American Photography Research Articles

Militancy from the Margins in Brazil

This article discusses some aspects of the political commitment visible in the lives and work of two female photographers in Brazil: Claudia Andujar and Nair Benedicto. It analyses two photographic series that were sent by these photographers to the Latin American Photography Colloquia in 1978 and 1981: Andujar’s work with the Yanomamis, the Amazonian Indigenous people; and Benedicto’s work with young offenders incarcerated in the Brazilian cities of São Paulo and Ribeirão Preto. For both photographers, training their lenses on some of the most marginalised sectors of Brazilian society at that moment also meant engaging politically with the military dictatorship. However, in both cases their political engagement was not limited to photography; it transcended to social and political militancy.

Blended Identities in American Photography

Blended Identities in American Photography

Exhibition Review: Devour the Land: War and American Landscape Photography since 1970

Exhibition Review: <i>Devour the Land: War and American Landscape Photography since 1970</i>

New Jersey Photographers of the Civil War and Postwar Era: John P. Doremus

Of the more than 3,000 photographers active in New Jersey in the nineteenth century, a number of them were itinerant camera workers at some point during their careers, operating with a horse-drawn wagon. Some photographers, especially those taking views, circulated locally even when they had a gallery where they did portraits and sold other kinds of photographs. Like many other American photographers who did not always wait for customers, John P. Doremus began working in the medium during the Civil War, when there was a strong market for portraits. Doremus is distinguished in that, for much of the latter 1870s and 1880s, he lived and worked on a floating gallery on the Mississippi River while his business back home in Paterson, Passaic County, was managed by his family. For this remarkable episode in his career, he was inducted into the National Rivers Hall of Fame in 1991. He is also exceptional in that he kept a journal in which he recorded fascinating details about his experiences. This essay provides a case study of an able and ambitious photographer and entrepreneur whose career, characterized by both typical and unique experiences, sheds light on photographic and business practices of his era. You can find additional John P. Doremus photographs here: https://web.ingage.io/6jsPH2p.

«Scenes in the Soviet Russia. Summer of 1930». Фильм Франка Феттера о визите в СССР в 1930 г.

The article presents results of studying the amateur film “Scenes in the Soviet Russia. Summer of 1930” by the American economist Frank Whitson Fetter (1899–1991) filmed in the Soviet Union in the summer of 1930. Firstly, it reviews historiography of amateur cinema and notes methods used in the research on Fetter's film. The section “Context of creation” reconstructs conditions of filming the movie in the USSR and circumstances of its currency. Fetter came to the country with intention of becoming expert in Soviet economics. He came well prepared: he had a Leica camera, a 16 mm Bell &amp; Howell movie camera, and large supply of films. Fetter spent six days in Moscow and six weeks in Kazan, voyaged on the Volga and the Caspian Sea, visited the Caucasus, and then returned to Moscow for three days and went back to the United States. During his trip, he took about 300 photographs and made a 40-minute movie. While photographs have already been introduced into scientific use, the film remains unknown to scholars and wide audience. The section “Movie content and aesthetics” considers plot and film techniques and elements. The movie consists of three parts: his stay in Moscow, his visit to the Autonomous Tatar Republic (ATSSR), cruise on the Volga and the Caspian Sea. The starting point for the analysis was Pierre Bourdieu's research on amateur photography. According to his conclusions, each group of people chooses a certain range of objects, genres, and compositions for shooting, and thus, the image is socially constructed. Fetter's cinematic area was determined by his research interests and experience. His draft notes confirm that his focus during filming was on the economic sphere. The movie aesthetics direct the viewer's eye to these plots. While observing everyday life, Fetter captured urban and rural transport infrastructure, trade relations, purchase and sale process and range of goods, queues. When visiting the countryside, Fetter observed the harvest and filmed various stages of the process. The film focuses on production and material base of individual and collective farms, organization and conditions of peasants work, residential and farm buildings, details of everyday life. The Volga-Caspian voyage permitted to capture the state of water transport, conditions of passenger and goods transportation. He devoted particular attention to filming propaganda materials. Thus, the film represents his professional interests and highlights socio-economic situation during the New Economic Policy dismantlement and transition to forced industrialization and collectivization.

Homemade Pornography and the Proliferation of Queer Pleasure in East Germany

Abstract Like other Eastern Bloc countries, East Germany sought to control even its citizens’ leisure time in the 1960s and 1970s, with the goal of making it useful or at least not subversive to state interests. Certain hobbies, like amateur photography, found support from the state in the form of increased access to equipment and supplies. Other scholarship has shown that sex was a locus of privacy and self-assertion in a society with a high degree of surveillance and state control. Focusing on a previously unanalyzed collection of erotic photographs of men, the article argues, first, that the support for amateur photography makes the state an unwitting participant in the creation and circulation of these illicit images and, second, that the images are an archive of queer men’s self-presentation and critique in a context wherein their existence and affect are transgressive.

Синтез социокультурной и технико-технологической обусловленности реализма в фотографии

The article presents the analysis of realistic images in photography as a concept and phenomenon. The author considers realism as a method that allows creating recognition of the surrounding world in photographic images. Reality is understood as reality, which is technically possible to record with photographic equipment. Much attention is paid to the development of photographic technology and its influence on the idea of realism in photography. The point of view is given, according to which the realism of the photographic image is conditioned by the liberal-democratic progress of society: the emergence of freedom of movement, mass tourism industry, leisure, hobbies, the appearance of affordable photographic equipment. Realism in the article is described in the categories of the literal presentation of reality, as photographic naturalism, tied to the optical perfection of the image. The development of amateur photography is interpreted in close connection with scientific and technological progress in the photo department, where design solutions are aimed at improving the optical performance of the image, but not at the possibility of artistic interpretation of the image. The mass amateur photographer and the modern user of digital equipment are considered in the article as conductors of a strictly limited model of understanding the realism of the image. This model is replete with figurative cliches and technical cliches, implemented not so much by the «photographer» himself, as by a computer program and its «ideas» about reality and realism.

Re-Reading American Photographs

Re-Reading American Photographs

American Photographs Abroad: Traveling with Lewis Hine

Panorama is a peer-reviewed, open-access, online publication dedicated to American art and visual culture (broadly defined). The journal is intended to provide a high-caliber international forum for disseminating original research and scholarship and for sustaining a lively engagement with intellectual developments and methodological debates in art history, visual and material cultural studies, and curatorial work.

Review: The Mass Production of Memory: Travel and Personal Archiving in the Age of the Kodak, by Tammy S. Gordon

Review: <i>The Mass Production of Memory: Travel and Personal Archiving in the Age of the Kodak</i>, by Tammy S. Gordon

О КОЛЛЕКЦИЯХ ФОТОСНИМКОВ АМЕРИКАНСКИХ ВОЕННОСЛУЖАЩИХ ЭКСПЕДИЦИИ «ПОЛЯРНЫЙ МЕДВЕДЬ», СДЕЛАННЫХ НА СЕВЕРЕ РОССИИ В ПЕРИОД ГРАЖДАНСКОЙ ВОЙНЫ 1918–1919 ГГ.

Nowadays visual history and its significance characterized by a broad interdisciplinary approach cannot be overestimated. Since 1991 when the Austrian historian and researcher of images Gerhard Jagschitz (1940–2018) first used the term «visual history», photographs and, perhaps, film documents began to be perceived by the scientific world not only as illustrative material, but also as a storehouse of new, but somewhere forgotten information, for example, concerning the appearance of settlements and people living there, everyday life and imperatives of human behaviour, as well as events in certain historical periods. In this article the author presents the data concerning the American military that gathered collections of photographs from the Polar Bear Expedition of the period 1918–1919. During the First World War, this expedition was undertaken by the United States to the territory of the European part of the North of Russia in order to prevent the German Empire from encroaching on the resources of Russia, taking advantage of its weakness as a result of the political crisis. This military mission, carried out jointly with other allied states, in the history of Russia will be called a foreign military intervention, which, unfortunately, became a catalyst for a bloody civil confrontation. In the course of the study, not only the names of the founders were revealed, but also the modern holders of photo collections located in the United States, providing almost free access to all of them. Particular attention is paid to such an important component of attribution of photographic documents as the identification of the American photographers personalities involved in the creation of the visual image of the Civil War in the North of Russia.

Before Babylift: Female Photojournalists and Vietnamese-American ‘Orphans’ in American Print-media, 1971–1973

President Ford’s announcement of ‘Operation Babylift’, a plan to airlift over 2,000 Vietnamese ‘orphans’ from South Vietnam to the United States in March 1975, prompted a wave of interest in adoption of Vietnamese children by American families. This was the culmination of years of growing interest in adopting Vietnamese ‘orphans’. Contemporary newspaper reports credited television and photographs with motivating potential adopters. Adding to scholarship which explores how photographs create discourses of ‘rescue’ and ‘responsibility’ in humanitarian contexts, this article examines how arguments for transnational adoption as a solution to Vietnam’s ‘orphan problem’ developed in the years leading up to Babylift. It notes stark differences in depictions of white-Amerasian and black-Amerasian children in keeping with racial discourses of early 1970s America. The work of female journalists in Vietnam has historically been marginalized; this article redresses this, arguing that American women photographers offered a specific perspective on the ‘orphan problem’.

Staging Images of Everyday Life in Late Colonial Korea: Colonial Visuality and the Proliferation of Amateur Photography

ABSTRACT At the height of World War II, the Government General of Korea exerted considerable effort to propagandise and mobilise the colonial population. Films, fictional works, theatrical productions, posters and exhibits exhorted colonised Koreans to support the war effort and sacrifice themselves for the Japanese empire. At the same time, a considerable number of images from the period provided views of a more mundane everyday life, filled with smiling children going to school and farmers living an idyllic communal life. Late colonial publications offer a fascinating visual archive of Korea, and behind the plethora of everyday images was the spread of amateur photography. The Japanese colonial state in Korea systematically and purposefully used amateur photographs to visually “stage” everyday life, transforming the images into symbolic representations that legitimated colonisation. In terms of visual politics and the aims of this special issue, the study of the visual practices of the colonial period underscores how their influence has persisted long after liberation in 1945 and continues to affect representations of Korean society, culture and nationhood even today.

The Latin American Colloquia and the Institutionalisation of Brazilian Photography

This article describes the institutionalisation of Brazilian photography in the late 1970s and early 1980s in the context of the other events relating to photography in Latin American countries. This process has close links with the first two Latin American Colloquia of Photography held in Mexico City in 1978 and 1981. These Colloquia promoted the creation of connections between Brazilian photographers and photographic institutions and those in Spanish-speaking Latin America. They also made it possible to bring European and North American institutional photographic experiences to Latin America, and helped to disseminate a version of Latin American photography in Europe, one that was based on a socially engaged documentary, the genre which was showcased and foregrounded at the Colloquia.

Fotografía en América Latina: historia e historiografía (siglos XIX y XX)

Desde fines del siglo pasado, la historiografía de la fotografía en Latinoamérica inició un período de vivaz transformación a partir de dos factores que dinamizaron y estimularon el desarrollo de este campo en la región: la acelerada evolución de los archivos fotográficos y la entrada de la fotografía como objeto de estudio en las universidades. Estos cambios dieron lugar a una reflexión metodológica que acercó a los historiadores al mundo de las imágenes, enfrentándolos a desafíos y posibilidades singulares en relación a otros tipos de fuentes. Se postuló la necesidad de desarrollar un vocabulario y una metodología de análisis específicos y de focalizar el estudio de la imagen fotográfica como parte de una cadena que involucra a varios agentes. Se propuso la comprensión de la dimensión histórica de la fotografía, ya no solamente como expresión artística sino fundamentalmente como la historia de un medio de registro, comunicación y expresión con finalidades diversas. Se fomentó la utilización de las imágenes como fuentes primarias respetando su contexto, sus múltiples funciones sociales y sus historias o itinerarios. El presente monográfico busca dar cuenta de esta diversidad, vitalidad y renovación de los estudios historiográficos sobre la fotografía latinoamericana desde diferentes perspectivas teóricas y metodológicas.

War Photography: Díaz &amp; Spencer’s coverage of the War of the Pacific (1879-1883)

In the study of 19th-century Latin American photography, the photographic capture of war and military operations has implicitly been equated with the eye of national states, understanding that photographers would want to show a positive portrayal of the military forces. However, war photography as a language of state power was not the point of departure. In most of the earlier examples of war photography, it was private photographers who first ventured into military conflicts almost as soon as the new visual technology was made available. They saw war as both an important historical event and a commercial opportunity. Experiencing with a technology that forced them to produce images of war stripped of battle action while trying to capitalize on the diverse interests in these conflicts, most photographers offered a rendering of war of ambiguous political meanings. In this essay, I argue that the photographs of the War of the Pacific taken by the studio Díaz &amp; Spencer are one of the first examples of the successful use of war photography for nation-building purposes, that is, as national propaganda. Photographers had the challenge to create impressive, apologetic and heroic captures of the military forces, and Díaz &amp; Spencer succeeded in creating a visual narrative congruent with Chilean official discourses, consolidating, rather than challenging, the Chilean state view of the war. Equally important, this allignment of political views was accomplished on account of Díaz and Spencer’s initiative—not that of Chilean state officials.

Art History at the Water’s Edge

The publication in 2019 of two books on the artistic and sexual cultures of New York’s derelict waterfront in the 1970s is a cause for celebration, and both Jonathan Weinberg and Fiona Anderson are to be praised enthusiastically for the dazzling breadth and depth of original archival research they each present. These books are important markers in the continuing critical reassessment of the intersection of artistic production and sexual politics in the 1970s, a decade that has figured in art history and queer studies as an object of fantasy, of desire, an object mourned, and is more widely characterised by various mythologies that are used to support a range of problematic historical narratives, most egregiously, as a decade of sexual decadence followed by the inevitable retributions of the HIV/AIDS epidemic and the necessary disciplines of neoconservatism in the 1980s. Weinberg and Anderson are both aware that these perceptions of the 1970s are the product of a partial and homophobic conception of subsequent history that serves reactionary forces, to include the privatization and gentrification of urban space and the increased fracturing of solidarity in queer communities due to economic inequality. Both return to the ruined pier buildings stretching the length of the lower west side of Manhattan, following their industrial abandonment in the 1950s and prior to their demolition in the 1980s, to contest these narratives. Weinberg and Anderson, then, make significant contributions to understanding of the AIDS epidemic by questioning its imaginative effects on its immediately preceding history, providing new perspectives on the vexed question of the experience of temporal deterioration in marginalised communities due to mass death. At a moment when art history is looking to ‘decentre’ its epistemological and ontological bases in a particular canon of Euro-American art, Weinberg and Anderson offer reconfigurations of artistic production in 1970s New York from the perspective of the waterfront, a liminal place, neither land nor water, through narratives that fuse visual art, literature, amateur photography and sexual activism. The fact that these books take such a similar focus and appeared in such rapid succession – so much so that neither author was able to cite the other’s work – seems to invite their comparison. Yet this temptation is to be resisted as far as possible, as it would betray the particular pleasures, insights and socio-political resources of each text, let alone the multiplicitous nature of sexual, social and creative experimentation on the piers themselves.

Pingyao international photography festival (2001-2020)

Founded in 2001, Pingyao International Photography Festival (PIPF) has established a platform for photographic shows and academic exchanges. It has been making efforts to promote photography as media of expression, communication, and a form of art. This article seeks to portrait the festival through featured exhibitions and activities, including the group return of the Chinese conceptual photography, the introduction of photographic curatorial notions, the balance between professional and amateur photography, as well as the exchanges among photographic students and educators through exhibitions and forums. It also attempts to propose the main challenges PIPF confronts through the difficulties they encountered in the 2020 version, which happened without the personal presence of the international community because of the Covid-19 epidemic.

Faciality and Ontological Doubt in Ralph Eugene Meatyard’s Photography

This essay explores Ralph Eugene Meatyard’s enigmatic amateur photography from a philosophical perspective, aiming to expose the consistency of Meatyard’s investigation of faciality and ontological doubt throughout his career. By employing the Deleuzian notion of the diagram, used to specifically analyze Francis Bacon’s and other painting practices, and showing its applicability to Meatyard’s amateur photography, I aim to reveal the complexity of Meatyard’s art and explicate their so-called Symbolist suggestiveness as well as to show how the medium-specific boundary between painting and photography is fundamentally put into question.

Donbas in Family Photo Albums: Interview with Vadim Lurie

Donbas in Family Photo Albums:Interview with Vadim Lurie Victoria Donovan (bio) and Iryna Sklokina (bio) Vadim Lurie is a photographer and visual anthropologist from St. Petersburg, Russia. He has exhibited his photographs in Russia and Ukraine. His work has explored the visuality of protest activity in Moscow and St. Petersburg since 2012. He is also a collector of family photo archives, now working on a database consisting of nearly 50,000 pictures taken throughout the 20th century in different locations of the USSR and the post-Soviet area. The foundational collection of this database are the photo archives of residents of the Donbas region in Ukraine, where Lurie conducted three expeditions with local art activists after 2014. VL: My trips to Donbas were a sort of continuation of the conversations I'd started with Ukrainian friends and colleagues, begun in Kyiv mostly. I found myself on the Maidan in March 2014, when the conflict in Donbas was in its early days. I started talking to internally displaced people who had left either because of the shooting and military actions, or because they feared for their own lives because they were activists. Not necessarily political activists, but, for example, art activists, who have their own position on things. Their world had obviously just fallen apart. So, the project connected with photography grew out of my friends' efforts and my discussion with them about somehow reconstructing this world. Well, if not reconstructing it, at least showing somehow what kind of world it was. When I talked to people in Kyiv, very often I heard the following story: I managed to leave Donetsk or Luhansk or some other place and took only a family photo album with me. Or instead—I didn't manage to take a photo album with me, I left it in my parents' apartment and was only able to take my passport and other documents. So, when Kateryna Siryk [art curator, "Plus/Minus" art residency in Sievierodonetsk] and I began to think about what specifically can be done in order to represent this region, we came up with the idea to visit people and take a look at their photo archives. This is how the project "Donbas Family Photo Archive" was created. Its goals were to find a balance between the global and the local, the private and the public, the identification of visual subjects that are specific to Donbas; an attempt to determine what comprises the visual memory of the families living in one small region. [End Page 153] During the first expedition of this kind in 2018 I went to Donbas. There were altogether three expeditions. In the government-controlled Luhansk region (Sievierodonetsk, Rubizhne, Lysychansk) and a couple of small towns nearby (Zolote, Stanytsia Luhanska, and Shchastia). There was the third person in our team—Oleksiy Khodyko, I am very grateful to him for his support. He is native to the region. He was born in a suburb of Sievierodonetsk. He knew the local reality very well, and he knew lots of people. It was mostly down to him, particularly on the first expedition, that we were able to establish this network of contacts. Over the course of the three expeditions, 50 archives were digitized (in total, just over 14,000 files). My task as compiler was to make copies of everything, including poor quality photos. After processing and deleting some repeats, all files were entered into a specialized database in which they were tagged. I catalogued them according to subjects, stories, and content. The family archives are of different sizes: ranging from a little over two dozen to 700 pictures. Most of the photos date back to the 1960–80s—the golden age of amateur photography. However, it should be noted that the digitized archives represent the entirety of the 20th century; among them there are prerevolutionary portraits and photos taken before the mid-1990s. Family archives reflect the entire life journey of a person: birth registration; portraits of parents with their child; first haircuts; kindergarten holidays; school photos; high school graduation; student photos or (boys') photos from the army (often formatted into demob albums, dembelskii al´bom); weddings; funeral photos. Click for larger view...