Image Ecology Assignment

Image Ecology Assignment

Yvonne Hopkins
301088627

Hannah Hoch

German born Hannah Hoch is known for her photomontage collages and her role in the German Dadaist movement in the early 20th century. Studying in Berlin, Hoch had an affair with a Viennese artist named Raoul Hausmann from 1915-1922 (Lewis, 2011). This relationship led her to become involved in the Berlin Club Dada: a group of artists that was heavily involved with political radicalism after WWI (Lewis, 2011). With her pioneering works in photomontage, Hoch has been considered one of the most important female artists from the German modernist period. Her photomontages, made up largely of paper clippings, are juxtapositions of organic and mechanical forms; brand text, headlines and symbolism; and historic and contemporary bodies and body parts (Harrison & Wood, 2003). As well as acting as commodity critiques and political activism, many of Hoch’s collages are reflections of her feminist viewpoint: a commentary on how women were perceived and valued at the time she was working (Harrison & Wood, 2003).

To illustrate Hoch’s work, I attempted to mimic her collages that contain cutup images of women’s faces and body parts, brand logos and mechanical parts. I used the quick selection tool to cut out parts of images and pasted them into different layers. I then rearranged the images in a fashion that represents Hoch’s idea of disembodiment of the female form. As Hoch used paper clippings from newspapers and magazines of her time, I then adjusted the hues and saturations of the different layers in order to gain a ‘vintage’ effect.

Piet Modrian

Born in the Netherlands in the late 19th century, Modrian began searching for a voice within his art. First being influenced by the Amsterdam Moderne Kunstring exhibition on cubism in 1911, he later moved to Paris in 1912 where artists Picasso and Braque influenced him (“PietModrian: About PietModiran”, n.d.). During WWI he lived in a Dutch artist colony in which he was influenced by the use of primary colors in the art of Van derLeck (“PietModrian: About PietModiran”, n.d.). Along with fellow painter Van Doesburg, Modrian helped found “De Stijl” (The Style). This movement attempted to express spiritual harmony and order through the use of abstraction and reduction to basic form and color (“PietModrian: About PietModiran”, n.d.). Modrian’s paintings of this movement consisted of compositions of horizontal and vertical directions (usually black lines) to create squares and rectangles that were filled with primary colors (blue, yellow, and red) or black and white.

For my representation of Modrian’s work, I attempted to copy this form. I used the rectangular marquee tool to make lines that intersect and cross each other and filled them in with black using the paint bucket tool. I then filled in specific rectangles and squares with primary colors and black using the paint bucket tool. I carefully made sure that the colors appeared balanced, not overwhelming and complemented each other, as do those in Modrian’s works.

Cubism

Pablo Picasso is well known for being one of the founding fathers of cubism: an avant-grade movement that influenced art in the early 20th century. Unlike painting methods of the past centuries, cubism is not an art of imitation but instead, an art of conception. (Harrison & Wood, 2003). The painter of a cubist piece can give the effect of three dimensions through representing conceptualized reality (Harrison & Wood, 2003). Cubism was considered a very unusual form of art as the artist would look at the object carefully, recreate the object using geometric shapes such as cubes and cones, distort images, and reveal objects from different sides at the same time (Harrison & Wood, 2003). Cubist works often show ambiguous shapes, use unusual intersections and angles, and has an irregular sense of depth (Harrison & Wood, 2003).

In order to recreate a representation of a cubist piece, I took a photo of a violin and cut out rectangular pieces of the images, placing them in different layers using the rectangular marquee tool. I then used the free transform tool to change the size, rotate and skew each rectangle, giving each piece an irregular shape. I used the inner glow effect on each piece and pattern overlay and/or color overlay on specific pieces to give it more of an ambiguous sense of space and 3 dimensional effect.

Impressionism

Impressionism refers to a French art movement in the 19th century based on the law of optics. Famous members of this movement included Monet, Renoir, and Sisley who worked in an artist colony in France during the 1870s (Lori, 2010). The term impression came around when an art critic commented that a piece by Monet was not finished and merely looked like an ‘impression’ (Lori, 2010). Impressionist pieces are often characterized as having quick, thin brushstrokes, thick application of paint, emphasis on precise light depiction, use of everyday subjects, creation of irregular angles, and aspects of movement (Lori, 2010). Also, a common characteristic in impressionist paintings is that the shadows of objects are not black but opposing colors (Boddy-Evans, 2011).

In creating my representation of an impressionist piece, chose a photo of an everyday sunflower in a field. First I applied the art history tool onto the photo using the ‘loose long’ brush with an area of 500 pixels and brush size of 10, working my way down to a brush size of 1. Next I applied an artistic ‘cutout’ and ‘dry brush’ filter in order to create a shadowing effect in which the shadows were not black. I then used the smudge tool to create the feeling of small, quick brush strokes. I then finished by modifying the hue and saturation to bring about more vivid coloring and a warmer feel.

Macro Nature/Wildlife Photography

Nature and wildlife photography has become vastly popular through magazines such as National Geographic, photojournalism and documentaries. With the introduction of specialized lenses that allow for extreme close-up photos of nature and animals, we are now able to capture elements on film that reveal aspects that are nearly unnoticeable to the human eye. Macro photography refers to close-up pictures of small things. In macro photography, elements are usually highlighted by creating focus on one point while leaving the background out of focus (Greenspun, 2007). Altering the aperture of one’s camera is key to this process (Greenspun, 2007).

In creating my own macro photography, I set my camera to aperture priority mode and altered the aperture until I found the right setting to capture the image of the ladybug. Using the aperture priority mode allows for the shutter speed to automatically adjust itself. In photoshop, I used the blur tool to further draw focus on the ladybug and create a smaller depth of field. In order to create warmth, I then modified the colors of the photo by enhancing the reds and altering the saturation, contrast and vibrancy of the photo. Finally, I brightened the photo to enhance the sun’s reflection on the ladybug’s shell in order to bring about a feeling of the outdoors.

Tilt-Shift Photography

Tilt-shift photography is a method of taking a photograph of life-size location or object and making it seem as though it was a miniature scale model. Using a creative technique to create an optical illusion of miniatures, it is understandable that tilt-shift photography is often referred to as ‘miniature faking’. In 1973, Canon released a tilt and shift lens that allowed for this type of photography by adjusting the viewing plane and lens plane by shifting and/or tilting the lens (Canon camera museum, 2010) Before being used for creating interesting photos with a miniature perspective, tilt-shift photography was mostly used for architectural photography to control perspective. Using a tilt-shift lens actually uses two movements: the rotation of the lens relative to the image plane (tilt) and the movement of the lens parallel to the image plane (shift) (Joshi, 2010).

As tilt-shift lenses are very expensive, it is possible to manipulate this method with photoshop. To do so, I created a shallow depth of field by using the blur tool to blur most of the photo, leaving the center clear. I also used the smudge tool to smudge the edge and corners of this photo. As miniature figures are usually brightly colored, editing of tilt-shift photography usually makes the colors my vibrant. I did this by increasing the saturation of the photo.

References

Boddy-Evans, M. (2011).Techniques of impressionists:What colors are shadows?Retrieved from

Joshi, B. (2010). How do tilt shift lenses work? Retrieved from

Canon camera museum. (2010). TS35mm f/2.8 S.S.C. Retrieved from

Greenspun, P. (2007). Macro Photography. Retrieved from

Harrison, C. & Wood, P. (2003). Art in theory 1900-2000: An Anthology of changing ideas. MA, USA: Blackwell Publishing.

Lewis, J. (2011). Women’s history: Hannah Hoch. Retrieved from

Lori. (2010). What is impressionism? Retrieved from

PietModrian: About PietModrian. (n.d.). Retrieved from