Experimental Photography Task 1

Patrick Gouldsbrough

Edmund TeskeTeske was a 20th century photographer whose work with portraits of artists and musicians, led to a prolific career in experimental art. His work with multiple exposures and montages often created a romantic and sometimes surreal feel to his work. Known widely among the art movement, Teske wasn’t that well known to members of the public and is to this day branded “a forgotten great of American photography”.

Normally, this work would be branded contemporary and non-traditional, due to multiple exposure, a technique that Teske normally used, been a new idea at the time of Teske. However, due to Teske having to do multiple exposure the manual way (taking an image on film and then winding the film back and taking another image on top of it). For this reason, I believe Teske was a contemporary photographer that used traditional techniques, due to the technological restraints not allowing him to carry out multiple exposure digitally.

Teske’s work could be and is displayed in books and in galleries. His work would never be displayed on a billboard, due to his photomontages been personal and romantic instead of been commercial and brash. Although a gallery of his work was not displayed until after his death (2004 J Paul Getty museum), he had some success in hiss lifetime. Firstly, in 1959, the museum of modern art purchased nine of his portraits, with many books also containing his work were published. Most notably, a book of his work entitled Spirit into Matter: The Photographs of Edmund Teske was published in 2004.

Manual Multiple exposure Manual Multiple exposure Manual Multiple exposure

Luigi Veronesi

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Luigi Veronesi was an Italian photographer born in 1908. However, due to him also working in film, sceneography and art, his photography sometimes took a back seat, while he was working on other projects. Despite this, he still managed to become one of the most influential experimental photographer, using techniques such as: movement, multiple exposure and reflection, amongst others.

Like Teske, Veronesi came from an age of film photography, which meant that he couldn’t use a digital technique for his multiple exposure technique. Despite this, I would categorise the majority of Veronesi’s work as contemporary with non-traditional techniques. In modern times, this work can be seen by most experimental techniques, after the invention of digital techniques, however, in the time of Veronesi, these techniques were unusual and therefore non-traditional.

Unlike Teske, Veronesi wasn’t featured that heavily in books (Veronesi featured in a few books of his works but didn’t feature in any modern art books full of other artists). On the other hand, Veronesi is like Teske in the sense of billboard work. His work would not feature on billboards because it’s too surreal for the times, however, it could feature in modern times, due to the commercial and mainstream art of Veronesi, unlike the personal, niche market art of Teske.

During his life, Veronesi had very few exhibitions with his photography, choosing to display his art instead. However, in 1980 he did have an exhibition of his images in Bolzano. On the other hand, after his life, he did have many galleries of all his work (film, art and photography) including: in the Palace of Milan, Institut Matildenhöhe, Darmstadt and Sprengel Museum, Hannover.

Ayman LotfyAs the only modern experimental photographer I have researched in this task, Ayman Lotfy is the only one who was born in a digital photography age, which is exhibited throughout his collection of work. Even though he tends to stick to Multiple exposure, fine art is also evident throughout his work. However, I have chosen not to show these as examples, since experimental photography is the key characteristics, where as fine art can still be classed as ‘conventional’.

In his work, you can see the fact that he used to be an artist, the vision and framing of his work is keeping an arty, creative flair to it, while taking some informal, experimental techniques. Staying in his homeland of Egypt for a large majority of the time means that his work is little known in the rest of the world, even though he is widely regarded as an up and coming experimental artist in the art community.

Due to the modern nature of his work, he is definitely categorised as a contemporary, non-traditional photographer. However, just because he is a modern photographer, it doesn’t automatically make his a contemporary photographer. Some modern experimental photographers use traditional techniques, along with historical photography to try and be unconventional for the ‘digital age of photography’.

Even though we live in the age of the commercial world of billboards and advertising, you couldn’t use Lotfy’s work on a billboard, due to it been personal and niche, due to the subject mostly been human and not everyday objects. Instead, books and galleries are the main places that Lotfy’s work will be distributed in. Despite most photographers having to wait to get big exhibits 30/40 years after they captured the images, Lotfy has managed to get his photographers exhibited in many galleries this far. ‘THE HIDDEN, Crete’ and ‘Romania art of photography, Romania’ are just two of the exhibitions his work has been featured in.

As well as this, you can tell that Lotfy’s work is not for commercial use and instead, is for a fine art purpose to display, instead of advertise.

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