Ironic photograph in the 20th century’s history of art.

(Group Assignment)

During the 20 century, there were a lot of great photographers in American society. Their art was influenced on the history of the further generations, and their projects are still well-known in the whole world. And especially, we interested in the documental photography of this period of time.

At first it is connected with our interest to know more about our past, to understand their opinions, to see their view on the really awful things. All documental photographers, who took pictures of wars, homeless people and children, starvation, deaths, portraits of famous or forceful people or the pictures of places, where humans were massed killed. All of them were great persons too. They provide their experience to us through the photos. And one of these documental photographers was Elliot Erwitt.

Elliot Erwitt was very famous American photographer. He immigrated to the United States from Russia with his family at the age of 10, in 1939. It was happened before the World War 2 started. Erwitt served in three armies: American, German and French, as a photographer’s assistant. And after war carrier started to work in different journals, also produced a lot of books, telling about photography art. He had his own style, the ironic and may be absurd view on the daily routine. And we saw one of his photos, made in this style, in Berkeley Art Museum. It was “Fort Dix, New Jersey”, made in 1951.

This is kind of black and white photograph, was made in the middle of the 20th century. It was printed not in the big format, and even has no frame. So it surely can be used as a postcard to raise the spirits of soldier's mothers and children or to send it to friends for telling them something.

It has three levels of composition. We can divide them using our-self position to the picture: the first will be the nearest for us and the third will be the most distant accordingly. Or using author’s composition view: to concentrate on the more detailed things. In any case the division will be the same.

On the first level, we can see the figure of the American soldier. He’s African American, who is an US Army marine. He is total uniformed in soldier’s costume of the 50^th years of the 20th century; he also had all necessary weapons and ammunition for it. He is situated exactly in the center of the whole composition and, of course, the mostly detailed person.

The second level shows us another group of soldiers, who keep their service. Although the have the same costumes and ammunition, them looks different from the soldier on the first level. They are ignoring the photographer and have no any connection with the viewer. It has us to separate the big figure, who is looking on the author of the picture and other figures on the photo.

And the last one, third level, contains only the landscape. The forest is situated near the road, and it is rather big to do not show any piece of sky. It is very important, because picture contains sky only in one part, and all its corners are dark. It makes the picture look more finished, framed.

Also we need to mention that it is photograph of war, but we do not see the dark atmosphere, which is always connected with the theme of war, disaster and destruction. There are no sad faces on the picture. An even if we are looking on the chain of soldiers, we can’t see any aggression or sadness and hopeless. There is very interesting kind of atmosphere here.

This picture keeps a lot of cultural work, and it is connecting with a lot of themes, which we didn’t mentioned before, such as the problems of the racial discrimination or the results of the affirmative action.

Using materials:

1. Berkeley art museum’s materials

2. Elliott Erwitt - Magnum Photos Photographer Portfolio

3. Racial Time, Racial Marks, Racial Metaphors

4. The history of world’s art, Chegodaev A.D.

Date: 2016-01-14; view: 875