Discipline abstract:
Folk art

Theme
"Photography is like a modern art form."

Completed by: M.S. Zakharova
Student 529 - W GROUP
Checked by: E. Streltsova

MOSCOW

2010
Content:

1 the birth of photography

2. Masters of photography

3. Russian photographers

4. Types of photography

Conclusion

1. The birth of photography

Originally born as a way of fixing portrait or nature images, performed much faster than the hand of an artist, photography then penetrated into all spheres of human activity. The objectivity and accuracy of the photographic image made it one of the most effective ways of displaying reality, the most important means of information and documentation. Photography is widely used in art, which has given rise to the term art photography. It became possible to talk about differentgenres of photography ... The ability of various materials to capture an image has become widely demanded in various branches of science, determining the emergence of scientific photography. In technology, not without the participation of photography, such industries as printing and reprography have developed. Photography has taken an equally important place in everyday life. In less than 200 years of its existence, world photography has passed a long and difficult path of continuous development and improvement. At the same time, all aspects of the industry developed in an organic connection: photographic materials and physicochemical processes, the principles of obtaining images, shooting photographic equipment, genres and creative techniques.

The date of birth of the photograph is considered to be January 7, 1839, when the French physicist D.F. Arago (1786-1853) informed the Paris Academy of Sciences about the invention by the artist and inventor L. Zh.M. Daguerre (1787-1851) of the first practically acceptable method of photography, called the daguerreotype by the inventor. However, this process was preceded by the experiments of the French inventor J.V. Niepce (1765-1833), associated with the search for ways to fix the image of objects obtained under the influence of light. The first surviving imprint of an urban landscape, made with a camera obscura, was obtained by him in 1826. Niepce used a solution of asphalt in lavender oil as a light-sensitive layer applied to tin, copper or silver-plated plates. Trying to implement the invention, the author on December 28, 1827 sent the "Note on Heliography" and samples of his work to the British Royal Society. In 1829 Niepce signed an agreement with Daguerre to form a commercial enterprise Niepce-Daguerre to work together to improve the method invented by Niepce and Daguerre. A continuation of Niepce's development was the subsequent work of Daguerre, who already in 1835 discovered the ability of mercury vapor to reveal a latent image on an exposed iodized non-silver plate, and in 1837 he was able to fix a visible image. The difference in photosensitivity compared to the Niepce process when using silver chloride was 1: 120.
The heyday of the daguerreotype dates back to the 1840-1860s. Almost simultaneously with Daguerre, the English scientist W.G.F. Talbot (1800–1877) in 1835 obtained a photograph using his earlier "photogenic drawing". A significant drawback of "photogenic drawing" was the long exposure. The similarity between the Daguerre and Talbot methods was limited by the use of silver iodide as a photosensitive layer. Otherwise, the differences were fundamental: in the daguerreotype, a positive mirror-reflecting silver image was immediately obtained, which simplified the process, but made it impossible to obtain copies, and in the Talbot calotype, a negative was made, with which any number of prints could be made, a two-stage negative-positive sequence of the process was realized - a prototype of modern photography.
Neither Niepce, nor Daguerre, nor Talbot used the term "photography", which was legalized and received the right to exist only in 1878 in the Dictionary of the French Academy. Most photography historians believe that the term "photography" was first used by the Englishman J. Herschel on March 14, 1839. However, another version is known, giving priority to the Berlin astronomer Johann von Madler (February 25, 1839).
The inventor of the film, the American amateur photographer G.V. Goodwin (1822-1900) in 1887 applied for the invention of "Photographic film and its production process." The introduction of photographic film, and then the development by J. Eastman (1854-1933) of a photography system using this photographic material led to fundamental changes in the photographic industry, made photography available to the mass consumer both technically and economically.
Subsequently, photographic equipment has changed markedly, and above all, in its optical part. Optics made a significant step forward. There are manytypes of lenses , which began to be used for various types of photography. The variety of artistic tasks has presented photographers with the need for a more subtle, more differentiated approach to their implementation. For photography of landscapes and architecture, in order to achieve "greater capacity" of the frame, they began to usewide angle lenses , which turned out to be inapplicable for such a genre of photography as a portrait, since the use of the latter causes significant distortion when shooting at close range. Also, complexlight filters , allowing to achieve very fine correction of visual effects, masterly control of color fixation. But all these features of modern types of photo-detecting devices deserve separate consideration.

Development of photography equipment

The single-lens reflex camera was patented by the Englishman T. Sutton in 1861. The devices of several foreign firms were subsequently designed on the model of his Reflex SLR camera. The two-lens reflex camera was invented by the British R. and J. Beck (1880). In 1929, the German designers R. Heydicke and P. Franke developed the "Rolleiflex" SLR camera, which was produced in various modifications for about 60 years and became a notable stage in the development of the camera industry. In 1955, a box camera was patented that could be placed in a woman's reticule or in a doctor's bag. For the police, the Englishman T. Bolas in 1981 developed two hand-held "detective" cameras (one of them in the form of a book), which made it possible to obtain snapshots. "Detective" cameras were given the appearance of bags, binoculars, watches.
In 1890-1950. cameras called box cameras have become widespread. Among them, a prominent place is occupied by the Kodak camera (1888), which marked the beginning of a new stage in photographic technology. The camera provided shooting of 100 frames on film with a paper base. After exposure, the film was processed, printed and the camera recharged by the company's specialists (“photo finishers”). The instructions for the camera said: “... Now photography is possible for everyone. You push the button, we do the rest. " Appearance in the 1890s. photographic materials with high photosensitivity, the introduction of a roll film with light-shielding paper gave impetus to the further development of photographic technology, accompanied by a transition from relatively heavy and bulky box cameras to lighter and more miniature pocket folding cameras with corrugated fur. The most famous and technically perfect was the family of cameras of the "Iconta" type (Germany), the first of which was made in 1929.
In 1912, American J. Smith manufactured a small-format camera with a frame size of 24x36 mm on 35-mm film. Then cameras of this type were released in France (Homeos-3, 1913), Germany (Minograf, 1915) and others. However, they did not have a noticeable effect on the development of photographic equipment. In 1913, O. Barnak, a design engineer of the German company E. Leitz, manufactured the first prototype of a small-format camera, later named "Pra-Leica". In 1925, the first batch (1000 pieces) of small-format Leika-1 cameras with a focal shutter, shutter speeds from 1/20 to 1/500 s and an Elmax 3.5 / 50 lens was manufactured. Thanks to the precision of manufacturing, the original layout, this camera opened a new stage in the camera industry and photography.
The development of photographic technology led to the creation of miniature cameras (the first development was the Minox camera of the Riga resident V. Zappa, 1935), cameras using disc photographic film (D. Dilks patent, 1926), cameras for technical photography in industry and science (the family of devices “Technics "The German company" Linhof "and the apparatus" Sinar "of the Swiss company of the same name).
Widespread use in the second half of the XX century. color photographic materials, as well as black-and-white with increased resolution, but less photographic latitude, necessitated the mass production of cameras with automation devices for controlling the shooting process. The production of such equipment was launched in the second half of the 1950s. After the appearance of cameras with semi-automatic control ("Agfa Siletta SL", 1956) and an automatic shutter speed ("Agfa Avtomatik 66", 1956), designs were proposed that had internal exposure metering, point light metering (“Pentax Spotmatic”, 1960), local light metering (“ Leukaflex ", 1965), brightness measurement at a working diaphragm (" Asahi Pentax SP ", 1964), dynamic system. exposure control TTLDM ("Olympus OM-2", 1969).
The first photographs required a significant exposure time, sometimes up to several hours. In 1839-1840. L. Ibbetson, who used a device that used the effect of lime glow in a hydrogen-oxygen flame (Drummond light), managed to obtain a daguerreotype of a piece of coral within 5 minutes, which required an exposure of more than 25 minutes when shooting in the sun. In 1854 in France, Gaudin and Delamar patented a Bengal fire as a source of light. The combustible mixture consisted of sulfur, nitric acid potassium and antimony. It took only 2-3 seconds to get the portrait. The first successful attempt to use electric light in photography was made by F. Talbot, who used the discharge of a Leyden jar to photograph a fast-moving object (1851). Photo studios with electric lighting appeared in England (1877), France (1879), and Germany (1882). The use of bright actinic light emitted during the combustion of a magnesium wire was mastered by R. Bunsen and G. Roscoe (1859). The first portrait from life using this source was made by A. Brothers in 1864. The concept of "flash" has spread since 1886, when magnesium powder was used in a mixture with other components that increase the intensity of light and shorten the ignition period. In 1893, Schaufer developed an electrically ignited magnesium flash lamp, which was a glass sphere with a magnesium wire filled with oxygen. Its disadvantage was the possibility of destruction of the balloon as a result of the expansion of oxygen at high temperatures. The design is up to date. safe flash lamps developed in Germany by J. Ostermeier in 1929, in which the balloon was filled with aluminum foil.
In 1932, the American G. Edgerton proposed using a reusable electronic flash lamp in photography. In 1939 he made a flash based on a xenon tube and developed a method for setting fire to a flash lamp from a camera shutter, which then became widespread. The "Meckablitz 100" flash with a transistor converter of constant voltage, released by P. Metz, marked the beginning of the production of electronic flash tubes (1958). The search for further control of the shooting process led to the emergence of a coordinated automatic flash lamp (Canon Speedlight 155A for the Canon AE-1 camera, 1976), which, when installed in the holder, functionally communicated with the camera through additional control contacts.

2. Masters of photography

In the second half of the XIX century. technical and scientific advances in photography have led to the emergence of new techniques that are characteristic only of photography. One of the innovators was the English master O. Reilander (1813–1875), who edited the allegorical composition Two Life's Paths (1856) from 30 negatives.
The English writer L. Carroll (author of "Alice in Wonderland") was recognized as the best master of children's photographs.
Since the 1860s. the technique of field photography has spread. Until the 1920s. it developed in the spirit of imitation of a picturesque landscape: R. Lamar (France), L. Misson (Belgium), A. Cayleigh (Great Britain), etc.
Ethnographic natural photography of the second half of the 19th century. set herself the goal of a reliable fixation of the life of the people. In the same period, reportage photography appeared, for example, R. Fenton photographed episodes from the fronts of the Crimean War of 1853–1856; Brady, A. Gardner - the American Civil War 1861-1865, A.I. Ivanov, D.N. Nikitin, M.V. Revensky - the Russian-Turkish war of 1877-1878. The invention, then the improvement of the focal plane shutter, made it possible to photograph moving objects, which gave impetus to the further development of reportage photography.
At the beginning of the XX century. in the works of photographers, the influence of various directions in painting is still noticeable. At the same time, interest in the interpretation of the forms of the real world is growing in photography. The works of representatives of this direction (the so-called avant-garde photo) combine the play of forms, pretentiousness of lines, light-tone transitions, unrealistic perspective constructions, non-objective compositions. Photographers photographing old plaster, cracks on the asphalt, etc., changing the scale and texture beyond recognition, created compositions in the spirit of abstract art. Searches on the path of the avant-garde were not always fruitless, they led to the development of their own specific means of expressiveness in photography, such as, for example, the use of foreshortenings, close-ups, multi-faceted compositions. At the same time, the principles of artistic solutions based on the documentary essence of photography were formed. In many genres, the journalistic power of photography was revealed.
War reporting had a significant impact on the turn of photography towards documentary forms, towards the rise of humanist photojournalism.

3. Russian photographers

Grekov opened an "art study" in St. Petersburg, and in 1841 published in Moscow a brochure "A painter without a brush and without paints, taking all sorts of images, portraits, landscapes, etc. in their real light and with all shades in a few minutes." In the 1840s. the famous Russian photo artist S.L. Levitsky. The group photo he took of Russian writers is especially good. In 1849 the photographer opened a daguerreotype institution "Svetopis" in St. Petersburg, and in 1859 - a workshop in Paris, which became one of the best portrait-making salons in Europe. He has received numerous awards at international exhibitions. S.L. Levitsky was the owner of a gold medal for photographic work at the World Exhibition in Paris (1851). In the 1850s. A.I. stood out. Denier (1820-1892) - a graduate of the Academy of Arts, who opened in St. Petersburg "Daguerreotype institution of the artist Denier" (1851) and published an album of photographic portraits of famous people in Russia, which included images of famous Russian travelers, scientists, doctors, artists, writers. The last outstanding representative of Russian photographers of the early period was another graduate of the Academy of Arts V.A. Carrick (c. 1827-1878). He is famous for his genre and species photography of peasants in the regions of Central Russia. Collections of V.A. Carrick has been shown (out of competition) at international exhibitions in London and Paris. In 1876, the master was awarded the title of photographer of the Academy of Arts.

4. Types of photography

Black and white photography
Black and white negative photographic materials have a different sensitivity to color than human vision. If, for example, objects of violet and yellow color are removed on non-sensitized negative film, then under the influence of violet rays the image becomes black, and under the influence of yellow it does not appear and remains transparent. When positive printing (on photographic paper), the purple color will be reproduced in white, and the yellow color in black, that is, the brightness of the object will be distorted when the tones are transmitted in black and white photography.

Color photo
Unlike black-and-white photography, color encompasses methods of obtaining images in which the brightness and color characteristics of the subject are reproduced in colors close to natural. The development of three-layer photographic materials made it possible to solve the problem of obtaining high-quality color images both on film and on photographic paper. It is based on the possibility of obtaining all colors by adding light fluxes of three primary colors (red, green, blue), or by subtracting light fluxes from white using layers that selectively absorb light. One of the most widespread methods of color photography was the method of obtaining a color image on multilayer photographic materials.

Silver halide photography
This type of photography is based on the use of photographic materials: film, photographic plates and photographic paper. The method is very expensive !!!

Silver-free photography
Features of non-silver materials: low photosensitivity, poorly reproduce halftones and have a "noisy" image; it is impossible or difficult to obtain color images on them. Silver-free photographic materials are used for microfilming, copying and duplicating documents, displaying information, etc.

Plane photography
The arsenal of traditional pictorial means of photography and the objectivity of photographic documents are limited by the two-dimensionality of photographic images. Black-and-white and color photography, electrography and video recording refer to plane types of photography and do not allow representing an object in three-dimensional way - as the eye sees it. The absence of the third dimension in these photographic images is due to the properties of ordinary (incoherent) light, which is used in shooting practice.

Stereoscopic photography
Stereoscopic photography encompasses methods of obtaining photographic images, when viewed, the feeling of their volumetricness (stereoscopicity) is created. The difference between a stereoscopic image and a conventional one is that a stereo image consists of two (minimum) conjugate images. Conjugate are images obtained by photographing the same object from points corresponding to the location of the eyes, i.e. taken at the same scale, with the same brightness and connected by a single perspective.

Holography
An image that is practically adequate to the subject of photography is obtained using holography - a special way of recording any information using coherent wave fields. In contrast to conventional photography, holography in the photosensitive layer registers not an optical image of an object, which characterizes the distribution of the brightness of its details, but a thin and complex interference pattern of the wavefront display of a holographic object, which carries complete information about it. Unlike other types of photography, a hologram with amazing accuracy conveys spatial relationships: different degrees of distance of individual objects from the observer, their angular and linear dimensions, relative position in space; makes it possible to view images from different angles and get a complete illusion of the really considered objects.

5. Genres of photography

Still life (from French nature morte, literally - dead nature) - the image of inanimate household items, attributes of any activity, flowers, fruits.
The genre of still life began to take shape immediately with the emergence of photography.
The mastery of photography with its own specific visual means, different from painting, also affected the understanding of still life. The range of objects and motives of the still life expanded, the everyday reality surrounding the artist more and more penetrated into it. Elements of other genres appeared in the subjects of the still life.
Still life has found a worthy place in the work of many representatives of world photography.

Landscape (French paysage, from pays - country, area) - a genre in which the object of the image is nature.
The genre of landscape, like still life, began to take shape from the moment photography was born.
To create highly artistic works in the landscape genre, it is important to clearly understand the peculiarities of the perception of a photographic landscape. As you know, we perceive living nature with different senses, but mainly with vision. Vision is binocular and incomparable with photographic either in terms of coverage, perceived brightness range, or color reproduction.
When photographing a landscape, one of the most important tasks is to convey the space convincingly. In nature, we see it as continuous.
In every landscape there is always a common changeable element that has exclusive power over our emotions: this is the sky. The entire world landscape experience testifies to the fact that a landscape painter should shoot the sky and ... everything else.
When bright accents are not placed, small details stand out too much.
Of great importance in monochrome photography is the color of the paper used. It can strengthen or slow down our associations.
Today's amateur photographic landscape often suffers from unjustified conventionality of the image, and modern attributes, wedging into nature, completely destroy its spiritual principle. This contradiction, however, can form the basis of environmental plots that cannot leave our contemporary indifferent.
Often an architectural landscape, especially in the case of thoughtless destruction or natural destruction of monuments, can acquire the value of a historical document. The ecology of culture is a very topical and extremely important topic for the photographer, which should be solved, apparently, in some new in temperament, flashy forms.
Also interesting are photographic landscapes that organically include a person in all the diversity of his personal manifestations.
The landscape genre is of great importance for visual self-education. In recent times, when the image of nature was highly valued in painting, sketch training, pictorial study of nature were a matter of course, even for great masters. Moreover, it is necessary for photographers without education, tradition and school. It would be naive to expect that only through technology can one make a forest look like a forest or rain after rain. Nature must be constantly photographically studied and all possible states must be “passed through” on an accessible nature, achieving their visual reproduction on a positive basis. Then the cherished unique plots, generally rare in the practice of a photographer, will become more accessible and frequent. The attitude towards nature in view of the threat of its destruction, as well as the attitude towards cultural monuments, is changing today. This is a prerequisite for a new revival of the landscape genre, in which photography has created artistic values ​​like no other.
Portrait has always been one of the most popular types of fine art, and in the pre-photographic era, written by the hand of an artist, it was generally the only way to capture the appearance of a person, to preserve it in the memory of posterity. With the advent of daguerreotype, it became more accessible, and portrait photography immediately became very popular, daring to compete, and to a certain extent successfully, with painting (although it received the contemptuous nickname “painting for the poor” from artists).
If we talk about the development of the genre of the photographic portrait as a whole, then two qualities - the depth of penetration into the essence of the human character, on the one hand, and the desire for the utmost reliability of the details recreated in the photograph, on the other, - are fundamental inherent in the entire history of photography.
In the studio photographic portrait, varieties of this genre are widely represented. An adherent of the expressive portrait was M. Sherling: in his photographs people were most often represented in a stormy inner movement. It is no coincidence that this master chose as models those who are naturally endowed with a powerful temperament.
A. Shterenberg has established himself as a portrait painter-lyricist. Using a range of light, he preferred ultra-close-ups in photographs: in them, in most cases, we see only the head of a person. Eyes play a special role in these portraits.

Reportage portrait ... (event, culprits, weddings)
The studio portrait now makes up one half of the genre. The other half of it is given to the reportage portrait, which is a part of documentary photography. In such popular genres of photojournalism as essay, series, reportage, more and more often there are pictures-portraits of participants in real life events. Unlike studio works, where the author has the ability to seriously transform a person's external data by photographic means, here there is a strong documentary beginning.
etc.................

Photography photography strife.

Pictures are often taken only in order to stop some moments, to preserve the memory of events or places where a person has been - we call this genre "I and a palm tree". But sometimes you want to shoot something that will awaken emotions regardless of memories, you want to take a picture that will hang on the wall as if it opens a window to some other world - to where we have not been and hardly already we will. A window to the world of art.

Yes, yes, it will be precisely the art that you created yourself - not Michelangelo, not Saryan and not Malevich - it is you. Why not? It is available to everyone. You just need to want.

It is to those who strive to do such photo, and our ABC will come in handy. All this knowledge is absolutely unnecessary for photo sessions of the "Me and a Palm" class - modern digital cameras are so easy to use and so complex inside that they allow you to shoot "chronicles of life" without the slightest effort, without spiritual overload - and with great results that you can use fill the tie with a plump 10x15 album.

How to define - art or not?

If, when you look at someone else's photo, you feel sorry that you didn’t take it, this is art. Joke. But only almost.

Suppose we always know our masterpieces - just don't try to convince ourselves otherwise. Some photographers try so hard to achieve absolute perfection that simple ordinary luck is neglected. And thus impoverish both themselves and us. Others, on the contrary, see each of their pictures only in a pink filter and deprive themselves of the luxury of critical evaluation.

If you manage to avoid such extremes (and extremes are always extremely harmful), then you just have to listen to your inner voice. To his own. He will never deceive you. After all, the main thing is that you like the picture yourself. To the Creator.

And if you like the picture, it's art. And real art is worthy of going out to the masses - to print and to the world.

Printing as a cherished result

Your wonderful photo will become a real masterpiece only after you present it to the viewer. Although, already on the threshold of time, when plasma panels will hang in galleries or on the walls of apartments for displaying paintings (desktop electronic frames are already sold in full in stores), the simplest way to materialize a masterpiece is still printing.

After the advent of more or less cheap inkjet printers, it became possible to print photos directly at home, and most importantly, it became possible to control the quality and printing process.

Managing the process is very important. Probably, every camera owner has at least once found himself in such a situation: you come to the laboratory to receive photographs, and they ...

• too red ...
• too blue ...
• too cloudy!
• ... but these are not your photos at all !!!

Therefore, printing pictures at home is safer. You will have to spend money on paper (which is better, the more expensive!) And ink (which are original - that is, from the manufacturer of your printer, but are cheaper - that is, not from the manufacturer of your printer).

Making a quality print at home is not easy. First of all, the printer and monitor need to be calibrated, for which you will have to use special equipment. You will also need skills in color management, changing contrast, color, saturation and many other characteristics of the image. You can read about all this in our ABC.

However, you don't need to do all this yourself - you just need to find professionals who will do everything for you for a reasonable price. Recently, more and more such services appear. It is important here not to make a mistake in your choice. And for this, it will again be useful for you to read our ABC to the end - after all, even if you do not process and print your masterpieces yourself, acquaintance with these technologies will allow you to consciously choose the most professional executor of your orders.

Theoretical aspects of photography as a form of fine art. The history of the development of photography, classification of its types, means of expressiveness in photography. One of the goals of photography is to convey the inner essence of the subject of photography. Photos are a repository of visually captured moments of life and act as a link between generations.

If this work did not suit you at the bottom of the page there is a list of similar works. You can also use the search button

The Art of Photography Is one of the most remarkable forms of art in the modern world. Often people confuse the true passion for photography with a lot of pictures of yourself. A true love of photography is about more than a “me and a monument” photo. The ability to stop the flow of time at some amazing moment, to express your emotions and feelings in one small picture, to expand the boundaries of your “I” - this is what it consists of ability to photograph... Getting carried away with photography, you begin to look at the world with completely different eyes, discovering more and more new boundaries for yourself. Capturing a raindrop so that the person who will view the pictures hears its sound - this is true Photo, for this it is worth learning how to photograph.

For people who are just starting to get acquainted with photography, this seems like a fairly simple exercise. I caught the frame, pressed the button and that's it, the rest will be done by digital technologies. Now you do not need, as before, to sit for hours in a dark bathroom with a bunch of solutions and developers to see the result of your work. Nowadays, it is true, thanks to such digital cameras, like here http://www.e-katalog.ru/list/206/panasonic/, and other equipment, the work for the photographer becomes significantly less. But the camera is just a means for creating a picture, and already the master makes from it not just a picture, but a whole story.

Actually, photography art hides a lot of subtleties and nuances. The word "" is translated from Greek as "light painting" - in fact, it means painting with light, this explains a little some of the technical components of the process. The whole technology of creating a photograph is to find the right composition, the right lighting and the photo itself. All this is determined by himself, based on his skills and abilities, and of course personal taste.

Today it is difficult to imagine our world without photography. Each person gives their pictures a certain meaning. For someone art of art photography- this is the most valuable document that contains the entire history of life. For some, this is a way to reach out to the world, a way to speak out. Contemporary photography- this is a great way of communication, firstly, with its help you introduce yourself to a large number of people, and secondly, it is a dialogue with yourself. You explore yourself, your emotions, your creative possibilities. The photo evokes in each person some associations, memories, new ideas about himself and the surrounding reality, allows him to attract the attention of others. In the art of photography, everyone can talk about their desires, feelings and fantasies without looking back.

In the development of photography as an art, the most important aspect is objective criticism. First of all, the master himself must be able to distinguish the disadvantages of his work from the merits. Criticism of others plays an equally important role. The more competent and authoritative the photographic works of novice masters will be criticized, the faster amateurish disputes that distract and interfere with creating high art and observing it will be eliminated from the world of photography.

Photography genre Is, in fact, the self-expression of the master. True art goes beyond the boundaries of the ordinary photograph. It can combine both the latest methods, such as computer graphics, and very old materials and equipment - coarse-grained photographic paper, toning, monocular lenses. In any case, the main factor in the art of photography is the place it occupies in our life. Such pictures are not made to order, they are created for galleries and private collections, this is the main difference between amateur photography and photography.

Today, none of us doubts the fact that art photography is an art that reflects the creative vision of the photographer as an artist. However, even at the dawn of the development of photography for several decades, the acute question was whether photography can be attributed to art or is it simply nothing more than a means of recording and transmitting information about the world around us.

It took photography for many years to regain its own place in the art world, along with sculpture, cinema, painting and theater. But now any photographer can express his attitude to the world around him and the phenomena through such means of photography as an angle, color or the choice of the moment of shooting.

When the first photographic prints appeared, no one took photography seriously. She was considered only simple pampering and childish play for a limited circle of people. In the first years after its inception, photography, due to technical limitations, could not claim either documentary quality, or any artistic value, or freedom of lighting solutions and the photographer's creative vision.

In the 19th century, it was widely believed that only man-made work could be classified as art. Accordingly, photographic prints that were obtained using various physical and chemical methods simply could not claim the status of art. Even in spite of the fact that already the first generation of photographers tried to revive the composition of their photographs with some interesting techniques and approaches, nevertheless, photography continued to remain an amusing trinket in the eyes of public opinion.

Photography was considered by critics of that time only as a mechanical copy of reality, capable of being only a semblance of artistic painting. Until the 1920s and 1930s, articles and publications seriously considered the question of whether photography is an art or is it just an applied, practical skill, where the key role is played by technology, and not the photographer himself.

Several periods can be distinguished in the development of photography as an art. Even at the dawn of the development of photography, it was not much different from painting, that is, photographers tried to use the painterly techniques they were familiar with in photography. They shot mainly monumental, immovable objects. These first photographic prints belonged to the genre of portrait or landscape. In addition, due to the emergence of the newspaper industry in the 19th century, photography has occupied the niche of simple documentary evidence of certain events. We can say that at that time there was still no talk about the expressiveness and artistry of photography. When did photography really become art?

Probably, no exact date can be given. But historians of photographic art mark a significant event for themselves that happened in 1856. Then the Swede Oscar G. Reilander made a unique combined print from thirty different retouched negatives. His photograph, entitled "Two Roads of Life", seemed to describe the ancient saga of the entry of two young people into life. One of the main characters in the photo turns to various virtues, mercy, religion and crafts, while the other, on the contrary, is carried away by such sinful delights of life as gambling, wine and immorality. This allegorical photograph instantly became widely known. And after the exhibition in Manchester, Queen Victoria herself acquired the photograph of Reylander for the collection of Prince Albert.

This combined photograph can rightfully be attributed to one of the first independent works related to photography. The creative approach of Oscar G. Reilander relied, of course, on the classical art history education he received at the Roman Academy. In the future, various experiments with photomontage, with the development of double exposure, and with stunning multi-exposure photography are associated with his name.

The Reylander case was continued by the talented artist and photographer Henry Peach Robinson, who became famous for his combined photo "The Leaving", made from five negatives. This art photograph shows a girl dying in an armchair with her mother and sister standing sadly over her, and her father looking out the open window. The picture "Leaving" was criticized for distorting the truth, but, nevertheless, it became widely known. It was immediately acquired by the English royal court, and the crown prince even gave Robinson a standing order for one print of any such photograph.

Robinson himself became the leading exponent of so-called pictorial photography in England and Europe. This direction of photography held a dominant position in photography until the first decade of the 20th century. Many pictorial effects and techniques were used in pictorial photography.

It must be said that photography for a long time could not leave the "shadow" of painting. However, the development of photography as an independent art at the beginning of the last century was largely facilitated by regular exhibitions, at which, along with simple beautiful shots, viewers could see interesting photographs that deserve the title of "artistic work". One of the first such international exhibitions was the gallery of photography with the modest name 291, which was opened by Alfred Stiglitz in 1905 in New York. It was a real exhibition of contemporary art, in which the names of famous artists were on a par with photographers.

With the beginning of the 1920s and 1930s, a new period began in the art of photography, directly connected with the mass publication of newspapers and magazines. Photography changes its style in favor of documentary and reportage shooting. The documentary and artistic realization were gradually intertwined in photography into a single whole. A new generation of photographers appeared who, through reportage and documentary photography, daily made the history of their country and the whole world. During this period in photography, artistic expressiveness with an ideological and social component was closely linked.

Photography becomes a carrier of a certain historical truth, a reflection of real events. It is not without reason that various posters, photo albums and magazines were of particular value in the 1920s and 1930s. It was during these years that communities and societies of photographers began to appear, which sought to turn photography into a self-sufficient form of art.

In our country, however, these positive processes at the end of the 30s were actually frozen. The Iron Curtain isolated Russian photography from trends in international artistic life for a long time. Talented Soviet photographers were forced to deal only with socialist realist photography. During the Second World War, many of them visited the battle fronts and managed to capture memorable moments of the great victory on film.

In the 60s and 70s, photographs again began to be considered as independent works of art. This is the era of photorealism and daring experiments with various photographic technologies and artistic techniques. Starting from this period of time, all directions of photography, which were on the periphery of public attention, finally received the right to be presented as an independent artistic value in art. New genres of photography appear, in which the author's intention and the creative vision of the photographer become the key moment. Famous photographers of that time began to touch upon such iconic social issues as social inequality, poverty, exploitation of child labor and many others in their artwork.

We owe the next revolution in photography to the transition from film to digital cameras. The digital image format has allowed photographers to move away from a simple mirror image of the reality around them. With the advent of digital cameras, computers and graphic editors, the photographer was able to transform his images in such a way that the viewer had the opportunity to get acquainted with the creative vision of the creator of the image and immerse himself in his surreal world. Although photography has become a mass phenomenon these days, for photography as an art, selectivity and a special personal "vision" are still important, allowing a person to create a real work of art using photographic means.

Despite the fact that with a digital camera you can take several hundred pictures in a matter of minutes, of course, not every frame can be classified as artistic. A modern photo artist expresses his vision of the world or the author's intention through a foreshortening, skillful play of light and shadow, a delicate choice of the moment of shooting and other techniques. Thus, the photographer, not the technician, remains at the heart of the art of photography. Only a person is able to put a part of his inner world into an image, so that the picture “grows” with new emotions and reveals the talent of the photographer himself.