information, preference for landscape photography (over the age (...) of 54) and nightlife photography (young people), and indifference regarding the journalistic source of the images. These data provide relevant information on which to adapt travel magazines' content strategy. (shrink)

After the horrendous events of September 2001, photographer Peter Elliott loaded his cameras and some clothes into his car and began a cross-country journey, looking for the flag. He found it everywhere: painted on a retaining wall in Tacoma, flying over a trailer in Bozeman, carried billowing by a lone man walking a sandbar in Florida, made of plastic cups stuck in a fence in Mississippi, draped over a fake horse in Salinas, immaculately hanging from a Beverly Hills mansion's window. (...) Home Front is both a tribute to the profound emotions of the country and a testament to Elliott's eye. His genius in these eighty-seven arresting images is to wed these serendipitous meetings with the flag to a language of light and composition that draws as much from classic landscape photography as it does from urban visual idioms. Elliott manages to convey here America's stirring and complex national character, one in which those who have not benefited from the nation's prosperity nonetheless feel the same sense of pride as those who have. With its inspiring introduction by Julia Reed, Home Front is the record—both somber and joyous—of Elliott's encounters with spontaneous patriotism. (shrink)

The spectacular and dramatic effects of changing seasons have been a source of inspiration for artists through the ages. Pennsylvania Seasons is a delightful collection of nature-themed poems paired with magisterial landscape photography that captures all the mercurial moods of summer, autumn, winter, and spring. Overflowing with visual and lyric imagery, this book celebrates natural wonders, some preserved in public parks and forests and others lurking in hidden places. Featuring the work of local poets who know the region (...) best, Pennsylvania Seasons matches each photograph with a verse that effectively evokes its power. The result is an inspired ode to nature which will be an essential gift for all Pennsylvanians. (shrink)

Wind, water, and molten rock constantly tear apart and resculpt the natural world we live in, and people have always struggled to create structures that will permanently establish their existence on the land. Frank Golhke has committed his camera lens to documenting that fraught relationship between people and place, and this retrospective collection of his work by John Rohrbach reveals how people carve out their living spaces in the face of constant natural disruption. An acclaimed master of landscape (...) class='Hi'>photography, Golhke explores in _Accommodating Nature_ how people configure the places where they live, work, and commune, both on an everyday level and in the aftermath of catastrophic destruction. Whether a ranch house anchored fast on an endless Texas plain, the shattered buildings and whipped trees left by a category 5 tornado, or the jagged cliffs of ash and rock created by the volcanic eruption of Mount St. Helens, the photographs unearth the ways in which new homes and lives emerge from the fragments of the old. Thought-provoking essays by Rebecca Solnit, Frank Gohlke, and John Rohrbach expand upon the issues raised by the images, contemplating the complexities of human and cultural geography and the relationships we have with our respective place. An arresting and vibrant visual essay combining magnificent vistas with intimate emotional detail, _Accommodating Nature_ exposes the intricate threads that bind our lives to the land surrounding us. (shrink)

Aerial photography had a special place in the business of the legendary former Swiss airline, "Swissair." Walter Mittelholzer, aviation pioneer and one of the founders of "Swissair," first trained as a photographer before joining the Swiss army s flying corps during WW I and later turning to civil aviation because of his keen interest in aerial photography. Photography was also the more profitable part of "Ad Astra Aero," one of "Swissair s "preceding companies which continued to exist (...) as a subsidiary of the newly formed "Swissair" under the name "Swissair Photo AG" as of 1931 until 2001, when the famous airline ceased operations. "Swissair Photo + Vermessung AG" was saved from liquidation in a buyout in 2001 and still operates as" BSF Swissphoto." The heritage of Walter Mittelholzer and "Swissair Photo AG" is kept at ETH Zurich s Image Archive, alongside Swissair s corporate "Swissair Photo Archive". The collection comprises around 100,000 pictures taken between 1918 and 2011. In includes mainly vertical and oblique aerial photographs of landscapes, towns and villages, and mountains, but also industrial plants, infrastructures, and individual buildings in Switzerland and abroad, from the 1960s onward in color. About 15,000 of them were taken by Walter Mittelholzer. A remarkable aspect is the vast number of views of the Swiss mountains: pure landscape photography, many of them with a horizontal or slightly oblique perspective. This was caused by personal interest of the photographers, many of them also keen mountaineers, but probably also by a high demand for such pictures for postcards and other commercial use. During the 1970s there was a notable change, when a more aesthetic view of the land became dominant that rather looked vertically at shapes and colors of the cultivated landscape than at the wilderness. Around 200 of the most beautiful, most striking, and most informative photographs were selected for the new book "Swissair Aerial Photography." They show the many changes in the landscape and in settlements over nearly a century. They also are an inventory of lost elements making a landscape, such as untamed rivers, orchards, receding glaciers and moors, shrinking agricultural areas, vanished historical buildings. And they document the growth of industrial plants and other infrastructure and urban sprawl in general. The book shows how an idyllic agricultural country has turned into one of the most densely inhabited places in the world in a matter of decades. The introductory essay looks at the history and content of the collection at the Image Archive at ETH Bibliothek, the history and a range of aspects of aerial photography in general, the changing aesthetics and use of the images and what can be read from them today, technical developments and a brief history of aerial photography in Switzerland." " Series The series "Pictorial Worlds. Photographs from the Image Archive, ETH-Bibliothek, "published in cooperation by "ETH-Bibliothek" and Scheidegger & Spiess, aims at building a bridge between analytical treatment of historical image sources and the interest in individual photographs for any possible reason. Whereas the library s online database simplifies research and enables search inquiries going beyond the mere inventory, the books are meant to present the contours of specific collections of images, to embed them in the context of their origin, and to offer an introduction to the multitude of possible historical interpretations. Each volume of the series comprises an introductory essay on the given subject and presented material. Detailed captions offer additional information on individual images. This subject-guided approach and carefully selected examples are meant to give a representative view of the sometimes extensive range of a particular collection within the Image Archive. The entire series is conceived for a general audience interested in cultural history and visual aesthetics, rather than for a specialized and scientifically interested one. ". (shrink)

In 1975 the exhibition New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape crystallized a new view of the American West: the sublime “American” vistas of Ansel Adams were replaced and subverted by images of a landscape inundated with banal symbols of humanity. Organized by William Jenkins for the George Eastman House in Rochester, New York, New Topographics showcased such photographers as Robert Adams, Lewis Baltz, Joe Deal, Frank Gohlke. Their pictures, illustrating the vernacular, human-made world of contemporary America, punctured (...) the myth of the pristine, wild American landscape—and definitively changed the course of landscape photography. Reframing the New Topographics offers the first substantive analysis of this shift and the continuing influence of an exhibition that not only reshaped the look and subject matter of landscape photography, but also foreshadowed environmentalism’s expansion beyond the mere preservation of wilderness. The essays in this anthology will add an important new dimension to the studies of art history and visual culture. (shrink)

Wind, water, and molten rock constantly tear apart and resculpt the natural world we live in, and people have always struggled to create structures that will permanently establish their existence on the land. Frank Golhke has committed his camera lens to documenting that fraught relationship between people and place, and this retrospective collection of his work by John Rohrbach reveals how people carve out their living spaces in the face of constant natural disruption. An acclaimed master of landscape (...) class='Hi'>photography, Golhke explores in Accommodating Nature how people configure the places where they live, work, and commune, both on an everyday level and in the aftermath of catastrophic destruction. Whether a ranch house anchored fast on an endless Texas plain, the shattered buildings and whipped trees left by a category 5 tornado, or the jagged cliffs of ash and rock created by the volcanic eruption of Mount St. Helens, the photographs unearth the ways in which new homes and lives emerge from the fragments of the old. Thought-provoking essays by Rebecca Solnit, Frank Gohlke, and John Rohrbach expand upon the issues raised by the images, contemplating the complexities of human and cultural geography and the relationships we have with our respective place. An arresting and vibrant visual essay combining magnificent vistas with intimate emotional detail, Accommodating Nature exposes the intricate threads that bind our lives to the land surrounding us. (shrink)

The Environmental Uncanny argues that the increasing destitution of our world is the result of a certain forgetfulness: we have forgotten that the basis of our knowledge is not calculative reason, but our participation in the natural world. Offering a unique interdisciplinary perspective on the global environmental crisis - ranging from traditional phenomenology, including substantial discussion of both Merleau-Ponty and Heidegger, to philosophy of biology, to architectural and urban design theory, to landscape photography, this book makes illuminating connections (...) to paint a multifaceted picture. (shrink)

Photography in Colorado was encouraged as early as 1861, when newspaper editor William Byers wrote in the Rocky Mountain News, "Secure the shadow, ere the substance perish," and roused the citizenry to take photographs of their families, friends, landscape, homes, and mills in order to document their lives and share them with others. The revised edition of Colorado: A History in Photographs draws on this rich legacy, portraying Colorado's history in images taken from the frontier era to the (...) present, all accompanied by a vivid, updated narrative. Presenting a broad view of countless aspects of life in Colorado and including 270 black-and-white photographs, this book will inform, entertain, and inspire all those who delight in learning more about the history of the Centennial State. (shrink)