'The World is Beautiful'
This is some research that I have carried out of Albert Renger. I picked this picture because it instantly drew my attention. I like how the snow takes away all of the effects, detail and colour to the image; and then you can clearly see the patterns where the snow flows. Despite the image being black and white, when it snows everything turns black and white anyway, so you can't really tell that the image has been taken like this. The snow in the background helps the tree and the branches stand out, giving you a clear sense the tree and how it's grown. The image has a viewpoint from far away meaning that there is more of a background and mid ground rather than a foreground. The background is colourless and plain, meaning that it's not the main focus in the image.
Renger-Patzsch was born in Würzburg and at the age of 12 he started making photographs. In the 1920s he worked as a press photographer for the Chicago Tribune before becoming a freelance photographer. Renger-Patzsch had his first museum exhibition in 1927. In 1928, he created his most remarkable piece of work so far; Die Welt ist schön (The World is Beautiful). This, his best known book, and it is a collection of one hundred of his photographs in which natural forms. A lot of other photographers of the time were interested in objectivity so these sorts of images were common in that time. Originally he wanted to call the book Die Dinge ("Things"). However his publisher chose the current title. This title fits a lot better in my opinion because contemporary photographers have been influenced by the idea that ordinary objects and scenes can be photographed to reveal their beauty, like this next example. This is another image of his that I rather liked, this is because you're forced to look at all of the intricate shapes, the sharp spikes and how it spirals up. Alberts main objective was to do just this, make you look at something for what it really is, not what it does. For example this is a plant and we all know it's a plant, however in this image you can see how the plant has grown and it almost has a character to it. He used the formal elements to show the lines and texture of the plant. This is a very organic image of something so natural. You can see the rhythm in the plant in how it repeats the spikes while the stem of the plant swirls round, it reminds me heavily of a female figure with all kind of curves. You can clearly see where the light source is, from the background I would assume that this light source is man made. |
Albert Renger-Patzsch |
My response
Overal evaluation
Successful image
I feel like this image is rather successful because you can clearly see the textures and the lines that are there. Despite there being a background it doesn't take all of your focus away, it's rather blurred and the colours are rather dim. This helps to put your focus on what's actually in the image to see all of the shapes. As there are spikes on the side of the animal I wanted to make sure these stood out, however I wanted to make sure you could also see the rest of the lumps and bumps on it's back. I had to think about the angle at which this was taken at so all of the texture was distinct and clear.
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Not to successful
I don't think this image is as successful as the first one, this is because there's not really a focus point and there are as many lines and shapes to it. When compared to the successful image it's not as focused on anything, despite there being small circles, curves and lines to the image; the picture was taken as a whole without a focus point which means these shapes aren't highlighted as much and made obvious. If I was to take an image of the plant again I would take it at a different angle so it was focused on the various lines taking away how obvious it is that it's a plant.
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