How did Pictorialist Photographers emulate Impressionists?
Texture - Deliberately out of focus images with high grain that look more like paintings
Colour - Mostly black and white or warm browns but also deep blues
Composition - Arranging the subjects in a similar way to what you would see in paintings
Editing - Visible brush strokes or other manipulation of the surface.
Subject Matter - Portraits, landscapes, nudes, food (anything they thought was romantic)
In the four Pictorial photo examples provided in the timeline above, consider the following:
What feelings / meaning / vibe is conveyed in the following examples?
What did they do artistically or photographically to show this?
We Still Make Meaning With Art
Memes
Sometimes, memes will take inspiration from traditional artworks which bring new meaning to them. In the meme on the right, they used traditional artworks and the expressions of the people depicted to show a modern pain scale.
In the activity below, you could choose to bring new meaning to your traditional artwork by turning it in to a meme in your photo recreation.
Class Project: Recreating an Artwork
Choose one of the six artworks below to recreate using photography. Consider how you will use elements like subject, background, arrangement, colour and lighting to give meaning to your photograph. We'll discuss the explanation part in the next lesson, so for now, concentrate on having clear intentions behind your artistic choices while recreating the image.
You Will Be Marked as Follows:
You have recreated some of the elements in your inspiration image and explained some of the elements used to create meaning.
You have recreated the majority of elements in your inspiration image. It is clear how your image was visually inspired by the artwork. You can explain how elements create meaning in your work.
You have introduced new meaning / your own meaning into the work in such a way that we can see what the original was about but you have brought it into your own context. For example, in the image to the left, a person participating in the getty museum challenge recreated Casas' Jove Decadent (1910). The origonal work shows the idea of the decadance of youth; the freedom to nap on the couch and read poetry all day. Meanwhile, the recreation shows the boredom or exhaustion of covid lockdown, being stuck on the couch with nothing to do, even though we now have access to far more than poetry through our phones. You can analyse how elements create meaning in your work.
You have introduced new meaning / your own meaning into the work in such a way that we can see what the original was about but you have brought it into your own context, see example explored in 'B level.' It is clear how your image was visually inspired by the artwork. You can critiquely analyse your work by explaining the meaning and techniques used to create meaning in the original work as well as the meaning and techniques used to create meaning in your own work and evaluate why and how you have used the techniques that you have and what you would improve.
For Your Process Journal
Create a subpage under 'Class Projects' called 'Recreating an Artwork.'
Create an A4 page on Adobe Photoshop. Edit your artwork as desired, see some tips for editing here.
Save your image as an A4 PSD file in your Photography folder on your computer. Export it as a JPEG or PNG to insert in to your process journal.
Insert the artwork you were re-creating and your final photo in to your process journal on your 'Recreating an Artwork' page.
Insert any practice photos you desire and label the practise ones and the final.
Insert any sketches or planning you did before you created your final photo.
Using the grade scale above, write a paragraph that explains the meaning in your photo.