photography time line essay

Essay CS1 Photography Time line 1990 – 1999 Contextual Studies Stuart Williams September 21 st – November 9th

2009

In this essay I intend to point out both contextually and graphically the side ways move the 1990s took in retaliation to the glitzy capitalistic and decadence of the decade that was the 1980s.

But first we must remember what caused us to crave for a change to a cleaner more tolerant way in which we look at today’s world. Shoulder pads no longer dominate our bars and Porsche 911’s our motorways, when it seemed virtually imposable to walk down a busy street without being overtly hit in the rib by a stray file o fax being wheeled around by a yuppie estate agent, not concentrating on where he or she was going, as they were too busy brokering a deal on thair, (what was then jokingly known as a) mobile phone as Pierce or Nigel their stock broker, tells them “your stock has just plummeted 10 points, old thing!” then to follow a large number of obscenities within ear shot of most of the UK. Yes, we had moved into the boom and bust, crisp and precise and much smaller world of the digital age.

It was in 1990 when photojournalists saw a marked improvement in technology by being able to save considerable time by no longer having to spend countless hours both travelling to, and developing, in the darkroom. This was largely thanks to Kodak, who came up with a couple of new toys

such as their photo CD arrangement and a digital camera system that was aimed directly at them, using a Nikon F-3 body and featuring 1.3 mega pixels, it was considered to be the first DSLR that started the digital camera revolution while in 1994 the Apple quick 100 camera was the first to connect to a PC using a USB wire.

As it would seem the digital camera would become more and more prevalent in the world of the media, with Nikon bringing out the D1 in 1999 which really took the share away from film based cameras and, in doing it, also competing with Kodak.

The world was relentlessly steaming towards digital imaging, helped along the way with the début of Adobe Photoshop 1.0 released into the market place in February 1990. This Program was written by Thomas Knoll and his brother John, started in 1987 and first known as “Display” then in 1988 a refined version of display becomes “ImagePro” Adobe strike a deal in 1989 and ten months later is released as Photoshop 1.0. Abode Photoshop would change the way in which we would think about developing photographs, and even speak about photographs, as since 1990 Adobe Photoshop has given us the

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Nikon F3 Kodak System 1991

Apple quick 100 camera

Nikon D1 1999


2009

freedom to improve and manipulate images with the greatest of ease making the old saying “the camera never lies” almost look redundant.

As it would become clear in a few cases especially in the magazine industry, where The National Press Photographers Association tried strongly to protect the integrity of the photographic journalist by both publicizing photo manipulation cases in its magazine News Photographer and adding to its code of ethics.

“As journalists, we believe that credibility is our greatest asset. In documentary photojournalism, it is wrong to alter the content of a photograph in any way (electronically or in the darkroom) that deceives the public. We believe the guidelines for fair and accurate reporting should be the criteria for judging what may be done electronically to a photograph. (NPPA, 1999)”http://stephengrote.com/teaching/courses/files/storage/NPPA%20Code%20of%20Ethics%20and%20Digital%20Manipulation%20Statement.pdf

Nowadays, nearly all magazine front covers are manipulated routinely to help them off the shelf. While news, papers have one standard for news and sport, and quite another for features. It was Nick Knight who said

It is very tricky now to really, honestly call yourself a photographer because a lot of what I do doesn’t adhere to the rules of photography. For example, with the introduction of digital technology and the more frequent use of that in the creation of the image, you are really not following the rules of photography any more. A lot of what I do doesn’t always pass through a camera. I am certainly not upset about that. I find that photography seems to be going pretty much nowhere. I’m quite happy to see it’s demise – not out of any nastiness but out of a sense that the medium that’s arising from it, that’s becoming the new medium, is much more exciting than photography. I think photography has been wrestling with a burden of telling the truth, which I don’t think it was ever particularly good at.

(http://www.opps.cn/word/?p=78)

Nick Knight was probably the most influential fashion photographer in the 1990s, Knight had accumulated no less than 12 major awards throughout the decade most notably and recently the Moët et Chandon Fashion Tribute in 2006. British born Knight has worked his way up through the ranks of the fickle fashion industry and magazines very quickly; coming from humble beings at Bournemouth & Poole College of Art and Design. He graduated with a distinction in 1982 and by 1990 he was Commissioning Picture Editor for i-D, going on to work for the largest fashion publications in the world such as Vogue and Vanity Faire. Knight has consistently challenged conventional notions of beauty and is renowned for his groundbreaking creative collaborations with leading designers like Yohji

Yamamoto and Alexander McQueen. He has worked on advertising campaigns for what looks like the who’s who of the clothing/fashion world. Christian Dior, Lancôme, Swarovski, Levi Strauss, Calvin Klein or Yves Saint Laurent to name a few. In 1993, Knight made fashion history by adapting ring-flash photography to capture Linda Evangelista for a landmark post-grunge cover of British Vogue as seen on the left here.

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As seen above a fine example of nights Image manipulation, for the Alexander McQueen campaign 1997

http://stephengrote.com/teaching/courses/files/storage/NPPA%20Code%20of%20Ethics%20and%20Digital%20Manipulation%20Statement.pdf

http://stephengrote.com/teaching/courses/files/storage/NPPA%20Code%20of%20Ethics%20and%20Digital%20Manipulation%20Statement.pdf


2009

Many of his images are cross processed (where slide film is put thought a negative developer) but he was one of the first commercial photographers to recognize the potential of the digital camera and digital imaging.

Mario Testino had a very large impact on the nineties coming from a humble family background in Peru with his sister being a knitwear designer, Testino moved to London in 1976, he started selling portfolios for just £25 which included hair and makeup, to hopeful models, and would eventually bring to an end the overly priced super model and hiring the lesser known models at the time such as Stella Tennant and Kate Moss.Testino now known for his "luxury realism" style gave, us another iconic picture; one that may well represent all that was good, clean and kind when photographing the late Diana, Princess of Wales for her famous Vanity Fair cover in 1997; He has now virtually become the royal photographer for Prince of Wales and Princes William and Harry.

One of the major styles in the 90s was controversially named heroin chic or grunge, challenging the perception of the impossible high gloss fashion photography that we had come to know from the 1980s, with a narrative going beyond just showing the clothes and even so far as exploiting sex, very often bordering on pornographic at times, with using down trodden premises demonstrating a gritty grimy scene creating a controversial factor to the images Juergen Teller, Wolfgang Tillmans, Glen Luchford and self-taught ex model turned photographer Corinne Day all used this style. Day’s 1993 images of Kate Moss were said, by Vogue, to be unflattering, while other critics accused her of being an anti-glamour snob and encouraging anorexia, drugs, even paedophilia, and

promoting “heroin chic”. Day paid no heed and went on to take pictures that were somewhat alternative, and highly personal documentary type portraits- with drugs, sex, and abandonment as dominant themes. Some of her most successful work revolved around her close friends Tara, George and Rose, and her own diagnosis, surgery, and recovery from a brain tumour in 1996.

Tara sitting on the loo, 1995George in the bath 1994

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Diana, Princess of Wales 1997 Mario Testino


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Me just before brain surgery, London hospital, 1996

Georgina, Brixton, 1995 Rose 1993

Juergen Teller’s photography bordering on genius gives us some of the most iconic fashion images of the nineties, and probably the most prominent one of nineties is in the form of Kristen

McMenamy shot in 1994. Indicative of the era with a tightly cropped image. Teller’s remarkable choices know no boundaries, from photographing a frozen dog tossed

into a dustbin in Czechoslovakia to a ball being dropped into a bath full of water. His work shows a deep seated humour that is his take on the world. "I am very pleased to say today that I am a fashion photographer who does other things” he says. (http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-

entertainment/art/features/juergen-teller-fashions-provocative-photographer-reveals-all-1724407.html)

Nan Goldin’s much acclaimed and highly controversial work bears similar hall marks as a testament to the era with her social documentary style of grunge or heroin chic. Heroin chic couldn’t be used in a better place as she herself started using heroin in her late teens. When she was just 11 years old Nan’s elder sister, Barbara, committed suicide, “Barbara’s death is a vein that runs through Golden’s work.” (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/photography/5648658/Nan-Goldin-

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frozen dog

dropping ball, 1998

Jonana and Aurele making out, 1999

Nan Goldin, The Devil's Playground, 1996


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unafraid-of-the-dark.html ) Golden’s ability to photograph all manner of ‘sub cultures’ in New York City is said to have influenced some of the largest names in fashion photography some of which profess to be her understudies, such as the afore mentioned Juergen Teller, Corrine Day and Wolfgang Tillmans. There are clear similarities with many other photographers work, such as Richard Kern, Glen Luchford Cindy Sherman and Collier Schorr. This could define her as the procurer of this very art form. Goldin’s ‘The Ballard of Sexual Dependency media show’ spans 20 years of work, from the 1970s through to the mid 90s, and then again revised in 1996. It features drug addicts, prostitutes, transvestites etc. Most of Nan’s best friends captured in the bathroom, bedroom, clubs, and on the streets. One of her best known works is that of a self portrait with a badly beaten face that her boyfriend Brian had given her after reading her diary. Her other works include the controversial Sisters, Saints & Sybils, which was shot in the chapel of the Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital in Paris, the priest then deemed it pornographic. Self-Portrait Writing in Diary During De-Tox (1989) Tokyo Love (1994), a collaborative project with Nobuyoshi Araki, with Nan written all over it showing many lost souls in a different society.

Quite apart from influencing the fashion photography, I feel that tidal waves of her darker work has inspired photographers better known for their pro-am sex photography which became an underground culture in the 1990s At this time, pornography was moving society’s concept away from the typical to a more diverse perception of homosexuality, group sex, fetishes, bondage and transsexuals.

Mariette Pathy Allen became known for her images of transsexuals and cross dressers, while Mark.I.Chester for his radical gay sex scenes and Michael Rosen’s studios became synonymous with sadomasochism, erotic piercing and gender

play portraits, always adventuring into what had previously been considered a no go area for most photographers, and publishing “Sexual Portraits: Photographs of Radical Sexuality" in 1990, and "Sexual Art: Photographs That Test the Limits" in 1994. These books have sold more than 10,000 copies. "Lust & Romance: Rated X Fine Art Photographs", was published by Last Gasp of San Francisco in October, 1998”.

Michele Serchuk widely used soft focus black and white images portraying bondage and fetishes, in exploring the more carnal side of the human psyche between gay, lesbian and straight couples. Paul Dahlquist was another one who also tended to use a wide array of soft focus techniques, emphasizing the body shape.

Barbara Nitke fascinated by the SM scene. “Everyone I've photographed has taught me something new about the nature of sexual desire, humanity, and the fact that no matter how we're wired to express love, freedom is having the courage to be who we are.” (http://www.barbaranitke.com/bio.html )

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Sexual Portraits 03 Michael Rosen

Leah brought A. over to play in front of my camera one Sunday afternoon Michele Serchuk

Sky ~ infrared candle1997 Michele Serchuk

http://www.barbaranitke.com/bio.html


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In 1994 she started work on her book Kiss of Fire: A Romantic View of Sadomasochism (Kehrer 2003).

Vlastimil Kula ventured into areas of passion and rebellion. Roy Stuart’s work explores voyeurism in a passionate

forbidden way implying the man lacks any sense of taboo. Selling over 500,000 copies of his Roy Stuart volumes 1-5 books worldwide, indicates that maybe a lack of taboo is indeed what is one of our darker desires.

Voyeurism seemed to find its way into a more diverse fashion spectrum, with Cindy Sherman typically known for slightly off the wall self portraits. Her work of historical portraits, in the early 1990s examines voyeurism and femininity through

costume. In order to emphasize the voyeuristic impression, the images were closely cropped.

The fashion photography of the 60s and 70s would seem to be repeated in a fresh regenerated way by Collier Schorr and Glen Luchford. Schorr, with images portraying adolescent men and women sometimes confused by their sexuality, while Luchford got together with artist and friend Jenny Savile who had gone through having reconstructive surgery, and wanted to purvey the agony associated with it. To illustrate this Luchford had her press her body against glass thus producing a surreal mess of human flesh (1995) His anti-fashion work also had

acclaim with the Spring/Summer Prada Campaign of 1997.

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Barbara Nitke Bathroom Kiss, 1995

1997ROY STUARTAvy, Villieres sur Marne 1995/2002

Collier Schorr DIE ZWEI (SPRING BREAK), 1997


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Glen Luchford / Jenny Savile 1995

While staying on surreal images David La Chapelle dubbed “the Fellini of photography” bizarre but yet beautiful images, are created with the tools of today’s artists. the computer, lighting, Photoshop, and a digital camera. Using them together, he creates works of art probably even able to make a manic depressive smile. His unique and humorous impression on the world that we live in have gained acclaim throughout the four

corners of the globe. He has manipulated photographs of just about every A list celeb in the English speaking world. La Chapelle was discovered by Andy Warhol, who gave him a photography job on his magazine, “Interview”. He has gone on to win major awards throughout the nineties and beyond. whilst working on major advertising campaigns, fashion magazines such as Vogue and Vanity Fair, as well as numerous album covers, while also dabbling into fine art photography.

Conclusion The 1990’s were about coming back down to earth, with a newer model of an older concept steaming its way forward. I can’t help but notice that some of the most influential photographers of the decade all seem to have adopted a style used, for a very long time by the most notable Henry Cartier-Bresson, known as the father of modern journalism. He took a very candid approach to his photography, that of street scenes, and capturing a moment in everyday life, with every day people. This is very much reflected in the work of Knight, Goldin, Tiller, Tillmans, Day and Larry Sultan, just to mention a few.

During this period many of the pro-am pornographers were using similar styles for their work, using what they had within their social / professional circles whilst studying what is a powerful and emotional side of human nature.

The heroin chic took photography back onto the streets giving consent to scruffiness and disorder, an image of life that we all understand; such a long way away from the manufactured studio glitz of the 1980’s The likes of Mario Testino, still satisfying our insatiable appetite to view high society, presented with much more class, and dare I even say a lack of tackiness without a day glow accessory or a shoulder pad in sight. The Nineties have made it possible for photographers like La Chapelle to flourish there digital artistic expertise on the world. I wonder just how obese we would all be without his later work, ‘ death by hamburger’.

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Madonna: Furious Seasons 1998

Alexander McQueen & Isabella Blow 1996


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Essay by Stuart Williams 2009

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Books

Charlotte Cotten (2004). The Photographs as contemporary art. London: Thames & Hudson ltd.

Reuel Golden (1999). C20 Photography. London: Carlton Books.

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photography time line essay

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