Argumentative Essay
“May Photography Be Considered an Art?”
“The ultimate role of photography as a contemporary language of visual communication consists of its capacity to slow down our fast and chaotic way of reading images.” Photography is the art and practice of generating durable images by recording light, either electronically by means of an image sensor or chemically by means of a light-sensitive substance and material such as photographic film. It is employed in many fields of science, business, and also manufacturing, as well as it's more forward uses for art, video production, and film, in addition to recreational purposes, hobby, and mass communication. Everyone has their own way of seeing the world, and everything that people generate is based upon an underlying uniqueness. In terms of photography, though, even mentioning personal style can look odd since the work is basically based upon the real world; but as mentioned, people all around the world were integrated into various arts and tended to develop their own uniqueness when it came to the fields they were interested in. And when it came to photography, many people made a major impact in this field by creating their own original world, their own styles, and by sharing part of their work with the whole outer world. In the upcoming paragraphs, a light will be shed on the work of two impactful photographers in the photography industry; Ernst Haas and Luigi Ghirri, in addition to a glance at their lives, careers, and image styles. We will also take a look at their similarities and differences in their work, style, in composition in addition to the elements and equipment that they utilized throughout their paths.
Ernst Haas was an Austrian-American who was born on March 2, 1921, and passed away on September 12, 1986. He was a photojournalist and color photographer. Throughout his career, Haas connected the gap between photojournalism and the use of photography as a solid standard for creativity. Haas was a trendsetter in color photography, his images were spread by magazines such as “Vogue” and in 1962, were the theme of the first single-artist exposition of color photography at New York's Museum of Modern Art. He served as leader of the cooperative Magnum Photos, and his book “The Creation” (1971) was one of the most popular photography books ever, selling more than 350,000 copies. Back in his childhood, Haas was unconcerned about learning photography, though his father tried to inspire him. But when his father passed away in 1940, Haas entered the darkroom, and he learned to print his old family negatives. His interest in this path developed, and he soon debuted to take his proper photographs. And in 1941, as the “School Photographer” of the “Max Reinhardt Film Seminar”, he attended technical lessons and established an interest in filmmaking. Haas also benefited from his family's wide library, as well as libraries and museums in Vienna. He studied poetry and philosophy, and they both nurtured his knowledge about the wide potential of artistic photography. His photographs combined poetry and metaphorical imagery, and this was particularly important to Haas's early development. Many of his first photographs compiled close-ups of plants, water, and natural forms that clearly reflected his influence on philosophy and poetry. Hesitant of his career trail, Haas realized then that photography only could transmit his ideas in various ways. He obtained his first camera in 1946 when he was 25 years old when he traded a 20-pound block of margarine for a “Rolleiflex” on the Vienna black market. In 1947 Haas premiered his first exhibition at the “American Red Cross” in Vienna, where he had a part-time position that consisted of teaching photography to soldiers. Taking a collection of his work to Zurich, he captured the attention of an editor for the magazine “du” named “Arnold Kübler”. And after reviewing his photographs, Kübler introduced Haas to Swiss photographer Werner Bischof’s imageries of Berlin after the war. After being influenced by Bischof's work, Haas began to deliberate how an image could simultaneously tell a story and function as an independent work of art. When Haas returned home, he correspondingly documented the war’s effects in Vienna. Haas acquired projects from magazines like “Heute”, often working with his correspondent Inge Morath. In 1947, while exploring locations for a fashion shoot, Haas and Morath saw convicts of war debarking a train and started documenting their arrival. Haas’s photographs present the grief and eagerness of the people who were searching for their lost family members among the remaining survivors. The resultant photo essay, “Homecoming,” was published in “Life Magazine” and “Heute”. Regarding the photography style of Ernst Haas, he pioneered the use of color photography at a time when it was considered inferior to black-and-white as a medium for serious creative photographers. His groundbreaking use of the slow shutter speed gave many of his pictures the illusion of movement, and his emphasis on audiovisual performances (involving poetry, sound, and visuals opened many ways in color photography and in multimedia and digital art). Although he is known for his color photography, Haas's black-and-white images are among the most reminiscent, and gorgeous images of postwar America and Europe, as was demonstrated in ICP's exhibition of his work in 1993. His style was mostly abstract using lines, reflections, and textures in his art. He also tended to create a whole mood and feeling through light and color that he integrated into his shots. As mentioned, Ernst Haas’ earliest black and white work in Vienna was shot with a Rolleiflex, but he soon switched to Leica for the rest of his path. He used an IIIf at first, then an M3 with 50 and 135 mm lenses, then a Leicaflex with 28, 50, and 90 mm lenses. For the film, he loved the original Kodachrome but ultimately was forced to use Kodachrome II after it was discontinued.
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Luigi Ghirri who was born on 5 January 1943 and passed away on 1992, was an important photographer born in “Scandiano”, Italy, who gained a significant reputation as a pioneer of modern photography. In the 1970s, his career began with a foundation headed by conceptual artists that had a clear influence on Ghirri’s work since he managed to present his first series of photographs about his homeland in a poetic and unclear way throughout this group. He produced color photographs of landscapes and architecture within abstract art’s scope. His photographs were rooted in a straightforward approach and sometimes implied an ironic sense of humor. He created a series of works, taking images of parks, beaches, and urban landscapes. His photos were of medium size and his utilization of color was addressed for its ability to express nostalgia and clairvoyance. In the 1970s, while he was becoming progressively captivated by his skills, photography in color (and particularly in Europe) was struggling to trace its means to enter museums or galleries. This clarifies why it took almost twenty years after his passing, for his work to gain attention in Italy. In 1975, Luigi Ghirri was comprised in the Discoveries list of Time Life‘s yearly published Photography Year issue. In a similar year, he showed his work at a show in Kassel, called Photography as Art, Art as Photography. In 1982, Ghirri was invited to Cologne’s Photokina, where he was presented as among the twenty most influential photographers of the twentieth century. He has been the theme of numerous books, and his work has been displayed in many various intercontinental countries, such as “Bibliothèque Nationale” in Paris, “Canadian Centre for Architecture” in Montreal, “Museum of Fine Arts” in Houston, and “Museum of Modern Art” in New York. In 1977, he opened up a small publishing house, called “Punto e Virgola” along with his wife “Paola Borgonzoni”, as well as with a photographer friend Giovanni Chiaramonte. This step filled the gap in the scope of Italian institutions of art by dedicated to sustaining the growth of the culture of photography. Ghirri focused on publishing monographs and essays of artists hoping to spread photography’s real artistic value. In 1978, with a low budget, Kodachrome became Ghirri’s publishing house’s first book that got published. It collected ninety-two images taken by Ghirri in Italy and zones close to it. In his images, people hold a secondary place in comparison to urban settings and landscapes which are more important features of his photos. Ghirri’s work is extremely accurate. Some of his images resemble line drawings since the composition is so accurate. Apart from being a photographer, Ghirri was an innovative writer too. His visual and theoretical ideas often appeared amazingly intuitive. He wrote the foreword for this work as well. In 1989 he made a series of shots in the studio of painter Giorgio Morandi. He passed away at the age of 49 because of a heart attack in Roncocesi, Province of Reggio Emilia, Italy on 14 February 1992. Regarding Luigi Ghirri’s photography, he was known for his color images of gardens, monuments, and the studio of Giorgio Morandi. Ghirri’s interest in illusion and scale gave his pictures a dreamy atmosphere. Ghirri’s influential book Kodachrome published in 1978, includes text by the artist regarding both the medium and all his sources of creativeness: “The meaning that I am trying to render through my work is a verification of how it is still possible to desire and face a path of knowledge, to be able finally to distinguish the precise identity of man, things, life, from the image of man, things, and life.” Today, the artist’s photos are held in the collections of the “Stedelijk Museum” located in Amsterdam, The Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris.
So Luigi Ghirri had a prominent style in his work, he was a Kodachrome photographer, and his work was very characteristic of these muted unsaturated tones to a great degree with a lot of softer colors. He also incorporated a wonderful and dry sense of humor into his work (backs of tourists looking at a mountain range which turns out to be a simple map poster). He also used a very unique and pastel color style. But for Ernst Haas's part, he had a very distinctive style to some of his color work. He had a very wide range of the things that he shot. He paved the way for work to become taken more seriously that was rendered in color. He used very high contrasted exposures that brought out these rich tones with reds, blues, and yellows. He also was a Kodachrome photographer just like Ghirri and used motion blurring in his photographs (matador rodeo shots) when he incorporated a large sense of abstraction through slow shutter speed which blurred these images and combined these with the colors that he used, giving a unique look to his pictures.
After shedding the light on both photographers’ lives, we discovered that they both had different lives that influenced their styles in photography, and practically shaped them to become the icons they wanted to become, in order to keep their art alive and transmitted to every upcoming generation. And as mentioned, their different styles and diverse ways of seeing and especially capturing the world brought new aspects and visions to people all around the world and influenced their styles eventually. Ghirri and Haas’s aesthetics paved the way for many modern photographers and inspired worldwide artists to see the world differently and capture it in their own updated aesthetic ways. This essay also presented that different styles can be also complementary when it comes to esthetics and style since the world of photography is all connected together and form one giant globe of various different styles and methods.
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