History of Photography

According to the timeline of the previous chapter, in the first decade of the 20th century, pictorial photography left the scene and began to take truthful photos, Stiglitz? As a key figure in this revolution, the invention of Kodak handheld camera also helped a lot. The second chapter describes the development of photography in the 1920s-1930s-40s, which is a critical period for photography to enter political expression and a golden period for documentary photography construction.

Eugene Ajie, connecting the preceding with the following.

Eugene Atget was born in France, 1857, 7 years older than Stiglitz. He died in poverty on 1927, three years before Edward Weston created the famous modernist photography "No.30 Pepper".

Eugene Ajie simply called his nearly 10,000 photos of Paris scenery and people "the artist's documentary material". Forty years after his death, MOMA purchased about 6,000 negatives and photos of him, and held many exhibitions for him during the period of 10. Yes, it's MOMA and Sakowski again.

The development of photography is so chaotic that it is full of "intentional fallacy". Eugene Ajie did not take these photos for an exhibition after his death. He sold these photos to government archives or private individuals as image reference materials. But now looking at the whole history of photography, he is a bridge connecting the past and the future, connecting 19 th century and 20 th century photography.

Why can he have such a peak position in the history of photography? I summed up the four characteristics of Eugene Ajie's photography mentioned in the book to illustrate.

1, touching the surrealism inherent in photography. Ajie took photography as a memory track and used the method of19th century to expose it for a long time with a big camera on a tripod. Therefore, there are no pedestrians in his Paris street view, like an empty stage. What Benjamin saw in Ajie's photo was "hellish emptiness".

2. The relationship between photography and history-Ajie photographed the "old Paris" that no longer exists.

3. Photography is a combination of self-expression and subjective and objective creation. You can vividly feel Ajie's life from his works. Ajie photographed his unique Paris.

4. The core theme of the 20th century-city.

To sum up, Eugene Ajie proved to us that photography is a medium of accumulation and convergence.

Looking back at the history of photography, it is strange that truth photography in the United States was in the ascendant under the guidance of Stiglitz in the 1920s. In contemporary Europe, Eugene Ajie made an unreachable response in such a subtle way. Although this echo will not be heard until nearly half a century later ...

After introducing Eugene Ajie, a great man who links the past with the future, the next note officially entered the "modernism" period of photography.