Modernism

20 Mar

           Modernism begins between ninetieth and twentieth century. It influenced such fields as: technology, mass media, entertainment, science and art. It is about something new, something that has never existed before. Modernism also states about departure from tradition, tries to forget all that has happened before. It is characterised by the use of new and innovative form of expression.‘To be modern is to find ourselves in an environment that promises us adventure, power, joy, growth, transformation of ourselves and the world- and at the same time that threatens to destroy everything we have, everything we know, everything we are’. In the 19th century the invention of photography changed the world of images radically. Instead of being painted or drawn the images became ‘machine made’.
In the beginning of 20th century when the popularity of illustrated magazines and newspapers started to grow rapidly, photography became mass-communication medium. Artists and photographers started to look at that new medium in      a different way. Alfred Stieglitz an American photographer, who is considered as pioneer of modern photography brought that new graphic medium to the same level as high art. He was creating beauty from everyday life, and making statements about the nature of photography, rather than about the world.

Paul Strand and Edward Weston another two American photographers, eliminated the social context by abstracting the reality and emphasizing shape and form. By 1918 Weston’s work became increasingly concerned with abstraction and flatness, and he began to produce his first sharp-focus photographs. Edward Weston is famous for remarkable series of close-ups of organic forms including shells, peppers, onions, eggplants, artichokes and cabbages. In the above picture         a simple vegetable  is transformed into a massive form.

 

Bibliography:

Marshall Berman -All that is solid melts into Air (1982)

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