Who are the representatives of the photo photography school?

Photo photography is a school in the history of early photography.

After the publication of Photography in Daguerre, some painters and scientists were the first to take up photography. Among them, a group of portrait painters began to operate photo studios and engage in portrait photography. However, in most people's minds, photography is still not included in orthodox works of art, but at best it is only an auxiliary means of painting.

At that time, a magazine criticized photography: in these photos, what can be expected is only naturalistic description. The creative intention is not satisfied, and the imagination is destroyed by the mechanical record of reality.

As a result, some photographers began to explore how to make photography enter the ranks of "art" and achieve the same aesthetic, emotional and self-expression effects as painting. They believe that to improve the artistry of photography, we must imitate painting. They imitated the popular "pre-Raphael" paintings at that time, selected themes from the Bible or literary works, and took pictures at the mercy of the stage. Then, they combined multiple photos into a work by stitching and overprinting.

One genre formed by these photographers is "photo photography", and the representative figures are Rayland and Robinson.

(A) Relander and his "two lifestyles"

British photographer Oscar? Gustav. Relander (18 13 ~ 1875) was originally from Sweden and was educated in Rome in his youth. He used to be a painter. /kloc-after he settled in Britain in the middle of the 0/9th century, he turned to photography. Like many painters at that time, Relander thought that the only way to improve the artistry of photography was to imitate painting.

1855, Relander took the work "The Play", which is a staged lyric photo taken at the mercy of the studio. In the photo, an old man and a child are playing together, and the picture is very poetic. Before shooting. Relander chose two suitable models to play the elderly and children, and trained and rehearsed them, so that they could keep still and make proper expressions during the long exposure. In the foreground of the photo, Relander also arranged some books and a fake dog to enhance the artistry of the picture. This highly regarded photo at that time was called "art photo".

Shortly thereafter, Relander began to study a complex mosaic technique, trying to take a meaningful photo similar to the pre-Raphael painting style, among which Two Lifestyles is the masterpiece. This portrait, a medieval oil painting, was spliced by Rayland with more than 30 negatives. In this photo, Relander conceived a moral scene: an ancient philosopher led two young people on the road to life. One of the young people is religious, hardworking and kind, and has respectable virtues. As soon as another young man left the sage, he rushed to the world of enjoyment and became addicted to gambling, alcoholism, lewdness and other bad habits, so that he lost his mind, endangered himself and died. There are dozens of characters in the picture, and each character has an ideological significance around the central theme. On the left side of the screen are gamblers, prostitutes, lazy people, drunkards and other figures symbolizing evil; On the right are carpenters, textile workers, scholars and other positive figures; In the center of the picture is a naked woman who is repenting, indicating that there is hope as long as she repents.

To shoot such a big scene on film, you need a big studio and many models. Relander avoided these difficulties and adopted the method of group shooting. He first took pictures of the characters in groups, and then took pictures of the scenery and props. Finally, more than 30 negatives were printed in blocks on a piece of photo paper. The production process is very complicated. It took Relander six weeks to get a 40×48 cm photo.

1857, "Two Lifestyles" was exhibited in the "Art Treasures Exhibition" held in Manchester (19 century, one of the most important exhibitions in Britain). This photo was praised by Queen Victoria of England and called "the most spectacular scene and the best photo". The queen bought this photo at a high price as an art treasure collection of the British royal family.