Anna and Bernhard Blume are a husband and wife photographer duo, both born in Berlin in 1937. Their work is intriguing both because of its content and technique. All of their work they are the subjects of and featured in performing unfathomable tasks because of the laws of nature would normally prohibit them. Most people today who shoot with digital SLR rely a lot on photoshop to get the same kind of freaky quality in their work as the Blumes have. The Blume’s however do not use any kind of digital camera or editing devices in their work and all of their work is show with black and white film using a large format camera. Their work is unique because of its strange content as you can see from the images above. A great deal of their work plays around with the slow motion stop action affect one can achieve with longer shutter speed times. The second image show above is a very good example of possibly shooting with a slower shutter speed. I am going to assume that somehow the potatoes have been suspended in the air because they are the clearest and crispest things in the image while the figure (which is Anna herself) is clear for the most part until you get to her head and arms which are very blurry and look they’re moving. The images above this one as well look as if the potatoes where some how made stationary and the figure moving using a slow shutter speed to get this freaky effect. For the day that they were making these images this was pretty difficult to accomplish and it required a lot of time and effort to get that one shot. Rolls upon rolls of film had to be developed and sifted through first before you even knew if you had the perfect shot you were hoping to achieve, whereas today with the click of a button our image is presented right in front of us on a tiny LCD screen. While their work for the most part is very amusing and fun to look at and you can help but smile in wonder at how it was made the print quality and technique in the printing are amazing and largely go unnoticed because of how easy modern day technology makes image making today.
I agree that now a days having the capabilities of computers and digital photography is in a way removing us from the actual workmanship of the product, but i believe that with these new advantages, we can move on to a higher level of photography. I am not saying there is no more importance in traditional film making, in fact quite the opposite, it requires attention to detail, that in the process creates better photographs. But if we consciously use the capabilities of computers with the same amount of attention that traditional development needs, then a new level in photography can be achieved. I would consider digital to be a different facet of photography as a whole- not a new or higher level than traditional.
ReplyDeleteJenn Brings up many valid points about how photoshop has changed photography. The fact that the Blumes were able to use such craft and different techniques to create theses images is amazing. It is people like the Blumes who were innovators and crucial int he advancement of photography. They have inspired many other photographers through their work with shutter speeds. Not to mention the sets that they have worked on are amazing in themselves. The patience it takes to be able to hang up each prop in the set and have the light fall in the exact light you want it to do is a difficult process to do, again the craft of the entire work takes much patience and is something I look to as an artist. They are capible of really transforming a set, as well as their models into something way advanced for its time.
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