Tuesday, March 25

*KEY TERMS
*Photomontage is the process (and result) of making a composite photograph by cutting and joining a number of other photographs. The composite picture was sometimes photographed so that the final image is converted back into a seamless photographic print. The same method is accomplished today using image-editing software. The technique is referred to by professionals as "compositing", and in casual usage is often called "photoshopping". Hannah Hoch is known for her photomontages.

*Hannah Höch (1889-1978) was a Dada artist born in Gotha, Germany. Worked during the early 20th century primarily. She is best known for her work of the Weimar period, when she was one of the originators of photomontage. Höch's most famous piece is Cut With The Kitchen Knife, a critique on Weimar Germany in 1919. This piece combines images from newspapers of the time re-created to make a new statement about life and art in the Dada movement. She was also very interested in combining images to convey feminist messages.

*John Heartfield (1891–1968) is the anglicized name of the German photomontage artist Helmut Herzfeld. He chose to call himself Heartfield in 1916, to criticize the rabid nationalism and anti-British sentiment prevalent in Germany during World War I. His images were very anti-nazi and mocked the Nazi party. He worked during the 1920s, 30s, and 40s.

*Man Ray- an American photographer and artist who worked in Paris in the 1920s and 30s. He “invented” the rayograph (a negative reversal process that influenced avant garde photography), also important with regards to surrealism.

*Barbara Kruger- (born 1945) is an American conceptual artist who is a post-modernist photographer. She continues to produce images. She has less emphasis on the image and takes a more multimedia approach with text. Much of Kruger's graphic work consists of black-and-white photographs with overlaid captions set in white-on-red Futura Bold Oblique. The phrases included in her work are usually declarative, and make common use of such pronouns as "you," "I," "we," and "they."

*Loretta Lux- (born 1969) Lux is a German fine art photographer and known for her surreal portraits of young children. She manipulates the background and features of the image to produce an image that is surreal, but also very engaging. The artist executes her compositions using a combination of photography, painting and digital manipulation.

*"Photoshopping" is slang for the digital editing of photos. The term originates from Adobe Photoshop, the image editor most commonly used by professionals for this purpose. Photoshop is widely used as a verb, both colloquially and academically, to refer to retouching, compositing, and color correction carried out in the course of graphic design, commercial publishing, and image editing.

*Paul Outerbridge, Jr. (1896-1958) was an American photographer noted for early use and experiments in color photography. Outerbridge was a fashion and commercial photographer, an early pioneer and teacher of color photography, and an artist who created erotic nudes photographs that could not be exhibited in his lifetime. Outerbridge's vivid color nudes studies included early fetish photos and were too indecent to find broad public acceptance.

*Clarence John Laughlin (1905 - 1985) was a United States photographer, best known for his surrealist photographs of the U.S. South. Laughlin was born in to a middle class family in Lake Charles, Louisiana. His rocky childhood, southern heritage, and interest in literature influenced his work greatly. He used reflections/mirrors/ etc. in his images and creates surreal images that emphasize the unconscious. He had a particular interest in history.

*Diane Arbus (1923 –1971) was an American photographer, noted for her portraits of people on the fringes of society, such as transvestites, dwarfs, giants, prostitutes, and ordinary citizens in unconventional poses and settings. Of her most famous works, is the black and white image of Twins that is featured in the text book. In July 1971, Arbus committed suicide in Greenwich Village at the age of 48 by ingesting a large quantity of barbiturates and then slashing her wrists.

*Joel-Peter Witkin (1939) is an American photographer. He worked as war photographer between 1961 and 1964 during the Vietnam war. In 1967, he decided to work as a freelance photographer. He deals a great deal with the grotesque and Witkin claims that his vision and sensibility were initiated by an episode he witnessed when he was just a small child, a car accident that occurred in front of his house in which a little girl was decapitated.

*Surrealism- is a cultural movement that began in the early-1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members. The works feature the element of surprise, unexpected juxtapositions and non sequitur, however many Surrealist artists and writers regard their work as an expression of the philosophical movement first and foremost with the works being an artifact. An example is the work of Man Ray.