This study examines the mistakes of amateur photographers in the late 19th and early 20th century, which have not been frequently discussed in the history of photographers and art historians. And I wanted to show how this mistake picture influenced th ...
This study examines the mistakes of amateur photographers in the late 19th and early 20th century, which have not been frequently discussed in the history of photographers and art historians. And I wanted to show how this mistake picture influenced the whole 20th century modern art photography. There are three main results of the research. (1) a mistake in early amateur photography, (2) an amateur mistake photograph's influence on modern art photography in the early 20th century, and (3) a 'shadow' mistake and modern art.
The kinds of mistakes an amateur makes are very diverse and complex. Nonetheless, these mistakes can be distinguished by the subject who made the photo. Cameras, photographers, and objects are the subjects that participate in the production of photography. Therefore, the amateur photography mistakes are largely caused by the errors of the technique, the error of the human being called the photographer, and the error of the object. The criterion for mistakes in photographs is not constant or universal. Because the standards vary according to the viewer. Therefore, the concept of mistakes in photography is fluid and relative.
Errors in photos are always the same. However, the criterion for evaluating the error varies depending on the time and space at which the error is judged.
Amateur mistake's influence on avant-garde photography in the first half of the 20th century is powerful. Looking at the photographs of avant-garde artists at this time, all kinds of mistakes in the 19th century amateur photographs can be seen. Blurred picture, subject cut into frame, shape distortion, underexposure and overexposure, multiple exposure (overlapping multiple pictures), reflection (reflected on the window), and photographer's shadow appear in the picture. The photographs of these artists are not examples of mistakes. Instead, it emerges as an example of the most powerful new photography at the time. Why did the avant-garde artists at that time adopt the amateur mistake picture, which was previously regarded as an error, as the work inspiration? It is because the idea of avant-garde art at that time is to overthrow all the values and rules of existing art. However, avant-garde artists at the time adopted the amateur mistakes as motifs for their work, not just because they wanted to overthrow the value of existing art. The more fundamental reason is that in the photograph mistakes are hidden the numerous artistic potentials of the photographic medium.
The most representative example of amateur mistake picture that influenced contemporary art photography is the 'shadow' picture of a photographer who mistakes his or her shadow for a photograph. Since the invention of photography, these shadows, which appeared in all photo manuals, have been recognized as photographs that photographers must avoid. However, since the 1920s, this shadow mistake picture has become recognized as a new 'modern picture' by some avant - garde artists. Of these, the most conscious and frequently used figure is Moholy Nagy. Why did he consciously borrow shadow pictures of amateur photographers? It is primarily to overthrow the existing belief in photography, that photography is a medium in which the world is objectively recorded. There is another reason that Moholy Nagy borrows shadow pictures from his works. It is because the shadow photographs directly imply the essence of the photograph. The essence of photography is both 'photo(lighting)-graphy' and 'skia(shadow)-graphiy'.
The photographic experiment of Moholy Nagy, including amateur shadows photograph, has had a profound impact on many modern artists since the Second World War. He influenced on the Chicago School of Design's students, in which he was a professor, and Ugo Mulas, Timm Rauter, John Hilliard, and also Otto Steinert, Subjective photographers and so on. These artists experimented with the properties of the photographic medium more systematically and, to a much more extreme, than what Moholy Nagy did.